Baby Shower, Maryland, and More

 Aaron's aunt in Virginia passed away suddenly - since we did not visit the eastern relatives at Thanksgiving, we decided to make a trip out there and spent a few days at Nathan and Cassie's, as well as attending the funeral.

 This is the first time that Esther and her cousins have really hit it off - Anna still kind of did her own thing, but Esther had so much fun with people to play with!

 We went to Sweet Frog and she wanted to sit with them :)

 We had a good time - except for the fact that the children were taking turns being sick and almost every night there was a different one up vomiting every couple hours!

 The ladies at our church did a baby shower for us - In spite of the fact that it was cold and early on a Saturday morning, there was a good turn out and we had a nice time.

 We were given lots of adorable baby boy outfits! - and some other fun things.

 We also played a game trying to make words out of the letters in Aaron Joseph's name - a couple ladies found the word "pastor" and another one found the word "apostle"!

 Some of the cute decorations...

 They had a variety of breakfast type snacks.

 Aunt Rebekah K. gave the girls a couple pretty dresses and I was trying to get a nice picture of them.

 Anna is figuring out to smile at the right time :)

 One month old! He is a good baby - sleeps a lot, grunts and groans a lot, and is pretty serious.

 We love our little man!

 I keep thinking Anna should do everything Esther does, and she won't even be 2 for a few more weeks...

 This is her new pretty purple dress - she will tell you very confidently that her favorite color is pink!

 I think she's adjusting well to not being the baby of the family, although she "wants the baby stop it" when he cries.

 Esther wanted to get in on the picture taking.

Why did I ever think baby boy clothes weren't very cute? I guess I hadn't really looked at them...

Christmas and Baby Pictures

 Sorry I haven't posted sooner - I haven't been anywhere with internet for a couple weeks - We knew we were going to be busy on Christmas Day, so we opened our gifts with the girls on Christmas Eve morning...which ended up being Providential! Above is Anna with some new toothpaste - so exciting I know :)

 Between grandparents and church friends, the girls ended up with quite a pile of gifts - Thank you everyone!

 Aaron

 We asked our nurse to take this before we left the hospital - Baby Aaron was technically born on Thursday, so we ended up not going home until Saturday.

 Aaron David and Aaron Joseph

 We stopped at Grandma S. on the way home to pick up the girls - none of us were our best (the girls being away from us for over 3 days, Aaron had a cold, and the baby and I you can imagine...) but we took a quick family picture anyway - hopefully we'll take a better one sometime....

 When we got home that night, the girls had more gifts that had come in the mail to open -

 Anna

 I took pictures of the baby and couldn't decide which expression I liked best, so I posted a bunch of them. To break things up a little, I'll give the highlights of his birth story for those of you that are interested -

 Our church doesn't have a Christmas Eve service, so we attended one at my in-laws church - during the service I started having some contractions, but since I was planning on the baby not coming for a couple more weeks (Anna was 10 days late) I thought they'd go away. They didn't - we spent the evening with Aaron's family and they weren't bad or anything, but they weren't letting me forget about them either...

 We went home and put the girls to bed and packed the van, just in case. Everything seemed to kind of stop and I got a couple hours of sleep, then it started up again - by about 3:30 there were a few that were pretty long and we decided to go to the hospital.

 It was about 7 before we actually got the girls dropped off at Grandma's and got checked in. They decided I was far enough along to stay and since I was Strep B positive, started giving me doses of antibiotics.

 I had read up on ways to deal with pain, but found myself trying to come up with ways to speed things up... Basically everything went really slow all day long. The Doctor on call went home to have her Christmas, and I walked the halls, stairs, and basically hung out :) I was the only patient on the entire floor so I got very good care - my nurse used to teach Lamaze classes and was very supportive and encouraging.

 Toward evening we were realizing I would be in labor all night at the rate we were going and so we decided to break my water. Things still didn't speed up right away, I even got some rest...but eventually they encouraged me to try standing and moving around some more and to focus on breathing so the baby would get enough oxygen and I won't try to describe the next hour or so - I think I'd like to forget it...

 Thankfully, the baby was moving down at the same time I was dilating, so when it came time to push, it only took a few minutes. Someone said something like, "a new flavor for your family" to tell me it was a boy (the staff was all curious what the baby would be too!) and we're very grateful for him!

 Also, I've felt much better after Aaron's birth than I did with the other two, so am glad for that!

 Baby in a little cradle Grandpa O. made for me -

 Anna is trying to bundle him up - the girls are so sweet when they talk to him :)

 We were excited when Aaron was able to shoot a couple deer, practically out the front door!

 Neither of us had ever gutted, hung, or cut up a deer alone, so we've learned a lot this week :) We also celebrated our 4th anniversary on Wednesday!

 We needed to set the baby down while we were in the basement for a moment, so the girl's "piglet" snowsuit and saucer toy worked out nicely.

 We actually got enough snow that Aaron was able to take the girls sledding in the back yard -

 They loved it!

 Aaron had already gained weight at his 5 day check up and judging from his clothes, I think he's gained more since then. These pictures were taken today and he's 17 days old.

 Esther talking with her little brother...