Christmas 5 of 6 - more TN

Aaron opening his stocking - his mom, like mine, loves to buy and give gifts! She also loves to decorate and the house looked like something out of a magazine :)
These are on Christmas Day - they had a meal in the evening followed by the gift opening, then some of them went to Aaron's sister's home for desserts.
Aaron has 2 sisters and 4 brothers - they were all there over the couple weeks, but not all at the same time - even so, with nieces and nephews and an aunt and uncle and grandparents, there was almost always a bunch of people around!
Some of us in the dining room -
Caleb, Aaron's nephew, and Dawson, got there own little table :)

Christmas 4 of 6 - TN

On Monday some friends drove us to the airport and we were off for TN! It was a bit more challenging flying with a baby, but we didn't encounter any problems - and they didn't scan or search us!

We were supposed to land in Chicago on our way to Nashville, but because of bad whether there, they flew us straight to TN - it worked out wonderful because our plane had been delayed, but we ended up getting there about the same time we would have anyway, and the flight was pretty empty, so they allowed us to take Esther's car seat on board.

It snowed on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the 26th - Everyone there was pretty excited to have a white Christmas!

Us again -

The lights in town were beautiful! We also drove to Nashville one night and saw some of the Christmas lights in that area. One house had the lights moving in sync to music - pretty impressive!

Esther's first Christmas :)

Christmas 3 of 6 - Us

We took a lot of family pictures over the last few weeks!
I wanted to take one of Esther and I in our matching outfits...
We had our own little Christmas celebration too - we read the Christmas story from the Bible and had decorated a little tree (we both have a bunch of Christmas things, but since Aaron had been sick and we were going to be gone anyway, we just did that...), and we drank eggnogg, and exchanged a few little gifts - Aaron gave me a waffle iron that we tried out yesterday!
This is after we got home - the snow was all sparkling and beautiful, but the picture just doesn't get the look across.

By the way, we're very grateful that Aaron is feeling better! He's still more tired than normal, but all of the other symptoms have gone away - thank you for your prayers!

Christmas 2 of 6 - Grandparents

I think all the pictures I had of Christmas at my dad's parents were similar to ones on Mom's and Rachel's and Rebekah's blogs, but I'll post a few anyway - we had a big Christmas meal at noon, and in the evening we had a "white elephant" gift exchange.

Priscilla, Rachel, Abby, and Mathias

Marie, Daniel, Libby, Esther, Reuben

Ellie, Uncle Doug

Aunt Ellen, Uncle Ronnie, Melita in front - we were gone for Uncle Ronnie's funeral, so we were very glad it worked out for us to have Christmas early, so we could all be there.

Melita again

Christmas 1 of 6 - my parents

Hello! I hope you all have had a wonderful Christmas! We were blessed to have lots of "Christmas" this year - with my parents, my grandparents, just Aaron and I, and a couple weeks at his parents - so I have lots of pictures and will try to post them over the next few days - then I have more of Esther to show you :)

We went over to Mom and Dad's in mid-December so we could get together before we left.

I was going through my pictures the other day and realized that I don't really have many of just Aaron and I since we're always taking them of each other, so I asked someone to take this one.

Dad with the shovel Aaron got for him -
Amos and Rebekah
David checking things out -
Esther and I and Miriam - My mom had made finger food for us to eat and we opened some presents - so thank you everyone!

Merry Christmas!

I guess I shouldn't be complaining about Mom not posting! We're going to visit Aaron's family in TN for Christmas and it's possible I'll post before we leave...but if not, Merry Christmas to you all! I'll try to take lots of pictures while we're gone to share when we get home.

The above picture was taken on Thanksgiving -

Esther all dressed up to go with me to the Ladies Christmas Tea!

It's hard to get her to lay still and smile for a picture...

Esther and I in front of the church Christmas tree

We thought, since Esther and I were dressed up anyway, we'd take some family pictures, but we didn't like how any of them turned out - mostly because Aaron has jaundice and some swelling in his throat and felt he looked almost as sick as he really is.

For those of you that don't know, Aaron came down with a fever about 3 weeks ago - eventually we went in to the hospital and they told us he had mono and strep throat! The fever is gone, but if you look up a list of the symptoms/results of mono, he's had almost every one of them in turn. So please pray that he'll heal quickly and completely!

Esther in pink

Even though Aaron's not feeling well, Esther seems to be doing just fine - we weighed her the other day and she was 9 lb. 10 oz. and she's getting more aware all the time :)

Someone gave her this jumper that says "little shining star" and I thought that was cute because the name Esther means "star".

Sorry these pictures are so dark...they're just a few of her kicking and making faces.

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!

Beautiful, Busy Fall

Hello! I won't even bother to apologize for taking so long to post...I guess once every couple weeks is going to be normal!

In September, some of the church men got together for a prayer breakfast.

Aaron's been spending some time in Badger helping a church with some construction.

This church bought an old house next door, and is remodeling it into a nursery, classrooms, and guest apartment.

Aaron also went with one of the kids from our church to the youth conference in Ill. with my parent's church. He had a good time - they got to go to our friend's corn maze and in spite of some van trouble, made it home safely. He was also at a Pastor's conference last week, so I'm very glad he's back!

The whole group that went - you can't see Aaron very well - he's in the blue shirt in front of the red door.

While Aaron was gone, I worked on our wedding album a bunch (maybe I'll post some more of those pictures one of these days...) and helped out at the corn maze some since a lot of their regular help was gone.

The baby still seems to be doing fine - I'm due two weeks from today, but that's a little hard to believe. We went to the hospital one day and toured the "birthing wing" - it was pretty nice and I'm glad to be able to picture it better. Also, we ordered cloth dipers and I've been trying to wash the clothes we do have and things like that...

As far as the garden goes - we've canned as many tomatos as we could handle, froze some of the sweet potatos in puree form, pickled some jalepenos, as well as some beets, and are trying out some sauerkraut.