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.