a late August day

I know it's the end of October, but I was looking at these pictures of a fun Saturday our family spent together (well, mostly together--Adrienne was at camp) in late August, and decided to post them. Above Lydia is showing her new snaggle-tooth smile in front of the Chico farmer's market. And by the way, California farmer's markets are awesome!!

Simon and Annie are running around in the fountains in the downtown plaza. This was spontaneous, which is why they're wearing clothes instead of bathing suits.



Jacob hung out in the shade while Simon and Annie played in the fountains (he's 3 months old here).

Annie and Simon love to squeeze themselves into the bars around the trees, and I thought Annie hugging this tree was great--she is from California, after all :).

Jacob's birth

For anyone who is my Facebook friend, this post will be redundant, but I did want to stick a few pictures from Jacob's homebirth up for the (few!) friends who aren't on FB! The above picture was taken a few minutes after Jacob was born. As you can see, he's already sucking on his fists (it was the first thing he did after he was born--seriously within 2 seconds!).

Aaron and Jonathan seeing Jacob for the first time...And BTW, the reason I'm not in any of these is that I was totally naked! Didn't want to show those pictures to the world ;).

Here is our wonderful midwife, Paula, and her assistant, Genesis, doing a newborn exam...

Look at all that vernix!

still sucking on his fists...


he weighed 8 lbs, 4 oz.

The proud daddy :).

Baby Jacob (and family)

So I've finally gotten to my neglected blog :). We've had a very busy four weeks, but here are some pictures of what's been going on in that time. As you can see, my little Jacob is the sweetest baby ever (oh, well I mean since Annie, anyway!). This picture was taken when he was three weeks old, and I swear he has been smiling since birth. He's probably the "smiley-est" baby we've ever had. I wasn't able to catch his ear-to-ear grin with my camera, but of course his "open mouth" smile is adorable, too.

Here he is before the smile--I should add that this post is "backwards", it goes from Jacob at 3 1/2 weeks (above) to him two days old (it was just quicker and easier for me to upload the photos like this--I'm blaming my tiredness!).

Aaron has really enjoyed Jacob...

Annie, Jacob, and me hanging out in my bedroom. Annie is utterly fascinated by Jacob and doesn't want to miss a minute of his waking life!

And her favorite thing in the whole world to do is hold him...

Jacob just waking up. I think he was less than two weeks old in this picture. And yes, I do sometimes use Annie's pink blankets for him!

Here's Jacob looking a whole lot like Aaron and Simon when they were this age...

Jonathan loves his new brother...

Sweet sleeping boy...

Adrienne loves holding Jacob and has been a tremendous help to me with Annie since he was born...

Annie, Jacob, and me in my bedroom again! This is what I spend most of my time doing these days (Jacob was two days old in this picture). I really have enjoyed nursing all of my babies, and am so grateful for the time I've been able to spend with them. Oh, and yes, Annie is wearing a Christmas gown, because it still gets pretty cold at night here (plus it was clean--clean laundry is hit and miss around here these days!).

A little bit of what we've been up to...

Things have been busy around here! I've barely kept up, but wanted to post a little bit (I actually haven't been taking that many pictures lately, due to a combination of exhaustion and busy-ness). But anyway, I couldn't resist including at least a couple of pictures of my boy on the court :). Jonathan has been playing basketball with an A.A.U. traveling basketball team this spring, and is thoroughly enjoying it...


Here are Jonathan and Annie on a field trip we took to a local farm--he was so sweet to let Annie ride on his shoulders because there was a lot of walking and it wasn't stroller terrain...


Our three youngest kids on Easter morning...

And me at 37 1/2 weeks along in my pregnancy! There has definitely been some growth since the last picture--only about 2 1/2 weeks till my official due date, but of course who knows when this baby will actually come! We are all really looking forward to meeting him or her and having a little baby in the house again.

A couple more pics

OK, strangely this picture was taken about 1 1/2 weeks ago, and my belly looks larger than in the one taken yesterday--I'm thinking different shirt and different angle?? With most of my pregnancies, my belly hasn't gotten very big (relatively speaking), although everything else on me does!! The other picture is obviously of Annie and Elijah sleeping, I just thought it was sweet.

Around the house

Here are a few random pictures of what we've been up to for the past couple of months...For some reason in the "posting" and "editing" sections of my blogger account, the photos are showing up as Html, which makes it a pain to insert text! Argh! It's terrible being so technology impaired. But anyway, most of the pictures are self explanatory, of course. The snow pictures are from the huge February snow storm--and the one of Aaron playing a video game was taken while the other kids were out sledding (that's how he preferred to weather the storm!). Oh, and the picture of me was taken taken today, at 30 weeks into my pregnancy!

The Perfect Snowflake

OK, here is one last video (at least for now!!) of Adrienne & Annie in the snow. It was cute because Adrienne was sure that she'd spotted the perfect snowflake in Annie's hair, and was hoping I could capture it on film. Unfortunately it was too small to be seen clearly, but it's still a cute video!

Addendum

OK, I am honestly shocked that I figured out (with some help from Elijah) how to upload our videos from our camera, to You Tube, and here! I admit it, I don't have much patience or capability when it comes to machines in general, but thankfully my new video camera (which was a Christmas present from my dear husband!) was designed with people like me in mind! I didn't add any text to the previous post, because I was afraid it wasn't going to work and I'd have to do it all over again. So, the first video is obviously of the very beginning of Jonathan's basketball game (he's #44, but of course easy to spot with his tall, dark, & "handsomeness"). His team had their last game on Tuesday, but he's had a great season (and only lost one tip!).

The next videos were taken today (Feb. 13th). We are having tons of snow here, which is fun, but I hope it lets up a little after this weekend, or we'll have some serious cabin fever!

My new flip n share!

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