Little Guy

Christian is a pretty advanced soccer player thanks to a huge competitive streak and a brother who never goes easy on him when they play together.

He is a second grader but plays on the third/fourth grade team. He also practices a lot with his brother's team, the fifth and sixth graders, because his dad is the coach. He doesn't shine on that team of course, but he can hold his own.

Well, the sixth graders on that team affectionately call him "midgit," and compared to some of those kids, the name is pretty accurate.

We missed Christian's soccer game on the 18th because I was in the hospital, and Doug was coaching Caleb's game.

When Doug came to pick up Christian after the game, he was kind of pouty and upset. When Doug asked what was wrong, Christian complained, "Dad, the coach and players of the other team kept calling me "Little Guy."

Christian's coach said, "It's true. The coach kept saying, "Guard the little guy... quit letting the little guy score...put more players on the little guy.""

Christian was pretty happy after that clarification.

Disneyworld

Okay, since I was not blogging at the time of our awesome family vacation, I am going to do it now so my family can see some of our pictures.


Truly, this was the best vacation ever! Granted, we were in a car accident, the weather was cold and we got completely drenched on 2 1/2 of the days, we had kids throwing up, I was seven months pregnant, and we were always exhausted. But there were no crowds! That cancelled out anything bad!

You might wonder why crowds are such a big deal to us - I mean, you expect to wait in lines when you go to amusement parks right?

We went to Disneyworld last time eight years ago when I was pregnant with Christian. We went in February expecting it to be the off season.



Holy cow! I cried every single day because the crowds were so overwhelming (and possibly, my hormones were a little out of control). Most days we only stayed at the parks for a few hours and then just gave up and went back to the hotel.

Then three years ago, when I was pregnant with Hope (are you seeing a pattern here?), we went to Disneyland, again in February, when it actually was supposed to be the off season.


Well that year, they had practically given away tickets and there was a cheerleading thing in town, so again the crowds were unmanageable.

The only day we actually got to ride anything was the day there was a torrential downpour. We were freezing and soaked, but there were no crowds, so we ended up having a great day!

So, you can see why the no crowd thing was such a blessing this time!

We spent a lot of time in gift shops doing the child swap thing since Gracie wasn't tall enough for a lot of the roller coasters.




These pictures are at the Rockin' Roller Coaster gift shop. That was an awesome ride - so smooth and fast! The longest we waited for that ride was ten minutes - that included the little movie they show before the ride - AWESOME!

Happy Birthday Boys

It's amazing how many birthdays we have in the spring. We used to plan it that way to avoid having me be pregnant during waterskiing season. The irony is that now, we have so many children, we only make it out once or twice a year anyway so it doesn't really matter when I am pregnant.

Grace is March 26, Christian is April 20, and Caleb is April 25. The funny thing is that Ava was a wonderful suprise baby, and her birthday fell in with the others on April 16.


In case you think I am forgetting somebody, Hope's birthday is July 18th. We were so in love with Gracie, that we (well, me), couldn't wait the full three years to have another baby, so Hope's birthday is in the summer.

Anyway, Gracie just turned five and had a wonderful birthday party with a million friends. The kids got to make their own homemade pizza's and decorated cupcakes. I actually had about five cooking tasks prepared for them, but we ran out of time after only three. I think everyone had fun though. (Sadly, the pictures from her party along with about 70 others, were ruined - I'm not sure how).


Christian turned eight and Caleb turned eleven. We usually do pretty large birthday parties for the boys, but with the baby being born only a week ago, the thought of throwing a large party completely overwhelmed me.

We broke the bad news to the boys reminding them that we just took a huge vacation to Disneyworld. Then we had a family party with more gifts than usual, and called it good.



Christian is going to be baptized soon and Caleb just graduated from cub scouts. He earned his arrow of light badge and crossed over the bridge (literally) from cub scouts to boy scouts. He gave me about five seconds to get one lousy picture of him on the bridge, so this is it!

Vital Statistics

Okay, so I forgot some details about the baby. Since this was my first attempt at blogging I was much more concerned with photo placement, etc.

The baby's name is Ava Faith Hagedorn. We really struggled with her name because all of our children have biblical types of names. The choices of female biblical names is much more limited so they have been over used for thousands of years (Rachel, Mary, Elizabeth, etc.).

Of course, the obvious choice with her sisters being named Grace and Hope was to name her Faith. We thought that might be taking things a little too far, plus we didn't want everyone mixing them up.

I told everyone at work, with a straight face, that I was going to name her Chastitiy. It was funny to see people's reactions!

I've liked the name Ava from the start, but Doug wasn't sure. In the end though, who is going to argue with a woman who just had a baby?

Ava is a derivative of the name Eve, which means life. We liked Faith so we kept that as a middle name. That way she still feels like her name fits in with the family. Who are we kidding? She will probably hate her name like all kids eventually do. Oh well - we tried!

She was born on April 16th at 4:45 in the afternoon. She weighed seven pounds, fourteen ounces and was twenty inches long.

I tried to imagine what she would look like when I was pregnant and assumed she would be another blondie like the other kids.

The day that I was in labor, I started imagining a little dark haired baby and was so excited to see that she really was! Finally, I get a little credit in this baby making thing. Who would have thought that Doug's blonde, blue eyed genes would so completely trump my dark genes?

Happy Birthday Baby Ava!

For two weeks we have been impatiently expecting our baby girl to be born. I have delivered early with my other four babies and so expected to do the same this time.

Two days before my due date, I still didn't show any signs of going into labor despite several long daily walks, shampooing my carpets, washing the cars, body pump, painting, power cleaning the house, and other crazy methods of inducing labor!



I love being pregnant and since this is my last baby, I wasn't necessarily in a huge hurry to go into labor. However, she has never been a very active baby, so I was always worried that something was wrong.

Plus, they took me off of the work schedule at 38 weeks, so I felt very much in limbo, waiting and wondering every day if I would go into labor.



On Thursday morning, my friend, Shannon, who is the lead nurse of the Kadlec Birthcenter, called and asked if I wanted to be induced. Doug and I jumped on that and were at the hospital two hours later.

We found out that all of our friends who were expecting babies, even those whose due dates were after mine, had delivered earlier in the week.



My wonderful nurse, Trish, was trying to start my induction quickly, but I was dehydrated and nobody could get an IV started. It took five attempts and very bruised arms before someone was able to get the IV going.

The pitocin worked right away and I started contracting fairly hard every two minutes. Since I tend to deliver quickly, I decided to get my epidural sooner than later.


Since I work at the hospital and deal with labor every day, I was not nervous for anything. That is until the anesthesiologist came in.

He said since I'd had a previous back surgery, there was a much greater possibility of puncturing the spinal cord which would lead to a nasty spinal headache. No big deal, except he also said that the normal method of curing the spinal headache might not work with my altered spine structure and I would suffer the spinal headache for a long time. I think his exact words were, "it will go away eventually." That was reassuring!

Of course, I had the epidural anyway and he did a fabulous job. I don't remember this happening with other pregnancies, but the medication in the epidural went straight to my head and I was loopy for the entire delivery.

I couldn't focus my eyes and during the delivery, I kept yammering on about being afraid of the ocean, sharks, eels and jellyfish. I'm sure everyone in the room thought I was a moron! Just a cheap drunk I guess.

About three hours later I started having a lot more pain. Trish said I was only five centimeters, but I have a history of delivering quickly after four centimeters, so I told the anesthesiologist to give me a quick acting drug in my epidural.

He didn't want to give it to me since it only lasts an hour and he didn't think I would deliver by then. He finally gave in and reluctantly gave me the drug. Twenty five minutes later the baby was delivered and he was impressed!

I truly could not have asked for a better delivery or for better doctors or nurses to care for my family. It was everything that I had hoped for.




It is always such a relief to have the baby born and to see that she is perfect and healthy. Even with ultrasounds and all of the technology that we have, I still worry that something is wrong with the baby that got missed. I suppose that is the consequence of working in labor and delivery - I see too much.

What a blessing it is to deliver in the hospital where I have my work family to take care of me. How fun to have so many people excited for the birth of my children - they always treat me like a queen when I am there.


Then to be taken care of by my ward family when I get home with childcare, meals, gifts and well-wishes. My family and I are truly blessed and we are grateful.

Newborn Gallery

Okay, I am finally going to attempt to blog the adventures of our crazy lives. This is a link to the hospital picture of Ava. I wasn't able to post the picture directly to the blog.

Newborn Gallery