End of the School Year

We have four days left until the end of the school year! I upgraded my license to a level two which means I am good to go as a teacher for at least five more years. I feel like I just graduated, yet, I'm finishing my third official year teaching (although in my head my year long internship totally counts as a year, so to me it is my fourth year teaching). Time just continues to move forward without me really realizing it. I have been pretty happy in my current job though, and I believe it has been a good experience for Bradley as well. He finished his daycare for the year on Friday, and they made him this cute little book of art he had done, photos of him with his friends and caretakers and it just brightened my day to see that my almost 17 month old son is safe and happy even without me or his daddy around. He will probably miss being there every school day, and will be excited to go back (although I am sure he won't remember because he is so little).

Today's the Sabbath and I am just so overwhelmingly grateful for the life I get to lead. I have a wonderful husband, darling son, and we have strong testimonies of the Savior and the gospel. I am so happy every morning to hear Bradley babbling about whatever it is he wants to tell us and interact with him. Being a mom is the coolest thing in the world. I am so grateful God trusts me enough to let me take care of Bradley while on this earth. Your heart just grows so much, and I am sure will continue to grow as I have more kiddos and they grow up, being a mom. I'm happy to spend time with these special people everyday and learn from them.

We went to visit graves with my Grandma and Grandpa Ballard yesterday. We went to the Salt Lake Cemetery where most of the Bowen's and Ballard's are resting. We got to listen to Grandpa tell us stories of his ancestors and Grandma was so happy to play with Bradley. I hope I never forget his shy smile as she touched his nose and tickled his hands. We visited my Uncle Dave Roper's grave and his daughter Emily who would have been just 4 days younger than me. Dave passed away on March 20th  of this year, and Emily died when she was only 13 days old of a heart problem.  Tomorrow (memorial day) we'll go down to Sandy area and visit the graves of my Grandpa and Grandma Clayton. Grandpa passed away on conference Sunday, April 3rd of this year. So it seems somehow more realistic the importance of remembering those who have gone before and honoring the atonement. I know they are all in heaven enjoying the opportunity to be with family and loved ones and probably spreading the gospel. :) The gospel is true and I'm so grateful for it in my life.

The Zoo!

Bradley loves looking at the lights

Aren't I cute??

Conference Saturday, Grandpa passed away early the next morning.

We love the cougars! This is Bradley at his first BYU football game.
He was such a good sport, and we had a great time! 

He was a lion for Halloween. Such a cute kiddo at all ages.
He was almost 10 months old here.

We went to California on Nov. 9-15 of 2015.
We got to go to disneyland! Bradley's favorite ride was dumbo. 

It was a long trip for a little guy with two days at disneyland. None of us were feeling great (infact, I had the flu the whole time we were at California Adventure) But, it really is a special place and it was more fun with kids even though he won't remember ever being there. 

We got to go to the beach while we were in California!
You can tell that the little guy loved being there.

He just sat here for about 1 minute while he smiled and enjoyed being in the spotlight. 

We sure have a big family! 18 grandkids now! 

My cute little family! 

Somewhere from last January till this photo my little boy became a toddler.
He was actually sick with some kind of flu on this day… but he was still happy because that is his awesome personality. He absolutely loves candles and was devastated when these candles blew out. 

Mitch and I joined my siblings and parents (minus Kyle and Ashley) in Hawaii the second week of January. It was the first time we left Bradley overnight but he was in great hands with his cute GiGi and Grandpa Gill. 

We celebrated my Mom being completely cancer free while on this trip! It was the first time in a very long time that my parents could actually relax. And we were happy to accompany them. 

We got a house!!! We moved in right after our trip to Hawaii. Here are some photos. Our house is 1900 square feet finished and the basement is unfinished (about 900 square feet). 3 bedroom, 2 and 1/2 bath. They recently re-did it and we like all the paint colors and neutral look about the house. We live in Layton and are trying to make friends. I am the worst at that though, so it will probably take us the normal year and a half to be comfortable.

I coach the Davis High Girls Lacrosse team. It has been an exciting and busy adventure. We will probably always have some kind of coaching going on in our house. 

More Cougar pride! Basketball games are some of our favorite traditions. We love spending time there and Bradley has a blast. Thanks to GiGi and Grandpa! 

So cute. My team bought this for him and he loves holding it and playing with it. 

We got a sweet ride after lunch with Nana! He loved being in the car whiteout it driving in the wind.  Hated the wind… 

We have a few parks in our neighborhood with slides and Bradley can't get enough. 

We went to the zoo! He loved the kitten and seals. Hence the face.

Our recent doctors trip at 15 months. Bradley is 95th percentile in weight, 75th in Height and off the charts for his head. He is growing and getting bigger every day. I love him so much. 

He has quite the expressions.
We love to laugh together. and he loves to play in the sandbox at Nana's house. 

My Grandpa Clayton passed away last week (April 3rd). He fought Alzhiemers for 7 years and is now reunited with his sweet Bride, my Grandma Clayton. We will miss him. It has been an interesting beginning of the year but we are enjoing spending so much time together and watching our son grow into a boy. He is a lot of fun, and a lot of hard but worth it work. He just recently learned how to give us kisses and throw things in the trash can. Hopefully next time I blog he'll have some new words besides ut-oh and mama/dada. 

All that mamadada mumbo jumbo

Bradley's already 8 and a half months old! He's sitting has teeth is crawling and says lots of 'mamama, dadada, umumum'. It is so cute to listen to! He is trying so hard to communicate to us. He started sitting up on his own when we were in Hawaii in the middle of June, then quickly transitioned to being able to move between sitting and rolling around so at almost 8 months to the day he started Crawling! I have baby proofed the house and he still is teaching me what to keep baby-proofing.

Bradley loved baths. He splashes and plays with his bath toys and just laughs a lot while he's in the bath. 

Riding the carts all by himself! So grown up... 

Rodeo! July 23rd. Aren't by boys the cutest?

He takes his cups very seriously. Look how much hair
he has! It feels like all the sudden he woke up with
a full head of hair.

Cutest little clothes. Thanks Elisa and Whitney!

Take me out to a ball-game! 

Take me out to a show! Taylor Swift with Mitch and his parents!
She was actually pretty awesome.

More proof we were there! 

                                       

We just love this boy. Our daily lives are pretty normal for new parents. We both go to work in the morning around 7 a.m. and I only work part time teaching gym until 11. Bradley goes to the daycare at the high school near me, so I pick him up on my way back. The schedule is great for us right now and Bradley is learning how to be okay without mom or dad nearby. After work we all eat lunch together (Mitch works close enough that he can come home sometimes for lunch!) and then Bradley and I find fun things to do to until daddy gets home. Dinner and more fun games/toys and he goes to bed around 8. We then proceed to watch netflix and talk until we are too tired and the days start all over again. 

We like our ward and our friends up here and are happy to call it home for a little while. We're in the process of looking for a more permanent solution in Davis County so if you find a good place let us know! We have to be out of our apartment in April so we've got a little time but we are getting anxious to settle into our own home. 

BRADLEY!

I've put an alarm on my phone to blog every week! We'll see what that does. This is serving as my journal and I haven't even blogged about our son Bradley yet! So that needs to happen, and will right now!

Pregnancy: We found out we were pregnant on a Sunday in April (the 27th to be exact). We were so excited to be pregnant and also I was shocked. It didn't seem like it was real. I showed Mitch the pregnancy test and he thought it was a joke because I didn't tell him I had taken one. He just came into the bathroom when I called for him and Surprise! Baby on the way! After the shock wore off for both of us we were so happy it made me feel a lot better about it all! I figured I was pregnant when all of the foods I normally liked tasted gross to me and I had next to no energy for anything. Plus, I would cry over so many things! I got really nauseated and just felt gross that first trimester, but second trimester I felt back to normal which was a blessing for me.

We went on a cruise with the Gill's in June 2014.
I was just barely 8 weeks pregnant in this photo.
 Kind of sick to my stomach the whole time but it was really a fun trip! 

We got to go on a "baby moon" in October 2014 before Bradley came.
We went up to Stein Eriksen Lodge and had a beautiful 3 day weekend up there.
It was so fun to pretend to belong and to just relax. We needed it!! 

I am 9 months prego in this photo.
 I was so ready to be done when I was done!  Being pregnant was amazing and I can't believe I grew a baby inside of me and got to feel him growing and hear his heartbeat. Those doctors appointments were my favorite things because we would know that he was alright and growing. Towards 35 or so weeks though I was so uncomfortable. He dropped into the ole pelvis and I was waddling and using the restroom all day long!! 

Birth Story:

Welcome to the world Bradley Clayton Gill. He was born on January 5th, 2015 at 1:01 a.m. He weighed 8 lbs. 4 oz and was 21 inches long. Getting him here was quite the adventure for Mitch and I! 

On the 4th I had a lot of back labor pains from about 2 a.m. until 8 a.m. I didn't sleep hardly at all because I had contractions coming every 8 minutes or so. Around 5:30 a.m. I started counting the time in-between contractions and it was about every 4 minutes, so Mitch and I decided to go to the hospital and see if we could be admitted. I called my mom on the way down there and Mitch called his. Mom told me that if I just made sure to breath it would all be easier. That advice, though simple and I knew that she was right, was so hard!! The contractions hurt so much, it was easier to just not breath during it. I did try to make sure to take deep breaths and Mitch helped me a ton to do the same and the car ride to the hospital was more comfortable than I had been all night. 

When I got checked by the nurse, she said that I had not dilated at all from my previous number at my last doctors appointment so I couldn't be admitted. I was beyond bummed! We had geared up so much to be able to have our baby that day sometime and so I cried a lot on the car-ride back. Mitch was such a kind and supportive husband to me the whole time though. He was definitely my strength!!! We went back home and watched a lot of friends while I continued to have contractions about every 8 minutes again from 10-2 p.m. they slowed down in intensity so I was thinking we would be waiting another few days. My doctor wasn't in town until Monday morning anyways, so waiting till the next day was fine by me for that reason and that reason alone. Around 3:30 I woke up from a nap in so much pain! The contractions had come back and strong. We went on a walk around 5:30 to try to help speed the contractions up a bit and it worked! by 7ish I was having them every 3-4 minutes and they hurt sooo much! Mitch convinced me, after I had a nervous break-down about not being admitted again, to get in the car and try again. 

The second time coming into the hospital, when I was checked I had dialated 2 and 1/2 centimeters! Wahoo. I was at a 3 1/2 so they admitted me. I was so relieved and excited! We got the best nurse ever that night. She was calm and kind and very understanding, way better than the one from the morning. My doctor (Lister) was out so I ended up having doctor Jerico. I loved her! She was so informative but not pushy. It was like being an obgyn was her hobby. My kind of doctor. I started on piton around 11:00 p.m. to speed the labor pains along, and then promptly decided to get an epidural. Those contractions hurt and I saw no reason in waiting longer for the epidural. I had dilated to a 4, but my water hadn't broken yet so Dr. Jerico came in to break it. As she was checking me, she felt something off about where the water should be, so she decided to have me get an ultrasound. Sure enough, Bradley's dumb was where his head was supposed to be! In all my checks over the week and day the nurses etc. had all said he was head down, so they thought that somewhere between me being admitted and getting the epidural, Bradley had flipped. I felt a strong movement right when I got the pitoson, but it didn't hurt like they told me it should have, so we are not sure what happened! So around 12:00 this happened. Dr. Jerico looks at Mitch and I and tells us that the recommended thing to do was to get an emergency c-section. She said we could try to flip Bradley back around, but there were risks involved with the umbilical chord and other things that we just didn't want to do and they didn't recommend doing anyways. So surprise! What I had expected to take all night with laboring happened suddenly, this baby was coming now! 

The whole experience of having a C-Section is a little blurry to me. I got a huge dose of the epidural from the anesthesiologist that made it so I was numb from my toes up to my chest. Because of how quickly you get this medication for a c-section, I started shaking uncontrollably. They put me in a different gown and made sure my stomach was ready to get cut into. Mitch got a yellow poncho type outfit to put on and we were off to the operating room! While on the operating table, I kept on telling Mitch, I am shaking so much. Is everything okay? How's my heart-rate etc. etc. Poor guy was freaking out inside but he kept it together so well and made me feel confident and calm about what was going on. I couldn't feel anything but pressure on the area, but apparently with a c-section they just pull and tear and cut for about 20 minutes until they safely make their way to the baby. They have a heart-rate monitor on the baby so they can make sure he's not under stress while this is happening. Dr. Jerico said "This little guy has no idea what is about to happen. He's just enjoying his cozy home and then, surprise! He gets pulled out and is supposed to breath etc. without moms help". Around this time I started having trouble breathing, and asked Mitch to check with the Anesthesiologist to make sure that all my vitals looked good still and that it was normal to feel like I couldn't breath. He said it was just an effect of the epidural. But when I asked Mitch apparently he was more scared than he had ever been. He felt like he might lose his wife and his baby in the same night! 

Bradley came at 1:01 a.m. and was blue and purple and big! They lifted him above the curtain I was covered with for a second so I could see him. He wasn't crying or anything, so they started doing all they could to get him to breathe. They took him to a separate room from me and put him on breathing treatments. His apgar scores were good besides his oxygen. He started breathing with the support of oxygen and I finally heard his cry! So cute and not shrill, the perfect baby. The nurses came in to tell me things that were happening with Bradley and Mitch was going between my room and Bradley's giving me the details too and holding my hand through it all. The whole experience took about an hour and all the sudden we were parents! 

I was wheeled into a recovery room and Bradley was taken to the small NICU/Nursery place in the hospital where he could be monitored by nurses and stay on his oxygen. I was really sore and tired, and I guess Bradley was too! Look at these little breech legs. 

First photo of him ever! So handsome and Big!

Our first meeting. around 3:30 a.m. after my drugs
had warn off a little and his breathing was stable.

around 7:00 a.m. I got to really hold him and feed
him and it was incredible. He looked up at me like
he knew I was his mommy. I'm so glad Mitch captured
this moment. 

Mitch's first time holding Bradley. What a proud papa.
Bradley has been a daddy's boy ever since. 

0-3 months:

Oh, the first few months! What a whirlwind of emotions, experiences and joys! We were in the hospital for 3 days because of the c-section. We got to go home Wednesday night. We had lots of visitors in the hospital including all our family members (except kyle/ashley b/c they live in CA and Chris/Jacee came Wednesday night to our house). My mom had a Chemo treatment the day Bradley was born so she came down when she finished that even though she wasn't feeling well which meant the world to me. Mitch's mom came every day to visit her new grandson and help me figure out how to breastfeed and not stress too much about c-section stuff. She had one with Mitch and is the only person in my family who had so it was nice to talk to her since she had been through it all before. We had some really great nurses, and loved our experience at McKay-Dee hospital in Ogden.

The first week was AMAZING and HARD. That first night alone in our home with a new baby was so awesome and overwhelming. The responsibility to take care of this new little life with no professional help! We really thought that we were done being in the hospital, but when Mitch's parents left that night, we were just surprised at the weight of the responsibility and overjoyed with the reality that he was ours. We enjoyed having our baby in his home and giving him a bath and into his jammies for the night. And then he wouldn't go to bed! How crazy right? He had his days and nights mixed up for about a week so Mitch and I shared the staying up with the baby duties and learned a lot of patience with being new parents. Bradley only took a little while to adjust to the day vs. the night and by two weeks old he was waking up pretty regularly in 4 hour intervals. He got used to nursing pretty quickly too. Though it was painful and frustrating, we learned how to do it together and Bradley is still a great nurser to this day. Mitch and him have just grown to be the best of buddies. He took to being a Dad so naturally and it has brought me more joy than I could ever have imagined to see them together.

Here are some first weeks of life photos including some of my favorites from a beautiful photo session of Bradley when he was just 10 days old.

Bradley and mama. I love that he is looking up at me.

So small he fit in a kitchen bowl!
 

Bradley with his nana. This is at 3 days old! We got to go to my mom instead of her coming to us because of the chemo treatments. My mom still jokes about how Bradley and her have the same amount of hair ha.

I took this photo the Sunday before I went back to work. I got 6 weeks maternity leave. He was smiley even then!

First day of Church! March 2015

First ever cougar bball game. Many more to come I am sure.

He's just so cute! And independent. He sat and held up his head so soon in life! 

Blessing Day! March 8th, 2015 

The family on Blessing day! Mitch did so well!                              

 

Look at those cute big eyes!! 

Grandma Ballard and Bradley share the same birthday. I think they even look alike. These photos are precious to me. 

We took a photo like this of us as roommates when we were all single, and now we all have children! I am so grateful for these three ladies so much. (Hannah & Ella, Kelly & Maggie, Whitney & Macklin)

3- 5 1/2 months: Bradley is moving toys from one hand to the other, focusing on us, eating baby food, and smiling back at you! That first purposeful smile was my favorite thing! He still smiles at us all the time and I melt. Look how cute my boys are!!!

  

Bradley loves the water. We got him this crab in preparation
for a big trip to Hawaii. We swam a lot this summer and he
hardly ever got burned... 

Uncle Scott's farewell. He left on May 5th, 2015. This is our best family photo so far. I love how handsome we all look dressed up for Scotts big event. We miss him! He's in the Independence MO mission. (Whitney lives in his mission!)

5 and a 1/2 - now: 

We got to go to Hawaii in the middle of June this year with Mitch's family. It was so beautiful there! We went down to Kauai for the first time and the scenery was unreal. It was pretty rainy there but that added to the beauty of being there truly. We had the best view from our window. Bradley did so well on the plane rides. I read up a ton and stressed a ton about traveling with a little one, but now that we've done it I think I stressed too much ha. We didn't sleep well, but I don't blame him with the dramatic time change and probably uncomfortable pack-n-play but other than that he was a dream baby as he's always been. We ate delicious food, adventured and played outside a lot. It was wonderful!

"The Dolphin" restaurant was Mitch's favorite
food of his whole life. It was so pretty and yummy.

Helicoptor ride! I had a panic attack but Bradley did amazingly well and fell asleep pretty soon into the journey so I took comfort in that and calmed down and enjoyed the experience (though my face here says something totally different than that ha. This was at the beginning, it got better!)

Bradley and Daddy on the beach in Hawaii. Both my babies burn so easy... They hung out in the shade most the time!

"Look Mom! No hands!" 

If you know much about our family it is that in the summers, we boat. We were so nervous about it this year with having a baby and that Bradley would hate it. He actually likes it aside from the uncomfortable life jacket! He would get lulled to sleep on the boat if we got him into just the right position... 

Boating is so fun. I'd say that is our favorite activity to do as a family. Mitch and I both love being pulled behind the boat and wake boarding but we also enjoy just relaxing in the sunshine. We live up in Kaysville/Fruit Heights now so it is a 50 min. drive to Jordanelle and a 1 hr 10 min. drive to the Gill's house, so we didn't get to go as much this year as years previous, but it was definitely still fun to use the boat and enjoy it with a baby. Mitch almost landed a 360 this year and I finally am comfortable going in and out of the wake on both sides (Only took me 6-7 years, right Brandi!?!)

It was a great first 6 months! We love being parents and love our Little Guy so much. He has a fun, strong and loving personality. We have been very blessed!