We had a baby!

Well, our long awaited baby girl has arrived! 

Here I am, the night before delivery!

The morning of February 9th, we welcomed a sweet Charlotte Belle into our family.  

Charlotte because it's a beautiful name (and I knew a couple Charlotte's growing up who only made the name more endearing) and Belle because she is Daniel's beloved Grandma.  I also knew her before she died and she was a sweet, wonderful person.

Here's Dad with his fourth child!

Charlotte was born at 10:59 am and weighed 8 pounds even.  She's 20 inches long.  She is my "middlest" baby as Andrew weighed 7 lbs and the girls were at 8lbs 5oz and 8lbs 6oz.

Charlotte was delivered "all natural," yes, by choice.  Depending on when you start counting contractions labor lasted about an hour and a half or so.  Very similar to the timing of Eliza's birth.  

(Abby's was a whole two hours long.)

This makes three daughters!

Precious baby girl.

It was just too sweet when the kids came to visit.  They were so thrilled!  It wasn't long before they were calling dibs on holding their baby sister.

Eliza wanted to check out all of Charlotte's fingers and toes, so we took a few minutes to unbundle her.

The day after our baby was born, Grandma Stewart arrived to be our helper!  

She has been so kind and incredibly helpful!  What would we do without her!?

2 days old.

Grandma Stewart brought a gorgeous home-made quilt for her grandbaby.

4 of a kind. 

A lucky little sister.

It's COLD here...

...Well, everywhere except my fridge and freezer!  In there it's a nice 68 degrees.

Yep.  I woke up yesterday morning to warm milk and melted ice cream.  We rushed everything (thankfully) to our extra fridge/freezer and rescued most of it.  I called on our home warranty plan (thankfully) and they'll be out to "repair" tomorrow.  Sure.  A yellow fridge from 1972.  I'm planning on the replacement.  That's why we got the warranty thing after all.  So I think I'll start shopping!

P.S.  It finally feels like Wisconsin outside.  A few inches of old snow on the ground coupled with sub-zero temperatures.  Wooo, baby!!

UPDATE:  Alas, we have a busted thermostat.  And our guy FOUND the part and is fixing it as we speak!!  I can't say I'm not disappointed about not getting a new fridge out of this.  But at least it's working and at least it's clean!  I mean, might as well wash it out while it's empty, eh?

Basketball Baby

I feel like I've kind of deprived the blog of pictures of me pregnant (with belly actually showing).  Though no one has expressed disappointment.  So maybe you will now be disappointed.  

Anyway, here I am!  And a fresh hair cut to boot.

Let's work on the lighting, shall we?  Start with a flash.

 Ahh, this only looks half-decent because I used "warmify" on Picasa's touch-up features.

 Finding good lighting for photography in our house is hard. 

 It makes me sad.

Had enough?

Good night.

:)

Help. RE: piano

I have a question for you.  How do you get your kids to practice the piano?  I've started simple: you get a gumball from the gumball machine for every 10 minutes you practice each day.  They usually get 2.

But we miss a lot of days!  I'm only so good at reminding and reminding and reminding.

So...what's next?  Some reward system where they get a prize if they practice every day that week?  Or a bigger prize for practicing every day all month?  Charts, stickers, tracking...

Or should I take privileges away for them not practicing!?  (You know that's what I want to do!)

Without ranting too long...I will ask again, what works for you?

Quoteables

A couple minutes after applying a first coat of polish on her nails,  3-year-old niece Bethany reminds her mom,
"Aunt Katie needs to do a double-jacket on my nails!"
*   *   *
Andrew:  (eyeing something new on the kitchen counter, half disgusted) Mom, what is that?
Mom:  That's deodorant, but it's for women.
Andrew:  It STINKS!
Mom:  (feeling a little defensive)  Andrew, it's unscented and it's new and closed.

(pause)

Mom:  You smell dinner!

(Ham and bean soup, which happens to be one of my favorite smells!)

Happy New Year!

Meet "Happy New Year Baby"

She hopes your new year is full of happiness and frosting.

 In lieu of having real snow, we decided to make ourselves some snowflakes!  I've wanted to do this before, but with the overwhelming amount of snow outside, never really felt moved to go through with it!  But this is the year, baby!  I love how each flake is so unique--wish you could see each one in detail.

A...unique Christmas

It's not as though the barfing ruined Christmas.  It just made it unique.  But everyone has a sick Christmas or two in their lives.  Let's this chalk this one up as one of ours.

While we were all well, we had a wonderful Christmas party at church.  We had a beautiful dinner and show.  Abby and I got to sing "When Christmas Comes to Town" from The Polar Express.  It was such a treat to sing with Abby, I've just been waiting for the day she was ready!  And it came!  Here we are in our jammies, like in the movie.

Eliza missed the last week of school, as she was the first to get "the bug."  Poor thing was hit hard and puked, she counted and I confirm, 23 times.  After a several day recovery, she was ready for action.  Then, the 23rd, the bug hit me.  Ouch.  I was too weak (though feeling a bit better) for our trip to The Nutcracker on Christmas Eve.  Here are the attendants:  (One of whom would be getting sick later that evening...any predictions?)

Because of my illness, we had to cancel our fun dinner/game/nativity plans with our friends!  Ug!  We still managed to pull off a mini nativity at home.  Our photographer is not pictured, but neither is the next sickie.

Welcome to the club, Andrew.  And merry Christmas!  The girls gathered all his stuffed animals around his "sick bed" so he'd be most comfortable during the festivities.

 By Christmas morning Andrew was feeling weak, but no longer throwing up.  Luckily he could enjoy the gift-opening.  And yes, we opted to stay home from church hoping to spare another innocent family of the bug's misery.  Besides, who wants to split up the family on Christmas?  We did enjoy the Joy to the World video to keep us in the spirit of things. 

A little glimpse into gift time:  Abby was overjoyed that Santa brought her a BYU sweatshirt she'd longed for at the BYU bookstore that summer.  This is what she is hugging.

 Andrew gets a model SR-71 Bomber.  Happy building!

Eliza is pleased as punch to give me this cool black necklace that will go with some black sparkly earrings I have!  I adore watching how the kids love to give!  Andrew and Abby made some neat ornaments and a clay Christmas bowl at school.  I really appreciate teachers who take time to help kids give something special to their parents and families.  I think it's great.  Eliza started a gift at at school but wasn't there that last week to finish it, poor thing!  Perhaps in January. :)

 Bill (my OSU brother) stocks us up with this adorable OSU wear for our new baby!  We love it!!

Abby gets a new hat--she's been eyeing the ones with the ear flaps for a long time. Let's say it's gotten a lot of wear the past 2 days!

Daniel put together a tool box for Andrew, much like one he had growing up.  This one is special to me also because the tools are in the tool box my Dad gave us (that we've since grown out of) when we got married!

 A little Rock 'em Sock 'em anyone?

One of the highlights of the day was receiving a new pet!!  We are now proud owners of a hamster!  He's a Djungarian dwarf hamster and has proved to be quite friendly, despite many warnings that they can be biters.  So I guess we got a good one!  The kids have learned really quickly how to handle him--it's been a lot of fun!

I was a little worried about the naming process...would 3 kids ever agree?  Well, Abby has been wanting a pet hamster specifically named Periwinkle for many months.  When they saw the critter she told the kids this and offered Periwinkle as the name.  Quickly and excitedly, Andrew and Eliza both agreed!  Wow!  Done deal.  Periwinkle it is.

After a fun inside-day I needed a little fresh air so we went out for a short walk down the street at dusk.  Notice, no snow!  It's been an odd December!  Also notice who has his energy back!  (Though he was a little bushed when we got back in.)  In the brisk 32 degrees we wandered down the road and tried to not let the wind scare us away.

 But it was scary nonetheless!  (Peek-a-boo, there's the baby!)

Abby has us pose with the sign.  Keep smiling Daniel, cuz you get the pukes next.  (He's was really sick that night and has slept nearly aaalllll day today, the 26th.)

One of my favorite pictures, the last of the day.   Abby, may you have an unusually strong immune system. 

We had such a fun time with our surprises for each other, finding and making goodies for you, and loved everything you sent to us!  What a fun day!  Thank you for your friendship, and Merry Christmas to all our friends and family!