Our "Lil Scrubs"

We made it!! Christmas was a little more simple and quiet since we had the surgeries for the twins the week before Christmas, but it was a good Christmas anyway!! I'm beginning to realize life won't be calming down anytime soon. Our twins seem to be competing with Charlie's record in our family. Charlie has had one surgery a year since his first birthday. AND he already has a surgery that he needs this upcoming year. HOWEVER, now the twins have had 4 surgeries since their birth--only a month and a half ago. At 2 weeks old both had their tongues clipped to help them in the future for speech and breastfeeding. Then this past week we took Spencer into the emergency room for dehydration from what we thought was a bad case of the flu. It turns out he had pyloric stenosis and they did surgery the same day. Of course since they are identical twins, we were soon in the ER again with Stewart which resulted in the same surgery. I'm so thankful they are doing GREAT now!! While we were in the children's hospital I saw so many children and families who had to suffer so much with different things they were going through--it broke my heart. It also helped me to look at my trials and blessings with a new perspective. I am so very blessed! I want to do better at loving and serving those around me. Jesus Christ is such an incredible example at loving and lifting all those He came in contact with. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!!

Halloween Pics--A Month Late

Okay, we were community helpers for halloween this year. My mom was so sweet to take the kids out trick-o-treating with Derek this year. I have to say Halloween is my least favorite holiday (if it can be called a holiday), but I do enjoy seeing the kids get so excited about the fun!! The second picture I added because each one of the kids has such a different expression on their face--I love it--it's the wallpaper for our computer. We actually have a picture of all of them smiling, but it's not half as entertaining!! :) Since Derek always cringes when I start playing Christmas music a month before Christmas, I thought he would be proud of me for blogging about halloween in December.

One Delivery for 6 Kids!

Okay, I'm still a little traumatized by the birth of my WONDERFUL twin boys. It has taken me three weeks to write about it. Maybe I'm weak, but 36 hours of labor and almost 4 hours of pushing really wasn't what I was planning. The best news for me was that I didn't have to have a C-section (I was really close to having one). I'm so thankful to my Heavenly Father for my beautiful baby boys!! When Derek and I were talking about everything later, I told him I shouldn't be surprised that it was difficult because I got 2 babies from one delivery. He corrected me and said we got 6 babies in one delivery! :)

Baby Shower

My dear sweet friends, Amy, Cortney and Lindsey. I'm so very thankful to have so many friends out here in New York. I really amazed at how well we have settled out here. I feel so close to so many people in our ward. Now that I'm not in Young Women's, I miss being able to spend so much time with them, but life must go on! :) They put so much time into my baby shower and it was so kind of them. Lindsey (in purple) is a neo-natal nurse at a hospital here and has given me ALL KINDS of great advice. I think I'll be calling her at 1am in the morning when I need MORE!

Okay, I lied, here's my belly pic. It was taken 3 weeks ago, so imagine me 3 times as big!! Just kidding. If you notice, my face is not in the picture so I can always deny it was me! :) I'm now in my 36th week. My doctor decided to go on vacation so I can't beg him to induce me any earlier. (He already said he would induce me at 38 weeks.) BUT my dear mom has saved my life!! We go up to the elementary school 3 times a day, and this particular school makes you find parking in the neighborhood and walk with the children up to the door. SO, when I am having difficulty walking, my mom does it. She's also a laundry monster! Every piece of laundry that goes into the laundry room soon disappears and is turned into clean laundry!! It's a miracle! :) We're trying to be patient to meet our little twins, but it's difficult when they are movin' around in my belly almost constantly!! :)

Charlie's Honesty

This morning I was getting the kids breakfast and Charlie looked at me and his eyes got very wide as he said, "Mom! Your getting BIG!! You're going to break open our house!!" Don't you love their honesty? Well, I've had some requests for "belly pics" but I don't know if I'll put them on the blog. :) Thank you for your encouragement Rachel and Melinda. Because of you I will at least take some pictures to have for later. :)

The Last Debate

So tonight's debate is happening just a few miles away from us. And if anything too exciting happens, Derek's hospital is going to be the one receiving anyone with injuries. They did a secret service sweep yesterday. BUT if it's like the last debate--that put me to sleep--we won't have any worries.

Derek's Osteopathy Blessings

I'm realizing how blessed I am that Derek does osteopathy. In my fun months of being pregnant, whenever I have back pain or leg pain or swelling feet I ask Derek for his help and he fixes it! Pretty amazing. I've been told I don't walk like a normal pregnant lady (all bent over and stuff) and I know that's because of Derek's treatments. This picture was from the reunion in Arizona where Derek's brothers were in line for a treatment. Because we flew in to AZ, Derek couldn't bring his table and so here's a make-shift table with couch cushions on a coffee table. Since we've been here, I tell people in the ward that Derek will work on them all of the time (it's the least we can do with all the help they have given us), but a lot of the time they don't want to impose. I just know how happy Derek is when he can help others out.

Family Home Screaming :)

I'm at 29 weeks this Friday! My brave doctor invited us to bring our four munchkins in for one of the ultrasounds during my pregnancy. SO, last night for family home evening we went to my appointment. The kids were excited, but soon lost interest when they saw that the "pictures" they would see of the twins were not like normal pictures. It was fun, though and I'm glad we did it. I have to figure out how to put it in the blog, but I have a little video Derek took of part of the ultrasound that includes Joseph asking the doctor to put the ultrasound on a bigger T.V. This is because we were given a hand-me-down big screen T.V. recently--we're in trouble now!!! I found out the twins are 3 pounds already!!! (That's 6 pounds of baby.) This puts them in the 80-90% of normal (single) births!!! OUCH! Thanks to the BIG Whitmer baby genes! I was hoping for a little bit smaller, normal sized babies like Derek has in his family.

School Fun

Well, our school year has begun and I'm getting into the swing of things. We had a little bit of stress getting everything set for Joshua and Charlie to enter Kindergarten, but I feel really good about the way things are now. Here's our day: Josh leaves on a bus at 8am, we take Joseph and Charlie to school at 9am, Charlie's in half-day so we pick him up at noon, then pick Joseph up at 3pm and Josh's bus brings him home at 4pm. Lots of fun! Emma and I are having quality time together. The first two days of school, we went shopping after we dropped the boys off to finish getting all the school supplies everyone needed. Well, that night Emma included in her prayer, "Please bless Mommy, that she can go shopping." I thought that was pretty funny.

Summer's Over!

Well this was our last hurrah before summer ended this year. As you can tell by the look on Charlie's face, it was a little cold to be swimming and then eating ice cream bars. :)

Grandma's Coming!

We're very excited that Grandma will be coming in mid-October. Our kids can't stop talking about it!! I just can't believe it's almost here. We're also excited that school starts this week. Charlie and Josh are going into Kindergarten and Joseph into 1st Grade. Joseph is reading so well now. He gave a talk in Primary today on Baptism and read the whole thing very clearly and loudly--He did a great job!! I hope Joshua and Charlie get as good of a teacher as Joseph got for Kindergarten.

2 More Monkeys Jumpin on the Bed

Can you believe we're going to have 2 more monkeys in this family??? I'm barely starting to wrap my mind around it. (It's okay, cause they're my favorite kind of monkeys!) We're starting to get things in place. We got some car seats and a stroller and this past weekend we got a new mini van. Thank goodness they have created something called the 8 passenger mini van. I don't think I could drive a suburban around yet and I'm seeing full size vans in our future!! AGGH! :) Joseph saw a really long stretched limo/hummer driving down the street and he said, "Mom, I think we need a car like that." Maybe I should start taking commercial driving lessons in preparation.

Part 3, The End

Okay, last post for the day! Today I was released as Young Women's President in our ward. I really feel like I was SO blessed to be able to work with these girls even if only for a year. I will miss them for sure!! They are in GREAT hands, though, my friend Cortney is now President and do a much better job!! :) One more thing--we've been going back and forth on middle names, but I think we have the first names figured out!! Can you see in the picture which names are new????

Part 2

The next part of our trip we spent in Utah with my family. It was also very enjoyable and our kids were able to see more cousins. Here is a picture of me and my sis, Ann. I'm actually 4 months pregnant! See the bump? One of our kids favorite parts of the reunions in both AZ and UT was that they got to dress up like Alvin and the Chipmunks and preform 3 of their songs. They hardly know any of the words to the songs, so they were barely recognizable to others, but they had a blast.

Wonderful Sunday!

Since Derek's schedule has taken an unexpected turn for the worse, we have seen little of him this week. We miss him and we were SO thankful he had Sunday off! This past Monday I was in a fender bender where a young girl turned left into our van AND AMAZINGLY none of us were hurt. The van also had minimal damage. I know Heavenly Father protected us!! So I promised some trip details (a little late? yeah): We had a lot of fun down in Arizona with Derek's family. All together in 2 houses in Peoria. WOW! It was so good for all of us and we know we can't stay away from family for very much longer than we have to. We spent one afternoon in the Children's Museum in Mesa. (It's amazing what you find when you don't live in an area anymore.) The kids are still talking about a kitchen area where they could pretend to make meals--simple things entertain the most!!

More to come!

Okay, we just had an amazing vacation for over 2 weeks. We were able to attend Dallin (Derek's youngest brother)& Julie's wedding, go to a Higgins family reunion in Arizona, and go to a Whitmer family reunion in Utah! We are still recovering a little, but I have so much to write about! Unfortunately I cannot find our card reader to take the pictures off the card in our camera and put them into the computer. Derek just started his 2nd year at this hospital--officially his 1st year of Residency, so he's a little too busy to find it. I will find it soon and post some of the fun pictures we took during our time in AZ & UT. For now, have a GREAT day!

Official Announcement!

Since I haven't really shared this blog with people other than my closest friends and relatives, most of you already know....I'm pregnant for the FIRST time ever! I can't even begin to explain how excited we are. AND it's not just one, but TWO! Despite my certainty that they were fraternal twins (since two of my sisters have fraternal twins), two doctors have now told me that they will be identical twins...another surprise! Derek said he thinks it happened this way so there would be no doubt in our minds that this is definitly a miracle from Heavenly Father! For answers to the common FAQ: No, we weren't taking any fertility meds(which would have made them fraternal twins), Yes, we're a little scared to have 6 kids 6 years and younger, and Yes, we are SO VERY BLESSED!! This is me taking one of my many naps (on the time-out pillow) with all of the kids coming over to join me!! :)

Joseph's Quote

First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOSEPH!! He's now 6. Big Boy! As some of you know, a big part of the reason we named Joseph his name was after Joseph Smith, the first prophet of our church. Ever since then Joseph has had this GREAT love for anything that has to do with Joseph Smith. On Sundays because we only watch church stuff, his big request is to watch anything about Joseph Smith, documentaries, movies or whatever. So, yesterday I was watching a new DVD by Rob Gardner (excellent) about Joseph Smith. At first the kids thought the person narrating the music was Joseph Smith and I explained to them that Joseph Smith was in heaven with Grandpa and Jesus. So as we were watching Joseph turned to me and said, "I can't wait to see Joseph Smith and tell him that we have the same name!" :)

Charlie's Quote

Derek took the kids to the High School to run around on the field a little. When I picked them up they were talking about the two dogs they met while they were there. All of them are a little scared of dogs, except for Josh. Charlie was quiet for a long time and then said, "I want to get a baby dog so he won't have teeth." :)

Emma's Quote

The other day we were dropping off kids for school and it was quite a windy day. Well, since Emma is the only one not going to school right now, she gets frustrated sometimes with the quick "pick ups" and "drop offs" without actually going somewhere. So despite gas prices, many times when she asks we will go for a longer drive which is something she thoroughly enjoys. We had the radio playing and Emma announced, "Look Mama! The trees are dancing!!" (to the wind) :) She cracks me up! Along with her love for going for drives, she's extatic whenever we go on the freeway. Can you imagine me in the doctor's office trying to bribe my children to be good and saying, "Emma, if you can be calm, we can go on the freeway today." My friend Cortney thinks she will be a good skydiver in the future. One more thing along those lines, when we went to Chuck E. Cheese's for Joseph's birthday, Derek had Emma on his lap playing a car game. Emma insisted she drive the entire time, and instead of trying to avoid the other cars, her goal was to knock all of them OFF the road! I can't wait for her to start practicing for her driver's license!

Kids in a Box

I thought this picture was pretty funny. So now I'm taking suggestions on where I should send our kids. Obviously to Arizona to visit all the grandparents and cousins, but where to after that? Maybe up to Utah and then to Disneyland. I know!! I can send them to CHINA to visit Cheryl and Erik when they get there!!!!! I am still amazed at the fact that they are going!! Crazy or Adventurous, you vote!! I already told Cheryl which one I'm voting for. :)

Happy Easter!

Hey everyone, I'm back! It's been crazy busy, but I really want to keep this up and running for family and Grandmas!!:)

We've had a busy 2 months. Easter was a lot of fun!! Here is a picture of our kids after the Easter Egg Hunt we had at Ann & Dave's. It took quite some time to get all the kids in the picture, but I think it was well worth it. Young Women's is keeping me busy--in fact we have New Beginnings next week. I'm really excited because one of my counselors had the idea of introducing the values by having a woman from the scriptures who displayed that value, introduce it!! I love the idea!! For example: Eve tells about the value CHOICE & ACCOUNTABILITY and Abish tells about the value FAITH. Anyway, we're gonna have the girls dress up and do it. YEAH!! Okay, can you tell I'm getting into this a little too much! :)

President Hinckley

Last night Derek was talking to his brother (Daniel) and as they were talking Daniel got the news that President Hinckley had passed away. Shortly after that Chip called in on the other line to tell us the news. We are going to miss him so much! He's a truly great man. I can't help but be happy for him despite our loss. He is able to be with his sweet wife. We are so thankful for all that he has given us, for his devout service to God. What a great example to strive to follow. I have been greatly influenced by his wife's book, "Letters". It is SUCH a treat if you have extra time. Her outlook on life was so different compared to any other I've known. She is another example I would like to be follow--an incredible mother! Sometimes we feel so far away out here, but it was so nice to hear from everyone so quickly when such important news was happening. We told our kids this morning and will have an Family Home Evening about it tonight. They love him so much and get so excited when he talks in Conference. In fact Emma pronounces our last name "Hinckins" because she mixes it up with President Hinckley's name too. We just recently got cable for the first time and LOVE the fact that BYU TV is one of the channels. Joseph always asks if he can watch "BU" channel because I'll probably say yes. It's so nice to have the option to watch church programs ALL the time. I also love the BYU radio option on the internet!! If you don't know about it, you can go to the BYU TV area and click on BYU Radio. It's wonderful!! There is an instrumental option and a normal option. Our kids sometimes will recognize a song and say "I know that song!!!" It's really helped keep the Spirit in our home. A couple of weeks ago I got called as the Young Women's President. I was this in our El Mirage ward also. I think I'm getting another chance to do it right! The girls in our ward are AMAZING!! I've been the counselor for about 6 months and I think they get tired of me always telling them how great they are!! I am just so amazed at how unified they are, so loving and kind to each other and everyone in our ward. They have great attitudes toward life and it is so renewing and refreshing to be around them. We love you guys!!! Have a great week!

Another Sunday Performance

Yesterday was Derek's birthday and for his birthday he gave ME a gift and let me take a nap after church. (For those of you without children--this is the BEST gift ever!) Just shows how sweet he is!! We actually celebrated his birthday on HIS birth date. Which means he didn't have to share a pink cake with Emma. (He swears he doesn't mind since pink is his favorite color! Just kidding!) This picture is from their joint birthday party from last year. Our kids have actually done pretty well at being reverent in church in this ward. BUT yesterday as we were listening to a high counselor's talk, Emma took off Joshua's shoe and Joshua threw his head back for a record-breaking performance!! He missed the cushion on the back of the pew and hit the wood border making the loudest noise that echoed through the whole building!! It was SO loud that the speaker said, "Good thing his Dad's a doctor!" As I was trying to take Josh out, Charlie thought it would be funny to lay down in my way and laugh at me trying to maneuver around him. I hope this puts a smile on your face, NOW I think it's funny. By the way, Josh is just fine--he has a pretty hard head. :)

Nemo on Ice

So after our doctor's appointment on Thursday morning, I got a message from Derek telling me that Cathy Psillos, a friend of ours in our church was giving us some Nemo on Ice tickets. Wow!! They were given tickets and went the night before and knew our little ones would LOVE to go. It would have cost us hundreds of dollars to all go together. It was very thoughtful of them! Of course we had a blast!! And this time we actually had a little money for souvenirs. We learned a very valuable lesson, too. When you buy your kids something to eat, you should like it too in case you have to consume it...we got snow cones and the kids just wanted to play with the cool mugs that they came in. Derek had to eat two and a half and I ate one and a half. The kids got a picture with "Bruce the Shark". It's really cute, so I'll try to scan it in the future sometime. Then last night we had another "Girls night out" where some of the women get together from our ward about once a month. Since Cortney is my visiting teaching companion and Kerry is someone I visit teach, I basically do all my visiting teaching that night also, JUST KIDDING!! I know I've said this many times before, but I love our ward, our neighbors and almost everything about New York!! This is really so great for our family to be out here.

Week of Fun

Well, Emma had her birthday on Wednesday and we celebrated it on the same day--a first for our family. I cannot believe how big she is getting. The next morning we had doctor's appointments for everyone except Joseph. Wow! That was exciting!! The bad thing was that they all had to have shots. Emma was first, she just gave the doctor a mean look after he gave her the shot. Then there was Joshua who whimpered a little after it was administered. And Charlie topped them ALL!!! He was screaming at the top of his lungs through the shot, the rest of the appointment and then all the way out to the van!! I think I still hear him crying. :)

Last One for Today

I'm so very thankful for my family, our little family, Derek's family and mine, too. I cannot explain the feelings of my heart right now. The holidays really help me to realize how very blessed I am. It's fun to hear from everyone and spend time with those we love. The lesson I taught last Sunday was on a subject that really made me realize how much Derek, our parents and so many close to us have been such GREAT examples to me in serving others. We are so happy here in our little spot on Long Island. It was fun to see how much my mom liked it, too. Thanks to everyone for all of the love and support you have given to our family. WE LOVE YOU!

All the Drama

Okay, this time the blog site wouldn't let me do what I wanted with the pictures, so I'm doing three different posts to cover our Christmas experience. Friday was a lot of fun, but a little scary, too. Last year when Derek and I visited New York, our favorite part of the trip was being able to visit the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. So when my mom came, we really wanted to take her and our kids to see them. Well, we packed the kids in the van. I ran inside and up to my room to get a coat with my hands full of stuff for the outing. On the way downstairs, I overstepped the first step and fell down the relatively steep flight of stairs. I did a summer salt and a half and landed on my face--my left cheek. (Afterward I realized exactly what hit, because I had a soar left shoulder, right knee, etc.) Derek came in the door to hear the last few bumps and was VERY worried that I was seriously hurt. To make a long story short, after one of Derek's incredible treatments, a blessing and some ice I was off to the Statue of Liberty. I know I was protected from serious harm and am SO VERY thankful I'm okay. If you look at this picture closely you can see my cheek was swollen. Luckily the black eye didn't set in until later.

Holiday Vacation

Well, I'm back from vacation! Before Joseph's school was let out for winter break, he told us, "Mom, we're going on a vacation." I told him our family was not going anywhere for Christmas this year and he informed me, "My teacher told me I'm going on a vacation with the kids in my class." He eventually realized his teacher was just talking about time off from school, but usually he has to find things out on his own 'cause he doesn't take our word for it. :) We had a WONDERFUL Christmas!! My mom was able to fly out to visit our family here and Ann's family in Connecticut. It really made it Christmas to have Mom here.