Easter - finally!

I am way behind and I want to post cruise pictures, but Easter comes first. We had a great day with going to church, doing an Easter basket and egg hunt for Rachel in our yard and just enjoying the day together. Rachel went with us to the Good Friday service and took communion for the first time. She prayed the sweetest prayer during communion about Jesus dying for our sins. She then drank the juice and ate the cracker, got a big smile on her face, rubbed her tummy and said, "Yum!". We think she got the point of it, though! :-)

Pictures of our little baby!

We ended up with some unexpected ultrasound pictures today, which was a treat. As you can see, the baby is cute as can be! :-) The baby was moving all around and waving its arms and legs. It measured right on track for where it should be. The reason for the ultrasound was not so happy, though. It seems about two weeks ago I contracted Fifths Disease. This virus is harmless to everyone except babies still in the womb. A baby that is infected can develop anemia, which can lead to heart failure. This is a small percentage of infected babies, though. My OB referred me to a Maternal/Fetal Medicine doctor right away and I saw him this morning. Basically, from the time I was infected there is a 12 week time frame that the baby could become infected. Chances are great that the baby won't be infected, but they will still monitor the baby closely through ultrasounds starting at week 19 until the 12 week time frame is done. If the baby contracts the infection before 19 weeks, there is no treatment option. After 19 weeks, they can do blood transfusions which help to heal the baby. The doctor reassured me today that most of the time, the baby does not become infected and even if infection occurs that most babies are just fine. Of course, we would love your prayers right now. First, that the baby will be protected from infection and second, that if infection does occur that no damage will be done. And most of all, that we will be able to trust God for the health and safety of our littlest one. Thank you for your prayers and enjoy these pictures!

Our rainy day activity!

Like everyone else around here, we are tired of the rain. By the way, I don't even want to hear the word "drought" mentioned this summer! :-) I've been battling a killer cold/cough and haven't been in the mood to seek out fun, indoor places to play like the mall or library. So today Rachel asked to get her rain coat on and play in the rain and I said, "Why not?". So we put on a coat and a rain coat on top of that, plus her umbrella and she played for almost an hour! It was her goal to collect enough rain water in her bucket to fill the plastic basket on the back of her old trike. So, she walked around the house until she found a good drain pipe and made trips back and forth with her bucket. She loved it and took the job seriously! At one point, she was so happy that she was actually skipping through the rain! The funniest part was that she kept trying to get Nutmeg to shake so that she could collect the water off of her fur. Mommy enjoyed watching from a comfy chair in the dry garage, while sneaking peeks at a good book once in a while. When I finally made her come in out of the rain, we warmed her up in a hot shower and bundled her up in her jammies and robe. A perfect afternoon for Rachel!

St. Patrick's Day

For a non-Irish family, we sure had a lot of fun on Tuesday! Rachel's teacher at school told them all about Leprachauns and they even had a Leprechaun visit their classroom one day during recess. On Monday night, Rachel decided she wanted to make a Leprechaun trap. So we left out some cookies and strategically placed a gold coin under a trap bucket. The next morning, she got up and was so excited to check the trap! Wouldn't you know it - that tricky Leprechaun somehow tricked our trap and escaped with the gold coin. But not before he made a mess with the cookies! Rachel was very disappointed that she would have to wait another year before she could catch a Leprechaun and find his pot of gold. Grandma Debbie made her cute shamrock shirt and Rachel made a special St. Patrick's Day bracelet. Rachel also had her dance class mini-show, but those pictures and videos will be in another posts (hopefully soon!).

Sharing Our News With Rachel

On Monday night, we shared our news with Rachel - we told her that she is going to be a big sister! We started by showing her pictures in her scrapbook from when she was born. Then we asked her what she had been praying for for a very long time. Here is the video from that moment.

Since then, she has been cracking us up with her thoughts on the baby. The first thing she said this morning when she got out of bed was "Mommy, all the baby can see is the inside of your tummy. That's boring!". She also said, "Our baby thinks it is the only one in our family because it doesn't know yet that it has a sister, mommy and daddy!". The sweetest thing is that she is working really hard at obeying the first time when we ask her to do something and she says that she wants to obey so that she can teach the baby to obey. When we went to church last night, she was stopping everyone she saw in the hallways and telling them our news with the biggest smile on her face! And when she got to her Cubbies class and told her teachers (Miss Tracy, Miss Melissa, and Miss Sudeana), they were so excited for her and hugged her and made her feel special. They asked her if she wanted to pray to bless the snack and part of her prayer was that when the baby is born and goes to the doctor that it won't be afraid because sometimes Rachel is afraid at the doctor. It's amazing how her brain is working and thinking ahead for the baby!

SC Snow!

We had a big treat this week and got six inches of snow! It started snowing Sunday afternoon with HUGE flakes coming down. It snowed until around midnight and the next morning we had beautiful snow perfect for playing! We did a little playing Sunday evening - Matt pulled Rachel on a little sled all over the neighborhood. The next morning, Matt had to go in to work so Rachel and I played for an hour and a half in the snow! It had warmed up quite a bit, so we weren't even cold. First she did her yearly snow angel, then we built our snowman. I went in to get a carrot for the nose and had the bright idea to use Oreo cookies for the eyes. Smart, huh? It worked great until Nutmeg tackled our poor snowman and ate his eyes and nose. I got him put back together, minus the facial features. Rachel then wanted me to pull her around the cul-de-sac on the sled. I'm neither as fast or as strong as Matt, but I gave it my best try! I then took a break on the front porch while Rachel got to work trying to move the snow in the front yard to the back yard one sand pail at a time. We finished up with Rachel driving her jeep in the snow - it worked pretty well for a while! Oh, we also spent quite a bit of time cleaning up the fallen branches around the yard. Thankfully we didn't have any damage, but we did have some good sized ones come down!

Our Gymnastics Girl!

Today Rachel decided to re-enact part of the circus we saw last week. Her sweet daddy was a willing prop for her show. He was a great sport since she made it clear that he was NOT allowed to move his head at all! Notice the pose at the beginning of the show? Oh, and she made us call her Hannah. Just a glimpse into our crazy, fun life!