Bubbly Bath Time!!

Last night we gave Cash his first real bath now that his belly button and everything is all healed up!  He did a wonderful job and actually really loved it I think!

He totally looked like he was just relaxing in one of those floatie rafts at the pool the entire time.

Not a fan.

Daddy did such a good job during the bath and swaddling him up in his towel afterwards :)

Shocked.

Thinking and trying to figure out what just happened to him.

Still processing everything that just happened.

How CUTE is he?!

He did SUCH a great job during his bath!  At one point I think he fell asleep in his bath chair!

Now that he's almost 3 WEEKS OLD I can tell that he's starting to be more awake and aware of what's going on all the time.  His personality is starting to show up a little bit too I think.  We had his 2 week physical on Monday and he did SO GREAT!  He weighs 7 pounds 5 oz. now and grew a half an inch!  The doctor checked everything out with him and said that he's a perfect baby and that he has great skin!  It makes me feel so relieved to be able to go to his doctor and not have them tell us anything discouraging.  Blake and I must be doing alright at this whole parenting thing! He's growing quickly and developing the way he's supposed to as well!

My mom gets here on Saturday and I can't wait!  It's going to be so nice having her here!  She is going to instantly fall in love with this little man, I will be taking LOTS of pictures the entire week so there will be lots to share!  She will be here from Saturday til the next Sunday so we'll all get lots of quality time together :)

Cassius Courtney Morden

He's here!!!!  He's finally here!!! 

He's over 2 weeks old now....sorry I'm a little late (I know I know....I never keep up on this blog anyway so I'm sure nobody is surprised).

Fantastic picture of him on his 1 week birthday...he is such a cutie!!

Little fingers :)

He was literally 3 minutes old when this picture was taken!

I just love him :)

He does not seem very happy here...the nurse actually took this picture of him, she did a great job!!

Cash was born at 1:54 PM on Christmas Day 2011.  He was 7 lbs 0 oz and 21 inches long :)

It all started at almost EXACTLY midnight Christmas morning!  I woke up out of a dead sleep and all of a sudden my water broke!  I woke Blake up really quick and ran into the bathroom and called the hospital to let them know we were coming.  Good thing we opened our Christmas presents on Christmas Eve this year!

Blake got everything together, put a garbage bag on the seat of the car and covered that up with towels...let the dogs out and put them in their kennel outside, packed up some changes of clothes and helped me to the car.  Blake did SO well under pressure!  Good thing I have him because I was literally just sitting there in shock the entire time he was putting everything together.  We finally left the house at about 12:20 AM and drove to the hospital.  I was having a few contractions during all of this but they were literally like 15 minutes apart and weren't hurting too bad....YET.

We showed up and got all checked in by a nurse named Mary who is actually from Nevada, Iowa which is crazy because that town is only like 15 minutes away from Ames where I grew up!  It was nice to show up to the hospital in a state where I don't know anybody and have a little bit of familiarity to welcome me.  

We got all checked in and they took us to the room where we just sat there and answered a bunch of questions about my pregnancy and medical history etc.  I told myself during my pregnancy that I wanted to try to have an all natural birth for as long as I could handle the pain.  I asked for some pain medicine about 15 minutes after arriving at the hospital haha. 

Turns out that my water had broken before I was even in actual labor.  I wasn't even dilated 1 centimeter by the time we got all settled in the hospital.  So then came the Pitocin....and then came the real contractions...oh. my. goodness... Once the "post-pitocin" contractions started, I asked for my epidural ASAP.  They were supposed to wait until I was 4 cm dilated but they ended up giving it to me when I was 3 because I was progressing so quickly.  After the epidural I was able to just fall right asleep!  Blake and I woke up around 11:30 and watched Keeping up with the Kardashians for an hour or so when the nurse came back in to check me at about 12:45.  She looked up at us and said "Welp, let's get ready I'm going to call the doctor right now congratulations you're 10 centimeters!!"  Blake and I just looked at each other and couldn't believe it!  We were about to meet our son for the first time!  The epidural made it so I couldn't feel a thing so I was just unbelievably excited to get to pushing and meeting my baby boy!!

The doctor, her name is Dr. Evans, showed up at about 1:00 and said, "Thanks for waiting until I could open  presents with my kids before you were ready to push!"  Then she got all ready and all the nurses came in and got me ready to go!  I couldn't figure out how to push because I was so numb so we had to use a mirror easel so I could figure out what was going on...I wont go into detail about that :)

About 15 or 20 minutes after I started pushing they handed me the most beautiful angel I had ever seen.  I loved him instantly and didn't want to let him go!  He cried like he was supposed to and then passed all of his tests with flying colors!  He was a perfect baby boy and I just love him more and more every single day.

Later that night Blake's parents came and so did Bishop Gillenthin and our friends David and Sarah Carey.  They brought dinner for Blake which was wonderful for him because he didn't get to eat at the hospital, just me!

  

Daddy and baby Cash :) They look like twins!

He was only about 3 hours old when this picture was taken!  Blake is such a proud papa already :)

This picture is mildly embarrassing, but I just would like everyone to see what a contraction feels like...it's written all over my face.  Taken about 5 minutes before my epidural.

Two minutes old!!

There's Dr. Evans!  I met her about 1 minute before I started to push :) She did a wonderful job!

Blake went to Walgreens in the middle of the night to get a snack and brought me back this little teddy bear. He called it my "Push Bear".  So he handed it to me right when we found out that I was going to need to start pushing in a few minutes.

My Labor & Delivery experience was wonderful!  And it's true what they say, once you meet that little bundle of joy all of the pain and discomfort you felt during the entire pregnancy and birth goes away IMMEDIATELY.  I've forgotten all about it and I know that he was totally worth it!  He is the best thing that's ever happened to me and I have honestly never been happier!  I love him so much and I am so grateful that he is loved by so many people as well!  We've received so many cards and letters and phone calls from family and friends it's great to know that he is so cared and thought about.  Thank you all so much!

Exciting Happenings!!!

So, here is the fantastic news of the day- Blake just got a job as the Shipping and Receiving manager for the Nike store here in Smithfield!  I'm so excited for him and I know he'll just love this job!  Me, on the other hand, still unemployed, but starting over on my search on Monday!

Blake is so happy about this position and hopefully will be able to use his history and experience with personal training, etc, and really do well with it!  I know he will!

I'm planning on either finishing up my cosmetology license at school this fall or doing an apprenticeship part time while working part time or full time on top of that.  Things are really going to get busy around here!

I just wanted to make that quick announcement for you all and give you an update!  We hope you're all doing really well and enjoying your Memorial Day weekend festivities!!

FAR Too Long!

I thought it would be a good time to check back to our blog here.....i haven't done so in probably 3 or 4 months and thats way too long, sorry guys!!!

We've just been trucking along here in North Carolina.... working as much as possible and spending time with Blake's family!  It is soooo beautiful here I absolutely love it!  Hopefully within the next month or two I'll be able to post some pictures of us going to the ocean or to the mountains.  We haven't had a whole lot of time to travel around here, mostly just up and around Raleigh, so it will be fun this summer to see what ALL of North Carolina has to offer!

I suppose the biggest news around here is that Scotty McCreery is in the final three on American Idol!  He had his homecoming this weekend but we weren't able to go because I wasn't feeling too hot.  We watched everything on the news though and it was so fun to see!  He grew up just about 20 minutes away from where we're living and there are signs EVERYWHERE to vote for him!  All of the restaurants have "Vote for Scotty!" on their store sign, I'll have to take some pictures for "ya'll" to see!

Southern Hospitality

To be honest with you all...I always thought Southern Hospitality was a myth. That was until I moved to the south :-)

Here are a few examples in the last two weeks of what I've discovered about Southern Hospitality

1) The first day we got here (at 5 in the morning) Gunner ran straight over to the neighbor's house and made all 5 of their dogs bark uncontrollably and the neighbors just laughed about it later on that day.
2) I rear-ended a nice old couple's truck...I only hit their trailer hitch so it didn't hurt their truck at all but I felt so embarrassed and sad and the nice little old lady gave me a hug! When has ANYONE been hugged by someone after you hit their car?!
3) A friend of Kim's (who I had never met before) came over, introduced herself, and helped me organize and clean the day after we moved everything in.
4) 6 guys from church came over and unloaded our moving truck in 20 minutes!
5) We've only been here for 2 weeks and people at the store already remember who we are!
6) Everyone says to me "How are you today ma'am?" And then actually LISTEN to my response!
7) Complete strangers can meet one minute and end up having an hour long conversation together like they've been friends forever!

Those are the only things I can think of right now but something like that happens to me every day! I love how people treat each other here and I hope and pray that someday it can be like this everywhere in the world!

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Paychecks for Dianna are on Their Way!

You guys will never believe what happened to me this week.  Drum roll please.......I got a part time job as a server, and I potentially have a job back at Nordstroms again but the one here in North Carolina!  This might turn into me getting hired for two jobs in one week!  That's unheard of in this economy and I'm so excited!!  I start my orientation at Lonestar on Monday morning, and I have to e-mail my resume and prior information about my employment in Utah to the manager at Nordstroms tomorrow morning.  I really hope everything works out because I LOVED working at the Nordstroms in Utah.  It has definitely been my favorite job, by far, that I've ever had, and we all know that we're best at doing things we love!

Another exciting thing that happened today is that I get to have a jump start to my gardening journey!  Blake's mom knows how much I'm looking forward to having a vegetable garden in our back yard this summer so she decided to let me start early!  Blake brought home an indoor/outdoor herb garden tonight that she picked up for me earlier this week.  I planted them tonight and will be keeping you all updated on how my herb garden is doing!  Here's a picture of day one of my little guys :)

January 13th 2011

Now, I don't know if any of you have ever had to drive a 16' moving truck ever in your lives, but it tends to be a little bit difficult to back out of things.  For example, our driveway.  The day we took the moving truck back, while Blake was backing it out of the driveway, he accidentally ran over our mailbox and broke it off of it's stand.  We haven't put it back up yet (hopefully they haven't returned any of our mail to the sender yet!!) but we're planning on doing it first thing tomorrow morning.  I'm kind of happy actually because I got to paint our names on it more easily because I was able to bring it inside and paint on a flat surface.  Here's a preview!

I know it's not the prettiest thing in the world, but it's ours :)

     

We put up a few pictures on the walls tonight at home and I was able to finally clean and organize everything a little bit.  Here's a picture of the Living Room so far!

There's a paper lamp we usually have next to the reeds but I had to put it into a different room for the time being.  I will post a more updated picture later!

Well, my friends, it's time for me to go to bed becauser there is A LOT for me to do tomorrow.  Miss and love you all and I hope everyone is doing as well as we are!

Work, Work, Work, Work, WORK!!

It has been so fun working on this house.  I've loved having a project to start every single day (and believe me, I have quite a few projects to choose from!) and see the results at the end of the day!  We've painted, sanded, stained, taken off wall paper, cleaned, thrown away countless cardboard boxes, and taken care of two big puppies all at the same time!  I am exhausted and have lots to work on tomorrow but I just wanted to post a few pictures of the renovation of our cute little home :)

Detroit Tiger colors on the walls of Blake's man cave :)

The foyer before....

More of Blake's cave :) I love the colors and how he painted them, I think he did such a great job!

Contrast of the two colors in the living room.  I'm going to paint those bookshelves and bench also - I can't wait to get it done and post more pictures of it!

What a perfect way to end my day....cuddling on the couch with both my babies.  They were so pooped from playing outside all day today.  I just love them, they are so precious to me :)

Welp, that's all I have for right now!  I finished a lot more today so I'll have to post more pictures tomorrow night after I get things done tomorrow and can take some photos of the progress!  Thanks for staying interested everybody!