Ephraim Daniel Checketts was born at 5:41 AM on Monday, August 24, 2009. He and mommy are doing great and they are both home trying to rest. Haela and Enoch love to hold their new baby brother.

Here is one view of the house. it is right up against a bluff where there are supposedly a lot of deer. bishop pennington, you can come hunt from our front porch.



Here is the front porch. i am really proud of this feature because directly below it is our cold storage room. Also it looks great because i didn't pour it.
Enoch, perusing the classified adds. not sure what he was looking for.

Here is a pic of the house from about a month ago. We will try and get some more soon

We are slackers

Sorry we have been so far behind on our blog for so long. We have a lot of really great excuses, but thats all they are, excuses. Since our last entry we have been moving forward with a lot of things in our lives. We have started building my parents house just south of Rexburg. Since they will be in Hawaii for a few more years we will get to live in the house till they return. In exchange for free rent I am doing all the labor on the house for free. It is hard to work all day and then go and build the house at night but it is coming along. The pumber and electrician are starting and we are getting the siding on fairly soon so we will be prepared for the winter weather. Charity is working hard at the head resident position at our dorm. She is a great example to the girls and always goes the Extra mile. Luckily we will be done managing in a few weeks so then she can just focus on this new baby that is coming and our other wonderful children. Haela will be starting school in a month. THat is scary. Enoch is 2 and talking like crazy. He says the funniest things all the time and we get a real kick out of him. My little construction company is doing all right. The lord is always sustaining us and we are very grateful for the things that he has done for us. We always have enough and a little to spare

It's a boy!

Sorry it has been FOREVER since I have posted! I have been sick (from the baby) and stressed (from managing) and all that fun stuff! So I have severely neglected this blog lately. I figured you all would want to know that we found out we are having a boy--no wonder the dairy issues! He measures 10 days ahead! Of course we have those large genes coming from both sides so it is inevitable. So when we told Haela it was a boy she had the saddest face! We have had a feeling it was a boy and so we tried to prepare her but even the preparation didn't stop the sadness. She said she will "still love a baby brother" though but that next time I need to have a girl. So every time we mention her baby brother she adds "and then after the brother we will have a baby sister, right?" I told her that might happen but we never know what the Lord will give us.

"I'm Prego"

So now that I am three months along and have been to two doctor's visits I feel safe telling everyone that I am pregnant! I am guessing it might be a boy because I have been very sick like I was with Enoch and am back to the no-dairy/no-soy thing again. The weird thing is when I was pregnant with Haela I could eat anything. In fact, it was the first time I could handle drinking a glass of milk! But she has a SEVERE allergy to dairy and many other scary allergies including nuts, eggs, soy, dust, mold, etc. Now Enoch--he is a different story. I could not handle a speck of dairy and was so sick when I was pregnant with him but he only has a very minor allergy to dairy. So do any of you have any guesses as to whether handling dairy in pregnancy could be related to the severity of allergies post-partum?

President's Day Fun!

For President's Day we decided to celebrate by driving two hours to a an indoor water park in Wyoming. It was SO fun to see the NON-STOP smiles on my kids' faces as they would fly down the water slides!

Enoch, of course, had to play with every ball he could find. He loved when Daddy helped him slam-dunk the ball!

The water fountains were fun to go under and then stay dry!

Haela and Grandma Johnson going down the smaller slide. It took Haela forever to build up the courage just to go on this one but once she got it down then she tried the big one and to her surprise she ABSOLUTELY LOVED it. From then on she went down the big one non-stop!

Enoch and Grandma Johnson zooming down the BIG slide!

Daddy is under the water so you can't see him. He would lay down to go faster which I thought would scare Haela but she LOVED it!