This blog has moved!

So I'll leave this blog open for a little while in case my few followers wonder where I went. Our blog is now wellmanlife.ouronlinejournal.com See ya there!

Welcome Little T!

Okay, so it's been about 9 months since Tate was born...time to writeit down before I lose all memory of it.

On December 31st (New Year's Eve), I felt horrible and all my symptoms meant labor anytime now. Not to mention the fact that I was having painful contractions although irregular at the time. Since it was the 4th baby and we were 30 minutes from the hospital, we went down just in case. I was dialated to a 3 and having regular contractions every 5 minutes. Then it stopped. They had me walk and walk and walk for 3 hours. Nothing. So we went home at 11:30pm. We were exhausted and missed any fireworks.

We scheduled an induction for a few days later so that Scott wouldn't miss any work. It happened to be 2 days before his sister's wedding but I wasn't sure I wanted to be an hour away from my hospital most of that day anyway. So we went in late Wednesday night and when I got there, I was dialated to a 7! Yikes! So it was a good thing I scheduled the induction instead of trying to make the wedding. They induced me and 2 hours later I was at an 8. They broke my water and an hour later, I was still an 8. Let me say here that I was trying to do this last baby naturally. I wanted to experience what it was like to give birth the way millions before me did. I also wanted to save us a huge anesthesia bill (it was all coming out of pocket and it's not cheap!). I thought labor would be quicker but the pace I was at was slower than I expected and the pain was getting pretty intense. At that point I caved and asked for the epidural. The anesthesiologist came in and gave it to me, followed immediately by my nurse emptying my bladder. Immediately following this I felt the need to push. Seriously? The epidural had not even kicked in yet? The doctor checked me and I was at a 10. The nurse thinks my full bladder was just in the way. (I was pretty ticked that I just wasted lots of money!) Anyway, I pushed for about 5-10 excruciating minutes and Tate Jeffrey Wellman entered the world. We actually didn't have his name decided until hours later. The nurse kept asking what the name was so they could announce it. Scott told her to just name him John Doe for now. She didn't think it was funny at all. He was almost Chase.

He was the best little eater of all the babies. The other 3 always waited until the next day to eat and he was hungry right away. You can see in the last picture that he has his daddy's cleft chin. He is the most beautiful baby. Stats: 6lbs. 13oz. and 21.5" long. Kendall calls him T. So T he is!

Christmas 2010

This year I actually got up at 5am and went to Walmart for some Black Friday deals. I only ended up getting one of them. The rest were all gone. Fun experience though! Thanks to my mom for coming over to sleep with the kids while I went shopping. Scott was at the dunes. :)

Gifts received..
Scott got ASU cups and a shaver. (he's hard to shop for)
I got a nook light and a scentsy candle.
Ty got a Nintendo DS with some games, The Diary of a Wimpy kid series & his own set of scriptures (we meant to get them for his baptism but forgot).
Kaycie also got a Nintendo DS, crayons, paper and barbie clothes.
Kendall got a pig tent and a horse learning bike thingy :)

I love this time of year. I love the beautiful lights and music and message of Christmas. This holiday always brings a wonderful spirit with it. Beyond all the gifts, we love telling the story of Christmas each week at Family Home Evening and finding others to help. We were able to participate in helping a local family out with gifts for the kids. We did this with another family from church. We went shopping for the kids and wrapped their gifts and left them at the door. The kids always have fun doing this and I hope they learn to love giving more than receiving. It's a work in progress. Unfortunately they're still "i want, i want...gimme, gimme kids".

So Fun To See Family!

This month we had lots of family come to town all at the same time. I love having my siblings visit. I am currently the only child in Arizona with my parents. My brother Sean is in dental school at Ohio State, my sister Shanna lives in Kentucky and goes to school across the river in Cincinnati for audiology school, and my brother Gil lives in San Diego with his kids. They all came to town for a few days and we rode around on the ATVs and bikes and had lots of good food. My older brother Gil brought his girlfriend and kids.

For anyone who doesn't know the story, my younger siblings and I found out about Gil when I was about 17 years old. My mom was engaged and pregnant at age 19. Her fiance left her and her dad put her in a home for unwed mothers to give the baby up for adoption. 10 years later she joined the church and met my dad. Fast forward about 17 years....we were watching Geraldo and they were talking about mothers being reunited with their adopted babies. My mom couldn't stop crying and proceeded to tell us her story. We were shocked! She said she thought about him every day and we had never had a clue! We convinced her to go to LA and search for his records. The courts wouldn't give her any records but said she could leave her info if he ever wanted to find her. Fast forward about 7-8 more years...my sister and my sick grandfather were living with my parents and my sister had some time on her hands. She decided since she had so much of his birth info, she would try to find him again. My grandfather said he would pay any fees because he always felt bad about the whole adoption thing. Well my sister located a woman who had all of the hospital's records and was able to track him down. It's a long story from there but we surprised her with the info for her birthday and flew Gil out the next weekend. He had known he was adopted since a very young age and had a good life. It's been great knowing him and his family. He's the one behind me with the mustache. Handsome guy! His girlfriend Vicki has the black hat. She's as sweet as can be and my daughter loves her. His daughter Mellissa has the black sweater. She was here with her husband and 2 dogs. His other daughter is Ariana (red shirt) and Austin is his son (grey shirt, brown hair). It's been about 10 years since we met them.

Grandpa's Contraption

My kids love going over to Nana & Grandpa's house. They have a huge fenced in acre with a garden and plenty of play room. My dad got the idea to tie up the red wagon to his bike and take the girls for a ride. They thought this was a great idea. It was pretty funny to watch. At first he had the rope tied to the wrong side of the bike and it kept getting stuck in the wheel. Then he figured out that he could only turn right to avoid that. Anyway, he got it down eventually and he got some good exercise!

Ty's Birthday Party

So we have a birthday party every other year for our kids. Ty really wanted a Star Wars party this year. I made the invitations, found a cute star wars bingo game on ebay, made some light sabers from pool noodles, had the cutest cupcakes made by ruth butler and a bouncy house to fight in. Oh, I also made jedi vests out of pillowcases. My mom embroidered the jedi logo on them. The boys loved it and all the hard work is always worth it in the end.





Of course Kaycie and Kendall had to play in the boucy house too.

He's 8!

Wow. I just spent hours looking through thousands of photos to find some of my favoites of Ty. He turns 8 this year. A big milestone! I love his red hair. I love his crazy faces. I love how responsible and helpful he is. I love his sarcasm (sometimes). I'm so glad he's mine!

He loves pickles. He didn't even flinch at 2 years old eating this giant one.

His aunt Lisa said she'd pay him a dollar to wear this Napoleon Dynamite wig. He was extremely upset that we made him put it on.

Ty's first day of kindergarten.

His first night at cub scouts. He was really excited.

Baptism Day! I didn't think I would cry when I saw his dad baptize him but I did.

I'm so proud of him and Scott. The extended family photo is only some of Scott's siblings and their families and then my mom and dad. Big difference between the two!

My 1 Pregnancy Photo

A friend wanted to see my pregnant belly. Here's the one shot I have from this pregnancy. I was about 32 weeks here. I also pulled a muscle trying to take this shot. It's harder to do than you'd think!

Halloween!

This Halloween was very inexpensive. We usually buy new costumes every year but not this year. Ty wanted to be Darth Vader again. Kaycie wanted to be Bobofet? So we were going to do a Star Wars theme. BUT nana found a pretty dress at goodwill so Kaycie decided to be an angel instead. Kendall borrowed a princess dress from Aunt Lisa's collection.

Kaycie is doing one of many many poses. This was just before the ward trunk or treat party. Our kids also have a huge Wellman family Halloween Party every year so they get lots of candy. This year since Halloween fell on a Sunday, we decided we would stay home and they could pass out candy.

Darth had to kill the angel.

Stoneman Lake Campout

This last weekend our ward had a family campout at Stoneman Lake. I'd never been there before but it was beautiful. The kids had a blast. Kendall immediately ran for all the mud puddles and I forgot to take pictures of the aftermath. Oops. Ty as you can see found his own way to get dirty. He played in the firepit most of the time.

They hooked up a swing for the kids. Kaycie had a blast on that. The night we camped out happened to be the night of the big meteor shower. Scott and Ty went out to the open field with a bunch of other people in the pitch dark to watch it. Scott said he'd never seen so many shooting stars. We went on some walks and found an old wooden cabin. We also went on a drive up the mountain with a bunch of other families and we got to climb to the top of the forest ranger's lookout tower. He lives in it most of the week! The weather was beautiful. It was a great time.

First Day of School

Wow. Summer is over and school has begun again. Ty is now in 2nd grade and Kaycie FINALLY starts kindergarten. She's been waiting for years :)

Kaycie was so excited. She attended preschool last year in a school setting so she was ready and not scared at all. She had a boy in her class that was crying hysterically. I felt sorry for his parents. I don't have anymore pictures of Ty because he ran off to find his old friends and go to class by himself.

Kaycie with Ms. O'Bannon

Family Vacation June 2010

In June, Scott's whole office took a week off so our family went to California! We did Disneyland one day with my brother Sean and his wife and girls. He is a dental student in Ohio so we don't get to see them often. It was so fun. We ate lunch with all the disney princesses (Ty loved that part...haha). Kaycie had lots of fun with her girl cousins. The pictures with Chip & Dale were hilarious. They were just goofing off behind her and not really posing and she didn't know what to do. So she just kept smiling and ignoring their antics hoping that I was getting a good picture.

We also went to an aquarium in Long Beach where the kids got to touch some sharks and sting rays. The also got to feed some Lorikeet birds. Kendall LOVES birds. Every time she sees a bird in our backyard, she points at it and starts laughing really hard. She did the same while daddy was holding a bird just inches from her.

After Disneyland and the Aquarium we left the coast and headed inland to the Palm Desert. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures here but it was a Westin timeshare type place. We get all our hotels stays for free with Scott's business card so it was extra fun knowing that we were paying no money for this part of the vacation. We chose this place because of the water slide. It was beautiful and the kids spent the majority of our two days there in the pool.