Remember this December?

Catherine, baby Matthew, Daniel, Caroline, Dad or Don, Jr., Douglas, Christopher, David (how could you not recognize that dark skin?)

Okay. My siblings (and there are a lot of them: 6 brothers and 1 sister) will definitely remember this. It was one of our favorite Christmas traditions. When we woke up on Christmas morning, we'd all dive into Mom and Dad's bed and wait for everyone else. In this picture, I count 8 of us, but I can't tell if it's Dad in the middle with us (and we're all impatiently waiting for big brother#1, Don) or if that's actually Don in there with us, and we've just plain kicked out Mom and Dad. Either way, it's a priceless photo with fond memories attached. Mom, don't be too mad that I absconded it. I'll give it back soon. Promise. :):)

Merry Christmas, everyone. I miss you all.

Just Julia

Here is a whole post dedicated just to Julia. When she was born, I wasn't up and going on the blog scene. Now that I'm back in the saddle, so to speak, I'll go back and fill you in on her arrival to our family.

She was born on November 16, 2007 at 3:03pm. Labor and delivery could not have gone better. It seemed like I had been contracting for a month, but finally Thurs. night to Fri. early morning, they got real. I finally called the on-call nurse at about 4am. She thought that since it was my 5th time around, I should just plan on going to the hospital by 9am or as soon as the contractions got as close as 5-8 minutes. They had been about 10 min. apart throughout the night, so I was just waiting. Then, when the kids got up around 7am for school, etc. , the contractions stopped. Weird. We did the morning routine, called my friend who had offered to come stay with Samuel and Wesley, and got ready for the hospital - all with no contractions.

My friend got here, and we headed for the doctor. I was prepping myself for the inevitable, "Well, nothing is happening, sweetie, so just head home and wait." But, when she checked, I was dilated to a SIX!!! Yeah!! My ticket to the hospital. Everything was still totally calm as far as contractions, so we took our time to get over to the hospital. There was one pretty strong one with some pressure that convinced me we didn't have time to go home for my wallet (Yes, Mom, I forgot my wallet. I know. I know. I should get a purse...:)). We headed straight to the hospital.

We got checked in. They got the IV going. The anaesthesiologist set me up (and I mean set me up...I felt nothing. Ahhhh.), and Tim and I basically relaxed and napped the rest of the morning. It was so calm. They started some pytocin and broke my water. Things kept on going calmly. Finally, the nurse came in and said that from the baby's heart rate monitor, she could tell that she was ready to make her appearance. They checked me, and I was at a 10! She said, "Well, why don't we wait until she lowers down a little more. Maybe 10 more minutes." I was like, sure. (This whole scenario is unthinkable when you're laboring without that epidural. It's funny the difference. Both ways are awesome, but I'll leave that discussion for another post...) Anyway, I ended up pushing for about 10 minutes, maybe three times. It was all so calm. I asked Tim is he wanted to "catch" her. He was like, "No, that's okay." I looked at the nurse/midwife. Then, I had to idea that I should just catch her. She said that would be fine. It was awesome. I just reached down and caught her. She was so beautiful.


Anway, that was all probably way too much information. But you could have stopped reading whenever you wanted. Hee, hee.

Here are some of her first pictures:

One last picture with a very pregnant Mommy.

Really enjoying the epidural. Ahhhh...

The second picture of her. The first picture was a little too graphic.

I'm all cleaned up, but I'm still mad. Where did my Mommy go?

December to Remember

I think I've finally figured out how to make my blog look normal again (i.e. the title isn't floating at the very bottom left. It's at the top again like a normal blog...) Don't ask me how, but I did it. Phew! Now I can post blogs without being so ashamed of my lack of ability to blog.

We had a mellow Christmas. Just the seven of us!! That sounds funny. Do I actually have 5 kids?

Here's the Christmas Eve Pajama Picture:

Here's a hilarious video of the kids and Tim sledding on Christmas Eve:

There was a fun hill just down the street from us. It was only in the 40's that day, so rather than go off and run all the last minute errands I had, I decided to go and join them on the sledding hill...with JULIA!! I wrapped her in about 4 layers and headed off. She fell right ot sleep. When I got there, I just put her in the bike trailer all snuggled up. She looked so cute. Pretty fun.