Thanksgiving 2009

For Thanksgiving we went to my moms house like every year. I made a 2 types of pumpkin pie and the classic, green bean casserole. We had a blast with the family. I really love my family.
Here is our "princess" Bryana.

Here is Uncle Ryan wrestling around.

Ian with the "turkey" hat! Gobble, Gobble! He loved the waddle hanging in his face.

Here is my Uncle Bill with his new wife Karen. She is great! We really enjoyed getting to know her better.

Our happy boy, the life of the party!

Here is my mom the best cook in the world. Except for the butternut squash soup that she made all of us try. Not my favorite, but hey, I tried it.

My sister came in town for the holiday and so we could throw her a baby shower. I really love spending time with her and it always makes me sad when she leaves.

Blurb..

Okay so I'm so excited to share with you about Blurb! It is a website that you can turn your blog into a book! The software was easy to use and I just made a hardbound book of my life over the past 2 years! Who says blogging isn't a form of family history!! Yeah for Blurb. Go to www.blurb.com to make your own book!

Halloween.

Here is Landon, Carter, Ian and the neighbor boys getting ready to go get all the candy.

Here is Preston and Parker dressed like punk rockers and a glam rocker. The neighbor boy was the boys' manager.


Go Parker Go! He had the best costume. Everyone loved it!

Here are the little boys trying on the wigs. Carter has on the mullet, can you say "little Joe Dirt!"

Look at Carter trying to get his fingers the same as Landon's.

Happy 3rd Birthday Carter

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CARTER GERALD!!!

Ready to come home from the hospital~



My sweet little baby!



First Birthday!

Second Birthday

Carter on his 3rd Birthday!!!

I can't even begin to describe how much I love this little boy! He is my buddy. While all the other boys are at school Carter and I get to hang out all day. He is the best little shopper and am so glad he is in our family. I can't believe he is already 3!

Happy 11th Birthday

***Re-posted from oct. 08
On October 11th 1998 our second child was born. She was due October 12th and after a few days of on again off again contractions I went to the hospital at 6pm on that Sunday night. We anticipated her arrival with great joy. We had our little boy and now a girl. Her room was ready, painted pink of course. Her closet was already filled with cute little dresses and shoes. I had made Rick redo her room so it was perfect. We had her name all picked out, Chandler Renee' McInelly. While laying in the hospital bed with my mother in law sitting next to me and Rick and the rest of my family sitting on the couches eating McDonalds, I noticed that while my water had broke my contractions were not getting any harder. As the nurse was coming in with the poticin to get them going my mother in law noticed that Chandlers heart rate was down in the 90's. She asked the nurse if anyone realized how low the heart rate was. The answer was that they (meaning the other nurses and resident on staff) were watching at the front desk and if anything was wrong they would see. No sooner did she say that then the resident come in and kick everyone out. As she tried to get Chandlers heart rate up, it dropped again into the 40's. She made the quick call to have an emergency c-section. From the time they made the call to the time she was born was a quick 7 min. I was knocked out because I had not had an epidural yet and when I awoke 2 hours later, my sweet husband was next to me in the recovery room trying to explain to me what had happened while I was asleep.
I only go over these events now because it has been 10 years! 10 YEARS! I remember those events like it was yesterday. This single event changed my whole life. She was put on life support until I was able to wake up and hold her. I never heard her cry. I never got to see her eyes. I only got to hold her and love on her for a small amount of time. She was 8 lbs. 15 oz. And had a head of dark blond hair. As we have added kids to the family she and Ian looked the most alike, though there were times that Parker's baby pictures were identical to hers. They were never able to give me any reasons for her short life. No answers to why. Only the faith that we have knowing that she came and received her body and that her mission was done. Her short life touched many and still touches people as I share her with others.
I have no problem talking about her or showing off her pictures, though they are sad pictures to look at. I want people to see her, to know she lived. I want people to acknowledge her life no matter how short it was. She is and always will be a huge part of our family. Her picture hangs on the wall with the others. She is our angel baby, that gives us another reason to strive to return to our Father in Heaven. She needs us to be worthy to raise her and I want to raise her. I long for the morning of the first resurrection that I will be able to hold her and this time she will be able to look at me and I will see if her eyes are blue like her brothers or green like her dads.
I write all this because its all I have of her. It's all I get, once a year we buy flowers and balloons for her grave instead of polly pockets, webkinz and baby dolls. Thank goodness for the knowledge that our family has of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It gives us hope and peace. It fills the hole in my heart that is empty because my family isn't complete right now. But some day it will be, I just have to be patient, and some days its really hard.
Thank you to all my friends who over the years have been their for me. Evan after 11 years, they still remember her. Thank You!!!

Chandler Renee' McInelly

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

First Day of School

So our school here starts WAY too early if you ask me. Aug. 12th! Really, I know that during the summer I long for this day but when it gets here It makes me sad. I'm not sad for very long as I realize that my house will actually stay clean for more than an hour and that I can get some things done that I otherwise can't with 5 boys + a bazillion neighbor kids running around. What makes me sad is the fact that with each school year I am one year closer to having my boys leave, they grow up so fast, oh and no more sleeping in!

Preston on his first day of 7th grade!!! Seriously am I old enough to have a seventh grader! I don't think so! But what a heart breaker! Love this kid!

Speaking of heart breakers, this little boy is my little buddy! I am addicted to him, I just can't get enough. He is a great shopper and loves to hang out with me. People always ask me if he misses his brothers. Ummm NO! Now he has mom all to himself! Really who cares about brothers when you have mom all day!

Parker going into 5th grade! This is the big one for elementary here! The rulers of the school, kings of the classroom, head honchos! He is so excited for 5th grade! What a great, sweet kid. He has taken seriously his role as protector of the little brothers while at school. Thank goodness!

Ian on the first day of kindergarten. Oh Ian, how you stress me out! He has already these first few weeks of school wandered off after school from the group and took a little walk down the busy street in front of the school. When asked why he didn't stay with his brothers he said "My brothers are stupid! I do it myself!" Needless to say I have already talked to the principal, asst. principal and teacher multiple times since school started. He is really our angel boy and is doing better than I thought he would but the long days have taken a toll on this once easy going little boy.

Landon on the first day of second grade! He couldn't wait to get back to all his friends and to be able to find out what ever one did during the summer. He is our little social butterfly. He is doing great and feels so much older now that there is a younger McInelly at the school.

4th of July

So I'm slightly behind in our posting. For the 4th we spent the day at my moms and then went back to my house to watch the fireworks. We actually had to wear sweatshirts!!! That is crazy here in NE. Whatever with Global warming!!
Here is Carter getting ready for the display after drinking an orange pop!


LOVE that everyone had there flags out!

Warren and Rick "Tailgating" in our van, in our garage!

Landon, Brock, Brett and Ian.

Little Bryanna!

Our New Turtle

So Preston needed to take care of a reptile or amphibian for a merit badge and since we didn't have one....we got a TURTLE!!! When we were in Utah our niece's parents had some they were willing to give us. We put it in a bucket and drove it home. We got him a tank and a basking area. He is so cute, at least as cute as a turtle can be. The boys love watching him swim around in his tank.

Sprinkler Wars

This is what you get when you have a hot day, sprinklers and boredom.

Randomness of May

So now that school is out and the craziness of summer is here, I thought I would post a few pictures of our May. We had a great May and here are just a few of the highlights.

First, Parker is now officially taller than Preston. Preston is 3 years older but Parker now weighs 8lbs more and is slightly taller. I do remind him that even though this is true, he is still younger in years and thus does not get to do the same things as Preston even if he is "bigger".


My sister in law and niece flew out for a weekend and we all went to Wicked. It was great. We went shopping, out to eat, got pedicures, and spent some great time together. I am truly blessed with awesome sister in laws and nieces! Lara is such a sweet, kind and fun girl to be around. I do wonder how it is that out of most of my sister in laws and myself I am one of the few that loves to shop and the ones that don't like it have daughters that do! I need to borrow my nieces so they can shop with me!

Here is Jennifer, myself and Lara! Isn't she growing up!

One of my dear friends had a new baby. Little Quentin was long awaited for and we are so blessed to have his parents as friends and we are so happy that they finally have another child to have in their family. We already love their oldest so Quentin is now part of our family too! Carter and Ian especially are mesmerized by him! Yay for snuggling new babies!

Speaking of babies, we had a momma bird build a nest in our play fort. What a stupid/smart place to build. Smart because it was well protected from the elements, stupid because that is where ALL the kids play. I really didn't think any of the eggs would hatch, especially since Ian tried "feeding" the eggs part of his sandwich but they did and we had a couple of baby birds hopping around our yard. We did have one incident where we had to pull Lola away from them so she wouldn't kill them while trying to "play" with them. It was great learning tool for teaching the kids.

Here is my garden, growing so well! I am super excited that everything is going well with it. I can't wait to get some tomatoes and peppers!

On the last day of school we went to my moms and swam! It was perfect out! Here is Rick "working".

Preston likes all things HOT. So he wasn't too ready to get in the water, but he enjoyed laying out in the sun!

Carter loved the water.

And, I have continued making yummy wheat bread, which my boys love. I have gotten better and better at getting the loaves to look normal. I have started making granola bars, a bazillion jars of freezer jam and enjoy it way more than I ever thought I would.

Mothers Day....

For those of you that know me well know that Mother's Day is my least favorite holiday. I use the word holiday loosely. For me, Mother's Day is a reminder that as a mother, I do not have all my children with me. Mother's Day at church is even worse since most of the block revolves around mother's and daughter's. I LOVE being a mother but ever since loosing Chandler I have had rough time during Mother's Day. To remedy this, we have spent probably 7 of the past 10 Mother's day's out of town, just our nuclear family, together. This past weekend we spent in Kansas City. We drove down to Liberty Mo. and Independence Mo. which both have church history sites to visit. We visited the Independence visitor Center, which was small but nice to learn more about what the saints went through during the time they spent there. Then we headed up to Liberty jail. We had recently been learning about what happened there during Relief Society and talking about it with the boy's. For those of you who don't know much about Joseph Smith's time there, he was wrongly charged and jailed with 4 other saints for 4 months. They spent from Dec. 1st and the 4 coldest months following in the basement of this jail, which by the way after it was a jail they used as an ice house because it stays so cold!!! The spirit was strong and testified to all of us the truthfulness of the gospel. The things that the saints went threw so that we could have the restored truth was amazing!


Here are the boys outside of the Independence Mo. visitor center.


Ian and Carter pretending to drive the wagon in the kids play area.


A nice family picture in front of the Chirstus.


Preston checking out all the different Books of Mormon, written in all different languages. He even found the one that his cousin would be using on his mission in Peru.


Here are the boy's helping the Sister missionary by holding pictures of what the jail looked like before it was restored.
I didn't take any pictures of the actual jail. I kinda felt like it was such a special place that it was not appropriate to take pictures of it, even though they wouldn't have minded. If you even get the chance to visit, GO! It is so worth it!

My Square foot Gardern

I decided that I wanted to plant a garden. I researched on the web what the best way to do it was and found the square foot garden. The concept is to not row plant but to plant things per square foot. The onions I planted could have 9-12 per square where as the tomatoe plants are 1 per square. Anyway lets pray I get my money out of this! :) Check out these websites here and here to learn more abot square foot gardening.