March 2015

Minnie Mouse:

 Superman:

 Superman with Princess Mermaid in a loving headlock:

 Tessa's first sewing project on her machine! She made a pillow! And, in true Tessa fashion, she promptly gave it away.

Some kind of open house evening at the school. So glad Dad likes to cover these things since I can't.

 Jake's Wipeout 5k. He did it with a couple of buddies and had a good time.

Also, we had an ultrasound in March and found out that we were having a boy. I thought for sure it was a girl, so it took me by surprise. But then again, I thought for sure Sadie would be a boy, so what do I know? Paige and Sadie came with us that morning to the doctor's office while Cole and Tessa were at school. Sadie was clueless, but Paige understood for the most part. Somehow I kept her quiet when we picked the oldest two from school so I could announce it to them on camera. Dad really wanted to see their reaction, and I was not going to be able to hold Paige off for long. I have an awesome video of this, but Blogger has some big issue with me posting it (too large?). Anyhow, on it, I have all the kids on the stairs. I have Paige tell them that we're having a boy, and when they finally catch on to it being the truth, it's priceless. Cole is so excited. He says that he knew all along that we were going to have a boy since, "God knows we have enough girls," but the the reassurance was nice!

Gavin Rich McBride

The birth story! I'd better get this down while I still remember it! I'd blanked that I should until now, and it takes definite precedence over catching up on the other stuffs.
Mr. Gavin made his earthly debut July 7, 2015.
With all of our other children, we were able to come up with a  name fairly easily. It took forever on this one. Jacob and I finally came to an agreement a few weeks before the birth.
Coming up on the end, it was clear that this baby was going to be as big as the others. It's hard to carry these huge children! Dr. Pierce had a vacation planned the weekend after my due date. He gave me a few options: go in and have labor started with a little bit of pitocin to see if my body would kick it into gear, let the baby come when it comes to whomever was on call, or wait until he got back to get moving with the labor if the baby hadn't already come. Well, I was NOT going to wait another week knowing this was likely another ten pounder. Plus, I wanted MY doctor. He knows me and what my body can do. After three successful VBAC's with Dr. Pierce, I wanted him close by. He told me that if it were his wife, he'd try getting labor started. If it didn't work, we'd go from there.
Gavin held off, even though I'd had some pretty good contractions during the week. I wasn't  progressing, so we were ready to go in on that very early Tuesday morning to get admitted and started on the pitocin. My mother stayed with us the night before since we needed to be at Baylor Hospital in McKinney at 5:00 am. We were quickly admitted and settled in.
What a boring bunch of hours. There wasn't much going on, so Jake and I tried to get some rest in between the medical stuff. The nurses were awesome, but the time crept along at a ridiculously slow pace. The nurses had to keep coming in to adjust the fetal monitor since you have to have one with piton and it kept falling off, or Gavin would move away from it. Finally things started to progress in the later afternoon, and they got my epidural established and my water broken. The pain eased up, and we were in business with things moving faster.
As four o'clock neared, it was time. Dr. Pierce coached me through, and a few pushes later, Gavin was born.
The put the little (big) guy on my chest. I was so happy he was finally here. He weighed in at 10 lbs. 9 oz., just like his big brother did. He looked and, so far (7 weeks later), looks a lot like his daddy. Gavin's siblings and Grandma Lori came to see us the next day. The kids are in love with their little brother. It's awesome to see and makes my heart just about burst. My fabulous five.

 Okay. As irritated as I was with all the ridiculous commentary I got from some people, in all fairness, I was huge. That makes them ten percent less irritating.

 Lil' Buddy.

 Grammy and Gavvy:

 My cup runneth o'er:

 Daddy and Gavin's newborn mugs:

Splash! - Feb. 28, 2015

Jake was upstairs one night helping to get a couple of kids bathed. He was back and forth between rooms when he heard a splash and a yell from Cole's bath. I heard a panicked holler from Jake when he made the discovery, so I ran up the stairs when he hurriedly called for me. I got to the bathroom and started laughing when I saw that Sadie wanted to play and had taken matters into her own hands. Jake's face melted into laughter as well, and he took pictures of these silly geese.

 My favorite:

SNOW! February 2015

The end of February presented us with a couple of snow days. We've got coats, but we certainly aren't outfitted for more than a couple of days of snow or ice around here, so I made some Texas "snow boots" with Walmart bags (so classy) so the kids could keep the wetness at bay and play for a little while without freezing their toes off.

Happy 3rd Birthday, GiGi!

Paige turned three on February 2, 2015. She is our sassy girl. I'd like to think that this sass will focus itself in perseverance and determination to get good things done in life. Because really, this is Paige's world, and we're all just guests here. She's made it apparent. There will be no middle child syndrome with this one!
She is my beautiful blondie and I love this girl fiercely:

 Happy birthday, GiGi!

She might favor the McBride side, but she's still got the Rich crack going on.

 Her lovely birthday "cake":

Use the Force - January 2015

Sadie the comedienne:

 Paigey darling:

 I finally finished my project of getting Sadie's quilt from Gma McB up on the wall:

 Must be watching something good?

Cousin Time!!! -December 2014 and New Year 2015.

The other McBrides came to stay! We had such a wonderful time with them, and the kids were thrilled to have cousins to play with and dote on them. Jake and I treasured the time we had with them because our quick Utah trips don't allow for a whole lot of one on one time. We finally got some really good one on one time with each of them. It was long overdue. And a double date night with Matt and Mary while cousins just took care of each other!? Surreal.
The drive from Salt Lake City to Dallas is no easy feat. We were elated that they would take the time to get here. And clearly in style:

 I was a failure at taking pictures. I was nearing the end of the pregnancy nausea, but it was still lingering. I grabbed what Jake had and a few from Abby. Good thing other people are more on top of it than I am. These may be a bit mixed. At the zoo, at home, at the cattle statues...
These girls were inseparable.

 Fort Worth Zoo!

 Stock Yards. They're pretty cute.

 Stampede.

Happy New Year! Abby and Hannah got invited to our multi stake youth New Year's Dance, so they went to make a memorable Texas night of it with the awesome girls in our ward. Meanwhile, we ate a bunch of sugar and pretended it was midnight with some poppers sometime before ten. Hooray!

It was awesome to spend New Year's Eve with family.