Baby Malachi

After so many times thinking he was coming early...I ended up being induced on my due date...still wonder if he would have come on my second prediction date...2 days later but I'll never know. He wasn't making any progress for a month so it was then or wait a week late. It is pretty cool that he was born on July 24th since his middle name is Brigham. As you can see he was a big boy weighing 8 lb. 11 ounces. He measured 20 inches...my biggest! It was a frustrating deliver because the nurse was scatterbrained, I had to ask for everything several times...oh I forgot...I was scheduled in advance and she didn't even order the pitocin until 3 hours later, I had to remind her to give me the antibiotic ect...but delivery was very quick, I pushed for less than a minute! And here came my beautiful baby Malachi!

The boys just stared for the first reaction, very curious. When he was in my tummy Zeke was very curious and involved, Gabe wasn't too interested. once he came out they switched, Gabe was curious and involved and Zeke just stood back and watched.

Oh Daddy snuggles!

Lovies from big brothers.

Here is his cute little face.

Zeke wanted to hold him, look at him checking him out.

Sweet!

Gabe's turn...he had lots of turns, didn't want to leave him alone...so cute and gentle with him too.

Making faces already

Melody is explaining what is on his belly button.

Family picture

He is a cute snuggly baby. He sleeps so well when he is being held

Home now, and more alert.

My 3 boys!

More lovies from Gabe!

My 4 boys :)

I'm not sure what you did, but I don't think he liked it.

Everytime we lay him on the floor for tummy time or anything the boys want to lay by him

I wonder if he's talking to the angels?

Looks like he's laughing but I think he was crying...he is a happy baby though, it just took forever till I could actually catch it on camera.

He has long fingers and long toes.

He plays with his feet a lot, likes to keep them curled too.

Zeke held him all by himself.

Well if Zeke got to do it, then Gabe wants to do it too.

we tried to re-create the pictures that were taken at the hospital.

He has some stern looks....he's so darn cute.

The boys thought it was so fun that Malachi got to lay in a basket...Gabe says he got to do it, so I want to do it to...so he wanted pictures just like Malachi's.

Now he's a baby.

Here is Zeke as a baby.

And Zeke laying in the basket.

Mommy snuggle time.

I sure love this little guy!

Boys in July

Here are the boys watching our cheapo little fireworks.

This was their reaction for the crackling balls...for some reason they really scared the boys this year?

They loved the sparklers!


Here is the double rainbow we saw...We came out of the store and Zeke said look...God made a beautiful rainbow for us...I was so proud. Then he said, matter of factly... and then he drove away...ha ha still cute!

My sister and her kids came over for the weekend and we celebrated Sabrina's birthday by throwing water balloons at her :) We had a fun water day with a balloon fight, Brig torturing everyone with the hose, and the pool...They loved playing in the gutter too.

Gabe soaking up the sun and the warm-er water.

Love this sneaky little look.

He is guarding his balloon ha ha...he loved throwing them at Katie the best.

I sure love when they are buddies. So cute!

Here they are with "babies" in their tummies...They would walk around and ask if I wanted to feel their baby kick...they loved it, it was pretty darn cute.

Before we built our house our lot was a rock field, but it was a low spot in the neighborhood so more rock was brought in to build it up. So the first couple of years we spent removing all the large rock off the top of our yard so it wasn't so hard, and uneven. Then we had to figure out what to do with the back property line where there was a 6 foot difference. The city should have taken care of it with a retaining wall but they refuse so it was left to us. After saving for a couple of years we decided to do a railroad tie retaining wall.

Brigham's brothers agreed to help out one morning to get the wall built. first they had to move all the ties out of the way, I think they were tired already...there was over 100.
We got a backhoe to help with some of the work. We dug out the little hill to make a two tiered wall for half of it the other half would be straight up.

Here is the beginning of the wall. It was very time consuming to line it up, drill the holes (with a weak drill) and then hammer rebar through it for support.


Half way through starting to fill in behind the wall...this will haunt us later.

Here is the tiered side of the wall...it has been a long day for these boys, in the middle of hot July besides all the labor.

From sunrise to sunset, but not done yet...Still not bad for one days work.

Here is the wall once it was finished.

The tall part (behind the trailer) started to lean a little after filling in behind it the force of the load from the backhoe and all the rock was just too much...over the next couple of months it continued to lean more and more and by Spring we knew we had to fix it :(

Here is the wall after we started taking it down...it was almost as hard to take down as it was to put up...prying the ties apart then hammering the rebar back out, it was a pain...poor Brigham did it mostly himself.

You can see the leaning here but it wasn't half as bad as the tall part.

This time we put support ties in front of the wall to keep it in place, cemented into the ground. After we finished building the wall...again...we had to dig out behind it about a foot wide and 3 feet deep so we could put a barrier behind it so the chemicals wouldn't seep into the garden...then we had to fill it back in. But finally the wall was done we could start working on the back yard.

Back Yard to date

Once we got the wall done we could finally start on the backyard...Our yard is so bad we couldn't use a trencher to dig the sprinkler lines...they even have a special trencher for rocky yards but ours was still too bad so we had to rent a mini-ex...it still had a hard time getting through some parts.

We cleared off the top layer before digging the trenches so we didn't have huge rocks, this is what it looked like after digging the trenches....we just don't have dirt it's large rock mixed with gravel, well maybe a little bit of clay too.

Next step was to go by each square and take these piles and rake them into flat spots...I'd say seperate the dirt and rock but seriously there is no dirt so we got all the big rocks out and added them to the rock pile...it was a pain, especially in the heat of the summer. You can't tell but the piles are over 2 feet...a lot of raking.

I forgot to take pictures of the squares after rock removal but this is when we were almost done, one little pile in the back.

This is where we are now...this is the side of the house. We have decided to do this area gravel so we aren't being as picky about the rock removal but there are still a lot of large rocks and leveling to do.

Right along the house we built some planter boxes for our berries, we will have raspberries, strawberries, boysenberries, blackberries, (we want to try blueberries but heard they don't work,) and grapes. May try other berries along the way.

We are almost ready! We are just leveling the backyard...these are the rocks that come up as we do that...we're not digging for them but we are still getting piles of them :S