Giving Thanks for Family

This year, we had much to be thankful for.  The Powells, Hensleys, Michels, and Perkins' families all gathered in Kansas City to welcome our newest addition:

Kinley Josephine Perkins, born 11/20/2011

Ledger was very excited to meet his newest little cousin and was surprisingly gentle and sweet with her.  He kept calling her "cute" and wanted to give her kisses.  We were very proud of how well he did with the little baby.  Kinley is a very sweet baby, but she has her sleeping schedule a little flipped around.  During the days, she slept like a champ in someone's arms, but at night she kept poor Mommy and Daddy awake a lot.  Everyone tried to pitch in a little bit to allow Emily and Josh to get a little bit of rest, but being a new parent is hard.

All of those newborn parenting skills came right back...

Ledger wasn't so sure about "sharing" his Uncle Josh.  But luckily Josh has plenty of room on his lap for two.

 

Josh's parents, Mary Lynn and Don, kindly offered to make Thanksgiving dinner for all of the visitors.  Sometimes combining families for holiday traditions can create an awkward scenario -- but we all had a great time.  Football, family, and food -- who could ask for more?!

Look at Kinley's adorable little black Thanksgiving dress!

Chris and I maintained our Thanksgiving tradition by going out and braving the crowds of people for Black Friday shopping.  This year the sales started at 10pm Thanksgiving night, so we were actually finished with all of our shopping by about 12:30 a.m.  The Olathe Walmart was packed, but it was a very similar shopping experience to what we have had in the past in Broken Arrow.

On Saturday, we got up early to go swimming at BoomMa and BoomPa's hotel pool.  Ledger had a great time splashing with BoomPa in the pool!  Superstitious BoomPa wouldn't take off his OU socks to swim because it was a Sooner gameday -- so he swam in his socks.  :)  Millie took some cute pictures -- hopefully I can steal them to add to this blog later.

In the afternoon, Oma and Doodah went to Topeka to watch Josh coach the Olathe South Falcons in the 6A football state championship.  The rest of us watched it on TV at home.  It was a very exciting game and came down to a last minute score for the Falcons to WIN their first football state championship in school history.  It was awesome!  We are very proud of Uncle Josh and the Falcons.  

Unfortunately, Emily was feeling particularly bad on Saturday.  BoomMa and BoomPa took care of Kinley and I tried to take care of Emily.  Poor Mommy.  After some home ministrations, she finally started to feel better in the evening.

We left KC early Sunday morning to try to get home and get a little rest before we had to head back to the "real world" next week.  We had a pretty restful day at home and got out some more Christmas decorations in the evening.  Ledger is a big helper and helped us decorate the tree!  With the extra lights and red berries (that Ledger insisted we put on the tree this year) I think our tree is just beautiful.

Holiday Weekend

This was an exceptional weekend and felt like it officially marked the beginning of our holiday season.

On Saturday, we went to the annual Parade of Lights with our friends.  The cold front had firmly moved in earlier in the day and it was COLD for the evening parade.  This year, we were better prepared and dressed to withstand the weather.  This year, it seemed like the parade was bigger than last year -- from start to finish, we enjoyed more than an hour of parade entertainment.  AND the floats were very generous with their candy distributions.  Very.  All-in-all, we had a great time!!  We know how lucky we are to have friends that will brave the frigid temps just to help us enjoy the holidays.

On Sunday, we awoke to a text message from Josh telling us that Emily's water had broke overnight an that they were at the hospital today.  We ran a couple of errands in the morning before lunch and then came home and started assembling our Christmas tree.  When Ledger woke up from his nap, he was really excited  to see the "lights" on the tree and wanted to help put it together.

Kinley Josephine Perkins was finally born at 4:30 in the afternoon on 11/20/2011.  We are so excited to welcome our first niece and look forward to getting to meet her in person later this week.  Once we get more photos, I will post pictures of her!

Quick Pics

This week we've had a pretty normal week.  The baby is moving a lot this week and Chris can even feel him moving around in there too!  Ledger has been noshing on left-over veggies with Ranch dip and he loves it.  Who knew I could get him to eat veggies so easily if I would just add a little dip!  Since I don't have much to update, I thought I would just post a bunch of pictures of my cute kid.

Nesting

Recently, I have been feeling the need to do some crafty type projects and mark some things off of my (very long) to-do list.  Chris thinks I'm nesting.  I'm not sure if it's nesting or not, but it's nice to get some things done. This weekend, we cleaned out our closets and took a lot of clothes to Goodwill.  I can actually walk into my closet now!  I'm very proud of us!

In Ledger news, he is finally sleeping better again.  I have no idea why we had a couple of tough weeks there, but it seems like his good habits are starting to return!  Yay!  He is still loving football, but we are starting to try to transition him to basketball.  We know we'll be watching Ethan play some Cougar basketball soon!  We brought his basketball goal into the living room to "practice" a little today.  We don't have an actual basketball, but the soft squishy purple ball works just fine for now. :)

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Celebration of Family

Today we said goodbye to Grandma Young in a beautiful funeral service.  Grammie Pam sang a beautiful tribute at the end of the funeral that brought the whole congregation to tears.  Ledger was amazingly well behaved through the service and, as always, helped our family smile in tough times.  Although it was difficult, it was nice to catch up with family that we don't get to see often enough.

We already knew that we wouldn't be together this year for the holiday, but we were disappointed that we would miss out on this tradition.  Chris had the idea for us to do a family Thanksgiving dinner after the funeral service.  We didn't want to add any stress to an already stressful today, so Chris and I agreed to cook the entire dinner and host it at our house.  So we shopped on Monday for supplies and on Tuesday I cooked two turkeys, mashed potatoes, and prepped for a feast!  Who says you can't make a full Thanksgiving dinner in 1 day?!  On Wednesday, Chris whipped up a batch of turkey gravy and I finished up getting corn, turkey, bread, stuffing, and potatoes ready.  As amazing as it seems, when the family arrived for dinner, it was ready right away and we were relatively stress free!  Everyone loved sitting together as a family and eating a no-stress meal together.  After dinner, we were thoroughly entertained by Connor and Ledger playing tackle football in the living room and being rough-tough boys together.

In all of the excitement, I didn't take a single picture.  Not one.  But I can promise that it was a day to remember.  A day to celebrate the life of a wonderful matriarch by enjoying the family that she held together and remembering the holiday traditions she built for the clan.

Pittsburg Weekend

This weekend we packed our bags and headed out of town to visit aunt Jaime and uncle V in Pittsburg, KS.  We didn't have any big plans, but we were looking forward to spending some time with family.  We got to Pittsburg too late in the evening on Friday to visit family.  We decided to go ahead and put Ledger to bed.  Unfortunately, we don't know how to put a 2-year-old to bed in the same room as us without having to go to sleep ourselves.  *Sigh*  As it turns out, I spent a lot of time in the bathroom where I could read with the light on and Chris went into his parents' room to hang out.  And Ledger still didn't fall asleep until much later than his usual bed time when I finally gave up and put myself to bed too.  (Moms -- if you have any advice on this, please email me!)

On Saturday, we woke up and had breakfast at the hotel with Pam, Steve, and Jaime.  Ledger just loves being with his family!  We did a little shopping that morning and then went to pick up Uncle V for lunch.  We ate at Del Rio -- YUM!!  Ledger took his afternoon nap at the hotel and then we met up for a quick dinner.  The restaurant had a big Pittsburg State gorilla out front, so we took some pictures (of course).

After dinner, we went back to the Vanderbeck house and settled in for an evening of football.  Uncle V even  got out some of the Star Wars toys that he played with as a kid and let Ledger play with those.  He loved it! Here's a picture of the boys watching football...

and this one shows just how much Ledger adores his Uncle V...

Not too long after this, we received the devastating news that Grandma Young had passed away.  We were lucky to all be together in a very difficult time.  Ledger was very concerned about how sad everyone was, especially Grammie -- but he continued to make people smile through tears.  Obviously, that changed the tone of our weekend.  Grammie and Papa left early the next morning to head home.

We took our time hanging out in the hotel room the next morning and then went to the Vanderbeck home to play with the toys again.  After a good lunch with Chris and Jaime, we headed back to Salina while listening to the Chiefs game on the radio.  Although we didn't have quite the weekend together we expected, it is always special to be together with family.

Meet the Baby...

Today we had our 18 week ultrasound.  The ultrasound tech took a ton of measurements and checked for any evidence of abnormalities and everything checked out normally.  Baby is measuring 19 weeks 5 days, which is just about right for our expected due date of March 27.  This baby is a real MOVER and wouldn't stop wiggling and re-positioning through the ultrasound session.  We got some really cool looks at the little arms waving and the little legs kicking.  As soon as we tried to take a video, the baby settled down a little bit -- but you can still see that baby wiggling.

And finally, we started looking for a money shot to give us a clue about the gender...

... and we got one.  It's a boy!  We are very excited that Ledger will have a brother to play with, but we have absolutely no ideas for a name yet!

This was a very good ultrasound experience.  Our tech was very informative and both Chris and I felt like the views that we got were really clear.  It was surprisingly easy to tell what we were looking at most of the time.

So... a quick update on my pregnancy.  We're at 19 weeks and I'm finally feeling more like myself.  My GI system is still not right, but I'm not nauseous all the time either!  YAY!  I have felt a few small movements from the baby, but nothing definitive.  The baby was dancing around on ultrasound today, so I'm sure in a few weeks I'll really be able to feel him dancing around in my belly!

Star Wars Halloween

Since Daddy is the Halloween-king around here, we usually let him dictate the costume situation for our family. This year, he planned to dress as DARTH VADER.  We actually bought his costume almost a year ago and have been modifying it over the last few months.  As a Star Wars nod, we thought it would be funny for Ledger to dress as Luke Skywalker since he is Darth Vader's son.  (Get it?)

We bought Ledger a "yoda" costume from the store but decided it didn't look quite "Jedi" enough, so I sewed a  Jedi robe.  Sewing the robe turned out to be easier than I thought, so in the spirit of the holiday, I decided to sew an adult Jedi robe and tunic for me to wear on Halloween too.  After some discussion, Daddy decided it would be too hot to wear the Darth Vader costume in the evening and wanted to wear the Jedi costume instead.  So I went back to the sewing machine and decided to make myself a princess Leia robe.  I'm actually VERY proud of how these costumes came out.  I am no seamstress, but I'm so thrilled with how good we looked as a family that I was actually excited to get dressed  up for Halloween!

We were also very fortunate to have our family around for the holiday this year.  Oma Hensley showed up to the Heusner halloween parade to watch Mr. Michel lead his classroom of kids around the school.  Grammie and Papa Michel went trick-or-treating downtown with us and treated us to dinner.  We had a fantastic day, but now we're exhausted!!