James' Baby Blessing

Picking up where we left off . . . The day after James was born was mom's Birthday!  It must have been a very exciting one for her, she spent the night with me and James in the hospital :)  The next day I was able to go home and mom had made some marshmallow brownies - yum!  Happy Birthday mom!  Thanks for spending it in such a selfless way :)

 Mom was able to stay for two whole weeks!  We did some fun things and she found at least one deep cleaning project to do every day (including cleaning my blinds).  She taught the kids how to play "War" and they played it a lot!  They also played Uno and CandyLand.

 It wasn't all fun and games though.  She put the kids to work cleaning the backyard!  (She did pay them :)

 Meanwhile James did what he did best . . .

 Another event to celebrate was mine and Parker's 8th Anniversary!  He brought home these gorgeous roses for me!  And that evening we watched some of our wedding videos, including of course Kevin performing his hit song "North Star Las Vegas" at our wedding dinner.  Hadn't laughed that hard in a while!

 Cute pictures of little baby James

 On mom's last day here, mom Dixon came down to spend the next week with us!  So for a day the kids lucked out and had TWO grandmas to play with!

 The post-baby amateur photo shoot :)

 More Uno:

 My kids are so lucky to have two grandmas that are so fun and that love them so much!

 Then this happened - Jeremiah started 1st grade!!  What?!  A handsome guy, huh?

 The kids did tons of fun things with grandma like going to the movies, shopping for new clothes, playing Uno, and more!  All too soon the week was up and I was on my own!  I am beyond lucky to have two moms that are so outstanding!  I don't know what I would have done without them.  After they were gone, my simply incredible friends stepped up to help me.  My friends Kristen and Dawn started taking Jeremiah to school and bringing him home.  Dawn still picks him up and brings him home every day!  This has probably been the most helpful thing anyone could do for me.  There have been a couple days that Dawn couldn't bring Jeremiah home so I have picked him up.  It was like a 3 ring circus!  Four little kids (one of which is a nursing baby) and a double stroller.

Lily is a huge help to me and is so good with baby James!

While we were sad to see grandma Dixon leave, we knew she and grandpa would be back soon for the baby blessing.  Also coming for the weekend of the blessing was Dad!  Mom really wanted to come, but needed to take care of Gma & Gpa Jensen.  While everybody was here we went to the awesome Cabella's by us and had lots of fun checking out the animals and of course the ATVs.  

Some of us preferred the reclining camp chairs :)

Yep, that's a real elephant!  Dead, but real :)  And there's 3 handsome guys!

At church that Sunday, Parker pronounced a beautiful blessing on sweet baby James.  He is a special boy who is meant to do some great things in his life and we are so blessed to get to be his parents.

After dinner, Dixons had to go back home.  We're so glad they could be here!

We got one more day of fun with grandpa!  I'm so glad that dad could be here for the blessing.  It was also really fun for the kids to be able to spend some one on one time with grandpa!  After we dropped him off at the airport Samuel cried the whole way home!  We had a wonderful weekend and love our families so much!