Abigail!

Abigail Marie Walls joined the family at 9:50 am Monday, November 23. She was 8 lbs, 5 oz and 21 inches long at birth. In just over 24 hours of life, she has been a sweet, quiet baby.

We came home from the hospital at lunchtime on the 24th. Emily and Jonathan were thrilled to meet their baby sister. (They couldn't come to the hospital due to flu restrictions--no children under 12 allowed.)

The official weigh-in.

First day of life.

Meeting Grandma and Grandpa Walls

At home with big sister and brother.

Meeting Momo Combs

Random thoughts

We're still waiting for baby 3 to make her debut. I am getting extremely impatient! Meanwhile, Emily asks almost every day if today's going to be the day. "I just can't wait to see my baby sister!"

Jonathan is still having potty training issues. I keep thinking about a comic from awhile ago that showed the mother saying, "Come on, let's just use the potty," and then thinking, "For this I have a college education?!" Maybe that's what they should have courses in instead of Intro to Philosophy.... potty training 101.

Emily has been working on a pinata for art for the last few days. What a glorious mess! Fortunately, it's been nice enough outside that we could take the glop OUT on the deck instead of IN on my dining room table. If it's dry enough, we'll start painting today. Such fun!

County Fair!

I'm backtracking a little bit in order to catch up on some photos. This was our day at our County Fair in October. It was chilly, but a much nicer day than the rest of the week, which was rainy and muddy and generally just miserable. The kids always like looking at all of the animals in the barns. We didn't get trompled by a runaway horse this year, although we were worried for a minute. (The horse was headed straight out from the barn just as we were leaving, but turned and went back in instead of coming at us.) We ate our fill of fair food for the year and were glad to go home and warm up at the end of the day.

During lunch, we sat and watched the horse pulls, which we had never seen before. It was amazing how strong the horses were--the winning team of "small" draft horses pulled 900 lbs and the big ones were up to 1400 lbs. They were all anxious to do their job--they'd barely get the horses hooked to the sled before they were taking off.

The kids love the fair rides. They make me sick just thinking about it, but whatever!

So all in all, a fun day.

Welcome!

Well, I'm finally giving in and starting a blog... I'm hoping this will be a better way for me to keep everyone posted on what's going on in our lives and so maybe I'll do better about keeping up with pictures and everything else. Please feel free to leave comments and let me know what you think!

So to get started, here are some pictures from Halloween, including pumpkin picking and carving and the kids costumes. They had a ball trick-or-treating this year. Every time someone put something in Jonathan's bag, he said, "Look mom! I got a treat!"

Here are Jonathan and Emily picking out pumpkins. There are advantages to waiting until the week of Halloween to make it to the pumpkin patch-- all of the U-pick pumpkins were half price! Jonathan would have gladly picked up every pumpkin in the field. It was muddy, but we had a blast!

Jay cleaned and carved pumpkins with the kids while I went to work. Emily dove right in to pulling gunk out of her pumpkin and she did most of the carving after Jay drew the picture on it. Jonathan was a little less adventurous but enjoyed watching the process.

Emily's final creation--she did most of the carving!

Jonathan's pumpkin (with a little help from dad).

A pair of horses...Emily has a major horse fascination right now and Jonathan wanted to be just like his big sister. He didn't like his hat thought, so ended up being an earless horse most of the time. They won the "most creative costume" at our church Trunk-or-Treat, which made me feel like it was worth the time and the hot glue burns.