Goals and Catching Up

My goal for this year is to blog at least once a month.
It seems like a very attainable goal, and since tomorrow is the last day of January, I thought I'd spend a little time catching up.

For those of you who don't know, I'm now 27 weeks pregnant with our 8th child.
We have been told we will be having a baby girl, which all of us are VERY excited about.
The problem however, is deciding on a name.
We've narrowed the list, but may end up taking it to the hospital in the end and deciding on a name after we see this little one in person.

We went out the 2nd weekend in December and took our annual family pictures.
My sister, Rebecca was kind enough to come out and help us take our pictures and get some really fun shots.
Here are some of my favorites:

We've spent the last month (since the week before Christmas) fighting pneumonia in our home.
Four of us ended up with it....Pat, myself, Stephen and Isaac...with Pat and Stephen having it the worst.
Just this last week, we also had a health scare with Pat's mom, who started bleeding internally and was air-evaced out of her small town to a hospital near us.
She was in the hospital for almost a week, and so Pat's dad stayed here due to his need for companionship due to his memory loss.
He was able to go to the hospital some of the time, but spent a good deal of time here as well.

Christmas was wonderful.
I truly tried to simplify, and felt like in the end, I was able to focus on family and traditions.
My favorite activity of the holiday season was decorating the tree and house as a family.
It brought me a lot of joy to see the younger kids play with the nativity set and enjoy "Baby Jesus".
Pat also decided to take the kids to the dollar store to get gifts for each other.
It was sweet, and sometimes a little comical to see what each child chose for his/her siblings.
(Stephen got 4 cans of silly string!)
My mom and my sister were able to be here for the days surrounding Christmas, and Mom and Dad John came up from Kearny for Christmas dinner.

Our New Year's Eve was very low key as Stephen had been diagnosed with pneumonia and still hadn't started feeling truly better.
We played games, did a puzzle, and watched a movie...and then went out and lit sparklers at midnight.
Everyone was up for the New Year except Stephen.

On the weekend of January 8th, we took our kids to see Wicked, the Musical (in Tucson).
We had given the kids (minus Isaac) tickets to the show for Christmas.
It was 2 days after I had been diagnosed with pneumonia, but I had started an antibiotic, and was actually pretty functional that day.
We have been singing the songs all month long...and enjoyed making the memory together.
We realize that time together is the best gift of all...and the more we can do to build lasting, fun memories, the richer our children will be in life experiences.

Our year ahead looks full and promising!
New baby in late April or early May,
Emily graduating from 8th grade,
Pat and I celebrating year 18 of our marriage,
Nate turning 12 and receiving the priesthood,
Pat graduating with his Master's degree (hopefully by August),
Stephen turning 16(!!) and getting his learner's permit (and hopefully receiving his Eagle scout so he can get his driver's license)...
And those are just the big milestones!!

Wish us luck getting everything accomplished!