There she goes!

I have been trying to put video's on here from my camcorder but so far it isn't taking. So for now I just tell you the news instead of showing it to you.

SAMANTHA IS WALKING!!!

Last week we were getting some stuff cleaned up before going to bed when Sammi walked her first steps. She came to give me a piece of paper. Then she side stepped back over to her walker. I was in complete shock! Earlier that day I had tried to get her to walk but as soon as I let go she cried and sank onto her bum. I told Les who looked up and said, "I didn't see it so it didn't happen." I knew he was teasing me but I wanted him to see it too. So I gave the paper back to Sammi. Just as I knew she would she looked at it then at me and brought it back to me. This time I made sure Les was watching. We are so happy! We have been worried that she was a bit behind due to her slow start but, she is proving to us each day that she is a fighter who can overcome obsticles. For the next few days I tried to catch her on camera but to no avail. As soon as the camera came out she would sit down to do something else. Finally, it happened! I am upset that I can't get the video on here. I am oh so pleased with her progress. Within days she went from taking a few steps to walking across our living room. She is getting to where she can turn around (somewhat).

In other news for those that don't know our family spent Sunday night stuck on a mountain. We went for a Sunday drive. As we drove up the mountain we went through some snow. Even in 4-wheel drive we slid a bit (there was a drop off on one side of the road. We kept going and made it through. We stopped to decide if we wanted to continue or turn back. We looked at our map and thought we were close to Randolph, UT. So Les thought we should continue on and maybe we could go see Carolyn and her family in Kemmerer. When we tried to move forward we didn't. So we tried to move back and couldn't. Les and I got out to assess our position. We dug out around our tires. I found some woodand we put that behind our tires. It didn't work. So Les got a bunch of smaller rocks and put them behind the tires. That didn't work either. Thinking we were close to Randolph Les decided to walk out for help. I fed the kids, wrapped them in blankets, and put them down to sleep. Emma wanted to be in my lap and so did Sammi. I finally got them to sleep. I sat for a long time watching the curve in the road around which Les disappeared. Sammi woke up several times and I would sooth her and put her back to sleep. I must have dozed off because I woke up to see Les standing outside the car. I unlocked the car ans he climbed in. It was almost 2 am. he was cold, tired, sore, and hungry. While he ate he explained what he had gone through. We were a lot farther from Randolph then we thought. Les got to a lake that was about 15 miles from Randolph. The snow on the road was 3 feet deep. He turned around when he realized that no one from Randolph would be able to get through to us.
We tried to sleep the rest of the night but the kids seemed to wake up as we were falling asleep. Around 7 am I decided I was going to walk out the direction we had come in. I was going to suggest that we all go but realized the kids kids wouldn't be able to walk that far and neither could Les. His legs were cramping from the wlking he had already done. So I started out armed with a few cereal bars, Les' cell phone, a map, and a walking stick. With images of my kids and Les in my head I pushed through without stopping to a place called Hardware Ranch (wildlife management area). As the buildings came in to view (2 1/2 hours after I started) tears flowed from my eyes and I screamed for help. I was still to far away for anyone to hear me. So I kept walking. I made it to within a hundred yards of the buildings before anyone realized I was yelling for help. A group of men were working on the roof of the nearest building. They climbed down ran to their truck and drove to me. They picked me up and drove me back up to Les and the girls. They attached tow ropes to the Yukon and pulled it out. We made it home by 10:30. We bathed the kids, fed them, and put them down for a nap. Then we showered and took a nap as well. We are still tired and oh so sore but we are home and safe.

Easter 2010

We spent Easter Weekend in Myton. In the previous post you can see pics of the joint birthday party we had. The first thing we did on Saturday morning was head to Stewart's for their annual egg hunt. The kids loved seeing the Easter bunny. We didn't let them play all the games. One reason was that some lines were massively long. Another reason was that some of the games were a little complicated for the kids.

After Stewart's we headed to my parent's house to watch Conference. Sometimes I miss how it was before I had kids. Only in that I would have been able to get more out of the talks. It is hard to listen while your kids are fighting, screaming (in happiness and pain), crying, etc. At least I can read them for myself when the May Ensign arrives.

Later in the day my sister brought her kids over and we had a egg hunt. I got more pictures of Sammi than anyone. Although this isn't her first Easter it is the first one she is mobile for and also one she isn't in a medical coma of sorts (i.e. spent first Easter in Primary Children's Medical Center). Sorry to all the other kids but now you know what is really important. Okay all of it is important but with three kids going in different directions it is harder to do. Sammi was also the slowest so I could get more pictures of her going after one egg than I could any of the others going after all the eggs. The other kids are so fast the egg hunt was over almost as soon as it started.

All things March

So much has happend in so little time. So hang in there while I catch up.

Birthday, Birthday, Birthday, and more Birthday
We had a lot of birthdays in March. We started off with Khole's. We didn't get to see her on her birthday but we got to have visits with her the day before and the day after. We bought a cake and gave her presents to open. Then in the middle we made it home so Mommy could decorate cupcakes for our cousin Tyler's birthday. Then we had 3 birthdays in 4 days. Emma's, Sammi's, a day, and then Papa Mounteer's birthday. We made it through all of them. Emma and Sammi had a joint party and we were able to bring Khole here to our house for it. I know it is in April (but it relates to the birthdays) we had another joint birthday for all three girls in Myton over Easter weekend. Here are the pics.

This was the morning of Emma's birthday. Les had to go back to school so we gave each girl a present. We saved some for the party in Logan and some for the party in Myton.

LOGAN PARTY

MYTON PARTY

Battle for Khole (Chloe)
So we had court at the beginning of March where we thought we would find out if Khole would be coming to live with us or not. The foster mom kept saying that Khole had things like Reactive Attachment Disorder. The Judge not knowing if it was true or not decided he wanted a professional to evaluate her. So he set a hearing for 30 days. The Gardian Ad-Lidam (Khole's Lawyer) told us he wanted us to get in as many visits as we could. So we did. I pretty much lived in Myton because we visited with Khole just about every other day for 4-6 hours at a time. In the middle of the month we had a family meeting with DCFS where they brought up doing over nighters with us. We did 3 overnighters in Myton and then the next one was in Logan for 2 nights. We got one more overnighter in before court. In that time Les asked a ton of questions. Some of which were to the place that was seeing Khole on a weekly basis. DCFS was going to use one of the employees at this place as their professional. We had already heard part of what this lady had to say and it was totally against us. Les managed to see the letter she wrote to the court. It said that Khole should stay where she is. That Les and I are "foreign" to Khole (which isn't and wasn't true). It also said that we would take Khole only to turn her over to her father when he got out of jail (only if the court orders us to). So Les called the place she worked to ask the program director what she was basing these things off of. They couldn't tell us without a release of information from DCFS but that while we were getting one the director himself would review the case. Before we had even heard back from DCFS (they approved us getting the release of information) about whether or not we could call this place back to find out what was going on the program director called us. He told us that the lady who wrote ole the letter no longer worked for them because she stepped beyond her bounds of her abilities. She had no training to evaluate Khole the way she did. In her job she was only to evaluate Khole on her development. Other than that she was to have no opinion. So with her fired DCFS was forced to take her to someone who really has the training to do such an evaluation. I can't say much about the results but lets just say that when presented in court the judge ruled in our favor. We were now able to take her home to live with us. So that is were we are.

We had a busy month. April isn't as busy in the sense that we get to be home more. However, we have been busy in other ways. Getting adjusted to another child to take care of and getting Khole adjusted to us has been a challange. I'll tell more about that in another post. Oh and as I said in the previous post Bryan deployed to Afghanistan as well.