This blog has moved!

So I'll leave this blog open for a little while in case my few followers wonder where I went. Our blog is now wellmanlife.ouronlinejournal.com See ya there!

Welcome Little T!

Okay, so it's been about 9 months since Tate was born...time to writeit down before I lose all memory of it.

On December 31st (New Year's Eve), I felt horrible and all my symptoms meant labor anytime now. Not to mention the fact that I was having painful contractions although irregular at the time. Since it was the 4th baby and we were 30 minutes from the hospital, we went down just in case. I was dialated to a 3 and having regular contractions every 5 minutes. Then it stopped. They had me walk and walk and walk for 3 hours. Nothing. So we went home at 11:30pm. We were exhausted and missed any fireworks.

We scheduled an induction for a few days later so that Scott wouldn't miss any work. It happened to be 2 days before his sister's wedding but I wasn't sure I wanted to be an hour away from my hospital most of that day anyway. So we went in late Wednesday night and when I got there, I was dialated to a 7! Yikes! So it was a good thing I scheduled the induction instead of trying to make the wedding. They induced me and 2 hours later I was at an 8. They broke my water and an hour later, I was still an 8. Let me say here that I was trying to do this last baby naturally. I wanted to experience what it was like to give birth the way millions before me did. I also wanted to save us a huge anesthesia bill (it was all coming out of pocket and it's not cheap!). I thought labor would be quicker but the pace I was at was slower than I expected and the pain was getting pretty intense. At that point I caved and asked for the epidural. The anesthesiologist came in and gave it to me, followed immediately by my nurse emptying my bladder. Immediately following this I felt the need to push. Seriously? The epidural had not even kicked in yet? The doctor checked me and I was at a 10. The nurse thinks my full bladder was just in the way. (I was pretty ticked that I just wasted lots of money!) Anyway, I pushed for about 5-10 excruciating minutes and Tate Jeffrey Wellman entered the world. We actually didn't have his name decided until hours later. The nurse kept asking what the name was so they could announce it. Scott told her to just name him John Doe for now. She didn't think it was funny at all. He was almost Chase.

He was the best little eater of all the babies. The other 3 always waited until the next day to eat and he was hungry right away. You can see in the last picture that he has his daddy's cleft chin. He is the most beautiful baby. Stats: 6lbs. 13oz. and 21.5" long. Kendall calls him T. So T he is!

Christmas 2010

This year I actually got up at 5am and went to Walmart for some Black Friday deals. I only ended up getting one of them. The rest were all gone. Fun experience though! Thanks to my mom for coming over to sleep with the kids while I went shopping. Scott was at the dunes. :)

Gifts received..
Scott got ASU cups and a shaver. (he's hard to shop for)
I got a nook light and a scentsy candle.
Ty got a Nintendo DS with some games, The Diary of a Wimpy kid series & his own set of scriptures (we meant to get them for his baptism but forgot).
Kaycie also got a Nintendo DS, crayons, paper and barbie clothes.
Kendall got a pig tent and a horse learning bike thingy :)

I love this time of year. I love the beautiful lights and music and message of Christmas. This holiday always brings a wonderful spirit with it. Beyond all the gifts, we love telling the story of Christmas each week at Family Home Evening and finding others to help. We were able to participate in helping a local family out with gifts for the kids. We did this with another family from church. We went shopping for the kids and wrapped their gifts and left them at the door. The kids always have fun doing this and I hope they learn to love giving more than receiving. It's a work in progress. Unfortunately they're still "i want, i want...gimme, gimme kids".

So Fun To See Family!

This month we had lots of family come to town all at the same time. I love having my siblings visit. I am currently the only child in Arizona with my parents. My brother Sean is in dental school at Ohio State, my sister Shanna lives in Kentucky and goes to school across the river in Cincinnati for audiology school, and my brother Gil lives in San Diego with his kids. They all came to town for a few days and we rode around on the ATVs and bikes and had lots of good food. My older brother Gil brought his girlfriend and kids.

For anyone who doesn't know the story, my younger siblings and I found out about Gil when I was about 17 years old. My mom was engaged and pregnant at age 19. Her fiance left her and her dad put her in a home for unwed mothers to give the baby up for adoption. 10 years later she joined the church and met my dad. Fast forward about 17 years....we were watching Geraldo and they were talking about mothers being reunited with their adopted babies. My mom couldn't stop crying and proceeded to tell us her story. We were shocked! She said she thought about him every day and we had never had a clue! We convinced her to go to LA and search for his records. The courts wouldn't give her any records but said she could leave her info if he ever wanted to find her. Fast forward about 7-8 more years...my sister and my sick grandfather were living with my parents and my sister had some time on her hands. She decided since she had so much of his birth info, she would try to find him again. My grandfather said he would pay any fees because he always felt bad about the whole adoption thing. Well my sister located a woman who had all of the hospital's records and was able to track him down. It's a long story from there but we surprised her with the info for her birthday and flew Gil out the next weekend. He had known he was adopted since a very young age and had a good life. It's been great knowing him and his family. He's the one behind me with the mustache. Handsome guy! His girlfriend Vicki has the black hat. She's as sweet as can be and my daughter loves her. His daughter Mellissa has the black sweater. She was here with her husband and 2 dogs. His other daughter is Ariana (red shirt) and Austin is his son (grey shirt, brown hair). It's been about 10 years since we met them.

Grandpa's Contraption

My kids love going over to Nana & Grandpa's house. They have a huge fenced in acre with a garden and plenty of play room. My dad got the idea to tie up the red wagon to his bike and take the girls for a ride. They thought this was a great idea. It was pretty funny to watch. At first he had the rope tied to the wrong side of the bike and it kept getting stuck in the wheel. Then he figured out that he could only turn right to avoid that. Anyway, he got it down eventually and he got some good exercise!