Happy Birthday Stephanie

I know I am a little out of order with the posts, but hey at least I am posting. Stephanie turned 6 years old on January 4th. I cannot believe that she is already 6. I can remember like it was yesterday holding her in my arms for the first time. It has been 6 wonderful years and I am so proud of the young lady that she is becoming. Her heart is open and softening to the calling of the Lord and we pray that soon she will receive Christ as her Lord and Savior. We celebrated her birthday with a party at Monkey Joes. Because there was no school on Monday we actually had her party on that day. She invited a couple of friends from school and a couple from church. All the girls had a blast and we were so proud of Stephanie because she made sure to include everyone and they all played really well together even though they didn't all know each other.

Easy Bake or Not

Stephanie got an Easy Bake Oven for her birthday this year. We had been given one by a friend recently, but it was missing some of the necessary utensils. Stephanie has been bugging me ever since to get the trays so she could use it. After looking at the expense to replace the trays vs buy a new one, I opted to just buy her a new one for her birthday. I remember having one when I was little and I really liked it. Now I must tell you that Stephanie is not know for her fondness of sticking with me in the kitchen. She generally will get started with me and then decide that she is done(way earlier than the task is finished). This is very much unlike Katie who willingly sticks the entire process out! So, I got the Easy Bake Oven set up and we were ready to bake. She chose the yellow cake with the chocolate frosting after no little pressure from mommy that the sugar cookies were too adventurous for our first time. I tried really hard to not just do it all myself and to actually let her do most of it. I am thinking at this time that maybe this will encourage and spark her desire to be in the kitchen more! Well, as our adventure proceeds she begins to get a little frustrated. There was so little batter that it was a little difficult to get out of the bowl and into the pan. She of course decided that she would rather relinquish the duties to me, yet again. This time though I made her stick it out. The finished product in my opinion was not worth the trouble, a little too thin, and not so appealing looking. However, when asked today what she thought of her Easy Bake Oven, she stated that it was awesome. So, I guess that we will attempt this cooking experience again and maybe next time our cake will come out a little fluffier. Maybe we will even attempt the sugar cookies, sprinkles and all!

He's Here

I know it has been a long time since I last posted, but I suppose you could say that I have been a little busy. Our precious baby boy arrived on Wed, Dec. 16th at 3:48am. While we were anticipating his arrival that week by induction, he decided to make his appearance a little earlier than scheduled. I thought I might share the story with those of you who may be interested and haven't yet heard it. I really want to write it down for myself though so I don't forget it. I was scheduled for an induction on Thursday, Dec 17th which was 9 days before my due date. My plan was to work on Monday and Wed and then have the induction done on Thursday. I went to the doctor on Monday feeling pretty bad with some very uncomfortable back pain that had been lingering on for several days. I was having a rather difficult time working due to the pain. The doctor checked me and I was no further along that the previous appt(about 2 cm). They hooked me up to the monitor just to make sure that I wasn't having any regular contractions and of course I wasn't. So my doctor bid me goodbye and said he'd see me bright and early Thurs morning. Since I was just so uncomfortable, I decided that it was best to call it quits at work so I proceeded home for my last few days before the induction. On Tuesday, I decided that I really needed to bake goodies for people at Chris's work so I embarked upon Wamart to shop for supplies. My intent was to finish early in the day and relax, but for those of you who know anything about my Tuesdays, there isn't much time in the day for doing much. So, at 10pm when Chris came home from his dinner meeting I was still cooking. He sat down at the table with me and I finally finished up at 11:30pm. I arranged and rearranged the refrigerator until I finally had all 5 platters strategically placed and carefully shut the door. I then walked over to the stove to finish cleaning up and ..... "I think my water just broke." No exclamation just a calm statement and then I proceeded to tell Chris to call K. as I walked into the bathroom. A few minutes passed by and I said to Chris, Did you call K.? To which he replies what for? I think that I ignored this and waited a few more minutes and then asked the same question again to which he responded "Why in the world would I call K.?" To this I boldly exclaimed that my water had broken and we had two children sleeping upstairs and we needed to go to the hospital! Now, I will say that once in the car Chris did apologize saying that he just couldn't understand why he should call K. as he was thinking all along that she was in school and he needed to call someone else instead..I like to believe that he was just in shock and not sure what to do as this had never happened to us before quite like this with our other children. And as he said, we didn't discuss who to call because this isn't how it was supposed to happen! I guess that God just knew that it was time for us to welcome Andrew in our arms a little earlier. We are so glad He did! So we proceed to wait on K. and I change my clothes and finish gathering my things, straighten the house and take out the trash(YES! I took out the trash). At this point I was not having strong regular contractions so I was just busying myself. "I think my water just broke." No exclamation just a calm statement and then I proceeded to tell Chris to call K. as I walked into the bathroom. A few minutes passed by and I said to Chris, Did you call K.? To which he replies what for? I think that I ignored this and waited a few more minutes and then asked the same question again to which he responded "Why in the world would I call K.?" To this I boldly exclaimed that my water had broken and we had two children sleeping upstairs and we needed to go to the hospital! Now, I will say that once in the car Chris did apologize saying that he just couldn't understand why he should call K. as he was thinking all along that she was in school and he needed to call someone else instead..I like to believe that he was just in shock and not sure what to do as this had never happened to us before quite like this with our other children. So we proceed to wait on K. and I change my clothes and finish gathering my things, straighten the house and take out the trash(YES! I took out the trash). At this point I was not having strong regular contractions so I was just busying myself. On the way to the hospital the contractions were about 4-5 minutes apart, but still very tolerable in pain. When we got there I was at 4cm and in 1 hour I was at 8cm and waiting on an epidural...I have never gone this far without an epidural and it was not my intent to do so this time either. I finally got my epidural and a little rest for about an hour and then my sweet boy arrived at 3:48am! He is precious and we adore him. That's his birth story and I just wanted to share it with everyone. Here are a few pictures of our little man!