True Love

I am SO in love with this little sweetheart!!!!!

It is kind of ironic because I was the least excited during this last pregnancy about having a baby, but now that Karsen is here, he is my favorite baby out of the three. Just to make it clear, he is NOT my favorite child, I love all three equally, but at the newborn stage he has been my favorite for several reasons. He hardly ever cries, he is so snuggly and cute, and overall has just been a really easy baby, so I have been able to enjoy him more, and have been stressed out a lot less!! The fact that I am not breastfeeding is also a big factor, but that is a topic for another post!!

Veteran's Day

I am so grateful for all of the military men and women who put their lives on the line to protect our freedoms and way of life. I am so proud to be an American and love this country that we live in. I am especially grateful for my soldier, for his hard work and dedication. Travis is a great man, and I am so proud of him for his willingness to serve in the military.

So on this Veteran's Day I want to say a big THANK YOU to all of the soldiers out there, including my very own!

Photo Shoot

The other day I did a little photo shoot of Karsen so that I would have a picture of him to hang on the wall. What do you think?

This is my absolute favorite one!! I LOVE it!

This is the one we chose to hang on our wall. Just precious!

Update

I've realized recently that I am not a very good blogger while I'm pregnant for some reason! I have written more blog posts in the past two weeks since I've had Karsen then I did during all of my pregnancy. Anyways, I figured that I'd better write an update on our lives for my own records! For those of you who didn't hear, Travis did NOT get deployed after all! They told them that they would be getting deployed in a year instead, which was very frustrating. We were happy that Travis would be around, but we were not looking forward to the year of anticipation and preparation again. We had accepted the fact that we would be separated for a year and were ready. But there wasn't anything to be done except to accept whatever came!

Well fast forward a couple of months to October 29th, Travis' drill weekend, and we found out that now the plan is that they will be getting deployed in January. Life is crazy I tell ya! So there is a 95% chance that Travis will be leaving in January to go to Fort Hood, TX for a few months of training, and then will be shipped off to Afghanistan in May. We are ok with this news, and are very grateful that Travis could be around for Karsen's birth and the first few months of his life. Leaving in January is much better timing than leaving in September would have been.

On to more exciting news, Travis got promoted with the military!! He is now a Specialist!! I was able to be there when he got promoted to put his rank on his uniform, which was a good experience! They have a little ritual with promotions where the spouse removes the old rank and replaces it with the new rank, and then punches the soldier as hard as they can in the chest! So I got to slug Travis in front of his whole company, which was pretty fun!!! I look forward to future promotions, just so I can punch him again!!! (I am really not as violent or abusive as I may seem! Travis is amazing and doesn't deserve to be hit, but traditions are fun!!)

Well that's what has been going on with our family!

Halloween 2011

We had a fun Halloween this year! We were fixing costumes up until the last minute, but I think they turned out pretty well.

Our knight/king riding his noble steed!

Our little ladybug!

And our little pumpkin!!

All ready to go trick-or-treating with daddy the jester! (Except Karsen of course!!)

This year we just took the kids out trick-or-treating for about an hour and a half and then came home and had a little impromptu Halloween party with my parents! My parents were kind enough to stay at our house with Karsen and hand out our candy while we took the kids around.

For our "party" we bobbed for apples, had doughnut eating contests, danced to Halloween music, and then watched Casper! It was lots of fun!!

Daddy demonstrated how to properly bob for apples!

Chloee put her face down by the water, but then decided it was more fun to grab the apple with her hand and throw it back into the water, creating a big splash!

Mimi got one!!

Chloee eating her doughnut while dancing!

Parker LOVED this activity!!

Yum Yum!!

Travis and I competing! Travis won, although he did have a smaller doughnut!!

Mimi and Papa competing. Papa won, but only by a hair! It was very close!!

Open wide!

Karsen slept peacefully while we partied!! Such a sweet baby pumpkin!!

Who Would Have Imagined?

Three kids under 5 is not unheard of or rare, but I never imagined that I would have three kids under 5 all in diapers. Let's just say I deal with a lot of poo in one day! But, it could be worse, and I am very grateful for all three of our children. They bring lots of joy to my life, AND hopefully before long both Parker and Chloee will be potty trained. (Fingers crossed!!)

2+1=3!!

The kids were able to come meet Karsen at the hospital, which was so fun! When Chloee was born, it was the middle of swine flu season, so Parker wasn't able to come to the hospital. So luckily this time around they could! Parker and Chloee were both SO excited to meet baby Karsen, and still love him a week later! (What a relief!!!)

Checking out their new baby brother.

Chloee being a big helper.

Brothers, and hopefully best buds!

Both kids climbed up on the bed to cuddle with me, but I only got a picture of Parker.

Chloee LoVes baby Karsen!

Introducing.......

Karsen Leany Brown!!

Our newest addition arrived on October 20, 2011 at 4:34 p.m. He weighed 8 lbs. 14 oz. and was 21 1/2 in. long.

My due date was October 27th, but because we thought that Travis would be gone to train for his deployment we opted to get induced a week early so that he would be more likely to make it back. So early on Thursday morning, Oct. 20th, we loaded the kids into the van and headed for Salt Lake City. We dropped the kids off at our friends' house, and then got the call from the hospital letting us know that they were ready for us. We got to the hospital at about 8:00 a.m. and got all checked in and ready to go. At 9:00 they got me hooked up to the pitocin, and we were on our way! I tested positive for Group B Strep, so I also had to have antibiotics for 4 hours before they would break my water.

When we arrived I was dialated to 2.5 cm. By 10:00 the contractions were getting uncomfortable and I asked for the epidural. Unfortunately it became pretty busy, so the anesesiologist was unavailable at the time. But luckily I wasn't really in pain, it was just more discomfort than pain. I got the epidural at about 12:00, and then got my water broken at about 1:00. At that time I was only at 3.5 cm. So we waited and let the labor progress. I was checked again at 4:00, and was to 5 cm. By then I was starting to feel the contractions through the epidural, and had them come and up the dose. By 4:30 I had them check again, and I was fully dialated, and ready to have my little man!

I only had to push once and our precious baby boy was born!! It was a wonderful experience!

Meeting Karsen at last!!

He is a big boy!

Happy parents!

I always have the BEST support when giving birth to our kids! First, my aMaZiNg husband Travis!

And my always faithful sister Heidi!

And my wonderful mom, and the best grandma ever, Mimi!!!!

All set to get my tubes tied. (That's right, no more kiddos for me!)

Being wheeled up to our room together.

It's Been Awhile

Man it has been awhile since I posted anything, and I have so much to post now! Travis has instructed me that I need to be better at posting often because he leaves this weekend to start his training for the deployment. He said that reading my blog helps him feel connected to our family, so I am going to try really hard for him to be better at keeping it updated.

Anyways, in the past couple of months we have had a lot going on. First off, I thought that I would share our news that we are having another little boy!! We are so so excited to be having another boy. Parker understands a lot more this go around and seems excited to have a baby brother. I am exactly 24 weeks today, so I only have 16 weeks to go!! Hooray!

We also have made some changes to our house in the past couple of months. We are just renting right now, and our house had carpet in the kitchen and bathroom(two of the worst places for carpet in my opinion!) So we talked to our landlords about replacing it and putting in linoleum tiles. They were fine with it, so that is what we did!! We started with the kitchen, and got it all put in and the new baseboards put up in no time at all! (We do still have to fill in the nail holes and touch up the paint on the baseboards!) Then we decided to get started on the bathroom. We wanted to paint the bathroom first and then redo the floor, so we got ready to do so, and ended up finding mold in the walls. So our bathroom painting and re-flooring turned into a complete bathroom redo. I will do a separate post just on that!

When it rains it pours, and for a few weeks it was pouring at our house. During the same time that we found the mold in the bathroom, Chloee ended up getting really sick and had to go to the emergency room. She had a fever of 107.5!! That is HOT, and scared us to death. Luckily they put her on some good antibiotics and she was better pretty quickly. Also during this time our dog got hit by a car. (Speaking of dogs, we got a new dog since I posted last! I will do a separate post about her also!) Luckily it wasn't too serious, and we didn't even have to take her to the vet.

I also had Youth Conference that same week, and then the following week ended up with pink eye. Life has just been crazy! I told Travis that I think Heavenly Father was giving us plenty of other things to think about and worry about so that we didn't have time to focus and worry about Travis leaving. In a way it has been good, because I really haven't thought about it too much until just the past couple of days.

Now we are on the brink of this next trial/stage of our lives as Travis leaves. I am doing pretty good so far, but we will see once he actually leaves. I will let you know how it goes!!

My OTHER Blog

Because I am no longer making jewelry to sell, I have decided to change my Mariah's Creations blog into more of a craft blog to share some of the projects I'm doing. So I've started to post a few things that I have done or plan on doing over there. My hope is to inspire others to use their creativity to make fun things too. I plan on posting often to keep it interesting!

Feel free to check it out if you'd like!!
http://mariahscreations.blogspot.com

Easter 2011

I realize that I'm a bit late with this post, but I wanted to document the fun we had this year, even if it is late! Our Easter fun started on Friday evening when we colored eggs.
Parker loved it!
Chloee just wanted to crush the eggs. We let her have fun with one that was cracked anyways!

Saturday morning we got up and had an easter egg hunt for the kids. They had a blast searching all over the yard for their eggs.

I was really sick all day Saturday, which was no fun. Gotta love being preggo!! We had a barbeque for lunch, and spent the rest of the day having fun with the family. We had everyone together except Aiden.

I spent the rest of the day in bed :( Luckily I woke up Sunday morning feeling much much better, and the Easter bunny came!! (He even cleaned my house! Thanks Easter Bunny!!!)