Strawberry Pickin (and eating of course!)

One of the benefits of HomeSchooling the kids is that Lauren is able to take them on field trips during the school-week. While other kids are stuck behind bars in class, they are able to knock out their work and then go get some living under their belts :)



The most recent trip was to the Pick-Your-Own-Berries farm. This was Claire's first experience with Strawberries, and there is one thoroughly ruined outfit to prove that she thought she was in heaven (an all you can eat Heaven!).



A good haul


Did you pay for that one?


A good afternoons work


All cleaned up and happy


Strawberries zap the strength


You can view all the pictures from the day (33) in the slideshow

Claires Birth: Redux

The first post we had for Claires birth was sparse to say the least. We snapped a ton of photos in our 2.5 days in the hospital, and have a bunch that are worth sharing. Here is a slideshow of some of the better shots we captured.

As a reminder you can click on the image itself to go to the next one in the list, or you can hover your mouse at the bottom of the image to get a menu where you can chose an individual photo.



Here is a brief rundown of Mondays Events:

6:00a: Lauren wakes up from having contractions off and on all night long.
8:00a: Eli wakes up :)
10:00a: Lauren is pretty convinced that these are not false labour due to the severity of them, so we decide to go into Easton and do some shopping and chores to stall and get a bit further into labour.
11:30a: As we are walking out of Target Lauren turns and says (in the middle of a contraction) "I think we need to drop the kids off now"
11:31a: We drop the kids off :)
12:00p: We get to the hospital to get checked and Lauren is now at 6cm and 60% effacement.
12:45p: They give us a room and take care of Laurens IV that she needed.
1:30p: Karen; the resident Labour Therapist comes in to help Lauren with the labour by giving her massages, accupressure, technique on the birthing ball, and general encouragement. She was pretty awesome and a great help.
2:45p: The doctor comes in and checks Lauren; now at 8cm and 80% effaced. She offers to break the water and once she does the contractions kick up.
3:00p: Lauren starts to feel the need to push and the doctor say "Go for it"
3:07p: We've got a kid!

All in all things went really smoothly, and relatively quickly. No doubt God really blessed us throughout this labour and birth, payment for having James? ;) Were really glad that it went down the way it did, and are now back home just getting settled into family life with 3 kids!

Shes Here!

Claire Aryn Taylor was born at 3:07p on Monday June 16th. She was 7lbs 13oz, and came in at 20.5 inches long/tall (however they measure that :)

Good job to everyone who picked Aryn in the poll...and shame on you whoever wanted our daughters name to be Clarinette (just kidding :) Well have more on the name choice and meanings up soon.

Super cute and very hungry, she is now spending most of her time munching. We've got tons of pictures and more info on the way, and will throw it up when we get home (laptop posting is a pain!) For now, here she is.







Note: We now have these posted on Flickr in high-res, so if you want you can get prints of them directly from Flickr. Simply click on a photo and you will be taken to the right page on Flickr.

Renovating The Nursery

When Dad built this house, he did it right. That includes the location of the nursery; Off to the side of the MBR yet accessible through a door. Although well-placed, it was in no condition to hold a baby after years of not being used. So we had a list of things to do to get it up to snuff.

1. Remove old wallpaper (thanks Mom! :)
2. Prep all surfaces for paint (remove all switches, lights, fill/sand...)
3. Paint the ceiling and walls (re-coat of white for ceiling and Aqua for walls)
4. Fill the nailholes and gaps in trim and paint it.
5. Position all the furniture as it will be used.

It took the better part of the weekend to get it all done, but its pretty much ready. The only thing really still needed is to put the door in the jam (I need to modify it to swing the other direction first) and replace the carpet at some point.



The last couple of images are of the booty we got at Laurens baby shower. Thanks everyone!

The Waiting Game

Argh.

Alright, so we spent all day yesterday playing the frustrating game of trying to figure out if Lauren was in real labour or not.

She wasn't.

We had gotten up in the middle of the night, packed and were tracking contractions and whatnot (see below), I had taken the day off work, we had dropped the kids off at friends, went to the hospital, and in the end all we got was a good workout (probably walked 10 miles) and a day together.

Normally that would be good enough for a Thursday, but we sure were hoping for a baby too! Well, were just taking it as it comes and enjoying the time we have (thanks Mom for the encouragement).

8:00 AM
Well for the past 3 hours the contractions subsided and allowed Lauren to get some sleep. As of now, they are pretty sporadic again ranging everywhere from 15seconds @ 17mins to 1min @ 2.5 mins.

Who knows. It would suck to go through 12 hours of false labour, but stranger things have happened. Lauren is doing her best not to get discouraged.


5:00 AM
We've completed packing and are going to try and get some more sleep. Lauren is doing well (always a trooper) and is now semi-snoring. Im going to try to do the same for a bit.

Contractions: 30 seconds @ 8 mins. Regularly for over an hour.


3:30 AM
We are both up and moving about due to Lauren not being able to sleep well. Were gonna finish packing and see what she feels like in a bit. Hope we dont have to take the kids somewhere in the middle of the night!


10:00 PM
Lauren was feeling nauseous all through dinner and having some mild contractions. Weve just completed most of the packing and have it in bags lying around for when we have to leave.

Contractions: 10-12 seconds @ 10 mins. Sporadic.

Poll: Picking a middle name for Claire - UPDATED

UPDATE - 06.03.2008

It is finished...well sort of. We've decided on a middle name for Claire. Although its one of the ones on the list we're not going to spill the beans just yet.

So if you haven't yet, get your vote in before its public : )

Poll Results

Well, we've settled on Claire Taylor for our daughters name, however we still cant nail down the middle name.

We've gone back and forth on several choices and have narrowed it down to a couple (2 or 3) serious choices.

Vote on which one you like best from these choices (and one silly one) using the poll to the right. Not that we're gonna pick based on a poll or anything, but just thought it would be cool to have you share in the agony of picking see what you like!