Baby Shower

On Saturday, the ladies from our church and some of my relatives and people from my parent's church had a baby shower for Esther and I. It was all very nice.

Hosanna made the cake - I thought she did a great job!

A creative decoration idea :) This is the crib from the nursery. Some of my little cousins sang "Jesus Loves Me", my aunt did a shower game (guessing which "old wives tales" meant the lady was expecting a boy, or a girl), and an old friend of our family's did a devotional.

Some of the guests - There was over 50 people there in all. My cousins from SD came up, so it was fun to have them there! No, Aaron did not attend the shower...but he did help with some of the setting up.

People brought so many nice gifts! Esther will have lots of pretty clothes to wear and blankets to keep her warm (that's a good thing, because the snow is really coming down today) and everything else she needs to be a proper baby :)

Rachel, Elizabeth, Priscilla, Abby, Alexis, Victoria

Hope you have a happy Thanksgiving!

Esther: Our New Family Member

I never did like pictures of babies moments after they were born, but just in case you do...

Sorry it's taken me so long to post about Esther, but I wasn't in too big of hurry because other people have been keeping you up to date - so thank you to everyone who's posted pretty pictures of Esther on their blogs! Also, I'd like to thank everyone who's been praying for us and who has brought us meals and things - we're blessed with wonderful family and friends!

For those of you who are interested, here's the basic story. I'd been feeling a little achy on Saturday and Sunday, and I woke up a couple times Sunday night, and somewhere between then and when I got up Monday morning about 8:30, I started having contractions. About 10 I started timing them and they were between 3 and 10 minutes apart - not really painful, but they also wouldn't go away.

About 2 or so, I went into the clinic and the Dr. checked me - I was at about 3 1/2, so she recommend I go to the hospital (about 20 min. away). Anyway, by the time we got there and got all settled in, (about 4:30) I too was convinced that this was the real thing. Everything went as well as can be expected - it could have been much worse, it was only the last hour or so - and the pushing (about 45 min.) - that I thought was really bad. She was born at 10:24 PM.
 Our family :) A wedding and a baby in 10 months - it's been quite an eventful year!

Since we didn't know if the baby would be a boy or a girl, we brought a green outfit to the hospital.

We named her Esther after Esther in the Bible and because it's Aaron's favorite girl name. We talked about a few others, but it wasn't a hard decision. Her middle name is Joy - like me, my mom, my sisters, a cousin, Aaron's sister, and one of Aaron's sister-in-laws.

She makes so many cute faces and expressions!

With the recovery and getting used to taking care of a baby, it's been a challenging couple weeks, but Esther has been a good baby so far - she normally only cries when she has a good reason, and she's been eating well.

Although, she hasn't learned to sleep through the night yet - we're getting better though - at first she was up every hour or so, but now she's down to two or three times a night.

It's hard to believe she's two weeks old already! She had her one week check-up last week and had already gained some weight.

We love our little girl very much! She truly is a blessing from the Lord!