Bo's 8th birthday

Eight years ago today, at almost this exact time, we welcomed our handsome little guy into this world.  Bo is such a fun kid. He is also a handful.  He has a great imagination and a fun personality.  He is a brother though, so he does his fair share of pestering his 2 sisters and just loves to entertain Alivia, his baby sister.

Some of Bo's favorite activities are playing the wii, playing soccer, baseball, wrestling. He loves to ride his bike and go swimming.  He loves to ride snowmachines and fourwheelers.  He loves to fish and hike. He loves to go camping and kneeboard and tube. He even loves to read. He hates to clean his room and heaven forbid keep track of his shoes. But he can be a hard worker when he wants to. He ended up with one of the main parts at their end of school program and he worked so hard and was so proud of his part.

He is a good student and probably even better socializer. He is constantly asking to have friends come over or go visit his friends.

We love our little man and hope he has a great birthday!

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We lost another great man

My husband's Grandpa Ward passed away this past Saturday. He was such a great and loving man. We will miss him so much. We love you Grandpa!

Byron Charles Ward, 84 died Saturday, August 6, 2011 in Rexburg, Idaho. He was born October 22, 1926 to Charles Clements and Gertrude Stallings Ward. Siblings are: Lila (Joe) Covington; LuDene (Clyde) Lowdy; Glen Ward; Yvonne (Sylvan) Taggart; Wayne (Sandy) Ward; Veda (Bud) Leavitt; Beth Pocock (Wade) Shirley. He married Norma Siddoway on June 4, 1948; sealed in the Idaho Falls Temple June 14, 1949. Parents of; Delvan (Connie) Ward, of Teton, ID; Kristine (Keith) Pryor, of South Jordan, UT; Neil Ward, of Teton, ID; and their sweet special JoAnn Ward. They have 9 grandchildren and 20 great grandchildren. He grew up in Salem near most of his cousins and stayed close to them through out his life. He served in the Infantry division of the Army stationed in Hawaii near the end of World Ward II. After he married Norma they lived in Caldwell until returning to Teton to farm. Later he purchased a dry farm on the Teton Dam Road. He loved farming and used wisdom as well as hard work to raise good crops. Byron was an active member of the Teton LDS 1st Ward and served faithfully in every calling. He served on the City Council and as Mayor of Teton. Many remember him as a strict school bus driver and fun ski bus driver. Byron’s hobbies included fishing, hunting, riding motorcycles, skiing, golfing, camping, and making caramel popcorn and sour dough pancakes. Several of his family have tried to duplicate his recipe but none compare to Byron’s. He enjoyed visiting with the men of Teton at Darrel’s Café and was willing to lend a hand to help anyone. Byron was great friends with all of his siblings and did many things to help them in whatever ways he could. After he retired, if a farmer ever retires, he and Norma spent many winters in Mexico and California. They enjoyed road trips to visit their friends. He quietly took on the difficult task of caring for Norma after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He had a tender heart, was a loving, devoted husband, a patient and wise father, a trusted sibling, and a fun loving friend. He is preceded in death by his Parents; his Wife; Daughter JoAnn; Sister Lila; Brothers-in-law, Joe Covington, Clyde Lowdy and Ralph Pocock. Funeral services will be held at the Teton LDS Chapel, on Wednesday, August 10, 2011 at 11:00am. The family will receive friends Tuesday, August 9th from 6:30 p.m. until 8:30 pm at Bert Flamm Mortuary, (581 E. 1st N., St. Anthony) and again on Wednesday from 10:00 a.m. until 10:45 a.m. before services at the Church. Interment in the Teton-Newdale Cemetery. The family requests any contributions be made to the Alivia Ward liver transplant fund at Bank of Commerce in Rexburg.

What we've been up to

Our sweet Alivia ended up with some health problems that we've been dealing with the last couple of weeks. We spent about 10 days down at Primary Children's hospital where she ended up having major surgery to try to correct a condition called Biliary Atresia. I've set up a blog dedicated to her story here. She is doing much better and we hope that things continue to improve.

Alivia

Bo has been involved in wrestling and has been busy going to practices and meets. So far he has won 1st place getting a gold metal 2 times. He went to his first big tournement Saturday and got a 3rd place bronz metal.  We are so proud of him. He is a good wrestler, but most importantly, he enjoys it and is having a great time doing it. It is a really good outlet for him.

Kaylee had her piano festival Saturday. This is her 5th festival that she has participated in.  She did awesome! She received a 99, her highest score yet. And she received some very good comments from the judge. We are so proud of her and the hard work she put into learning her songs. She has great potential as a pianist if she will stay dedicated and keep practicing.

Sunday was Raegan's 4th birthday. It is so hard to believe she is 4. She is so much fun. She is our little fireball and is always saying or doing something that just makes us go "What the heck did she just say or do?"  We love her so much and wish her a very happy birthday! I will do a separate post just for her birthday soon.

14 years and still goin strong

Happy Anniversary Honey!

I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!

Raegan's point of view

I often get interesting pictures on the camera if we leave it lying around and Raegan gets her little fingers on it. Instead of just deleting them like I usually do, I though I'd share them with you instead. These are just a few of the gems I found. There are usually ALOT of duplicate pictures so I just posted a few...and these are just from stuff in the last month.

I believe these are chicken bones for the cat

Fun with the Johnson's

Ryan's cousin, Russell and Tanya and kids, Megan, Justin, Kristin, and Lauren came up to visit us for about a week in February.  We had so much fun with them while they were here.  They stayed in a hotel so when they first got here, we met them in town and had dinner and then headed to their hotel so the kids could swim.

The next morning, the guys and boys went to a gun show for a couple of hours and then everyone met up at our house and just hung out and visited for the rest of the day.

Sunday, we blessed Alivia

Monday, we headed up to Stonefly Lodge to spend a couple of days playing in the snow and just relaxing.  It was so fun to spend time up there together.  The kids had a ball playing together...except the ones who were sick. Justin and Kristen ended up with influenza while we were there so they didn't have so much fun.  We all took turns riding the snowmachines in a field across the street and we took little trail rides in the area too.  Ryan and Russell then got Justin and Bo out behind the lodge and made a trail down the hill to sled on.  We all hot tubbed a couple of times and played ping pong, air hockey and pool.  We watched movies and played games and read books.  It was great!

We came home on Thursday and some of us took off and went shooting guns while the rest of us hung out at home.  Russell and Tanya left the nxt afternoon and we spent the rest of the weekend trying to recover from all our activities. We were all so exhausted!

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baby smiles

We sure love it when she smiles!  She's starting to make a lot more baby sounds too. it is so fun.

Alivia's Baby Blessing

We blessed Alivia on February 20, 2011.

Dress was made by Great Grandma Muirhead.
It is beautiful! Thanks Grandma!

After church we all headed over to our house for a lunch of soups, salad, bread, drink, cookies and cake. We ended up with 33 people at our house afterwards. It was crowded but so fun.

Thank you to everyone who was able to make it.
It was a great day!

A football fan in the making

Alivia and Ryan hung out for quite a while like this watching the Pro Bowl on Sunday. I think Ryan is pretty excited about having a football watching buddy.

Alivia Joy Ward

Alivia joined our family January 20 at 11:06 am. She was 7 pounds and 18 1/2 inches long.

We got to the hospital about 7:40 that morning and were waiting for the doctor to come break my water.  She came and got feeling around in there and could tell something just didn't feel right. She was feeling for the sutchers (sp?) on the head and was not finding anything but softness.  I've been told for weeks that my baby had flipped and was head down by several different doctors.  So it was possible that maybe she had flipped back over.  She did an ultrasound and sure enough, her head was not down.

This would not have been a big problem had she not just broke my water and my contractions were already getting harder.  She called the on-call doctor and he came in. It was decided that in trying to avoid a C-Section, they would give me an epidural (which I've never had before) and try to turn the little stinker so that I could deliver normally.  After the epidural and a long, agonizing time of them working on trying to turn her, they determined that she for some reason would not turn.  Then we had a choice of going with a breech vaginal birth or with a C-Section.  After talking with Ryan and a few tears shed, we decided not to risk it and to just go with the C-Section.

They turned up the epidural and shortly had me prepped and ready for surgery.  What a strange sensation it was. I was told exactly what they were doing as they were doing it. They were talking and joking the whole time, which made me more relaxed I guess.  They even asked what names we had to choose from and took votes.  The procedure went really well and seemed really quick and then I was holding my beautiful baby girl.  They said that the umbilical cord was kindof wrapped behind her shoulder and that was probably what was keeping her from turning.  So I'm glad we opted for the C-Section because that potentially could have caused problems with the breech birth.

After several hours in the surgery recovery room, we were moved to a regular mother/baby suite.  It took forever, it seemed to get feeling back in my legs and feet, but man once that wore off, I realized the pain.  I hurt more from them trying to turn her than from the actual incision.  I am so thankful she is here and safely. She sure is precious and we all love her so much.  She seems to be a pretty content baby and we're sure gonna enjoy her...especially once I get to where I can move again.

Ryan's big fish

This past weekend, Ryan took the scouts on a winter campout to Island Park Reservoir. Saturday morning, they got up and did some ice fishing. Although fishing really wasn't great, he did manage to catch this beauty.  He was pretty darn excited about it because these fish just don't get this big.

It is a Kokanee Salmon, 19 1/2 inches and 3 pounds. Isn't it a beauty!

Bo's new glasses

Last week the kids got their eyes checked at school. We were informed that Bo's eyes were not up to par.  We took him to the eye doc and sure enough, he has an astigmatism so he got his glasses today.  He looks so much more grown up with them.

Honey do list

We have had a busy couple of weeks doing some home improvements before the baby comes.  Here are some pics of what we've been up to.

We painted the baby's room

Raegan "helping" paint the closet doors

Ryan painting the aqua color.  It scared us a little at first, but is much better now.

Both colors - aqua and dark brown

Bo being a big helper

Bad picture.  The room actually turned out really cute, especially once we got the chair-rail up.

We built shelves in our storage room after nearly 9 years of living in our house.  I'm so excited to fill them up. They turned out so good.

My husband bought a roll end of carpet for really cheap so we ripped the carpet out of our upstair living room and replaced the pad and the carpet.  We are loving it!

Ryan pulling up the old carpet



Raegan thought it was great pulling up the pad



Starting to install the new carpet

We also had to buy a new crib because ours was on the recall list. Luckily Walmart took it back and gave us a full refund so we bought a new one and spent time figuring out how to put it together.

Ryan also built a few shelves along the top front of our garage for coolers and such.

It's been a busy couple of weeks, but so worth it.