Noah's first trip

We took the little guy down to Great River Bluffs State Park yesterday and enjoyed some great fall colors, a picnic lunch, and some short hikes out to panaramic views over the Mississippi River. What a great day!

Old stuff

Mid August we took a short backpacking trip up in the Gooseberry falls area. The weather was fantastic for us. We had lots of time to enjoy our campfires since we did pretty low-miles hiking days (seven months pregnant doesn't say "sure lets go put some miles on the hiking trails). Brian spent some time trying to "get artsy" with the camera, this is his best fire shot.

Photos of Noah

He's awake! These are pictures of 3 week old Noah. His shirt says Handsome Baby - wouldn't you agree?


A little bit of an action shot in the last two. He's busy learning about his arms and legs, he swings them all over the place when he's laying down.

Meet Noah

Noah James was born on Wednesday, September 24th at 9:40pm. He weighed in at 7.5 lbs and is 19 inches tall.









He's absolutely perfect, look at those tiny toes!







We got to go home on Friday around noon, of course we walked the few blocks. Noah rode in his soon-to-be favorite method of transit - his Chariot.





Sleeping like a rock star!

False Alarm

The little guy certainly made us think he wanted to come early this past weekend. I had the privilege of staying in the hospital for a few days and being treated for preterm labor. There are 2 things that I really don't like: IVs and know-it-all residents. In order to give everyone a fair chance at the guessing game (please join!), I'll share a few facts or comments from the docs.

1) He'll be okay even if he's born tomorrow. It's not too early for good health.
2) Some women who deal with pre-term labor end up being induced when they are overdue.
3) I'm among the lucky 20% of first-time moms who feel contractions before labor.
4) The treatment I had stopped labor at 3 cm, they commented that they have patients going around for weeks at 1 - 5 cm.
5) There is no statistical difference in outcomes for people who are put on bed rest vs. everyday activity regarding preterm labor.
6) I don't believe the baby has "dropped" because breathing is still somewhat challenging.
7) They think he weighs at least 4 pounds at this point.
8) Is my sense of urgency about getting ready for baby because of the "false alarm", or is this "nesting"?

That's all I can think of that might be helpful. I'm not going to put a guess out there because I don't want to falsely convince myself that he'll be coming in any particular timeframe. We'll be taking it one day at a time! I don't know if the game image will work to link you to it, so here's the real link... http://www.expectnet.com/games/falsealarm

He likes to eat...

Cheese, Fruit, and Chocolate are the top 3 foods of my pregnancy. I suspect the later two are just my personal preference, but I look for them regularly for snacks, etc. We are getting to a point where every time I sit down to eat a meal, the little guy thinks that is great play time and he should kick and wiggle. Maybe he is celebrating meal time. Maybe my stomach is that loud when processing food that he wakes up and fights with it?! Maybe I'm just too active/busy/distracted to notice all of the kicking and wiggling during the rest of the day, but I notice it at meal time (and bedtime, but that's a different story!).

I don't have much for adventures to report on lately. We're trying to come up with a weekend getaway for this weekend, but are having a hard time deciding what to do. I'm thinking about getting extra sleep, putting my feet up, eating some good foods (see above). Brian's thinking camping, hiking, biking, the usual outdoor adventure outing. We'll see what ends up happening!

Bad about keeping up

I haven't posted about our May vacation, June travels, Niece's birth, or our July vacation... Here's a picture of an elephant that I visited at the National Zoo in DC when I was there in June on a business trip. The elephants were particularly easy to take pictures of because they came near the front of their playground and they are large. The hippos didn't want their pictures taken- they hid underwater the whole time.

Our home internet access is gone now. We'll get it back around the time the baby comes so that I won't have to be cut off from the world when I'm home on leave. Until then, don't expect much here...

Have a good one!

Winner

Random Number Result = 1 (from 1 to 8).

The winner for the "guess the gender" contest is Sarah Carlson! Sarah was the first to comment and she guessed correctly.

Here's her prize:

This is a set of 4 that all have the same design, but different messages. The background on the coral is stamped with Papertrey Ink stamps and the messages are stamped with Stampin Up! stamps. I'm going to have to learn to make less girly crafts! Anyone want to have a little boy card party?

Thanks for playing! Now you can all go buy something blue ;)

He waves hi!

Ramblings

Hey! I know it's been awhile. We haven't had any good vacations or outings recently to report on. Here's a picture of the new hairdo I got cut in mid April...

This week is the final time to post your gender guesses - see previous post. We have our big ultrasound appointment on Thursday morning. I've been working on the prize... Sorry men, I'm not sure how many of you would love to win a set of Melissa's special cards, though I'm sure they were entering my contest for the competition and bragging rights only! Hopefully I'll post a picture of the prize before I give it out. If you haven't posted a guess, get it in here soon (Hint, hint, Mom)!

We do have a vacation planned soon, so I will have some material to put up here. Look for little European-like villages from SW Wisconsin. I would put some pictures from James and Allie's wedding, but I'm sure that they are going to take care of that on their webpage: http://www.allieandjames.com/.

Have a good week! I'll be back to post a gender game winner at the end of the week!

A little contest...

For those of you who haven't heard yet, we're going to have a baby! We are planning on finding out the gender whenever we can - we both like to plan ahead and be organized...

In the meantime, I'd like to see what our friends and family have to say?? Do you think we'll have a boy or a girl? I'll also make this your one and only opportunity to make suggestions or comments about naming this child... Leave a comment to enter.

You are free to ask any questions about my pregnancy so far if you believe in one of those old wives tales and want to use that as a measure, I'd love to hear it!

When we believe we know the gender, I'll close the contest and do a random drawing from those who guessed correctly for a little prize...

More Craftiness

This is the gift I created for my sister-in-law for her baby shower this past weekend. The "roses" are baby socks, hats, and onesies planted with kabob skewers into a piece of styrofoam in a little tin pail. The yellow wrap around the base is a sling for holding the baby - close and cozy for baby, hands free for mom!

I did a little stamping on the onesies. These monogrammed outfits will help the volunteers in the church nursery know who "baby A" is!

Ski Season Wrap-up

We've started the bike season now, so I thought I would post the final pictures from our fantastic ski season. In March, we skiied in northern MN twice. The first time was with the church young married couples group at Giants Ridge. The weather was great, the trails were nicely groomed. It was fun to ski with others for a change. Brian was pretty excited to be cruising around on his new "fast" skis.

Easter weekend, we rented a little cabin in the woods at Tettegouche camp. It was fun to keep the fire burning in the woodstove. The challenge with these cabins is that you have to hike in everything you need for the time you are there. We skiied in, but would plan in the future to hike or snowshoe instead. We hiked out... By this late in the season, the trails were groomed, but the snow was very icy and fast. Not the best conditions to get used to new "fast" skis!

Crafting

Some of you know that I'm a bit of a crafter. Since I left Stampin' Up! I've found that my new favorite stamping company is Papertrey Ink. Nicole (the genius behind the stamps) posted the suggestion yesterday of using patterned paper and a square punch for a card layout. I had a little time last night and found her suggestion to work perfectly for this card. It is made with some retired(?) Stampin' Up! designer paper, pretty-in-pink, and old olive cardstock and an old sell-a-bration set "So Very". The inside has some other various sentiments to complete my thought...

Sorry about the photo quality. I'm working on that...

Thanks for stopping by. I'll probably have more vacation photos next week after our ski weekend at Giants Ridge.

Black River Skiing

I am a wildcat...

We had a great time skiing this past weekend at some of the best trails we've ever skiied. Black River State Forest, WI was perfectly groomed and has really fun hills! We skiied about 2 hours each day, completing almost all of the "intermediate" trails in the system.

Forestville Cross Country Skiing

I got a chance to try out my new tripod and the camera timer. I barely made it back to the railing with Brian before the 10 seconds was up!

The weather was fantastic! We saw numerous people out enjoying the nice day. This was taken at the overlook point.