Our newest addition...

I finally cleared my camera and have been giggling over so many pictures. I really did attempt to send out a Christmas card this year, but my own photo session with 4 kids proved to be unsuccessful. It's quite comical to scroll through the 50+ pics where at least one of them is doing something crazy. Anyway, I just hurried and picked a few pics to share...

FIRST: WRIGLEY!!! Since it's Caleb's dog, he got to pick the name...and being the true blue Cub's fan that he is....that's what he chose. We kind of liked Gus, but that just wouldn't do. Santa did his research and decided to bring Caleb a puppy for Christmas. Caleb had been asking, no BEGGING for a dog for a LONG TIME, several times in tears because we would always refuse since he has an allergy problem. He was devastated thinking the only pet he could ever have was a fish. Poor boy. Santa's heart must have been crushed, and thus, the research and ultimately.....a miniature schnauzer...
Seriously...this boy loves his dog...and Wrigley loves him right back.

This winter has been very MILD...until one day it dropped into the 30s--maybe--and our kids found the "winter" bin and thought they needed to get all decked out in winter gear to go ride their scooters...
This is at the Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch. While Grandpa Steve and Grandma Tami were hear, we went to check out the animals here. You can drive through and feed them...it was pretty funny. I'm sure I got some great footage on the camcorder...we might have to post that sometime.
Look CLOSELY...here you see Steve's head...
And here you don't! So funny!!! This ostrich gave my boys diarrhea. :) He was a bit too aggressive for their taste. He would peck at the windows and obviously dive his head through the sun roof.

Grandpa Steve took good care of Wrigley while he was here. I think Wrigley went through withdrawals after they left.... and so did we :( It's always so fun to have family come visit.
Max took a big step and caught a toad. I'm not sure if Caleb has crossed that bridge yet or not. I think he still makes Max do the dirty work. He just likes to watch :)
McKell and Bridger came for a couple days...Yea!! Unfortunately the day before they came it was 70 and the day after they left was 60, but while they were here, San Antonio had an "ARCTIC BLAST".... that's what they ended up calling it and it was all over the news. But here are the cute cousins...I guess once removed...

So we get up to take McKell to the airport and Mike walks back in the door after having left for work...ALL INTERSTATE ROADS WERE CLOSED! Unbelievable. It had rained the night before and froze and then snowed maybe 1/2 an inch and by 6:00 AM there had been about 75 accidents, so they closed all the roads. Crazy. Literally, it was the ONLY thing on the news. And they waited until noon, til it was COMPLETELY melted and almost dry before they reopened the roads. We were cracking up. Everything was cancelled---school, most work places...over a bit of ice and a sciff of snow. :) My friend that grew up down here was pretty disappointed when she went to BYU and it snowed over a foot and she still had to go to school :)

Here's Bridger on the "white" trampoline! The snow didn't even stick to the grass.
And McKell named it rice-snow. It was really weird. Lucky for us, the closed roads meant we got to keep them an extra day. :)

Annie is ALWAYS playing with or around Wrigley...or I guess I should say that the other way around. Anyway, they have a good time together. It's so cute. My one regret: Annie used to do the army crawl and Wrigley would hop on her back and go for a ride....and I didn't get it recorded!!! It would've made America's Funniest Home Videos for sure. Now she's crawling and her back is too high up for Wrigley to lay on it. Bummer.
She always goes over when he's sleeping and crawls all over him. I love that he doesn't care.
They were playing tug of war here...
The other cute thing that I have to record is Eden taking him for a walk. She's constantly saying, "No Wiggley...Wiggley, NO!" She REALLY enjoys being completely in charge of someone. And then he starts running and pretty much drags Eden along behind...it's pretty cute.

Nigeria

Some highlights of my Nigeria trip. Sorry it has taken me so long to post them. Kind of a crazy life with the kids our new puppy and work. I had a great time and despite getting lost for one day all by myself in Nigeria, everything went well. The Lord was watching out for me:)
This is the recovery room, these babies didn't even have any Oxygen on them. Crazy!


This was our holding area. There was no schedule, you just had to go find your patient and verify with them and the surgeons. No ID bands.
This poor lady, viewer discretion advised. Sad case of inoperable burkitt's lymphoma
You can see our bus through the way. We walked on the path to our OR on the left.
This is the hospital. The OR is to the left. To the right is storage I think.
This is a 6 yr old we put to sleep, that had blount's disease (very bowlegged).
This is an x-ray of a man who had had a complete fracture of his humerus and had not been able to afford to get it fixed. The picture below is of him. The ortho guys put in a bracket and gave him function again of his arm.


I know this is mostly where Leanna posts some pics of our CUTE kids, but I thought I would post a couple pics of my recent trip to Nigeria. This one is our "5 star" hotel. It really wasn't but it was better then a lot of people lived in there.


Our old anesthesia machine. We were glad we had Oxygen. But we had to reuse the same circuit. Kind of different to what I am used to.

Lots of unfinished construction
We had guards riding with us w/ AK-47's
Our shuttle to the teaching hospital.

More, more, more

We took the kids to the temple the other day and I actually remembered my camera! Eden had been asking if she could go to the temple for quite some time. And I really loved that story in the last Ensign about that sweet grandpa taking his granddaughter to the temple for her birthday. Hopefully we can take the kids there more often. I'm thankful we have a temple as close as we do. And like I've said before, if/when you all come to visit, bring your temple clothes...it's beautiful. There was actually a picture of the celestial room in the Temples Ensign as well.




Here are a few pics my friend took...this was when Annie was about 1 month...
And I just had her take 'school pics' for me...



And HALLOWEEN.... 2 Jedi Knights, Belle, and a Tootsie Roll

We let our kids go to our neighbors house on Saturday night before our trunk or treat. We decided not to go door to door since Texas celebrated it on Sunday. But our sweet neighbors had their bowl of candy all ready. I thought this pic was cute...
I tried really hard to get a great shot of the beautiful princess...it was a bit difficult. She wore this dress for the entire week. I finally gave it back to my friend so I didn't have to change her in and out of it all day to eat.

A few pics...

Here's our little girl...although this was a couple months ago, I still had to share. I'll post a more recent one too. Mike was holding Annie standing in line the other day and I could not believe how much Annie resembles Mike! She definitely has his eye shape, but maybe my cute button nose...haha. Sister Lawson would always tell me what a great nose I had while she was teaching me piano...funny memory. She told me several times and she would always say that she should know since she stared at the side profile of people all day! Anyway...random thought. I miss her. Especially when I'm playing the piano, wishing I would have practiced more under her direction.

This was when she 1st found the thumb and slept all night! Soon after, she started rolling and woke up at least 5 times a night, since she hated being on her tummy. Now she just sleeps on her tummy, and with the combination of the thumb, she a pretty good sleeper. :)
This looks staged, but is actually exactly how we found her one day. Caught...
This was the official first day of school for the boys. I know...a bit late in sharing, but better late than never. You can see Eden is standing right next to Max. She packed a lunch as well for at least the first few weeks of school and cried every day after we dropped the boys off because she wanted to go to school too.
This was in Houston...our quick trip so Mike could take the boys to the Cubs game. I'm AMAZED at Caleb's love and devotion to the Cubs. They had a great time. And it's always fun to be with our Chicago friends! We went down to the Boardwalk and this is obviously petting the stingrays...
They boys played at this little water place FOREVER...it was quite entertaining. As usual, the free things seem to be the most entertaining!
This is Caleb's best buddy. He's constantly talking about Andrew... They were on the same baseball team with a few of their other buddies as well.
Caleb hit a home run in the 2nd to last game!!! He had his up and down games, but that one was pretty exciting!! We got to go out for ice cream after that one. :) He sure loves baseball.

This was Max's first season of t-ball... I don't know if he has the same love of the sport, but he still had a good time.
These are the 3 amigos...all the same age and we're all in the residency program together.
We got a season pass to the Children's Theatre, and this was our first time going...it was GREAT! Mike and I are super excited about it...every play is based on a children's book. This was "Petite Rouge, A Cajun Red Riding Hood". Eden is still saying, "The alligator didn't eat her."
Here's the most recent shot of Caleb's mouth. He has lost 4 teeth in about 2 weeks. The bottom 2 are his permanent teeth...adjacent are missing and the top 2 are gone now. :) The toothfairy will soon be broke.