Spring Roundup {2013}

Joined my family for spring roundup in Chesterfield at the beginning of Memorial Day weekend.  It was a beautiful day, and only got windy towards the end.  

 Keith, Clay, Stephanie, Reed, and our dad, 

ready to bring the cattle from pasture to the corral.

Kortlen ready for a ride!  

 Here comes trouble!  These two are obsessed with collecting shells and rocks...

...I threw away more than one bag of the above this weekend!  

This little cutie joined in on the fun!  Her we are, waiting for the work to start.  

The Flat-Bed Crew.  Brielle (Em's friend) and Emily taking pictures, and 

Tanner, Kortlen, Deseret and Taylor manning the tags and holding down the fort. 

So happy the Ryan got to help this year, and was able to get away from work for a weekend! 

Putting Tags in... 

It was soooooooooo dusty!  We were all black from the fine dirt in the corral. 

Ryan was initially 'assigned' to running the nord-forks, but quickly got promoted to doing castrating.  

Keetley slept all 4 hours in her car seat, in the ventilated (all windows down!) cab of the flatbed pickup.

Simple Joys

A few random things:

Sliding down the stairs at Grandma Poulsen's house, in the sleeping bag!  It's all fun and games till someone gets hurt....the next run down the stairs resulted in all three boys crying, and the sleeping bag being put away.  Good times!

6 weeks old, and baby girl is starting to talk with me!  She smiles in the middle of feedings, and is genuinely happy and content.  I love this phase, when they're starting to be more alert, and learning to have little conversations.

Making Crayons

I decided to make little star crayons for my preschoolers as a graduation gift....what started as a 1 hour project, quickly turned into taking all.day.long.  I kid you not.  A gallon of naked crayons will go MUCH farther that one might expect.

 Not sure how many I ended up with, but we had fun!  Tanner, Taylor, and Kortlen even helped!  I used a silicone cupcake mold for the stars, and found a silicone-bottom ice cube tray in an apple shape in the dollar bin at Target.  After 4 uses in the oven, it finally gave up the ghost, but gave me enough apples to give my class and one other.

I want to say there were 50-ish stars just from one gallon of naked crayons.

I baked them in the oven on 250* F for about 20 minutes, then would stick them in the freezer, and pop them out of their trays.  Worked really swell!  I wish I had TWO molds going at a time...it wold have taken less than the seven hours we labored.

The star shape is great, because you could potentially do 5 colors, then take ONE CRAYON to church, or put in the diaper bag, etc.  Although I didn't like the look of the 5 colored crayon, I tried to vary the colors in each point so a child would be able to have more than a single color.

Such a fun and simple (not to mention inexpensive!) gift...though it was super time consuming!

Loving this girl!

And more pictures by Stevie.  ♥♥♥

Here's my favorites...

And now I need to pick a favorite to print and hang on the wall!  Impossible...Impossible I tell you!!!'

Thanks so much, Stevie!!!!!  

Celebrating the Birth Day

I got brave, and asked my dear friend (there's nothing she DOESN'T know about me now!) if she'd consider taking Birth Day pictures of Keetley.  Luckily the stars were aligned, she was in town, had help with her kids, and we had a pretty good notion of what time Keetley was going to arrive...so Stevie showed up right in time to catch some pretty great moments. These are some of my favorites!!!  

Ryan and I have this *thing*.  He drops me off at the hospital, gets me comfortable, then leaves to do whatever it is he needs to get done....in this case, it was work.  I called him around noon, letting him know it was 'about time' and he dutifully came back to the hospital.  Works well for him (hello, paycheck) and I don't have to entertain OR share the TV remote.  :)

This one makes me laugh!   Before he even cut the umbilical cord, he texted his family!  LOL!  oh, technology.  So wonderful, and yet, so annoying.  LOL!

When I found out Ryan had texted all our family to let them know of the Keetley's arrival but that he didn't include a picture, I QUICKLY had to remedy the situation....again....technology.  LOL!

Thank you so much, Stevie!!!!  I'm so glad you were able to capture some great moments in the delivery room on Keetley's special day!  You've now seen it all.  If we weren't best friends before, we are eternal friends for sure after this! 

{love}

I should be sleeping.  You know, getting rest while she's getting rest....

But I can't stop looking at her beautiful little perfect self.

I'm in love.

And so are her brothers.

And her daddy.

We simply cannot get enough of her!

Simply Smitten {Keetley Ann}

She's here!  Keetley Ann made her graceful arrival into this world on 4.10.13, at 2:41 pm.  After snuggling with mommy for a good hour, she weighed in at 6 pounds 10 ounces, measuring 20 inches long.  She's our smallest baby by far, and we are simply smitten with her!

She's perfect in every way!  Beautiful button nose, dimpled chin, long fingers and the most beautiful pink lips a girl could ask for.  I think she resembles Taylor's look the most, but she's definitely from the same mold as her brothers.  Speaking of which....

Out of all the pictures at the hospital, this one ^^^  has got to be my favorite!  I am sure I caught Taylor off guard, because he and Tanner are very excited to have a baby sister!  Kortlen shared in the same excitement for about 2.5 seconds....I think having a sister is going to take some getting used to for the little guy!

My mom is so wonderful!  She came up the night before I was induced, and has pretty much taken care of everything while I was in the hospital.  I worked hard to get my house picked up and cleaned up before she came so she wouldn't have to worry or stress, and could just play with her grandsons, but I came home to an even MORE spotless house!!!  She took my boys home with her (thanks for babysitting, Clay and Deseret!!!) and they'll return on Sunday.  The break and quietness has been nice (I've been home for 4 hours) but I'm starting to go a little stir crazy.  LOL!  Time to catch up on sleep and maybe read a good book.  I miss them, but I don't miss having to bend over and pick up after them!  :)

: : : Labor and Delivery : : :

Keetley's labor and delivery were by far my easiest! I don't even need to give a simplified version of it, because it was so amazingly perfect!

Showed up at the hospital at 7 am for induction.  Painted my nails while Ryan grabbed my bag from the car and parked, and the nurse set up the bedding. Was started on an IV and pitocin right away, and by 10 am had the anesthesiologist prepping me for an epidural.

After Kortlen's "I am woman, hear me roar" natural birth, I was all game for making Keetley's arrival as painless as possible.  The epidural was so great, I was numb from my nose down.  Not even kidding!  By 2:15-ish pm baby was ready to come, I was ready to get her here, but the doctor was in another delivery.  My nurse (the same one who held my head in her hands during Kortlen's delivery and told me to stop screaming and BREATHE!!) turned off the pitocin and we all just sort of waited.  and waited.  and waited.

At 2:30 ish my doctor showed up, said I could push...so I did....twice...and she stopped me on the third push because baby girl had arrived!

Keetley was alarmingly purple to me!  The doctor laid her on my abdomen, and we got her warmed up.  She let out a few little squeaky cries, and we got to cuddle.  We tried nursing for a while, and at one hour old, the nursery nurses weighed, measured, and cleaned her cute little self right up!

Stuck two little bows in her dark head of hair, swaddled her and we are so in love with her!  Pictures of her shortly after birth are coming....(Thank you, Stevie!!)

: : : Where her name comes from : : : 

My grandfather had a sheep and cattle ranch up Echo Canyon, near Heber, Utah.  We called it Keetley, after the man who had settled the area (google Keetley, Utah).  In 1989, the ranch land was found to be the perfect location for a reservoir to service the area, and long story short, was sold.  Our family spent MANY summers there.  The majority of summer photographs of our childhood were taken at Keetley.  We played in the "Witch House" and fished for moss in the ditches, bathed in the freezing bathroom, and babies got baths in the kitchen sink. We rode the rolling hills to move the livestock, or go with grandpa to change the water.  Keetley was the place of Crandall Family Reunions each 24th of July.  We'd sit in the shade of the humongus tress, play with cousins.  We would beg for a cousins old enough to take us to look for fool's gold in 'the mine' up the road....always gathering more rocks in our pockets than I'm sure my mom wanted in the washing machine.  It was a place of many cherished memories.  I'm so excited to have given our beautiful daughter such a meaningful name.

Her middle name is in honor of Ryan's mother (Edytha Ann) and grandmother (Anna Maye) and just so happens to have a little bit of my own name.