Goodbye, Precious Son

Our beautiful baby boy, Isaac James, was born last night around 11:00. He had passed away sometime in the previous 24 hours. We think it happened when his umbilical cord got twisted.

He was 6 lbs. 5 ounces. And he was perfect.

We covet your prayers.

Kindergarten!

Today is our first day of kindergarten. I debated whether or not to start before the baby comes but decided to go ahead! Hopefully we can get a good couple weeks in before we take a break.

Emmie is doing preschool alongside her big sister and told me all morning that now she is a "big girl". I was really proud of her for listening while we read our history and science books.

On a totally different note, I just took a quiz from http://mydeco.com/imagini/test/ It was great. My decorating style according to them is "Earth Mother". Interesting. What's your style?

We're Off to the Lodge!

It's that time of year again. Time to go relax by the lake for a few days. Time to watch my kids build sand castles and my hubby jet ski. (Normally I would be right there with him, but this year . . . not so much.)

I can't wait to play "Apples to Apples" and see if Ethan and Barry can top their "s'manwich" recipe from last summer. Looking forward to posting some good pictures soon!

Little Artist

Allison loves to draw and color. I think we could hang out all day and do art stuff together. She surprised me a few days ago when I was out for a while. I came home to this:

She did the digital version with a program called Tux Paint. I love it because the kids can do all kinds of things on there with no mess. But then she sat and copied it onto paper. This isn't very close-up, but the penguin faces are so cute. :)

Tree Climbing

Lately the girls have been begging Ethan to teach them how to climb trees. They know from their Nana that Daddy started climbing trees at about two years old so I guess they think they are behind. :)

My favorite story from Ethan's mom is the one about how he got stuck in a tree during an earthquake when they lived in California. He was 6 years old and she was really far along in her pregnancy with his brother Phillip. The best she could do was to hold onto the back door and yell "don't let go!" The picture from above is actually from a photo scavenger hunt -- it's Ethan up a tree at the library.

A few weeks back he finally took the kids out front to the best climbing tree we have and showed them what to do. They were so proud of themselves but haven't been up the tree since. Ryan was content to scoot on his bottom down the hill for now. With the way he climbs everything in the house though I'm sure he will be up a tree soon.

Here's Ethan helping Allie -- it was tough getting a good pic because of all the branches.

Emmie reaches the top!

Ryan scoots and scoots.

Something New

I have been wanting to paint more lately but it hasn't been the main priority. (Feeding the family, changing diapers, all that seems to take up the "non-bedrest" time!) Anyway, I decided to try something different and do a landscape. I'm not sure about this one yet. I can't decide if I like it. Any thoughts?

Finally Posting Again

I don't know where the last few weeks went. I kept thinking about posting but obviously failed to deliver.

It has probably been a month since I last posted and I will share some pictures as soon as I figure out how to get them off of our new camera. :)

Right now we are visiting my folks because I'm on "partial bedrest". Fun stuff. (This dear baby thought he might want to make an early appearance this last weekend!) I had to ask them to explain what the "partial" meant because I needed some parameters. So apparently it means staying down for two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon and then taking it easy the rest of the time. I was kind of looking forward to the downtime until I realized how lonely it would be! But I'm getting a lot of reading done.

Hope everyone else is having an exciting summer!