A few pictures of Sabrina

"Big" brother with Sabrina.
He loves her a lot - but doesn't quite know how to help yet. We mostly just try to keep him from sitting on her head and poking her eye out.

Those PJs are a little big.

Just sitting around.

Sabrina is following the pattern of her siblings. They all slept - in the same "touchdown" position. According to Marci I do the same thing.

Sabrina is here!

Yep - she's finally here, and we finally named her.

Things progressed sort of slowly and she got an epidural at around 10:30. Dr. Beck finally came in at 12:40 and broke her water, and things went very quickly after that. 30 minutes later she was dialated to a 10 and she was ready to push. It didn't take long.

Sabrina entered the world at 1:28 PM - she weighed in at 8 lbs. 8 oz. and came in at just shy of 20 inches in length. And she has a pair of lungs on her too. We found that out in a hurry - which was probably the one and only time we'll be really happy to hear her cry.

Everyone is healthy and happy and doing just fine.

Some pictures from day one (click on the images for a larger version):


Here is Marci just before we went to the hospital. Maximum belly extension!

The happy mother - this is about 2 minutes after the birth.

The proud daddy - about 10 minutes after birth.

All cleaned up! (I won't show you any of the shots of her before she got all cleaned off.)

Marci finally holds Sabrina after she's been all cleaned up.

Caleb is clearly happy to have his baby sister here.

Gavin couldn't wait to see his sister. He climbed right up onto the cart to get a look.

Look at those feet!

There are eyes in there - she actually had them open quite a bit, I just didn't get a good picture of her.

Sabrina is clearly tired after the move.

When she fell asleep - she really fell asleep. Nothing we could do would wake her up. But that's a good thing, both mommy and baby could use a good sleep.

More later.

My latest adventure

Head over to my other blog where I posted some pictures from my latest hike.

10+ miles over the length of the Superstition Mountain Ridgeline.

FANTASTIC hike. Go forth and view.

Family pictures

We got our family pictures taken. We're still waiting for the whole family picture to arrive, but I thought I'd post the other pictures now.




Them's some good looking kids.

Smile!

This is Caleb's school picture.

And yes, he smiles like that when you tell him to smile.

We're working on it.

Climb on in!

Gavin has discovered that he can climb. He gets into/onto anything he can reach. His favorite things to climb into are the dryer and the dish washer. He would try the oven too if we weren't watching.

Strangely enough, it hasn't occured to him to climb out of his crib yet.

Thank goodness for small favors.

Haloween

We had a good Haloween holiday. For handing out candy I got 2 of my neighbors together and we brought my grill around, set up a TV to watch the football game (we tapped into my neighbors cable) and then grilled steaks and watched football while handing out candy. Every dad that came by was visibly impressed/jealous. It was great.

Anyway, here are the pics of the kids.

Caleb was very excited to carve pumpkins. He designed each pumpkin and tried to help in the actual carving. Naturally, I did most of the work.

The final product.

Caleb wanted to be Batman this year (he was Spiderman last year).

Gavin wore Caleb's Pinochio outfit (a gift from his Aunt and Uncle ) - he wasn't too fond of it though. We had about 5, maybe 10 minutes of him in it, and then he started to rip it off.

Overall though, everyone had a great time, and we're still working through the candy Caleb collected.

Cousin's, or twins?

Seriously, take a gander at the similarities in the profile between these two. They may be more than a year appart in age - but they could easily be twins.

Gavin: rat, or boy?

Seriously, what the heck is he trying to do?



Look at all that drool on the screen!

He's actually completely destroyed our screen door. He loves pounding on it and has run into it a few times - the screen has ripped off of the door frame. And the Beaver-boy act isn't new - he does that all the time.

Weird.

All I want for Christmas...

...is my four front teeth!

Learning to tie....

Caleb has decided that he needs to be able to tie his own shoes. We're still practicing, but this picture is from the Sunday when he came to me and asked me, totally out of the blue, to help him learn to tie his shoes.

Gavin walks....destruction is upon us!

At just past 9 months Gavin decided that he would start walking. By the end of that week he was waling like a champ.

Marci's kind of ticked. She didn't want him walking so soon. And with good reason...he's totally destroyed our house in a very systematic and efficient manner.

1st day of Kindergarden

Well, we finally sent Caleb off to the "Big Boy School" as Caleb refers it. His first day at 1/2 day K. We saw a couple of parents who were crying - however, we were more of the opinion that this was the greatest thing ever.

Caleb got a new Batman backpack just for the occasion.

He insisted on walking even though it was like 110 outside.

After it was over, we couldn't wait to tell mommy how cool it was.

He's still excited every day to go to school. He loves it. He'll learn soon enough...

4th of July

Okay...so...fine, this is a little behind. Oh, well. This will help provide a little context for how quickly Gavin is growing up.

Anyway, we went on Saturday night to watch a fireworks display at a mortuary near our house (yes, a mortuary - don't ask, we don't know - but it's a good party anyway). Here are some shots from that night.

The mortuary sponsors a pretty good party, and they come around just after the sun sets to hand out popsicles to everyone there. This was Gavin's first "cold treat" experience, and needless to say, he was pleased.

Gavin actually had a ball - just watching people and having everyone entertain him.

Just wait till you see the pictures in the next post - you won't believe it.

Gavin really enjoyed the show - he was smiling and having a great time.

Caleb, being the pyro that all young boys are, of course had a marvelous time.

And it was quite the show.



I wish I had brought a tripod for this shot - I couldn't see where I was aiming, but it turned out okay.

So, that was our 4th of July celebration this year. Good times.

A plethora of photos...

Just a few cute photos taken recently - in no particular order:

Gavin eatin on the LoveSac - the only place where he'll stay still long enough to get a few decent sips out of his bottle.

Gavin's first time swimming - he enjoyed it as long as he wasn't getting splashed. In fact he enjoyed it so much....

...that he fell asleep in his float.

Dude will be walking before you know it.

Caleb certainly loves his little brother...

...they play together quite a bit, but Caleb wants Gavin to be big NOW, so that they can wrestle and stuff.

Maybe if Caleb learned to smile....

Grandpa and the boys

Just a little picture from the last time grandpa was in town.

Kentucky Derby

Marci and I have a semi tradition of watching the Kentucky Derby every year. We could care less about horse racing in general, but, it's true what they say, the Kentucky Derby is the most exciting 2 minutes in sports.

This year we had a party and invited some friends over. Since the Derby is all about big, ugly hats for the ladies, the rule was that the women had to wear hats of some sort.

Here were the results:

Gavin got into the act as well:


It was a really fun day. Homemade hamburgers, good conversations and the kids even had their own horse race with stick ponies after the real race was over.

Rock climbing Caleb

We had a stake activity called "Family Fun Day" - basically a small fair type thing at our stake president's farm. They had a small climbing wall there that Caleb REALLY wanted to climb. He did okay - this picture is essentially as high as he got before getting scared.

Marci did it too and got all the way to the top.

Bathing the boy

Gavin really likes having a bath. It's great fun (apparently) to splash around and (again, apparently) chew on the washcloth.

He's just stinkin' cute is all I have to say.