After three years, we finally finished our house! We are so excited to be done with it. Austin worked like crazy to get it done before we had another baby. We spent the last few weeks of the remodel staying in our camper in our driveway just so we could keep the kids out of the mess. After we finished the house, we moved the camper (and a FEW) other vehicles to my parents’ house and set up camp there. We spent all of Martin Luther King Jr. Day packing, scrubbing, and staging the house so it could be listed the next day. My mom, Stacy, and Jill gave up their day to scrub floors, clean our oven, and make our house look like kids had never stepped foot in it. We are so incredibly thankful for them! Some friends brought over some furniture and pillows to help us stage the house and get it all ready for our realtor to take pictures and get it listed.

The next morning, our realtor came over to do paperwork with us and get pictures of the house. Then we went to look at a house that belonged to a family friend and our house was listed that evening. The next morning, we had a lot of interest in the house. After the first showing that day, we received a really great offer. We let the rest of the people see the house that had already requested a showing and we had a second offer that was good but not quite as good as the first. Our house was listed Tuesday evening and it was under contract Thursday evening. We were so thrilled!

Our kids were so excited about taking one last picture in front of our house. 🙄

Friday evening we met with the family that had let us look at their house and ironed out details so we could have a contract drawn up to purchase it. We are so excited about the property and house! We are really looking forward to growing into it and taking on some more projects. The house is everything that we had hoped to get in a house but we weren’t sure we would find in our price range. We will be on 10 acres which we know our kids will love!

We spent the rest of the weekend and the next week getting everything moved out of our house so we could close quickly on it. It went on the market on January 19th and we were officially closed on February 5th. We were so excited at how quickly everything went. I had spent a lot of time worrying about selling our house and finding the right one to buy. I finally gave it to God and reminded myself that He had much better plans for our future than I did. As soon as I did that, things fell into place perfectly. Austin and I have total peace about the property that we are buying and the way that things are working out.

On February 2nd, we celebrated Gran’s 4th birthday with pizza, and cake.

The morning that we closed on our old house, I had an appointment in Topeka to get a Covid test so I could be admitted to the hospital to be induced the following Monday. At the appointment, they told me that I was 6cm dilated and should probably head to the hospital soon. Naturally, I took that to mean that I should go home, do school with Ellie to wrap up her week, finish packing the kids’ bags, finish packing hospital bags, pick up and deposit our check from closing, unload my car from the final load of stuff we had moved out of the house, install a car seat, and run to town for last minute baby items we needed. Austin came home from work and about 5 minutes after he started helping with everything, he got a migraine and had to go to bed. My parents and I finished everything up while Austin slept. When I finally woke him up and he was ready to walk out the door, it was evening.

We got to the hospital and got all settled in. We were there for a few hours before doctors started trying to rush us along and caused us to have an emergency C-section. We are both pretty salty about how things were handled. Austin wasn’t able to be in the room and the baby was rushed to the NICU as soon as he was born. Orwell McNamara Francis was born at 11:46pm on February 5th. We’ve had a few people ask us how we came up with his name. We decided that we both liked the name Wells but felt like it was too short to go with our other kids’ names. We started brainstorming names that were longer but could use Wells as a nickname. We stumbled upon a list of names that I’m pretty sure someone completely made up and we agreed that we both liked the name Orwell. It also inspired me to read 1984 again. His middle name, McNamara was my great grandfather’s middle name. I’ve been trying to convince Austin to use the name for each of our boys and he finally gave in this time.

I woke up about an hour and a half after he was born and the first picture I saw of him was heartbreaking.

Within four hours of his birth, he was on room air which was a huge relief. I didn’t get to see him until about 4am and by then Austin and I were so exhausted that we could barely stay awake.

To say that we were exhausted would be an understatement.

I think we got about three hours of sleep that night and then spent most of Saturday going back and forth between my room for my checks and an iron transfusion and the NICU. By 6pm Saturday, Orwell had been moved to our room and we got to feed him and hold him without being attached to machines for the first time. Sunday we were getting pretty restless but we did watch the super bowl. GO SPORTS!

We were released Monday afternoon and had a long drive home because the roads were really bad. Between Kansas City and Silver Lake, we stopped four times to scrape our windshield because the defrost couldn’t keep up with how cold it was outside.

Ellie, Gran, and Emery were so excited to finally meet their new brother. Emery was really excited to see that the baby we had been talking about for months, had ears, eyes, and a nose.

Austin and I are quickly realizing that we are in way over our heads with four kids but I think we are going to survive it!

We are so excited to get into our new house and get settled. Austin is already drawing up plans in his mind for the shop he wants to build and looking into buying a used tractor. Our kids are thrilled at the idea of getting chickens next spring and they promise that they are going to take care of them every day. Ellie already has a spot picked out for Austin to build her a playhouse and Granville is pretty sure we have enough room for two trampolines and a “kid shop.”