HaPpY TURKEY dAy!

This Thanksgiving we got to head up Hurricane UT and spend it with Zach's family at his brother Burke's house. We had lots of fun with the Pembertons! Casen got fully potty trained! We got our family pictures taken (my sister in law Rachel is an amazing photographer...thanks Rach!) Did some black friday shopping! and ate lots of yummy food!
Casen got to stay up every night late with his uncle eli playing games and watching movies, on the way home he said, I want to go to Eli's house, I love Eli, he plays with me, I miss him! I think Uncle Eli is casen's favorite! Luke and his cousin Aiden are only a few months apart, almost the same size and just waiting to get old enought to play with eachother!
Thanks for the wonderful Thanksgiving Pembertons!

On a side note...we got home and checked our email this morning and found out that Zach made the All-Arizona Academic team (made up of students from community colleges) and with making the team he gets a TUITION WAIVER to one of the State Universities! WOO WOO! We had already made plans to attend NAU this following semester and are so excited that we don't have to pay tuition now! Zach works so hard to get good grades (he honestly studies more than anyone else I've ever met) and we are so proud of him for achieving this!

my boys...love them!

casen and luke are the best of friends...luke is just about to sit up and can't wait to be able to play with his big brother :)

lately we've been...

...going to the Park

...doing tummy time!

...taking baths together

...watching movies together:)

Christmas was great this year, we got an early christmas present in luke on Dec 4 (11 days early) and zach's family came and visited us for Christmas! It was lots of fun having them here for Christmas, we played lots of games, ate lots of good food, and enjoyed eachothers company. Casen got absolutely spoiled by everyone for Christmas, he got lots of "Cars" stuff, and now has almost every single one of the characters and can name them all too, he's lots of fun and loves having a baby brother who he calls "Wooook". Luke is getting bigger, he struggled putting weight on at the beginning cause he had a cold, which he got from his momma, I was sick when I had him, not fun. But he's over that and finally just about out of his newborn clothes :) Casen wore newborns for all of like two weeks and then he was on to the next, it's been kinda fun to have such a small baby.
Me and Zach got a joined present for eachother this year, INSANITY. He just finished one week and I'm going to try to start this week, I tried last week...but it was a little too much for me then, I'm going to try to start this week though :) Between Christmas and New Years I had mastitis, a UTI, and a major tooth problem, between antibiotics and pain killers my body has been having lots of fun!
Ryan was home for Christmas this year, for the first time in like four years, it was lots of fun to have him close and get to know him a little bit more again, he's been pretty absent from the family for a long time now but hopefully that's changing a little bit.
My favorite part of Christmas was talking to this stud :) My baby brother Kyle....


He's in Argentina and doing good! It was fun to talk to him! This is at his district Christmas gathering
Zach's little brother Neal is on a mission in Mexico and we got to Skype with him this year, and that was lots of fun too! It was lots of fun to visit with both our missionaries with both of our families :)

Merry (very late) Christmas! and Have a great 2011!

Lucas Ja Pemberton

daddy and baby


auntie Jaime holding luke



first family pic...casen doesn't know what to do.




Casen and his new baby brother





luke holding mommies fingers






he scared us quite a bit and had a hard time breathing for a while, but nothing a little suction and oxygen didn't clear up in a few hours, poor kid had a ton of fluid in his tummy and lungs.

~Ja is zachs middle name and his dad's... it is pronounced Jay~

Baby Luke joined our family on Sat Dec 4th @ 5:05 AM, 11 days earlier than he was supposed to, and about five days earlier than i was ready for him...tomorrow would have been perfect :) but i can't complain too much because he has been the best baby and it was the easiest delivery too.
Friday evening my back was hurting me pretty bad and I was having quite a few contractions, but I had been on my feet alot and had been having contractions all week and thought that they would settle down after I took a bath...which I did after putting casen to bed...but they just got worse, around 10:30 I starting packing, because my contractions were about five minutes apart and getting harder. So I told zach around 11 and he started timing them for me, we got all packed and called my mom around 12:30 and my dad came over to stay the night with Casen and we left for Showlow, my contractions were about 3 1/2 minutes apart. we got to the hospital and all settled by 1:30. I was dialated to a 5, and my contractions were 2 1/2 minutes apart, but my water hadn't broken, so as soon as my midwife Wendy got there around 2:00 they broke it for me, after that my contractions slowed down, so they put me on some pitocin to speed them back up...at 3:30 I was a 7 and decided to get my epidural, I was having a hard time deciding because I know a few people who have had bad experiences in showlow with epidurals lately, but I got one and it went great. after I got my epidural and my contractions were coming pretty fast they started monitoring luke a lot cause they kept losing his heartbeat, scared the heck out of us a few times when it took a while to find it, but he did just fine. I think I probably started pushing about 10 til 5, the pushing took like 1 1/2 hours with casen, so fifteen minutes seemed like a breeze. My epidural was great, I still had a lot of feeling in my legs and could move them pretty good the whole time and it wore off pretty quick too.


Lucas Ja Pemberton made his appearance and the nurse announced "it's a boy"!
It was fun being surprised, even though I was pretty sure it was another boy, a buddy for Casen.
He is so tiny, Casen was 8 lbs 8 ozs and 21 1/2 inches, Luke measured in at a whopping 6 lbs 13 ozs and is 19 3/4 inches long. HUGE difference...especially to my recovery :) I definetly recommend having a small baby ;)

Casen has been loving him so far, we've had a few close calls when he has tried to pick him up or kick him...but so far Luke is unharmed. Casen is learning to be more soft with him and
is pretty good at saying his name..."looooook"

and I'm finally posting...

lots has been going on this fall, school, work, fair, gardening, canning, drying, picking, casen's birthday, pregnancy, painting, visitors, cleaning...

Casen is growing and learning every day, he's not very up on the whole talking thing, but he's throwing in more words every day, his favorite things to say are: "Where's pop"(my dad), "Where'd she go"(whenever anyone or anything leaves), "its broke", "it's stuck", "it's mine", etc...he is such a big boy, and usually, except for today happy and easy to get a long with. Today, however, he was on the fight! Which was bad cause today is my day to clean my grandparents house, which is always something I dread, it's hard enough keeping my own house clean...but they pay me well..both of them :) so it's worth it, but when Casen is having a bad day, what usually takes me about an hour and a half took me three. which put me behind the rest of the day...but oh well, how can you be mad at this face


Casen turned 2 on September 5th and he was lucky enough to celebrate it with almost all his family, Zach's mom, dad, and brother and sister came up for the weekend and got to be here for Casen's fun day! And boy did he have fun, casen loves cars, everything is "GO CARS" so zach had the great idea to take him over to Thunder Raceway for the races Saturday night the night before Casen's birthday and boy did they have fun! Zach's dad and brother went with them and Casen sat there for almost four hour watching the cars go round and round and loved every minute of it! they didn't get home til midnight and casen was still awake. Sunday morning he got to open all of his presents (mainly cars and things to play with cars) and then he got to go to church, his favorite thing(actually he doesn't mind it much now that my mom is the nursery leader, before that he cried for almost two hours every sunday...why do you think they called my mom to be the leader:)
Here's Casen outside with his nursery buddies



Casen actually got the whole present thing this year and tore into all of his presents!






More presents and and cake and icecream at Nonna and Papa's :) Casen got a little 4-wheeler from my parents and LOVES riding it around the house!






The rains were great this July and Casen loved going outside and playing and getting all wet and muddy!




The fair was a few weeks ago and Casen loved every second of it, so we spent a ton of time there, here he is on the rides, he even got to go on a few with is friend Paxton!

fall

we're so excited for fall, been having fun at the fair, looking up yummy new pumpkin recipes to try out, wearing sweatshirts at night, and canning vegetables...fall is here :)