Back a Bit: Crazy Day with Mom and Dad

The last day that Mom and Dad were here and the day of the baby's birth, was Crazy Day. This is a tradition that my mom created. My kids know it well by now. Every time that a sibling is born she gives the kids a Crazy Day following the birth. Since the baby wasn't born in time, we elected to go ahead and do it the last day that they were here. It was the first ever Crazy Day that ended up being before the birth. But every Crazy Day is unique after all.

I took many pictures from the fun day that I wanted to go ahead and post. My mom does such a good job making it fun for the kids. Mom got a painting project for them. They were magnets. She had them come in two at a time to do it with her to make it manageable.

Cecily had a great time painting two little wooden butterflies.

Ben did a turtle that turned out so cute.

Amelia did a large wooden butterfly.

William did a very detailed elephant.

Sam's was a frog.

And Calvin's was a lion. I guess Calvin was the one person who got kind of sour about it not turning out just how he wanted. In the end, my mom helped him fix it to his satisfaction. No one else had any trouble and enjoyed it entirely.

For lunch, Amelia helped mom to put slices of cheese inside of some hot dogs and then wrap them in crescent roll dough. For breakfast we had served dinner, which was a Mexican Shepherd's Pie, and then we were planning to serve breakfast for dinner. Lunch was these fun wrapped hot dogs.

We wrapped the hot dogs in foil and tucked them in these lunch bags with some other fun food to have a "picnic" in the basement.

The lunch bags had Toy Story characters printed on them and a place to write each child's name. I knew they would think they were fun.

The pajamas were part of the Crazy Day craziness too.

Mom took this picture of me. It was around 12 hours before the baby actually was born.

After dinner, while I was at home laboring, Dad and Mom took all of the kids to Wendy's for a treat.

Samuel took all of the following pictures on our camera to show me when he got home.

Frosty!

Yum. I don't know if the Wendy's trip will end up being a great memory for Mom and Dad, but I'm sure the kids loved it and it was certainly helpful of them to take the kids like that.

Next, they brought the kids home and put all to bed, we sat up and watched an episode of Little Dorrit and finally gave birth around midnight. An interesting day and evening. :)

Ready or not, Mom and Dad left for the airport at 8 AM the next morning. I have a group of pictures from a bowling night we did for William's birthday that I will post next and then I will return to current things.

Goings On

There haven't been a lot of goings on. Naturally, we're not doing much besides letting me rest to recover from the delivery and adjust to being a nursing mom again and including our new little boy into the family. But I have a collection of random photos from the last week or so and a few that I took of the baby last week to share. The boys worked together to sculpt this snow truck. They entered a picture of it into a contest for the newspaper. They didn't win. I think the judges were looking for a more traditional snowman. But it was fun to do!

Sleeping in the bassinet in the basement.

Fun cookies from a friend. A great way to celebrate a new sibling.

Yum!

Chatting with Grammy. She was the very happy recipient of a phone call!

:)

Cecily was repeating everything that Amelia was saying on the phone, pretending to be talking on her "phone" also.

Hanging out by the sliding glass door trying to absorb a little sunlight. Notice the distress lines in the forehead.

Really not happy now.

Trying the other side.

Better...

...but still there are distress lines.

Ah....found his thumb and all is well.

She can't get enough of the baby. He's only awake every so often. She's usually very close by when he is.

I love him.

His feet are worth capturing and remembering.

So amazing. The first week is always hard, but hazy with wonder and awe as well. He's such a miracle. So thankful.

Elijah's First Day

I didn't announce here about the birth of our new son. But most people have been able to keep updated through my mom's blog. Elijah Franklin Jones was born on January 29th at 12:15 AM, weighing 8 lbs. 9 oz. I will try to post some of his birth story and thoughts about how it all came about soon. Baby check.
Our wonderful midwife.
Proud father.

Relief and tiredness.

The next morning, after saying goodbye to Grammy and Papa, each of the kids got their turn to greet the new brother.

Sam's been waiting and waiting. The wait was hard for him. He finally gets to see that baby!

Whew! Safely here and resting peacefully.

New Years Eve

I had started this post before the birth so I thought I'd finish it up and go ahead and post it.

New Year's Eve was such a nice, relaxing day that I took some pictures of things we enjoyed. The kids had one of those days where everyone played so nicely together.
I found these two coloring together in the guest room.

These two were up on Sam's top bunk trying out their new Guess Who? game that they got for Christmas.

Someone else was busy cooking...

...and feasting together. They even set up pillar candles next to their places.

Hamburgers.

Next, there was a feast that was just for mommy.

Complete with this amazing dessert tray!

Later in the day I found Cecily cleaning up some debris that she had scattered from carrying around this bag of sweet potatoes. What was so great was that she went and got the broom out of the garage by herself and got her play pink dustpan and was doing this without any help at all. Way to go Cecily!

Some fun and festive food to celebrate New Year's Eve.

We got sparkling juice for everyone and I fried some honey-buttermilk dipped Chicken Fingers. We love to dip them in honey mustard.

We also had some brie with baguette for a treat. I had some leftover salmon and lobster bisque from a special dinner I had made for Peter earlier in the week, so I served up the rest for the kids.

Tired little miss. Happy New Year! Welcome 2011!

I'm tacking on these pictures of a different day, different feast. Ben and Cecily set this one up and I can almost never resist photographing their cute little parties.
This one included dolls and a towel tablecloth.

And they didn't forget to pray. :)

A Solid Exhortation

I was just over at Nancy Wilson's blog, Femina, and she linked to this POST. As Nancy says, I always "appreciate a solid exhortation" and this qualifies. So unusually good was it, that I wanted to link to it myself. It's for wives and on the topic of marriage, but the concepts apply to submission to leadership and authority in general. Anti-cultural, anti-human nature, it's not a real easy pill to swallow, but entirely Biblical and what is needed to heal the mess we make! Thank you to Dan Phillips for the good word today!