she's here!!

I'll spare you all the details, for now, but wanted to get some pictures posted for those far away to check her out!

Emily Grace made her debut into our lives on Thursday morning, June 26th, at 10:08.
She weighed 7 pounds, 1 ounce, and 19 1/4 inches long. (she's little!!)

Of course, we're all in love, and are slowly learning a new normal.

She is doing terrific, and I'm sure you'll hear a lot more about her in the days and weeks to come.

here she is!

just barely

well, I have mixed feelings about this post. most obvious is my feeling of complete and utter thanks. Jason's office was spared from the flood. though just barely. if the river had risen as they were projecting, and crested as such, we would have had problems. major problems. but it crested earlier and lower than they thought which spared us. though just barely, spared nonetheless. no water reached the building, or even the sandbags.

the picture below is from our local paper, the Press-Citizen, and Jason's building is the one in the picture with the blue roof that backs up to the line of trees. as you can see, the building was completely surrounded by water, so for several days, we simply didn't know if it had reached him or the status of the office, as we couldn't get to it to check it out.

the reason this is so bittersweet though is because so many others in our community lost everything. while we are certainly grateful for our outcome, our hearts and lots of prayers go out to those who weren't so fortunate.

summer obsession

hmm, can you tell what we're obsessed with this summer?

we took the kids to a Cubs game a couple weeks ago; it was Abby's first game, and all three of them were super excited. It was a ton of fun; we took the train in and did the game, then train back out and did the zoo the next day. We got such an early start the day of the game though that Abby zonked out during the early innings on Jason's lap, and missed her favorite player (Soriano) hitting a homerun. She woke up for plenty of the rest of the game though, and of course in time for some cotton candy, just part of the ballpark experience. Each of the kids had something they were most excited about.....Matthew's was to see D. Lee make an out at first, Ben wanted to get a foul ball (didn't happen but we did come close a couple times) and Abby was just excited to be going to a Cubs game (the boys had been but she hadn't). It was fun to see them enjoying something so much that we enjoy as well.

Hopefully we'll have many more family trips to Wrigley in years to come!

It was a beautiful day, and the Cubs won! What could be better?!

six big years

Matthew turned 6 on May 17th and wanted an all-baseball celebration.

He had 4 boys from his kindergarten class over for wiffle ball in the yard, lunch, pinata, and ice cream sundaes; then later in the day, a family party with cookout and cubs cake.

I'd say he has it pretty good! But so do we....Matthew is such a source of joy to our family. He continues to be very easy-going and laid back about most things. He enjoys baseball, doing puzzles, playing anything with Ben, and music. (those of you who've seen his dance moves can verify, right?) He loves to dance, and his teacher has commented about how shocked she was when she saw this side of him, as he's normally so quiet. But for those of us who know him well, it's no shock; that's probably the more 'normal' side actually.

Anyways, it was a fun celebration and we are so blessed by Matthew's presence.

Happy Birthday Peach!