Guess who’s two years old!?

Our little Drewby Doobie Doo!

We can’t believe how big he has gotten.  Here he is in his first year. (I’m not sure of how many months…?)

And here’s our little guy last week with his beloved blankie.

He just is so adorable and has the sweetest personality to match.  We are so thankful that God brought him into our family!  What an incredible, amazing blessing!

H A P P Y  B I R T H D A Y, D R E W !!!!

Here is Violet showing off her newest onesie!  My friend’s family is stationed in Japan and sent it across the ocean with love.

Thanks you, guys!  She looks adorable in it!

We took the boys to the park today to play some soccer.  Collin was loving every second of it… Drew was pretty much done after these pictures were taken.  It was really fun and really cute.

Mommy and Violet spent our time cuddling at the sidelines:

Hope you had a great time with your family today!

You gotta love the classics like Rubber Ducky and C is for Cookie, but I can’t help it… this is my favorite Sesame Street song right now.  :)

This has been one busy week… are you ready for a big update?

Dave and I celebrated our 11th year of marriage!  What a great anniversary present to be home with our brand new baby girl!  My mom watched the boys whilst we went to our local sushi place with little Violet.  What a wonderful gift from my mom!  It was awesome!  Violet gave us the gift of sleeping through the entire thing and allowing Mommy & Daddy to have a conversation.  Thank you, Violet.

More proof that this labor and delivery was totally different from my last two:  I actually felt up to a little trip to a tea room with my mom.  I was so excited to squeeze in some special time with just my mom.  And it wound up being so cute because it turned out to be Violet’s first “tea” with the girls.

Our beautiful little Violet had her first bath this week!  I may post video of this later – or not – you’ll have to wait and see.  :P

It’s amazing how much I just already adore her.

While my mom was in town we thought we’d grab the chance to celebrate Drew’s 2nd birthday since it’s only a couple weeks away!  Halloween afternoon we decorated, opened presents and had yummy cupcakes.  Here he is looking at the Thomas the Tank Engine balloon my mom found.

It’s just not a par-tay without streamers!

Drew loved his new barn and parking garage!  But especially loved his new James Engine.

What’s all this hoopla about?

Baby Violet hanging out with Grandma on Halloween.

Grandma sneaking in more kisses.

Dave and Collin having fun.  Leftover streamers make an awesome mummy!

We also fit in some pumpkin carving that day.

Pumpkin Designer:

Pumpkin Carver:

Drew wound up being too exhausted to do any trick or treating.  I think from the mix of refusing to take a nap that day and being worn out from his little party.  So Daddy just took Jango Fett out.  Or Boba Fett.  I can never remember which is which.

As you can tell the poor kid didn’t have any fun at all.  Sad.  Just sad.

Quick picture of my mom with the grandkids before she took off for Phoenix.  We had so much fun with my mom the last 2 weeks and it was such a blessing to have her here.  Thanks so much, Mom!!!!

She’s here!  Say hello to our newest addition, Violet!

Everything with Violet’s Labor and Delivery went so smooth, it had to be an answer to prayer.  Thank you for your months of committed prayer for our family.  Not only did HELLP not rear it’s ugly head, but the entire process was almost easy.  (I never thought I’d have a delivery like that, so I understand if you completely hate me for saying that.)  It’s just unbelievable how it was so smooth.  We started pitocin at 10:30, got an epideral about an hour in, pushed through 4 contractions and delivered at 1:32.  Short and sweet.

Violet is a little sweetie, of course.  She’s a good eater, a good sleeper and a good pooper.  All of the things you want in a baby.  Oh, and she’s seriously adorable.  She looks SO much like her brothers and has their red hair… especially like Collin’s shade of red.

Here are some pictures from Monday – Saturday of this week.  Hard to believe she arrived less than a week ago!  Thanks again!

Here is one last picture of my massive belly just for you:

We will be heading to the hospital Monday morning to be induced.  Be praying for an uncomplicated birth and healthy baby girl!

After last week’s visit, my doctor told me she wanted to do another set of tests then decide the timetable according to those results. (Not the results from the previous weeks tests.)  Is that even making any sense?

Anyway, so she pushed things back a week and we’re not sure what dates she’s thinking of now.  We have an appointment tomorrow and will know more then.  (Hopefully.  She’s played us once before!)

In the meantime, enjoy some sweet newborn pictures and baby facts from our other two cuties:

Anne and May are having a High School Humiliation Week contest in honor of their new book A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS.  One way to be entered into the contest is to write an embarrasing story about high school. I figured that should be easy enough for me.  I mean, when was I NOT feeling humiliation during high school?  The hardest part was picking the best out of hundreds of humiliating moments.

Should I write about the time I walked dead-on, full force into a pole while leaving a building? Or….

Maybe the time I was talking with this boy I liked and it became clear that he had absolutely no clue who I was.  He asked,  ”Oh, have we met?  Where do you go to school?”  ”Uh, Marcos.”  ”Really?  I’ve never seen you there before.”  Perfect. Or….

Maybe the time I was in the computer lab typing away and had the hiccups.  I was talking to my friend and hiccuped at the same time so it sounded like I let out a extremely massive, extremely inappropriate belch.  It went something like this, “I think maybe it needs to be double spaAAAAAACED!”  I never felt like such a lady. (line up, boys) Or…

Maybe the time when I called my older, cool college friend, Steve, and begged tactfully asked him to go to Sr. Prom with me since no one had asked me and I was scrambling to be able to go to Prom.  He, of course, said he was tied up with some “frat event” he had to do, but I’m sure he meant he possibly, maybe, potentially had a slim chance of going to Subway with his buddy that same night.  (I went to Ed Debevic’s that night with my sister-in-law who took pity on me and got me out of the house so I wouldn’t sit around and mope.  We took pictures in their Photo Booth so I could always remember my “Prom”. LOL  Is she sweet or what?)  Or…

Maybe when my sister and her friend were walking and I came up in the middle of their conversation and someone complained of a papercut and stated, “Ugh!  I just wish I had a Band-Aid!”  ”I have one!”, I declared, and promptly pulled out this random Band-Aid from my backpack.  I didn’t think about how totally uncool and lame I would look until I raised my head from looking into the backpack and they looked back at me like, “O.M.G.”  Nerd Alert!

But no, I think any major humiliation moment for girls needs to include one thing:  Panties.

So I started walking with a friend of mine, LouAnn, after the bell rang and Algebra let out.  I was wearing my favorite dress at the time, a navy blue knee length number with a scoop neck and creme flowers printed on it.  It was actually pretty cute and I wish I had a picture of it, but all my high school pictures are strategically hidden tenderly placed in the garage somewhere where you’ll never find them.  Well, my friend and I walked the length of this LOOOONG hallway and were chatting away minding our own business.  We went to turn the corner and then we heard, “HEY!!!  GIRL!!!  YOU HAVE YOUR DRESS UP YOUR A–!!!!”  It was loud and startling so everyone in the hallway stopped.  We stopped.  Everyone looked around.  Everyone looked at me.  I looked down.  Holy.  Crap.  I was the offender.  My face immediately turned bright red and I broke into a sweat.  My dress was indeed up my a–.   And everyone was looking at me. I quickly pulled it down.  I snapped my head back up to look at LouAnn who looked as equally shocked as me and then we both burst out laughing.  I had thrown my backpack over my shoulder, which apparently caught the bottom of the dress, which apparently hiked it up over my panties.  Way up.  We tried to walk to our next classes as fast as we could, but we were laughing so much it was hard to get there.  Because as I always say, when you’re humiliated you just have to laugh.

Proof that long ago, I actually did have a waist.

I was starting to question it myself…