Online Art Show

Blaine Hogan has a website that I like to read. Last week he announced that he'd be doing an Online Art Show and invited people to send in their visual art to share, so I sent in a drawing I did for a friend a few years ago. There is nice variety of work that is fun to look through - check it out, and next time you can participate, too!

Might As Well Be A Luxury Spa Treatment

Family Evenings at Home

The day after Miette was born, Jesse mentioned that he wanted to establish a tradition of spending time as a family on a designated night of the week, modeled loosely on the Family Home Evening of the LDS church. It happened to be a Monday, so we decided to adopt the actual night, as well as the concept, of FHE and officially begin immediately. Unfortunately we didn't take any pictures that first time, but we had a nice time in the hospital room together.


The next week we decided to go to the park across the street. It was a very pleasant evening and we did a little reading, but mainly just laid in the grass. We weren't technically at home, I guess, but it was good enough for us.

Last week things took an interesting turn as we more fully
explored the family culture we hope to foster.

Because we're not actually Mormon, and we've essentially lifted almost everything about the idea from them, we'd like to at least come up with an original term to use, but so far we've just been calling it Family Home Evening for lack of anything better.
If you have suggestions for a new title, please share in the comments!

Birth Day...Fun(?)

After we arrived back home Saturday night, contractions continued unabated. Sara came over and watched Uncle Buck with me while Jesse took a nap. I tried unsuccessfully to get a bit of sleep myself, and we headed to the hospital a little after midnight.

The rest of the night/morning were not so fun for me, and by the next morning around 8:00 or 9:00 I didn't have much endurance left. We decided that after 30 hours of continual labor with no sleep and little food, an epidural was a great option. I was disappointed not to be able to continue with an unmedicated birth, but so relieved to be able to rest a little!

Here's Jesse enjoying some of that relief:

It is at this point in our story that I would like to pause for a moment and explore a small detail. Notice the nice gray University of Portland shirt my husband is wearing.

Now let's go back and observe some of Tobin's friday night birthday festivities:

Above, you'll see Jesse dancing with Tobin's friend's mom.

And here's some of the aftermath.

Same shirt.

It was a busy weekend.

Fast forward back to Sunday. After I took a quick little nap, some more things happened, and as it turned out I needed an emergency c-section. Thankfully, the midwife/doctors were able to foresee this and thoroughly prepare for it ahead of time, so it wasn't a shock to me and didn't feel so frightening. It was definitely a very strange experience, though.

Our baby girl was born around 1:45 in the afternoon on our first wedding anniversary.

She needed a little help with breathing right at first, but was doing just fine before long.

With Grandpa Scott...

...and Uncle Tim...

...and Grandpa Boom.