It rained the first day of school, so the girls got to walk to school with their umbrellas!

2nd Grade

Kindergarten

The girls waiting to go to school one morning.

The first day of Kindergarten wiped this sweet girl out!

Summer likes to wear her swimming suit everyday.  She also wear  her backpack around like her sisters!

Ben at 1 month

Addie lost some teeth and had some big gaps for awhile!

No front teeth!!

Rachel and Ben

All ready for church one Sunday morning

Ben still loves to be swaddled to go to sleep. 

Introducing our new pet "the very hungry caterpillar"!

Do you see the resemblance?? Especially the hairline:)

Summer decided all the towels should be out of the cabinet!

It's a BOY!!

 Benjamin Bleak Powell was born August 3 at 7:29 am.  He was 8 lb 6 oz and 21 in long.  I'm still getting used to the new normal around here.  It's taken me about 2 months to get time to post this it's seems like it just takes a little bit longer to do everything.  We love having Ben at our house!  It's fun to have a little boy around and the girls love him and are such great helpers to me!  With all the pink we have had, we love seeing more blue here, too:)  

We decided to have Ben at home.  I NEVER imagined I would do this but we did it and I really loved it.  I couldn't have done it without my wonderful husband, mom, friends and midwives. I expected to have him about a week early like I did with my other girls.  But he didn't have the same plan as me.  He wanted to keep me on my toes...so we just waited.  I did a lot of walking... but when it's over 100 degrees almost all day and night it had to be really early in the morning or at the mall. 

the day before he was due I had false labor for hours.  Luckily, 2 days later I woke up to a contraction about 3:30am.  I kept sleeping in between contractions until about 5:30am.  Then I got up with Summer, show loves to be up with the early birds!  Around 6:00 I realized my contractions were about every 10 minutes and were more uncomfortable but I wasn't sure if it was real or not since I had had false labor  I wasn't taking any regular contractions very seriously.  My mom asked if I wanted to go walking but my contractions were uncomfortable enough that realized that I wouldn't be comfortable on a walk.  I felt like I really had to considerate through my contractions.  So I went and woke up Shaun at 6:30am  to tell him I was pretty sure I was going to have the baby.  He knew I was but I still wasn't sure. He immediately calls our friends to get the girls and had me call the midwife.  I called but didn't sound very urgent.  I realized I was in labor but figured we had some time (ha ha) Luckily one of my midwives lives close to our house she got here by 7am & about that time things started  going fast.  My other midwife made it there sometime I'm not sure when but she made it there and Ben was born at 7:29am.  He is perfect and came out looking perfect!  When I first looked at him I noticed he had dimples and I was immediately in love:)  Shaun has cute dimples and I've always wanted our kids to have them and our sweet little boy got them:) When it was all over with I couldn't believe how fast he came. From the time I woke Shaun up to when Ben was born it was just under 1 hour.   Babies really are little miracles and we are so grateful for a sweet, healthy baby BOY! 

Shaun is weighing Ben here.

Ben and Grandma Summers

Our friends the Quigley's came to meet Ben. 

Excited sisters!

Yay!!

I love the sleeping smile... we were lucky to catch a picture of it.

Craft time with Grandma.

I made play dough the week before Ben was born and I was SO happy I did.  The girls played with it for weeks.  It kept them busy making all kinds of fun things! 

Add caption

My sister gave Ben a cute camo outfit, so we had to take some fun pictures of Shaun's future hunting buddy.

Ben's first car ride!

Sweet kisses!

First Bath!

All dressed up!

Go BSU!!

I'm so happy I'm not pregnant anymore.  It's  a lot more fun having baby Ben here!

Summer Break

We are still in Vegas and having fun here. We typically travel during the summer and like to visit family but this summer we stayed home.  We did get cabin fever plenty of times but tried to find things to do.  We did a lot of swimming and drinking Slurpees.  We got a few great thunder storms that we loved to sit outside and watch.

The girls before swimming lessons one day.

The girls love to have their dad throw them in air when we are swimming!  My mom got these really great pictures of them.

There is an awesome park in Boulder City that has Mountain sheep hat come down and graze in the public park in the evenings.  It's fun to be up close to them.

 

We got all dressed up for the 4th of July!

Here we are waiting in line for Breakfast at the park!

Shaun and Summer at the Boulder City Fireworks

Drinking slurpees

This is a hale stone from one of the storms. 

Handsome hubby with the storm clouds coming.