June Highlights!

Below is a collage of life this past month...

 Here is our little "Wild Child!" (We had to hose her off before letting her in the house.)

The boys having morning coffee.

Silas is growing well! He is a content little guy. Here are some of the many faces of Si.

 Lydia got a butterfly kit for her birthday. The caterpillars were delivered, and we got to watch them each form a chrysalis, and then turn into a butterfly! Daddy attaching a chrysalis.

It was super exciting watching them emerge!

 Our church hosted it's VBS this month. It was a root'n toot'n good time- cowboy theme. It was a great turn out!

 The kids together. :-)

 Daddy and Si hanging out.

 I was looking through pictures recently and noticed we have very few family pictures. So my goal is to try to get pictures when we can. So here we are, pausing in the midst of some chaos, to say "Cheese!" I think my mom took about 15 pictures, and this was the only one in which you could see all of our faces. We even got a great smile from Carrie- we'll take it!

 Painting at the cottage!

 A big event of this past months was.....Care's first ponytail! She rarely lets me do her hair, but this morning she was feeling gracious. :-)

 Si's first walk! (I washed the spit-up off the carrier after the walk.)

 Care couldn't handle all the excitement.

 We've had many friends come over for a visit. I usually forget to take pictures, but I remembered when our good friends, the Bussis family, came. Steve holding Silas with two of his three boys next to him.

 We had a morning playdate with my friend Jodi and her three girls. Josie, Care and Lydia hanging out.

 Some friends from Canada were in town so they came over for dinner and a visit. Here Gerald is meeting Silas.

 Care saying hi!

 Swimming with Grandpa!

 Topping off a fun day with snowcones!

Another big highlight of this month is that Carrie is showing a lot of interest in the toilet!

The hugging sisters... (melts my heart!)

Sweet memories...

8 years later...

...FINALLY FINISHED!!!

I am proud to say I have completed my Masters Degree in Education! I started this back in 2007 and have been taking classes, one at a time, for the past 8 years (pausing here and there to wedding plan and have babies). I probably wouldn't have completed it but I found out about 3 years in that if you don't complete your degree in 8 years, your classes start to expire, and you have to re-take them (and pay for them again- they aren't cheap). So that boosted my motivation to finish. 

It felt pretty incredible to hand in that last portfolio project of my final class- a week before Silas was born. Here I am coming home from that last class. The girls and Zach helped me celebrate!

The paperwork to prove it.

I have no idea if I will go back to teaching and use this degree in a classroom setting- only God knows that. But I teach my kids every day in our home so I know I am using it here every day. :-) 

Baptism!

 June 7 marked Silas' baptism! Here he is all ready to go to church.

 It was a beautiful service and Silas did great. The girls were very interested in the baptism font. Carrie even did quality control and tasted the water before Zach baptized Silas. :-)

 Lydia checking the water out too.

Zach invited all the kids up front to witness the event. It was so neat to see all those little faces watching. 

What a beautiful thing to witness your child being baptized and united with Christ in His death and resurrection! We promise, Silas, to do all we can, with God's help, to model and teach you about our faithful Father.We pray every day that you will come to know and love Jesus as your personal Savior!

May!

Wow- Silas is 4 weeks old already! He is doing really well- healthy, happy and quite the content little guy. He has a pretty easy going personality which bodes well considering his two older sisters are always wanting to be near him, touch him, burp him and hold him while he's awake. :-) 

Our girls hugging. They are very into hugging these days- so sweet.

Lydia making mud patties on the driveway.

A dear friend visited while she was in town. Lydia took to her immediately and they quickly became pals.

Care looking stylish with her shades.

Our sweeties ready for church.

We went to a birthday party at the Croc Center and Si did a great job sleeping through the entire event!

And here he is awake.

Si and Mamma...

Our four-week-old!

Silas James

On May 5, 2015, around three o’clock in the afternoon (2 days after my due date), I started feeling some contractions. I didn’t think much of it because I'd been having false labor regularly for weeks. The contractions continued sporadically into the evening. Around seven o’clock they became more regular and intense (again, something that’s been routinely happening).

Zach had a council meeting to go to so my mom graciously came to help put the girls to bed and stay with me. As the night progressed the contractions became closer and more painful, but I still didn’t think it was the real deal. My mom and I distracted ourselves by watching a t.v. Duggar special on births (very fitting).

Zach came home around 10:45 p.m. (late council meeting!) and as soon as he got into the house, I suddenly had a contraction much more painful that brought me to tears. Even still, I didn’t believe it was the real thing, so we said “goodbye” to my mom and started to head upstairs to try to get some sleep. Only five minutes later I had another incredibly strong contractions that brought me to my knees.

Just then, we saw the headlights of my mom’s car coming back up our driveway. She had gone only five minutes down the road and instinctively turned around and came back to our house. When we opened the door to greet her, she told us that she really thought this was it and that we needed to go to the hospital. At that point, I began to feel another intense contraction so we agreed! We grabbed our hospital bags and headed out.

We arrived and Zach dropped me off and I walked to triage while Zach parked the car. When they checked me, they found I was eight centimeters dilated – yikes! The contractions continued to come about every 3-4 minutes and they quickly moved me upstairs to delivery. We got into the room and started praying that we would have time to get an epidural. It felt like the contractions were coming right on top of each other at this point. Thankfully, only a few minutes later we heard a friendly knock at the door and I was thrilled to see it was the anesthesiologist. She quickly gave me an epidural and…bliss, sweet relief!

At that point, we could have tried to have the baby, but Zach and I asked if we could rest a bit and just enjoy the relief the epidural gave. The doctor said that was fine, so we did. After a bit of rest I realized I couldn’t hold off pushing anymore, so we called the nurses who called the doctor- it was time!

We said a prayer with our delivery team and after about seven minutes of pushing, out came our beautiful baby boy, Silas James! He came into the world at 3:44 am, weighing 8 lbs. 6 oz. and was 21 inches long. I got some skin-to-skin time with him and we said a prayer of thanksgiving with our delivery team. We were (and are!) exhausted, but overwhelmingly thankful to God for the gift of this precious baby boy!

Skin to skin...

Here we are with our awesome delivery team. Blast from the past: I coached the nurse standing in front 10 years ago in softball.

 Daddy and son...

 First family shot!

 Si's older sisters looking after him.