Here are just some cute photos of cute kids doing cute things, or simply being cute without really trying. You can click any of the photos to see the whole album.
Collin and Owen came home with their class photos and individual photos. The class photos will be classics, I’m sure. I like how we had no idea it was class picture day and we sent our kids in black t-shirts, including one with the Bat Signal on it.
Classic.
Collin and I also had a great time a few weeks ago when we went rock climbing at Pilot Mountain. He loved every minute of it and really climbed up the rock like he’d been doing it for years.
We had another really great trip to the beach, this time to Carolina Beach where we found a reasonably nice dive motel right on the beach. Our room was nice and roomie with two queens, and it looked right onto the sand. We enjoyed watching the sun rise twice. We drove down Thursday evening and checked out Saturday morning and were back in time to catch conference. The weather was absolutely perfect, but the water was still a bit cold to enjoy all the way. I did dive in Saturday morning after Collin took me up on the “you go first and I’ll go” challenge.
Today at church we blessed baby Rhys. I blessed him, among other things, to continue growing strong and healthy, to be an example to his older brothers, to love his friends and his enemies, to always have a desire to learn and seek the truth. He looked beautiful in his cute white jumper with a pleated front.
Collin and Owen also participated in an optional Science Expo at their school. We helped them out, of course, but made sure their displays reflected their own work, which couldn’t be said for a lot of other entries. They did a fantastic job:
And, we had a fun visit from my brother Drew and his family from Georgia and my mom from Utah. Always fun for the kids to hang out with their cousins and Grandma:
[Spoiler: There are more pictures of baby Rhys below, so keep reading.]
We had some perfect snow last week! And by perfect I mean it didn’t stick to the roads and turn to ice like it usually does around here, and it was perfect packing snow. All this meant that we had an epic snowball fight with all the boys in the culdesac. It was classic and a ton of fun. Even Grady got into the action!
You can check out all the pictures from the snowball fight here:
Collin also had his Pinewood Derby, and got 2nd place in his Den, with his stylish BYU-themed truck. It was a lot of fun to work on it with him. With 5 sons, I figure I get to help build thirteen more pinewood derby cars over the next 10 years. No complaints here. 🙂
And, last but not least, our little Rhys is over two weeks old now, and he has been so fun to have. And we hate to jinx things, but he has been a really pleasant baby. Loves to just sit quietly and be held; hardly ever cries. He loves to sleep and eat is just content. It’s also amazing how he can sleep through all the commotion that is constantly around him. He’ll definitely grow up to be tolerant of noise!
It’s been a few days since we welcomed Rhys Carter Packham into our family. We are so thrilled to have our fifth son, and can’t believe how lucky we have been. He is beautiful and perfect.
He has some pretty thick dark hair on his head and he’s got some chubby cheeks. He was born at 9:41 am on February 2, 2002 (Groundhogs Day), and came out at a hefty 7lb 12oz (our biggest baby yet), and 20 inches long.
As for the birth story … Aubrey basically had her water break a little bit around 5:45 am, so we woke up and started getting ready with showers and getting dressed, etc. and started timing the contractions. We dropped our kids off at a couple of friends’ houses and were at the hospital by maybe 7:30am. Even though Aubrey’s contractions were coming fairly regularly, I don’t think she thought they were exceptionally strong, so she kept feeling lame for coming to the hospital, though I think deep down she knew the baby was on its way soon. Once we were in the room, her water more fully broke on the floor so we knew for sure it was go time. From that point, her contractions continued to strengthen on a steady basis every few minutes and seemed to get steadily more intense. After a few rather intense contractions, the baby’s head about visible then it crowned and a few pushes later his head was out. His cord was around his neck and they had to cut it before his body was delivered, and when he came out he was a bit “shocked” from the fast dropping into the canal (“precipitous” is the word they used). So, they had to jumpstart his breathing with some positive pressure ventilation, but it took less than a minute before we heard his first scream. That was a sound like no other after seeing him come out not quite responsive. Oh, and obviously when he came out I saw right away it was a boy, and I called out “It’s a boy”, and I wasn’t surprised at all. I guess I recognize the body part quite easily at this point after having all boys.
After they got him breathing, they took him off to the special care nursery to make sure he continued to breathe well, etc. so Aubrey and I were not able to just hold him for the first little while. I think we didn’t totally mind this time because Aubrey seemed pretty drained and exhausted from the intense work she had just done, which was awesome to behold. She has delivered five babies now (the last four with no pain medication), and each time it has been beautiful and powerful and frightening to watch, each time bringing tears to my eyes to see her in pain and yet so focused and determined and strong. She is truly amazing. I love that I get to experience this all with her.
For the last month or so, we had been pretty sure that we like the name Rhys/Reece if we had a boy, but we’d been struggling with the spelling and also didn’t have a middle name. At one point we were kind of leaning toward Reece and people kept asking, so I went ahead and posted on Facebook that we were calling him Reece. But after a couple days thinking about it and with the official birth certificate needing to be filled out before we left the hospital, Aubrey and I spent some time re-thinking the spelling. We just kept coming back to the more traditional but more unusual and different spelling of Rhys. In the end, we both preferred it much more and realized we’d regret not using that spelling if we went with Reece, which we thought was also nice but just lacked that certain something in our minds. For a middle name we went with Carter, which is a family name on both sides: Aubrey’s grandma’s maiden name (Laurene Grace Carter Smailes), and my great-great-grandma’s maiden name (Junietta Carter Wall). So … we decided on Rhys Carter Packham and we totally love it! We think it fits right in with the rest of our boys’ names and will be a great, strong, and unique name for him to carry through his life.
His brothers have been absolutely adorable with him. Although a couple of them were really hoping for a girl (which was cute), they were instantly excited to hear he was a boy. They all love stroking his head and saying hi to him and holding him any chance they can get. When they got home from school on Thursday to find us at home with Rhys, they all ran upstairs and climbed on the bed all leaning over him and saying “hi Rhys!” and stroking his hair. It’s definitely a proud moment to see older siblings so excited for the younger ones. They will be great examples in the younger ones’ lives — examples for good, I’m sure.
