What a great evening of music! We had a Stake Easter Musical Fireside and each Ward contributed one or two pieces, all of the Primary children sang a piece, and then all of the choirs sang a joint piece together. Some of the music was so, so good! There had to have been at least 100 Primary kids singing He Sent His Son and it was fabulous and the Spirit was so strong. I conducted the last piece, Did You See Him in the Garden.  All of the Ward Choirs practiced on their own and we had never rehearsed all together... but it turned out great and was so powerful and the Spirit was so strong! There were so many other great musical numbers and choir numbers! Afterwards, we had a dessert potluck and there was a ton of good desserts. Cameron played in a cello duet for prelude and did a great job, Logan and Emma got to sing in the Primary number, Cameron and Errolyn sang in the combined choir piece, I conducted and ran the evening, and Mike ran the sound. And Allie was just  happy to be there. ;)

There have been a few hiccups with the land we're buying. We feel that everything will work out in the end, but buying the land will be one of those leap of faith decisions. I'll write more at the end of this process. We took the kids to hike the land on Saturday and they loved exploring and hiking around. I'm getting excited to own it soon!

Poor Emma is allergic to Oak pollen. Her eyes have been hugely swollen and she's been congested. The Zyrtec helps great, but if we give it to her even a little late, her eyes get so bad. Errolyn was excited that they got Sweepstakes at UIL.  Cameron's orchestra also made Sweepstakes. Logan is doing well in chess and has his first tournament in a couple of weeks. Emma started soccer for the first time and is so excited. Logan will be doing baseball this season, and Errolyn volleyball as usual, and Cameron's doing well in tennis at school. We've been slowly but surely getting the house organized. It always goes into disarray when I'm pregnant and then slowly gets back to where it should be after I have the baby. The kids have been super great at yard work and inside cleaning and I'm glad I have a hardworking family!

Life is good!

Woohoo!!  They accepted our offer!  3.5 acres!  w00t!  We were super worried because another offer came in.  So, we switched our offer to be all cash, instead of a loan (although we're still trying to rush through a loan so we don't have to use all of our cash), and a 30 day closing period.  They were "enticed" by the cash offer and took our deal.  And for those new to the conversation, we aren't building on the land until it's paid off... so it will be many years.  But, we will hike and play on the land in the meantime.  w00t!

So much for me writing more often.  :)  The Stake Conference in February went well and the music was good.  Now, I'm preparing for a Stake Easter Musical Fireside.  It's not too much work since all of the wards are providing the musical numbers, but it's a good variety of pieces so I'm excited.  We're having a dessert potluck afterwards to try to get more people out. 


Allie is 6 months now and tall for her age, of course.  She is gaining weight well and is eating baby food now.  Mike spent a long time installing a garage door opener in the Stake Center attic with a camera attached so it would retract out of the ceiling for Stake Conference.  Between that and his new webcasting equipment he had a nice set-up. 


Cameron, just came back from his High Adventure Scout trip.  They were supposed to hike for 30 miles, but they quit at 22 miles since one boy had severe blisters and others were complaining.  I was sad and wished they had finished since we don't want Cameron to learn that it's ok to give up when things get hard.  But, I wasn't there, so there may have been extenuating circumstances that I don't know about, who knows.  Errolyn had a blast at Girl's Camp and felt the Spirit a lot and made lots of friends.  She went with another Stake since she will be missing ours this Summer, and now she loves the girls in the other Stake.  I'm so glad she was able to go. 


Logan is in the chess club at school and loving it.  Emma is so excited that we got Sea World passes this year.  Her pass was free and I was waiting for a special to decide if we would get passes for the whole family or not since it's been many years since we've gone and it's quite expensive now.  They had a buy one get one free sale for a few days and so we took the whole family last night, bought our passes, stayed 30 minutes, and then left because it was closing.  Lol.  We knew it would be short, but the sale ended today and you could only buy tickets at the gate, so late last night was our only chance to cash in on the sale.


I'm sick right now... I think that's the only time I sit down and write.. when I'm sick.  It's just a bad cold, but I feel badly for Allie since it's her first bad cold too.  :(  The humidifier helps a lot though.


My parents and Janet's family came up earlier in the week and it was nice to visit with them.  I wasn't feeling good both days and so I wasn't very talkative.


We've been looking at land... we'll see what happens!  Other than that, I'm excited about our Summer vacation plans this year!  They are ambitious, but filled with lots of fun sights and experiences!

So, we all may write a little more on our blogs now that church is earlier in the day, but we'll see.  The Christmas season went well.  We went caroling to some friends and family, we went and saw Christmas lights, Errolyn had a Christmas Party with a ton of 6th graders, instead of acting out the Nativity this year we read and discussed it, we had lots of family in town, and we gave and received good presents.  Cheryl came into town with her family and it was fun to hang-out and play games with her.  We had the in-town family come to our house for a big Christmas gathering.  The kids also had a blast playing with their cousins.  Mom, Dad, and Janet came after Christmas and we got to spend time with them either at our house or at David and Heidi's house.  Games we played were Shanghai, Tossed Salad, Cash Flow, and Disruptis.

Allie is nursing great now and gaining weight well, although I may have said that last month too... it just took a little while to get her there.  Allie is a smiley, happy, laughing baby and the kids adore her.  Errolyn starts volleyball this week, and Logan and Emma start basketball.  Cameron's studying for mid-terms.  Emma's been sick and throwing up the last two days but is finally feeling better today.  Mike's been busy installing a garage door opener at the Stake Center.  :)  He is attaching a camera to it so it will retract into the ceiling when not in use.  It will be pretty cool.  I've been busy preparing for our upcoming Stake Conference, Music Training, and Music Workshops.

Now that Allie is sleeping through the night (10 hours now!) I've had to start helping Mike take Cameron to Seminary... not fun... so tiring!  But, Cameron loves seminary and has a great teacher.  We made our new family goals for the year and one of them is to do quarterly family service projects, but I want to try to do them monthly if possible.  So, we scheduled out the first four and the kids are excited.  I'm sure more has happened, but that's the short version.  :)

Logan was baptized on Nov. 29th.  Janet's family and my Mom and Kevin came up for it.  Also in attendance were David's family, Carol, George, Grandma A. and Jim.  There were friends and teachers from church and then my friend Estee showed up with her kids and I was glad to see her.  The baptism went well and Dad was able to watch via Skype.  Logan kept saying he just felt "good" which we told him was the Spirit.  I've seen Logan spiritually mature a lot this last year and he was ready to be baptized.  Afterwards, all of the family went to Olive Garden but it was crazy with so many kids.  Janet's family came over for a short time afterwards and then left.

Thanksgiving was also good and we had a fun time seeing family.  Dad had been in and out of the hospital with kidney stones so my Mom, Kevin, and Janet's family stayed behind and had their own Thanksgiving to be with him.  I would have done the same thing if I had lived there.  Luckily, the weather was nice on Thanksgiving day and the kids were able to play outside while the adults talked.  George taught Cameron and Errolyn how to play some Shanghai game and they loved it and played it most of the day.

We just had our "Messiah" concerts this last weekend.  The Friday night performance was just ok, and many other things seemed to go wrong for me that night, including Allie's feeding schedule and her not wanting to be held by strangers.  But, the Saturday night performance was wonderful!  The choir and orchestra sounded amazing!  I have to admit that the dress rehearsal and performances were a bit stressful for me because I had a young nursing baby I was worrying about.  When the soloist on "He Shall Feed His Flock" sang "Take His yoke upon you... and ye shall find rest" I felt that to be true!  I prayed that Heavenly Father would make up the difference and asked to take his yoke upon me and when I did I felt a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders.  I was crying through the end of the piece and was touched by many other choir pieces on and off throughout the rest of the concert.  "Worthy is the Lamb" is so powerful that you can't help feeling the Spirit during that piece as well as "Hallelujah." And I had fun conducting!  I generally just had a good time for the last performance and it was such a joy to conduct the Messiah for my 6th year in a row.  It was also fun to see Cameron playing the cello in the Messiah orchestra this year.  Errolyn and Cameron also played in the youth orchestra for prelude.  Logan and Errolyn sang in the Children's Choir and Cameron sang in the Youth Choir as well.  And then Mike did the sound, as usual.  It was the first time I felt that the "Messiah" was serving my family and helping them because of the unique opportunity it was affording them to use their talents and grow.  I also felt the prompting that because of the efforts they saw Mike and I making they were learning how to be future leaders and to be dedicated in service, which thought gave me comfort.

Every person in my family bore their testimonies today except Emma and Allie, of course.  Everyone had a different event in their life that made them feel the need to get up.  Logan, his baptism, Cameron his concussion and how he didn't realize how much of a difference seminary was making until he had to miss it for a week (oh yeah... Cameron had a concussion from playing soccer at church and had to miss school for a week... he's fine now), Errolyn bore a sweet testimony about watching me play violin for the Messiah prelude and watching me conduct and how she loved me and wanted to be just like me (I wish I'd recorded it... my jaw about dropped when she said that), and Mike about all of the blessings in our family's life recently, and me about some of the experiences I'd had with preparing for the Messiah. Many other people stood up and bore testimony about how they had felt the Spirit during the Messiah concert or how much they had enjoyed using their talents because of that.  Many people mentioned me by name, which was a little embarrassing, but I'm grateful that my efforts with the Messiah have touched so many lives. 

Allie has been nursing well!  It was a roller coaster of 2 months with pumping, cup feeding, frequent weigh-ins, etc. but she is now nursing well and gaining weight well.  Whew.  She's also been sleeping well and sometimes I'm able to get a 7-hour stretch of sleeping during the night.  Other than that, life is good.  I'm still getting ready for the Christmas season, but most of the busy work should be done this week.  :)

So, long story short... Allison Canella (Allie) was born on Sep. 7th.  I was watching a scary movie and right as King Kong was attacking I felt a giant pop.  I didn't know what it was but had to go to the bathroom instantly (I'm assuming my water broke but it wasn't obvious).  I sat back down and had the worst contraction ever and instantly knew I was in labor after that one single contraction.  I called Mike downstairs and two minutes later had another horrible contraction.  Yes, I went from nothing to instantly two minutes apart and painful contractions.  The hospital took way too long to give me the epidural but shortly after they gave it to me I had Allie.  She cried when she came out and then they laid her on my chest and she turned blue and stopped breathing.  They whisked her away, gave her Oxygen, cleaned out her lungs, and were rubbing her to warm her up.  30 seconds later she started breathing with the Oxygen and 2 minutes later she could breath on her own.  It was a SCARY two minutes!!  They thought something was wrong with her heartbeat, but after a few tests the doctor was luckily incorrect and Allie was fine.  Carol helped with the kids on Sunday while we were in the hospital which was nice. 

Allie is wonderful!  She is so cute and smiley!  The kids absolutely adore her and fight over who gets to look at her or hold her.  :)  We have been struggling with nursing though.  I got mastitis which led to thrush which led low milk supply.  She wasn't gaining weight and I've had to supplement a little in the evenings.  Now I'm pumping a lot to increase my milk supply and it's been a big pain. 

Life is a little crazy right now with little sleep, constant feedings, and the kids being in four different school, but we're surviving.  Things will calm down soon enough.  My parents came up for Allie's baby blessing which was nice and the kids performed "I'm Trying to Be Like Jesus" on the same Sunday. 

Tomorrow is Halloween and Allie looks so cute in her Super Girl costume.  Heidi has been super great and has been taking Emma on Wednesdays to a dance class with Halley and then over to her house so Emma can play with Halley.  It's been super nice.  Also, Halley and Emma are in the same class at school which is fun.

I'm sure there has been a lot more, but I need to go feed Allie again.  :) 

Sitting pretty at about 5cm and hardly any contractions.  The doctor honestly didn't expect me to make it to my appointment today because she thought I'd for sure have my baby this week.  She stripped my membranes today but said there was hardly anything to strip because my body is so ready have the baby and she doesn't know why I haven't yet.  That's just the way I roll I guess.  So, hopefully I'll have the baby within 24 hrs, but if not, I'll probably have to wait to be induced on Tuesday.

Logan had a homework question that asked him to explain how to solve a specific math problem.  He wrote, "Be smart."  Lol and rolling my eyes.  I made him change his answer but I thought it was pretty funny. 

The kids love dancing to Errolyn's "Just Dance 4" Wii game, but sometimes I felt the songs and dancing were a little too old for Logan and Emma.  So, I bought "Just Dance Disney" and they love it.  I think I'll try the "Just Dance Kids" ones next.  But, I love that they dance and get their energy out but also are having fun.  :)

The kids have been busy, busy with school stuff already.  Emma met her new Mother's Day Out teacher yesterday and found out that she and Halley will be in the same class.  Emma is so excited.

This is my last few days being pregnant... forever.  I'm SO relieved to almost be done with this pregnancy, but also a little sad and reminiscent of my past pregnancies and babies.  This baby will be the "last" of many things for us... last first steps, last first words, last everything baby wise.  But, we know and feel this last baby will complete our family so hopefully all of the lasts don't make me too sad but more grateful for the wonderful family I've been given the opportunity to raise.