Sisters!!

Emily is here!

That's right, Emily Jack was born Tues Jan 12 at 12:47 a.m. It was an unexpected and late night rush to the ER Monday night under potentially serious conditions, but everything turned out good in the end.

Within one hour of arriving at the hospital, Emily was removed via a quick emergency c-section. Emily had a rough first few minutes of life, but she's doing very well now, as is KayLyn.

Emily weighs 6 lbs 7 oz, and is 19" long.

We're so grateful to all those who have helped and have offered to help. We especially appreciate the prayers in our behalf.

Happy everything!

We have been doing a lot of celebrating around here lately. We had a wonderful Christmas-and Jessica even enjoyed opening presents this year!


We picked up Alden and Kira in Chicago the day after Christmas and they spent the next week with us. We saw the sights in Chicago and later traveled to Springfield and Nauvoo. We also celebrated the New Year together.



Then Jessica turned 2 and got to open more presents and eat cake!

"It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas"

(Although not outside-we have no snow!)
We got our Christmas tree decorated-and then redecorated it-moving everything to the top half. Jessica kept bringing us bulbs with the tops off saying "bwoken."


We had fun making gingerbread people, and......


a gingerbread house!

Autumn!!

October was beautiful!! The streets in our neighborhood were lined with trees flaming with colorful leaves. Most of the leaves have fallen now, but there are tons on the ground for Jessica to play in!


We went to get our pumpkin to carve for Halloween at a pumpkin patch in a small town south of Urbana. Jessi rode around in the wagon with the pumpkin and later we buried her in spaghetti, butternut, and acorn squash (which they were selling for 25 or 50 cents!)




We decorated Halloween cookies with some friends in our apartments. I couldn't convince Jessica to do much frosting, but she loved eating the cookies and candy!



We had wonderful plans to be Little Red Riding Hood, her Grandma and the Big Bad Wolf for Halloween....I ended up sewing Jessica's cape the night before and never got anything made for us. I still tried to be the Grandma, but Nate dressed up in his bunny suit that he used in a chip-making class.
Jessica didn't quite catch on to the idea of putting candy in her basket. Once she got a hold of it she wanted to keep it and eat it!

Pumpkin Carving

Wedding Trip

We had a very fun trip to Utah for Crystal and Mike's wedding!!

Jessi and I were glad to go early and help get ready for the celebrations...



We also had plenty of time to play games...



The wedding was beautiful, and we are so happy to have Mike join our family.



(Which is getting very large!)



We also got to spend time with Nate's family!! The day following the wedding we took a fun trip to Hogle Zoo together.



We were so glad the whole family was able to come.