Uncle Robbie's surprise visit

Last night I called my brother Robbie to tell him that I had sent him an e-mail with some pictures in it. He told me he wasn't home right then so he would have to look later. I asked him where he was and he said "driving." I asked him where he was driving and he responded with "around." If you know my brother at all these answers would not surprise you but his lack of info made me even more curious as to what he was up to. By the end of the phone call I still had no idea what he was doing. Five minutes later, my doorbell rings and there stands my brother... Totally didn't expect this- especially since we had also just been talking about how he didn't know when he was going to be able to make it up to visit us AND we had the very first snow storm of the season yesterday. It was a fun surprise.

Today we got to spend the day having fun and "shopping" as Maddie likes to say.

Thanks for the fun surprise!

Grandma Jo comes to visit

This week my mommy got to "sluff school" to come stay with us for a few days. We loved having her here. Unfortunately she had to go home today- we miss you already!

Besides just getting to spend a lot of quality time together, we were able to get a lot accomplished this week. Here are a few of the things she helped me with while she was here.

*Get caught up on all of my laundry *Clean my fridge that has needed to be cleaned since we moved in *Cook lots of yummy food *Shop *Deep clean my house *Watch my kids while I got things done (from shopping to showering) *Hand washed my dishes after every meal- even though we have a dishwasher :)

Thank you Mom for everything! We really do miss you already.

The Whole Story- for those who want to know

So this post may be a little too much info for some people (I'm not going to go into all the details) but I know that a lot of my friends want to hear the whole story of our big day.

Before I begin, I have to put out a disclaimer- this labor was really great for me but considering the LONG 9 months I had to experience before the big day (I was a lot sicker and had a lot harder time with the pregnancy) you can't be mad at me for having it so easy :)

Although I had been having contractions for the last 2 or 3 weeks, I finally started having some hard, consistent contractions on Thursday night. We were finally getting to the point where we thought it wouldn't be long before we went into full blown labor. And then they stopped. Completely stopped. I was so disappointed. But that night during the night I started having some really crazy pains that weren't contractions and couldn't sleep from 2:30 on. So in the morning I called my doctor to talk to her about this and she told me to come in and she would try to see what was going on. So I left Karl at home with Madison and went in to the office figuring she would say just the same thing as normal and tell me that I was just going to have to deal with the pain for a while longer. When I got there she decided to hook me up to the monitors to figure out what was going on. She told me I was having contractions about every 3 minutes- they weren't very strong at this point (I didn't even know I was having them because all I could feel was the weird pain I had been having) but she told me it wasn't worth sending me home at this point to wait for them to get stronger because it wouldn't be long before I would have to come back. So, I called Karl and told him to take Maddie to his sisters house because we were going to have this baby. Let's just say we were all a little bit surprised by this news. It felt like this baby was never going to come!

So I went upstairs and got all checked in while I waited for Karl to get to the hospital. In that time period I dilated from a 3+ to a 5 pretty quickly. Shortly there after a nurse came in and asked me if I was ready for my epidural because there were 4 girls who were all about to have their water broken (me being one of them) and they only had one anesthesiologist. At this point I still wasn't even in pain but figured it wouldn't hurt to do it then. So they gave the epidural and decided to give me some pitocin hoping to help things move a little faster. I think the opposite happened though. I was still having contractions every 2 minutes or so but they were not strong enough to do much. My doctor came in at about 2 PM and broke my water and we sat around waiting for something to happen. We waited... and waited... and waited. Finally sometime after 6:00 I had finally dilated to about a 6+. About 20 minutes later I started feeling a LOT of pressure. I told the nurse and she checked and I was now dilated to a 10! It took me about 4 hours to go 1 centimeter and then only about 20 minutes to go almost 4 centimeters.

Ten minutes later, Brooklyn was born.

And the big surprise- she had hair.

And there you have it. It was a long 8 hours of sitting around waiting but a relatively pain free day. Really who can complain about being numb from the waist down for that long when you can't feel any pain? I sure won't.

The story of Madison's reaction to being a big sister coming soon!

She's Here!!!

Brooklyn Kay is finally here!

Born at 7:17 Pm October 23rd

7 lbs 6 oz

19-1/2 inches

(just like Maddie)

But unlike Maddie... she has some hair.

Both mom and baby are doing well (and dad's rather proud!)

Sliding Leaves

When we moved to our new house we didn't have any idea that we would have such wonderful neighbors. Our next door neighbors are an older couple who I can't seem to keep up with. They are always doing something to "take care" of us whether it be mowing my lawn or sharing their wonderful garden with us. We love going over and just chatting with them as often as possible. Today was one of those days.

The weather was beautiful and the leaves have begun to fall which obviously means that playing in the leaves was a must.

Under 200!

Since Karl has officially made it under 200 pounds, bringing the grand total up to about 65 pounds lost since January, (which is probably the lightest he has been since he became an adult) we decided he deserved another blog post. He is looking SO good! Way to go Karl! We are so proud of you for keeping up the hard work AND keeping off the weight!!!

This past week we decided to buy the new Wii Fit Plus since he has done so well with the first game. There are a lot of fun new games on it (feel free to come visit and play with us sometime if you're interested).

Madison has discovered that she likes to exercise with her daddy.

But more importantly, she has decided that she likes to make her daddy's exercises even harder for him...

Now that's what you call a "Super Dad". Keep up the good work hun, we love you!

The good ol' college days

This past week I have been working on making a digital scrapbook of mine and Karl's 'love story'. In doing so, I have been going through all of my old college day's pictures and they really made me laugh. I think I did more childish things then than I do now with my two year old. So here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Playing cowboys and Indians. Alisa was actually going on a date and we decided to tie her up so her date had to untie her before he could take her out.

I still have that blow dryer... unfortunately it just died last week... :(
This was us ice fishing... really we mostly just played.

Our roommate fake Christmas eve. We brought all of our mattresses into the room and had a big sleep over.

How long do you think you can hold your arm in the air? I think we made it over an hour before we all agreed to put our arms down together.

Sleeping four people in a queen size bed- we really did make it the whole night like this.

Karl was a part of some of my college day fun too- here's the proof.

This is my soon-to-be-but-not-yet-SIL, Katie

Can you figure out what I am?

Finger painting with chocolate frosting- it's fun and delicious.

Ball wars

So I know these pictures aren't as cool to anyone else but I sure had fun remembering. Thanks for letting me share.

I Love It- That's all I can say

The Great Pumpkin Patch

One of my favorite Halloween traditions is Pumpkin Carving. Actually I probably get more into the choosing and displaying the pumpkins than I do the actual carving but I LoVe PuMpKiNs! This year Lacey and Steve asked us to go with them to pick our own pumpkins at the coolest pumpkin patch in Paradise.

There is just something about going out and actually getting to hand pick your own pumpkin- it's thrilling and exhilarating.

Pulling the wagon's through the patch

Our Little Pumpkin Family

Maddie and Ivy had so much fun checking out all of the pumpkins

In the end, we came home with these three babies- They are huge! And the best part, they only cost us $2.00 a piece!

Thanks Lacey for all the pictures!!!