It's birthday time at our house!!

For the longest time in our family we each had our own month to celebrate our birthday.  Neil had September, Sarah June, Rebecca July, Bethany May, Julia February, Matthew December, Emma October and David was November.  This worked great until MaryAnne and Dallin were also born in November.  Three November birthdays and they are all in a row besides (2002, 2004 and 2006)  Then Joshua decided (well the Dr.'s decided) to share December with Matthew. Lydia wanted to have her own month so she waited until January to be born.  It is interesting to me that we have all the girls birthdays (January-November 4th) and then we have all the boys (November 12th to December 31st).  I knew when Lydia wasn't born in December that she would be a girl instead of a boy because of where birthday fit.  Well we are right in the middle of birthday season at our house.  We have seven birthdays between October 20th and January 5th, plus Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years.  It seems like it is one party after another right now.

MaryAnne turned nine on the 4th of November.  She has one amazing birth story.  She was overdue and we were schedule to have her induced on the morning of the 5th.  About 8:00 on the night of the 4th I started having contractions, but they weren't too hard.  We decided to go to bed and go into the hospital in the morning. You would think I would know better by our 7th baby.  I don't know what I was thinking.  I woke up about 10:00 and told Neil the contractions were coming harder and I couldn't sleep through them any more.  We called our friend Jeanette Cox, who was planning to stay with our children in the morning and asked her to come now instead.  She lives a little ways from us and by the time she got there I was in transition labor. It was a quiet drive into the hospital, I was feeling every bump down our dirt road.  We don't live too far from the hospital and it was a good thing.  We had called the hospital before we left to let them know we were coming.  We checked in quickly and were walking down the hall to the delivery room. When she heard this story my sister in law, Molly, asked why I was walking instead of riding in a wheelchair. I honestly hadn't even thought of asking for a wheelchair. As we were walking the nurse asked is I needed to stop and wait through a contraction. I told her that if I stopped we were going to have a baby right there. She told me to just keep walking.  As I walked through the door MaryAnne made her entrance without any doctor around. It was quite exciting for a few minutes.  The best part about having a baby that fast is that you don't have to get an I.V.  She was a beautiful, healthy little girl.

MaryAnne is full of personality and spunk. She really keeps us hopping with some of the things she comes up with.  She loves horses, playing with friends, and reading Addy books.  She makes her opinion known and likes to be listened to.  We are grateful to have her in our family.  For her birthday she really wanted to try a cake with polka dots.  We gave it a try and it turned out pretty good.  We baked mini cupcakes and colored with really bright colors.  Next, we put the cupcakes into the pans with the batter and baked the cakes.  When we cut the cake it looked like polka dots.  I think it would work better with a donut hole pan to make the polka dots more round.  MaryAnne's birthday was on a Monday, and  a busy one at that.  She wanted ham for dinner.  Right after dinner we had to leave for a family service project and then Family Home Evening.  We had her cake for our Family Home Evening treats.  It was a good, but busy day!! Happy Birthday, MaryAnne!! We love you!!