Congratulations Lynn

Hello Family,
We had a branch party Friday night, I was sick @ couldn't go buy Lynn went and the men were cooking the main dishes.
Lynn made BBQ pork ribs and they were delicious! HE WON 1ST PRIZE FOR HIS DISH!
He won a Chef's hat. I thought I would show you a picture of the Happy winner eating one of his favorite snacks. Milk and ginger snap cookies.. Congratulations Lynn.

Help

Planning to go to the South Towne Expo center. Looking for cheap, but good places to stay and eat. Any ideas??? Email me at work carina.blacker@intermountainmail.org

Welcome Home: Jace Reed Andersen

This morning just after 11AM, Amber and the baby came home from the hospital. Before we left the hospital, we called the Social Security Lady associated with the hospital and told her our baby's name: Jace Reed Andersen

Everyone is excited to have Jace and Mom home with us. Of course Jace has been the center of attention all afternoon. I hope he is ready for this constant companionship of older siblings!

Tugging at your Heartstrings

Amber has been doing very well at the hospital. Ever since the first day of her stay there, she has been up and walking around. The nurses are amazed at how well she is doing. She was doing so well that she had hoped that she could come home today. Normal C-section visits would dictate that she comes home Friday morning. However the nurses in and she felt that it would be fine for her to come home today.

Amber was disappointed, however, when she learned this morning that the doctor wanted her to stay with the full-time. He didn't have any reason for it, he just thought it would be best. Amber had a hard time accepting that, and it took some sweet talking on my part to help her feel better about it.

While Ann went exercising this morning, Alayna sat in our office in the house and stuck close to me. She was being very clingly.

Amber called while I was holding Alayna. I talked to Amber for a bit and had her convinced that we were all doing OK and that things would be fine for her to stay the extra day as originally planned. I then thought it would be a good idea if Alayna had the chance to talk to Amber. I asked Amber she had a minute to talk to Alayna. Amber agreed. I asked Alayna she would like to talk to Amber. Alayna shook her head yes. When I gave the phone to Alayna she immediately began sobbing from the bottom of her heart. In between chokes of tears, Alayna got out the words, "Mommy, I want you to come home!" and that was all she could say. She then just sobbed and sobbed.

By the time that I got Alayna off the phone, Amber was in tears herself. So much for rescuing the situation. Amber did end up staying there at the hospital today. But, she was mad at me for making her smear her makeup with her tears from that emotional episode with Alayna on the phone.

Our new Real Estate Agent

Thought I would pass this post along of Jake's. JO

I'm a Utah Real Estate Agent!

I had the month of August off from MBA school, so I thought that I would put that time to good use. I signed up for Real Estate classes, attended them all, and on Friday I just passed the state exams to qualify me to become a real estate agent for the state of Utah. I have not yet signed up with a brokerage, but I will be doing that in the near future.

Over the past couple of years, I have been kicking myself for not getting my RE license instead of selling those stupid security systems :) when I got home from my mission. I talked to Shantell and she told me that I'd regret it forever if I didn't get it out of the way while I had time. I'm glad that I got done when I did, becuase the state has now upped the education requirement from 60 hours of classtime to 90 hours. I finished the classes 1 week before the change went into effect.

I am hoping to get my Idaho license as well, and that should be quite a bit easier. Idaho and Utah have an agreement that makes it so that it's not too tough to be a realtor in both places. I will have to take some Idaho real estate law classes and take the state exam, but that shouldn't be too bad. I will probably work on that in December or some other time where I feel like I've got some extra time.

So, that means if any of you decide to buy or sell houses, I am the guy to come to :).

Friday, September 07, 2007

Welcome Baby #5

Well, our fifth baby arrived today at 7:30 AM. Our insurance carrier changed since our last baby was born, so due to the change, we had to switch hospitals. There is a new federal law that saws if your doctors have an office that is further than X miles from your hospital, and you have had a C-section before, you have to have a C-section again. Aylee was C-section due to her being breach, however, the other kids were all vaginal births. The law still stands and Amber had to have a C-section this morning to bring our little son into the world.

We are still looking for a name right now. He came in weighing 7 lbs. 9 ozs. He was 20 in. tall. The doctors were getting a kick out of his high pitched little scream that he has. Baby #5 does not have much hair on his head - another difference from all of our other children.

He had a low blood sugar count after the birth and thus the hospital ran some extra tests - especially where Amber had the Gestational Diabetes. But, the determined it was low simply due to Amber not eating anything before her surgery because all of his other tests were just fine.

Amber did a great job. It is pretty intimidating to go in for a C-section when you know well and good that you could do just fine without it. She was stellar. She astounded everyone by standing up and walking up and down the halls at mid-afternoon. We're hoping that she can be as active as possible so that she can resume her regularly scheduled chores by the end of the week ;-).

Ann and Jake have been down watching the kids and taking care of that end of the spectrum. We're sure glad to have their help.

The kids are very excited for their new brother. Each got to hold him a couple of times today. Aliece has also insisted that it is "tradition" that we go eat a McDonalds on a day when we have a new baby born in our family. I don't know how it can be tradition when we just did that for Alayna, but Amber acquiesced and Jake Reed and I took the kids to McDonalds for dinner tonight to celebrate the occasion!

We'll try to keep you posted as we get a name picked for the little tyke.

Reverent Delirium

Yesterday at church I had to come late because I was attending the Spanish-speaking branch. As I walked into the chapel, I had a hard time finding my family because they were so darn reverent and quiet. Usually I see heads bobbing or excited voices talking.

When I finally located my family, I went in and sat down next to them on the bench. After sitting there for just a few minutes I noticed that there was something different. Amber turned to me and whispered into my ear saying, "Aliece is cracking me up, she is trying very hard to be reverent."

I turned and looked at Aliece, she was sitting there with her arms folded and and her mouth suppressing a proud smile at the effort that she was giving for reverence. This continued, throughout the whole first part of the sacrament meeting. We did not hear a single sound from her even as they passed the sacrament. Even the ward clerk noticed something different and smiled as he walked by counting the members in the rows.

Aliece maintained the same composure even throughout the first speaker. Every time I would look at her, she would try to suppress that proud smile that she knew exactly what she was doing. Amber and I were just amazed. We figured all of this reverence however, must have been pretty tiring, because after the first speaker she had fallen soundly asleep.

At the end of the meeting, we decided that it would be time to wake her up so that she would be ready to go to her class. As I lifted her up to start to wake her, I noticed that she felt quite warm. Amber and I figured that it was just because that she was asleep and laying next to Amber. However, after the closing song and the closing prayer, Aliece was still very warm.

I decided that I should take her home and take her temperature. Right after the meeting she and I hopped into the van and drove home. I took Aliece's temperature and found that she had a fever of 102°.

I then realized, that this newfound desire for reverence, was likely nothing more than the result of a delirium coming from her high fever. Oh well, it was nice to think that our daughter was turning a new leaf. :)

Aliece's first tooth (loss)

Aliece was over to the neighbor's house today playing when she tripped and fell -- knocking her mouth on their table. After the incident, she politely asked the mother if she could go home for a minute to check on her tooth.

She came and showed Amber her mouth. There was blood everywhere and Amber tested the tooth to find that she nearly knocked it out - it was pretty wiggly. Amber yanked the tooth out and Aliece is the proud owner of a missing front tooth.

Aliece is pretty excited to be getting a visit from the tooth fairy tonight. She has all of the tooth protocol down to the letter due to the experiences of her older siblings.

Aliece is the third person this week who has lost a tooth in our home. Johnathan lost one late last week and Aylee did earlier this week. That's quite a stretch for us!

The Barraki Star

Johnathan has recently been infatuated with the Bionicle website -- especially the Barraki movie trailer.

He has the theme song memorized and just sang it at his school for show and tell.

I have posted a copy of his singing. Just click this link:

http://www.john-james-andersen.com/john_baraci.mp3

Guy's Day

Earlier in the year, Jacob had mentioned that he wanted the men in the family to get together for a guy's day. Having Joseph go to California, however, threw a wrench into planning anything during the summer. However with Joe's recent return, Jacob did not waste any time in calling us altogether to have a quick guys get away.


The activity of choice was a simple fishing trip up to the Bear River near Grace, Idaho. Jake and I traveled from Provo and met Dad, Dave, and Joseph. I had looked up a couple of spots on the Internet that were popular fishing locations around Grace. Our selection was the Black Canyon near Grace. It was a beautiful little canyon made of lava rock. The river was more shallow here and had several terraces making small waterfalls.

During the beginning of our fishing adventure, dad showed us all up by catching the first two or three fish. Us boys were only successful at catching lots and lots of green seaweed. After a couple of hours, I caught about three nice sized fish in a row. I soon shared my power bait with Jake and Joe who started to fish the same hole as myself. Dad came up to the bridge where we were fishing off of, and started fishing also. I started looking around for Dave, as he had been fishing upstream a little bit earlier. I scanned the banks of the river to no avail. I asked dad to help me in my bank scanning. Finally as I was looking off the bridge I saw what looked like a fishing pole sticking out of the water. Then I noticed what looked like Dave's hat. My heart jumped in my body, thinking that maybe Dave had been crossing the river and had slipped and fell and have gone unconscious. Seeing his fishing pole sticking out of the water, I was afraid that Dave had drowned. As I was pointing over toward Dave, trying to get dad to see what I was seeing, I saw Dave's hand come out of the water and give me a quick little wave. Instead of being a drowned body lying in the river, Dave had taken off his shirt and donned some swimming shorts and had laid himself in the water underneath a waterfall and was fishing totally submerged except for his head. I laughed to myself and thought that is so much like Dave!

By the end of our adventure, everyone of us had a caught at least one fish. We had a great time spending the day fishing.

To finish off our great day, we stopped by a local diner and ordered some burgers. It was fun to sit and chat and talk about the day's activities. We had such a great time together, I fear that we will have to make this an annual occasion. It was good to get us altogether and it was especially good to see Joe after having him be in California during the summer.

Lots of Pictures!

We have been having lots of pictures taken lately.I just had Jenna and Joey's taken (Micah had to work and Brad didn't want to). I figured this was ok since we will have our school pictures really soon. Micah and Brad just had their school pictures taken earlier this week. Jenna will have her pre-school pictures taken soon - and by the way I chose to send her back to her old preschool. Brad is getting football pictures next week. And before we know it both kids will have another set of school pictures this next spring, and then Jenna's dance pictures. Wow that is a lot of pictures. Anyways...I thought I would share some. Some I really like...and some I don't.Some really show their personalities....I love this one of Joey.The photographer was not very good with little ones.And some of their smiles are pretty...well not natural. But they turned out pretty good anyway.
Aren't they the cutest??!!?