2 weeks!

It is hard to believe that Harper is now 2 weeks old! I am always amazed how fast time flies once a baby arrives! Harper continues to be a true blessing to our family - she is a really calm baby who hardly ever cries (much to the disappointment of her big sisters who are on active stand-by all the time ready to pick her up and cuddle her). She weighed 8 pounds 10 ounces at her 2 week checkup this week, so she is apparently very good at eating! She is sleeping between 3-4 hours at a time at night so I am feeling very rested and good! I am planning to go back to work next week. Since I am blessed enough to have a job where my kids can come with me, I don't have to worry about leaving the baby behind, and so I am not worried about the transition! I have been enjoying the time home with the kids, but with the weather being as crummy and cold as it has been, the kids are starting to get a little house bound, and are probably ready to go back to school - though they would never admit this! Jim returned to work this week, and we have missed having him around, and I was getting a little spoiled by his waiting on us....freely admitting that I hate to go shopping, and having the excuse to make Jim go was a really big happy place for me!

We are looking forward to the new year, although we have no plans to go anywhere, the kids think we are going to make nachos and watch movies, so they are excited. It doesn't take much to entertain this tribe!

The Day After

My niece really enjoyed her new cousin!

Is there anything sadder than the day after Christmas? All the shopping, rushing around, food preparation is done, all the secrets revealed, and all the trash left in its wake. It is easy to say that we will keep that Christmas spirit all year long, but do we carry through? I know that I don't. We try to do good works, help our neighbors, lend a hand to those in need, visit the sick and the elderly, and pray for those who need it, but sometimes we slip into a routine that does not include this stuff. It would seem that outside of December, the rest of the world doesn't really include these things either, so it is easy to let them slip by the wayside. Maybe this can be the year that we do better. I am dedicated to trying a little harder.

Colin wrestled in his first tournament of the season today. I didn't get to go, but Jim reported that he worked very hard. He got 3rd place. He wasn't very happy with this, but he says he will just have to practice harder. The tournament was in Rossville, and the roads were questionable, Jim said that they got almost there and he was saying 'whew we made it' - when they had a little trouble and slid into a ditch. Luckily, they got a ride into town and Colin made the weigh-in in time...I managed to get the number of a tow truck guy from Rossville, and he was able to get Jim pulled back onto the road. Nobody was hurt, and the van is fine too. After that adventure, I was sort of glad that we decided that I should stay home with the little ones! I do hate to miss his matches though! He has a couple of weeks before his next tournament.

Christmas 2009

Merry Christmas!

It has been quite an adventure here! Yesterday we took off for my brother's house in the afternoon. I have to admit that although it was sleeting a little bit, I had not paid any attention to the forecast at all, until we were on the way and they came on the radio and said that we were under a blizzard warning. Even after hearing this, I didn't pay much attention, after all we get told all sorts of stuff in forecasts all the time and they don't necessarily happen. So we managed to make it to my brother's house, had a great time visiting, eating ourselves silly, opening gifts and watching our children play with our niece and nephews. My mom, who had surgery last week even felt like coming over for a bit, so it was nice to have the family together. After a couple of hours, I realized that it was snowing and blowing really hard...the kind of snow I hadn't seen since I was a kid. So Jim and I decided to gather our tribe and head for home. My sister had taken a few of our kids for us, and she decided to go then too. Luckily, she has 4 wheel drive and was going to go ahead of us so that we could follow in her tracks after she blasted through the drifts. My brother lives about 15 miles from our house, and it took us an hour to get home! It was pretty bad out....visibility at times was about zero. Having made it home, Jim and I had already decided that midnight mass was out of the question, (even though I was a little disappointed because it is my favorite mass of the year). However, once home we realized that they had cancelled the services for both last night and today.

With my grandma going through chemo, she isn't up to having her annual Christmas dinner, so we had planned to stay home today, which is good because we aren't really able to get out anyhow! The girls helped me prepare a turkey dinner here and we have been enjoying the day with no place to go, playing with our new toys and watching Christmas movies on tv. Preston proclaimed that this is "the best Christmas ever" so I guess we did something right! Jim did a great job shopping, and the kids were very happy with their gifts. All in all, I would have to agree with Preston!

I hope that you have all had a wonderful Christmas too, filled with blessings and love!

Home, happy, healthy and thankful

Just wanted to take a quick minute to update on things here. We are all home, enjoying some time off work, and school. I have had a pretty easy recovery from the c-section, and am feeling really good! I am so thankful for the outpouring from our neighbors in the food department, as we have been treated to quite a feast of different foods, none of which I had to cook in the past few days. Harper is a really good baby, who is sleeping about 3 hours at a time, with the exception of last night when she seems to have come down with a bit of a stuffy nose. Madison did a great job of updating the blog for me while I was in the hospital, and first home and unable to treck up and down the stairs to the computer.
I have to admit that when I found out that I was due to have a baby on Christmas day last spring, I was thrilled about the new addition to our family, and less than thrilled about the due date. I just couldn't get over the idea that Christmas is not a good time of the year to be laid up, or to try to add more stuff to my 'to do' list. I was so wrong. It has been great - the kids are home, they have been a great help to me. Jim had accumulated some vacation time, so he has been home as well, and tackling our Christmas shopping for us... I hope he knows how much I appreciate his running around, and all his help! I am so lucky to have such a great family. What a nice time of the year to be home with out having to go in to work, or having to go anywhere at all, to share time with my kids and husband! God truly works out the details for us is we let Him.

Harper and More Harper!

As you can probably tell, Harper is the center of attention. She hasn't been put down all day!

Quite the Week!

Hope and Harper have returned home safe and sound, but not without missing two Christmas programs. We are happy to say though that Harper is a wonderful addition to the family, and we will enjoy spending the coming years with her!

Harper is born!!!!!!

Everybody is fine. Hope and Harper may be home on Friday.

Double Digits

Cameron turned 10 years old today. He is excited to be double digits old! He also was hoping and wishing that the weather would be bad enough that he would not have to spend his birthday evening at his 4th grade music program (wish granted). He spent it instead at home having sub sandwiches on home-made french bread, and a cake which he insisted on baking himself, and playing with his new video games! (And doing one small science assignment for school of course). I have to share that whenever it is someone's birthday here they get to pick out their dinner of choice. This kid is so picky - so it cracks me up that of all the food on earth he wants sandwiches for dinner!!

We are very proud of Cameron. We love how he openly shares his feelings, and how passionate he is about things (especially any sports where KSU is playing). He is a great student, a wonderful brother, and an all around great kid! Happy Birthday buddy! We love you!

Scare tactics

When I was a kid, my grandfather and father worked together on the family farm. My brothers and sister and I used to think it was great fun to sneak up on Grandpa and scare the pants off of him. He was a very jumpy man. He would always tell us that we took years off his life, but it didn't stop us from doing it every chance we got. I feel kind of bad about it now, maybe had we not taken years from his life, he would still be here with us today!
In the past week, I feel especially bad about it since I have found that I definitely inherited his jumpy nature. I was using Jim' s car to take Colin to wrestling practice this week. I have not driven Jim's car very often, and was fumbling around in the dark trying to figure out how to get the headlights on. A friend of mine was over at our neighbor's house picking up kids for wrestling practice and she came across the street to see if she could give Colin a ride too. I didn't see her coming, so when she knocked on my window I came absolutely unglued! I screamed like one of the people out of those old awful horror movies. She felt terrible, and so did I - after all she was being nice and here I am acting like she was going to kill me!
Several weeks ago, Cam's lizard got out of his cage. We had given up looking for Jay Lizard and assumed he was dead someplace, or that one of the cats had eaten him. Today, when I was sorting laundry, Jay ran across my foot. Again, I screamed like a banshee on crack, and acted like that stupid 1/2 oz lizard would kill me. In fairness, I saw it move across my foot and thought it was a mouse, and I am terrified of rodents. I can't help but think about all the times I did this to my poor grandfather. I hope he is looking on and laughing at my expense now!

Trying to relax and catch up

Riding the sleigh with Santa. Mallory and Madison decided to ride too, mostly because there was a bag of candy for all who rode along!

The annual 4-H Christmas party was a pretty good time!

I got sick of trying fruitlessly to comb Quincy's hair every day, and trying to bribe her to keep her pony tail in, so finally we just cut it short. We think it is cute, but I must admit that the combing and keeping out of her face is still a struggle! If she was a boy I would shave her head!!!

We were supposed to have a Mexican dinner at church this weekend...however they are re-doing the plaster in the church and doing a bunch of work in the basement, so they cancelled the dinner. I was sad about the loss of a really good lunch, but not about having to spend the weekend cooking and serving food! Since this event was cancelled, it completely freed up our weekend. I thoroughly enjoyed watching several movies with the kids yesterday and just relaxing around the house. We also had no events today, so we went to Walmart for stocking up reasons. I am happy to say that we have baby diapers in the house now, so we won't be having to stop on the way home from the hospital! The only thing we are missing is a baby to put in them! In hitting the 9th month, my body is totally ready for this baby to be born. My heart is totally ready too. I know in my brain that the 9th month seems to go on forever, and then you are serving cake to a 1 year old and have no idea where the year went, so I am trying to enjoy this last few weeks, but waiting has never been one of my strong points!

Santa has been frequenting Overbrook a lot this week, and Quincy has used every opportunity she can to tell him "I am NOT on the naughty list" - I guess we have been telling her that a lot lately!

Cameron got news on his basketball team, and so that begins. Colin will have his first wrestling tournament the day after Christmas. Winter activities are going to be in full swing before we know what hit us!

No more mystery

I had a sonogram yesterday. My doctor thought that the baby was possibly quite big, and possibly breach. This baby was neither one of those things, but they did say that they think it is a girl. The lady did tell us that she was making an educated guess, so I guess that there is always the possibility that she was wrong. Our little girl looks very healthy and strong and now we are just waiting! I went in with the idea that maybe we should wait to find out, but once they started looking, I just couldn't keep from asking!

This actually works out very well, because I had given a lot of our baby clothes away, and the ones I have left are mostly pink. I had already warned Jim that if this baby was a boy, he would be wearing lots of pink. Real men wear pink though, so it would have been alright! We are thankful that everything with the little one looks good, and that I am feeling mostly good, and its just about waiting now!

Thankful for our insanity

We are having a great, but insanely busy Thanksgiving weekend. We started out on Wednesday with me having a doctor appointment, and while I was gone the kids started cleaning for Thanksgiving dinner. They did a pretty good job while I was gone. My doctor appointment went OK, but my doctor has decided that he thinks the baby might be a little bit big, and a he is pretty sure it is breach. He has ordered another sonogram for next week to check the position and size of the baby. I can't help but wonder what difference it makes if the baby is breach or big since I am having a c-section, but he just said he wants to know what he is dealing with before he starts cutting. So we will have another opportunity to see if we can find out the sex of the baby. The kids are pretty excited. I am sort of torn, because at this point we don't have much time left, it might be nice to be surprised in the end. I am fairly certain I am going to be overruled on the surprise option!

We had a great, Thanksgiving dinner. It was a quiet day and very relaxing.

Friday we had a visit from Jay who is up from Kentucky with his new girlfriend. The kids, I must say were pretty well behaved considering how Uncle Jay usually gets them all wound up. We enjoyed the visit, it is always great to see Uncle Jay.

After visiting with Jay, Mallory, Madison, Preston, Quincy and I were treated to Disney on Ice from our neighbor as our early Christmas gift. She has also purchased the Colin, Cam, and Jim Harlem Globetrotter tickets and they are excited about that. I must say that Disney on Ice was wonderful. I loved seeing the costumes, and there really is something magical about Disney stuff. We even managed to carry in candy and drinks so we didn't have to buy the $10 snow cones or $20 cotton candy!

While I was enjoying an evening with Disney, Jim was home with Cam's birthday slumber party. His birthday isn't until December 8, but I was worried if we waited to have his party I might just go into labor with all those boys here. So we decided to do it a little bit early. He had a great time, and the boys were all well behaved, although they were extremely loud! They finally crashed out at 4:30 this morning...and although there might have been a day when I could stay up late, those days are definitely over for me!

The slumber party crew didn't get to sleep in very late, as we had to decorate the 4-H Christmas tree in Overbrook this morning. I have to laugh every year, because where I grew up, a red cedar tree was nothing more than a noxious weed, but when you are in our 4-H club, they suddenly become a Christmas tree! It really does look pretty nice, and the kids had a fun time decorating it.

We spent the afternoon getting baby supplies out of the attic and washing them. I am feeling pretty ready for our new little arrival.
Having been incredibly busy hasn't stopped me from being very thankful for all I have been given. I know I am blessed immeasurably!

Happy Birthday JIm!

It is Jim's birthday today. He was treated to an extra special day - complete with working at the city's tree dump, working to set up the school carnival, and then spending the evening at the school carnival. Top it off with KSU losing to nebraska, and I am sure it was his most perfect birthday ever! He was a very good sport though! He took Quincy to the tree dump, and they found a whole bunch of caterpillars, so she was completely and totally impressed. He said he had fun playing games at the carnival with Preston and Quincy.

I hope it was a good day for him, he is a great husband and father, and we are very lucky to have him around us!