Zachary Scott Buchanan

We had a baby boy on September 29! We are so excited for him to be here. He was born at exactly 37 weeks, so 3 weeks early. I knew he was going to come early, but we wanted an October birthday for him so bad. Didn't happen. Maybe there was a little bit too much nesting happening. On Monday I went to my doctor's appointment (where I didn't let him check me because I didn't want it to start labor), took the girls to the library, took the van through the car wash and vacuumed it, went shopping for sheets for girl's new beds, trimmed the bushes and flowers, dusted the shutters, made dinner, etc. I guess I should have taken it easier if I wanted him to wait a few more days. That night Scott was laying on the couch in SO MUCH pain from his double ear infection. His ears hurt, his head hurt and he just felt awful. We went to bed at 11pm and prayed that the baby would not come yet because Scott felt so bad. My prayer did not work.

At 12:30am I sat up in bed and knew that my water had broken. I woke Scott up with an apology and told him we had to go to the hospital. I once again felt so surprised that the baby was coming so early and felt very not ready for it all. We called a girl from our ward who babysits often to come stay with the girls through the night and Scott and I drove to the hospital.

We got there and waited a while for anything to happen because of some emergencies they were taking care of. I had contractions on my own for awhile and then about 3:30 am I got an epidural and they started the pitocin. Getting the epidural was probably the worst part of it all. It hasn't been bad before, but the guy doing it was just chatting and making jokes and not paying a bit of attention to me. I hated it. My blood pressure crashed right afterward and I felt like I was drifting away. Once that was stabilized we just waited until I was dilated and ready to push. We were absolutely thrilled when Dr. Thackeray got there and it was time. By the way, I love Dr. Thackeray (my O.B.). It just made everything more calm to have him there and know that he would be delivering yet another one of our babies. I pushed for about 20 minutes and then was told to relax for awhile and lay on my side because the baby was turned side ways. This got the baby's head where it needed to be and I got to start pushing again. After another 20 minutes he was here. He was born at 8:50am. He was perfect, very blue, but perfect. As I held him in my arms I determined that he looked a lot like Brielle did as a newborn and he does. He is gorgeous.

I had a very nice hospital stay and literally pretended I was on vacation at a resort somewhere. I had a beautiful view of the mountains out the window and watched the rain and snow fall on them. I had meals delivered to me in bed. Scott and I watched movies while holding our new baby boy. Zachary spent the nights in the nursery, so we got good sleep after a sleepless night. And the girls were well taken care of at home (thank you Tawna and Sarah). It was wonderful.

We have all been home together for about a week now and we are doing well. Some moments are crazy and some are just heaven. Ava was a terror the first few days, but is now realizing that I am not leaving her again and is calming down. Brielle is a great big sister. She loves to feel like she is helping and loves to hold Zach. She just needs to control her wiggling and bouncing all around him. Scott went back to work yesterday and thankfully my mom arrived. It's so nice to have someone here to help with the girls when I am taking care of the baby. Things are very good right now. I should say though that I am VERY nervous for the months ahead of having three such small kiddos. Yikes. Wish us luck. We wouldn't want it any other way though. We are so happy to have these cute kids!September 28. The day started like this. I was on my way to my 37 week doctor's appointment.Surprisingly enough, the day ended like this. About ready to deliver little Zachary.He's here. This is when I really freaked out. When I saw these three little kids in a chair together and knew they were all mine to come home with me and be taken care of by me. Wow. I also panicked when I saw we were driving a mini van full of car seats. What have we done?Aunt Tawna and Zach.
Grandma and Papa meeting their new grandson.Zach in his car seat for his trip home.Brielle and Ava adoring their new baby brother.
We enjoyed a very relaxing, not leave the house, not shower, lay around weekend of watching conference. Here is Scott and Zach together.And me pretending to watch conference, but just staring at my boy.Yea! He takes a bottle too. Actually, he takes anything. I've never experienced nursing like this. Wow. From minutes old he was a good nurser and continues to be. He's killing me. Thank heaven Scott can do one bottle each night for him.Smiling and giggling in his sleep.Scott took the girls to the zoo for his last day of paternity. They were all so excited to see the new baby elephant. He called me to say they were miserable and leaving. It snowed on them. They were all freezing. So Scott took them to Friday's for hot chocolate and chicken fingers. That made it all better.

Please, don't call it a clunker.

It is official! Scott got his license plates put on his new car. A big thanks to your tax dollars in the Cash for Clunkers program.

We heard about Cash for Clunkers on the news and Scott started researching it. It sounded just right for our 1992 Saab. We love, love, loved that Saab! Seriously loved it. We paid $1,500 for that car in Boston. We bought it from a friend in the hopes that it would last us the rest of our time in Boston and then get us across the country. We then packed that car up with all of our belongings and made the big month long trek across the U.S. and Canada to move here. It got us to our new home and lasted 5 1/2 years with no problems! It was a good, good car and we were so lucky to never have a car payment.The last months of the Saab's life with us though were all downhill. It didn't have air conditioning anymore and Scott was driving to and from work in 90 degree heat with no air. It had no radio. And in the end Scott had to fill it up with water every morning to travel to work and every evening to go home. Even the morning we were to turn it into the dealership we were both just hoping and praying it would start and get to the lot. When we dropped the Saab off Scott actually asked the guy to please not refer to it as a clunker. It was much more to us than that.We were the second people to do Cash for Clunkers! We were ready. The car had been chosen, a deposit had been made and we just had to fill out the paper work. Then we were off in our brand new car! Yahoo! It has been very exciting for Scott to have all of the luxuries of a real working car. It is definitely his baby! He gets to pump the air and listen to sports radio! He is one happy man with his new car.

Happy Anniversary!

Sunday, September 6, was mine and Scott's 6th anniversary. It was good, but different too. We have made a tradition of going away on a little (or big) trip for our anniversary. Except the year we were in the hospital having Ava. This year was different. Things were different because I am very pregnant so we didn't go anywhere, we had my family here visiting, we went to church where I am always distracted and crazy doing Primary and then we went to a wedding of some friends in the evening. The wedding was actually a really cool way of remembering it was our anniversary. It was at La Caille and it was GORGEOUS! The ceremony was nice, the mingling and appetizers were fun and the dinner and dancing was great. We had a nice time being out together like that on our day. We took some time after leaving the chaos of the dance floor to walk around the grounds at La Caille. They are simply beautiful with flowers and trees and a full moon over the canyon and peacocks and bunnies . . . .etc, etc. We walked and talked and hugged and kissed and remembered how happy we are that we made the decision to marry each other 6 years ago. A lot has changed for us in 6 years, but knowing for sure that Scott is the man I want to be with forever has not. Happy Anniversary to us! Next year there better be a good trip!

Here we are headed out to the wedding.

Two, Two, Two!

I know. I haven't been great at updating the blog lately. Three reasons: 1. My arms and hands HURT SO BAD from carpal tunnel. It's especially bad using the computer. 2. Our camera is broken in that it won't upload to the computer. So I had to do these at Walgreens on a CD. 3. We've had a lot of visitors and other goings on that kept me from the computer. I'm back to do some updating though. Here we go:

Ava turned two years old on September 5. We were all lucky to have Grandma and Grandpa Allred here to celebrate with us. They started the festivities the day before with Build-A-Bear. There could not have been a better present for Ava. Grandma let her pick out her animal of choice. She chose a puppy. They filled her, bathed her (Brie walked her through it all) and then found a U of U cheer leading outfit for her.Grandpa Roger was not all that thrilled about the red cheer leading outfit, so he actually bought another one . . . a blue one. So now, not only are each of us divided in our wearing of blue or red, but so are our stuffed animals. Thank you dad.

Ava's birthday was a completely fun filled day. She woke up to the house decorated in streamers and balloons. Both Brie and Ava were thrilled with the streamer doorway Grandma and Scott created for them. We had a good, big breakfast with eggs. Ava LOVES eggs! She was taught at breakfast how to hold her fingers and say "two, two, two" to show how old she is. We then headed off to visit the zoo. Grandma, Landon, Sarah, Aiden and Anne joined us there. It is a good time to be at the zoo. All of the animals have babies! We saw EVERY SINGLE animal and even rode the train.Baby giraffe that was born while were at the zoo the last time.We then met up with Grandma and Grandpa Buchanan, Grandma Great, Grandpa Allred and Tawna at Noodles & Co. for Ava's favorite meal EVER . . . Mac n' Cheese! It was fun to have everyone together for lunch. I don't think Ava noticed though, she just CHOWED on that mac n' cheese!After a good long nap, the party continued with the watching of the BYU vs. OU football game. Wow. What a gift OU handed over to Ava for her birthday, by letting BYU beat them. Awesome game! We had dinner, then cake and ice cream and a lot of cheering and yelling from Grandpa Allred because of the game. We love, love, love our Ava Potata! She is hilarious right now. She gets so crazy! She is talking a ton and saying more every day. She follows and copies everything Brie does. She is still attached like velcro to me and really, I don't mind. She is so cute and I'm so happy to spend my days with her. Brie goes off to preschool now, so Ava and I have good times together running errands and going to Kindermusic together those mornings. I hope she is ok to be a big sister soon. She seems excited. She is always trying to look at my belly under my shirt to find the "baby boy". I'm glad she had such a happy birthday with so much fun and family!

These are Ava's stats at her 2 year old visit to Dr. Brian:
Weight: 21 lbs. 7 oz.
Length: 32.5 in.
Head: 45.4 cm.
Still not on the charts, but following it along from below.

Brie's First Day of Preschool

Yesterday was Brielle's first day of preschool. She was VERY excited! She couldn't wait for me to actually leave her there at school all by herself with her friends and Ms. Chris. She kissed me, Ava and grandma good-bye and was off! She had a fun time and learned about how she is great! We are very excited for her to have such a good time at preschool and for Ava and Mom to have some time together until little baby boy joins us.

P.S. She chose to wear this polka dot skirt because Grandpa Roger would be here and "he loves polka dots!"

Deer Creek

Brielle has been asking since the snow melted to go to the beach. She wants to swim and build sand castles and for sure fill her bathing suit with sand. Well, we didn't go anywhere that has a beach this summer. We had to try to have a beach day in Utah. So, we started our day at the Farmer's Market where we bought DELICIOUS peaches, raspberries, corn, apples, apricots, etc. We took it all to Deer Creek to play in the water and sand. Deer Creek is not that great when looking for a beach. It makes for a much better day if you have a boat there. So we found our friends and climbed aboard their boat. It was a fun day and Scott even got in some knee boarding. I decided to opt out of any water sports. Ava buried her head from any wind coming her way. I think Brie was plenty happy with her day at "the beach".