We came home last night from a weekend away visiting family to find a note on the door. It was a termination of rental contract without cause. Our entire apartment complex got them.

Apparently the new owners of the complex are going to turn the apartments into condo’s faster than they had let on to us. We were told they weren’t going to do anything for a year.  Thanks a lot.

So, now we have 30 days to find some place to live. We can’t afford much, so if you know of something please let us know.

Last night I was making a quick dinner, as we had to leave for Awana’s soon.  Angelique decided she wanted to “help” me, so she brought a chair over to the stove to assist with the process of boiling noodles.  While the noodles were boiling, I went to clean something up and get the table ready to eat.  Angelique promptly disappeared, leaving a chair by the stove unattended. 

I was only away from the stove for less than a minute when I heard the scream.  Turning around, I saw Greggory standing on the chair, holding his hand in the air, and his hand was bright red.  He apparently tried to reach into the boiling water and grab a noodle.

I quickly took him over to the sink, letting a few profanities slip from my mouth, and put his hand under running cold water.  I held him there for a good 15 minutes, Tracy came in and after surmising the situation, got him some Ibuprofen.  We called Tracy’s folks to let them know we won’t be at Awana’s tonight and to drop the kids off.  After dropping them off, we rushed Greggory to the hospital.

He screamed and cried the whole way to the hospital.

In the emergency room, the triage nurse put gause around his hand, which helped calm him down, as the air wasn’t getting to the burn anymore.  And, they got us back immediately.  I’ve never had that quick service at an emergency room before (except with Tanisha, but dealing with cancer kids is another story.)

He has mostly 1st degree burns with a few 2nd degree burns.  They told us what I already knew, it needs to heal from within, don’t pop the blisters, give him tylenol or ibuprofen for pain, and keep his hand wrapped.  He slept the whole time while in the actual room. 

Once we were done with our misadventure in the hospital, we still had time to make it to church for Awana.  We stopped to grab a bite to eat and headed to church, Greggory spending the evening with my wife and having his hand bandaged up.

It was a scary evening and an exhausting one emotionally.  Josiah kept Tracy up quite a while on top of that. 

This morning, Greggory woke up happy and playing.  He ripped the bandages off, so we had to re-wrap his hand up again.  He is being cautious with using the hand, though, which is normal.

We re-enrolled Katelyn into Connections Academy for next year last week. I asked Katelyn if she wanted to do this for next year and she said “yes”. Which I had already filled out the papers and faxed them in. I think they are enrolling new students now as well. So if you are thinking about homeschooling I really encourage you to do it because you can have some wonderful times with your child but you can have some very frustrating moments as well. At least Katelyn is very understanding and forgiving of me when I loose it with her when my expectations are too high for her. That is my down fall is the expectations is really high, when I feel it should be easy but to her it is not because she just learned the concept. Other than that we have a great time doing this and spend a lot of time together. My favorite part with her is when she takes the stuff she learns and applies it out side of school. She does a lot of the science stuff and applies to.

For example: she saw a water fountain and she said “that is liquid, it has no shape of its own.”

My response was ” what is it made up of?”

She said “Matter.”

I just am glad she understands some of the stuff.

Well I haven’t written in a while, taken care of 5 children takes a lot of energy out of me. So far it is going some what smoothly, if you can call it that. We still have the normal fighting but it could be worse. We are trying to have the girls pick up on some of the slack in chores and making sure their room gets cleaned nightly. Which is a task in it self, for some odd reason they think they can mess it up with out cleaning it up. I mean even the oldest one complains. I want to get rid of all their toys and have none at all then they wouldn’t have to worry about cleaning them up any more. But what would that really teach them. I have tried bribing them and tried giving them a time limit of cleaning and if not cleaned then the toys get taken away forever. Nothing has worked to get them to clean. So maybe they will surprise me one day and keep it cleaned or clean it when we tell them to clean it.

On Sunday we got home from church and I barely was keeping my eyes open for lunch time I forced myself to finish eating and then went upstairs to sleep.  I crashed, I think I slept for 3 to 4 hours, it felt good.  Josiah slept that long as well.  That nap helped for that day but I need more sleep all over again.  I am too old for this newborn stuff.=)  I know it will get better and I am not complaining about it.  I just look at his face and fall in love with him.  I can’t believe Josiah is already 3 weeks old. He is already out growing some of his  clothes. He also is getting a double chin and some rolls on his thighs. He is so cute and precious.

Last week Brett went back to work and I took over things again, though Brett did take Angelique to school for me. School with Katelyn went pretty smoothly better than I expected even with very little sleep for me. We had only one day of frustration with Katelyn, Josiah and our van to the point where I felt overwhelmed and cried for 5 minutes inside the van because it wouldn’t start. It turns out it needed a new battery. Well yesterday was a little tougher to get into school time with Katelyn but I finally got to it with her. It was on my part not hers, I just didn’t feel like doing it. I got Angelique off to school as well and Brett got to go back to working out in the mornings again. I even got a shower before I started the day which is good. Though Josiah has been wanting to be held all day and not give me a minute.  Today has been a lot easier day.  Josiah slept the whole time I did schooling with Katelyn which gives me a break compared to yesterday where he wanted me all day long.

We got home Monday from the hospital and had a pretty quiet day. I rested and Josiah slept a lot. He also ate a lot as well. Around 3 pm is when the rest of the kids came home and they rushed to go see their new baby brother. Do they love him! They fought over who was going to hold him first. We even let Greggory hold him. He is very curious about him and wants to have hands on. He likes to try and put his pacifier in his mouth and he also tries to give him love pats. His gentle means a whole different gentle than ours does.

Tuesday we just hung around the house and relaxed. That was really nice. Josiah had his first doctors appointment with his doctor that afternoon to check his weight. He gained an ounce in one day, which the doctor said that is good. He was having latching on problems at the hospital and continued at home, the only way he would nurse was to use a shield.

Then on Wednesday stayed home most of the day. We took the kids to Awana and had dinner there. Brett and I left after the meal and went home. We didn’t stay for the actual Awana part but the kids did. It was kind of wierd going home and not helping, I felt useless but I knew I needed to go home and rest.

On Thursday we went to my mom’s work to have lunch with her but we crossed paths and saw each other after her lunch time. So we took him around to meet all her co-workers more like Grandma showing him off. Then ran a few errands and then we went home. I also e-mailed chiropractors that do chiropractor care and craniosacral therapy on newborns that our insurance would cover. Cranisocacral therapy is suppose to help latching on problems but if I couldn’t find a place that took our insurance we would had to pay over $100 for the first session and if he needed more then around $50 each extra session. Ouch! But I did find one it’s called Pure Life Clinic. They had an appointment for Friday in the morning. We relaxed for the rest of the night.

On Friday took Josiah to clinic and had the cranisocacral therapy done and half way through the treatment he got hungry and he latch right on with out the shield. Yipppeeeeeeeee! The therapy worked and she wasn’t even finished with it, so she said he was fine and didn’t need any more work done. We only had to pay $15 for it and he will go again in a few months to get realigned. My sister in law did this for her boys and kept telling me that it should be a requirement for all newborns to get this therapy done, I never did it with Greggory because he seemed fine. But with Josiah’s nursing problems I decided what the heck lets try it and it worked. So now I believe the same thing as her, all newborns should be getting this therapy. The clinic is owned by a married couple and they were so nice. I would recommend them to anybody. After we left for that we did a few errands and went home for the night.

On Saturday I went to my sister’s house and Brett went for the day to our church’s men’s retreat. Had lunch with my sister, mom, grandma, sister in law and her mom, and all our kids (eight all put together). After lunch we headed over to my mom’s house and made homemade pizzas. We spent the night over since Brett didn’t get there until 2:30 am. I had lots of fun.

Sunday took him to church for the first time. He was a very good boy. I wish I would have took a picture of his outfit on him because he looked so cute. We got home from church and I slept most of the day away. That helped me a lot. Poor Brett though Greggory wasn’t feeling very good so he didn’t a nap in.

Monday our apartments are getting new windows in it so we spent the day at my parents house and then we went home. Brett took Greggory to the doctors and found out he has a ear infection, poor guy. So now he is on some medications. Brett went to his Bible Study and took care of the kids for the first time since Josiah has been born. I am also off all the pain medications now as well.

As for today I am starting feel tired again since I haven’t had a chance to take a nap in the last two days and only getting 4 to 5hours sleep a night is starting wear me out. I took some pictures of Josiah to prepare for our birth announcement. I took a lot and did they turn out to be so cute. It will be hard to choose which one we will use. This the update so far of our lives and his first week of his life.

Brett has been so good during this and pulling a lot of the weight around here. I am blessed to have such a wonderful husband that is willing to do this for our family. I am going to miss him when he goes back to work on Monday. I love him so much.

God is good to us. We are so blessed to have the children we have. Yes, they can be trouble but God gave them to us as a gift and I cherish the thought He gave them to us to raise as His children. I pray they all will grow to be children of God. I may have given birth to them and raising them but they are still God’s children. We need let them see that God is their heavenly Father and we are their earthly parents. He has entrusted them to us and we have to see they get the upbringing that God wants for them. When you look at your children and see how blessed you are to have them always remember that God gave them to you. Children are a gift from God and they aren’t to be taken for granted.

Josiah Richard Gorley was born March 29th at 1:20AM. He weighed 7 lbs 10 oz and is 19 1/2 inches long. We had an all-nighter Friday night, as Tracy was having contractions Friday morning, causing us to go in to get checked out.

Our normal doctor was out on vacation, so we had another one check on Tracy. Tracy was dialated 4-5 cm and 75-80% effaced, so they kept her and had her do some walking. They also kept checking her blood pressure. When her blood pressure hit over 150/100, they decided it might be best for her to have this baby now rather than wait 3 days. So, they began giving her some magnesium sulfate to bring the blood pressure down and started her on pitocin at around 6:30PM. Josiah’s head wasn’t far enough down to break the water, so we waited.

Finally, at about 1AM Josiah’s head came down far enough for them to break Tracy’s water, and that’s when things started to happen. Her contractions got very hard, though she couldn’t feel them due to having an epideral (her first time having one.) We woke the kids, as they all fell asleep in the room waiting for the baby to be born. Tracy felt like she had to push, the doctor told her to go ahead as she was having a contraction, so she pushed. Pretty soon we saw Josiah’s head and I was able to touch him as he came out. His cord was wrapped around his neck, so I quickly got my hand out of the way as the doctor unwrapped the cord.

Angelique watched the whole thing. She got squeamish after the placenta came out and started getting a bit freaked out. Kate kept her head under the covers after baby came out, until things got cleaned up a bit. Tanisha sat there, watched everything including the doctor stiching Tracy up. By the time it was all over everyone was exhausted and went home, leaving Tracy and I with our newborn son.

The next few days we were greeted with visitors, mostly family. Tracy was getting her tubes tied, which was supposed to happen Saturday but got postponed till Sunday. Though no one told the surgeon performing the operation. He was less than pleased when he arrived and found out the surgery wasn’t going to happen. The rest of the day was nurses checking on Tracy, trying to get Josiah to wake up to breast feed, and having family drop by to visit.

Sunday was a busy morning, as Josiah went to get circumcised and Tracy was taken to get her tubes tied. I was left by myself for a while to worry and pray about Tracy. Wasn’t too worried about Josiah- they’ve been doing circumcisions for thousands of years. Tubal Ligations are much more recent.

After another day of forcing Josiah to wake up long enough to eat and having our sleep interrupted constantly, we were ready to head home. So, we packed up our belongings, I took everything down to the car, we got our instructions for Tracy (no lifting for 6 weeks- ugh!) and got in the car to head home.

Now, thanks to my generous workplace, I have two weeks off to help Tracy around the house. Once that is done, we’ll see how to manage. God has been amazingly graceful to us by blessing us with a beautiful, healthy baby boy. He is a true joy! The girls love him, Greggory is curious about him, and he is happy and healthy. Praise the Lord for his provision!

Tracy’s having hard contractions.  VERY HARD.  Just called the doctor to see if they want us to come in.

Figures.  I have one thing that absolutely needs to get done at work, and baby comes before I have it done.

I am finally nesting though I have only 3 days left of my pregnancy. I have been wanting to do stuff but I have been very cautious of what I do but now it is different. I had Tanisha and Angelique clean their room and clean the living room. I also was doing school with Katelyn while they cleaned. Then I decided the kids had way too many toys in the living room so we cleaned out the toys, got rid of two boxes worth of toys and one garbage bag worth of broken toys or ones that was missing pieces. I also vacuumed the living room. Then I put the baby swing together and realized the cover smelled like my parents attic so I decided to wash the cover and while I was at it I washed the bouncer cover as well. So got those cleaned and all put back together. Though I think I am missing two poles to my swing that may be in my parents attic but it is not harming the swings function at all. We put our fourth van seat in our living room and we have set baby stuff on it which is bugging me so I might tackle that tomorrow. The clothes needed to be folded so I did that and had the girls put their clothes away, I even had Katelyn and Angelique put their clothes away, who knows how they are put away but they are put away none the less. Brett came home to a clean living room first in a few months. Then tonight I wanted to take a bath but it hasn’t been cleaned in a while so I cleaned it out. I got to take a bath in a clean tub for once. Our place is coming back in order finally. On Saturday  I  plan to clean it even better, the kitchen is next and got to clean our room and Greggory’s room. I want to leave on Monday night with a clean house and come back to one on Thursday when I get released. I want our new one to have a fresh start in a clean house.

Angelique lost her first tooth today. She was so excited! Though she was kind of concerned since it started to bleed alittle bit and she can’t stand blood. But she got over it since she was so excited about loosing it. She called Daddy and let him know she lost it and to give her a dollar when he comes home from work. We had to explain to her she needs to put it under pillow in order to get the dollar. She is so funny. Then Tanisha our oldest started to call all her friends to let them know her sister lost her tooth.

If I don’t go into labor before March 31st then I am going in at 8 PM to get some medicine to bring his head down farther.  Then Tuesday, April 1st my doctor will come and break my water and start the induction.  So in 11 more days we will get to meet Josiah. I am so excited.