London Corollary Post

Shalane brought up a good point in the comments of Rebecca's announcement. I don't put up info about my pregnancies, not sure why, I probably overdid it with Anna and now am overcompensating.

But there is a good story I have to go back to tell you-
So you may remember I went to London with Ben in April, I was only a few weeks pregnant - hadn't been to the Dr. yet - but I was plenty sick. Sick sick sick. Combined with jetlag, I was just barely keeping it together the whole trip.
So at the end of our stay Ben ordered an Uber ride to the airport which was a solid 40+ minute car ride through London early in the morning. By the time we got dropped off at Heathrow I was done. I stood there, as the car drove away, shaking my head at Ben who was ready to do his airport thing - he does it so well.  I knew that if I started walking, I would regret it. And yet, standing still I also regretted it. So in the early morning, at the drop off lane of Heathrow Airport, I tossed all the cookies in my tummy. And at the end I desperately needed something to wipe my face with, so I cracked open a zipper and pulled out a pant leg from my luggage, cleaned myself up and stuffed it back in. Then fetus, Ben, soiled luggage and I and all walked in to start a 14 hour travel day.

I'm glad we can laugh about it now. 

Rebecca

On Friday morning I had to get up super early, take this picture then drive to the hospital -

To have a baby - 

Rebecca Juliette was born around lunchtime after about 4 1/2 hours of medicated labor.

Stats: super cute, looks/acts like her siblings, loves pacifiers cuddles and eating.

(Actual stats: 7lbs 2oz 19")

Ben was there.

Her sisters adore her but they have been on an extended visit to grammas house and have not seen much of her yet.

Calvin is still working on facing this new reality.

Mommy, I can't

This has become an oft-quoted video at our house. Even Calvin likes to watch it repeatedly. It just perfectly sums up how it feels sometimes, when life gets a little hard.

Half Square Triangle Quilt

This is the pattern I used to make this quilt - each block is a different arrangement of half-square triangles, each is unique, there are 72 of them.

Here they are finally finished trying to figure out a layout I liked - it took me a half hearted 2 years to finish all the blocks? maybe, I can't remember. I was definitely working on these at our old house. They got pushed to the back burner a lot while I worked on other things, like the couch slip covers.

The blocks with white sashing.

Here is an up close of the quilting - so glad I sent it out to be professionally quilted, it looks so good.

Top Tip: any time you spread a quilt on the ground, all the children in the area will come stand right on top of it. The back is a gentle paisley that magically matches all the pink, blue, green on the front. The binding is a solid pink.

Here it is on the bed. I'm a little neurotic about this quilt, it being so white and new and fresh, very nervous of messy hands and dirty shoes. That will happen eventually, but hopefully not for a few years.

Thanksgiving 2015

by Anna Gaines

Grandma and Rachel were here for thanksgiving, it was a lot of fun having them here.
At pie night i had pop rock pie. It was good. It felt very tingly. There was a pretty Mona Lisa pie. It was awesome.




For thanksgiving we went to Uncle Todd's house. I played super smash bro. downstairs. I ate some mashed potatoes and gravy and rolls and fruit.

Thanksgiving was super fun.




*editor's note: It's fun to have a guest author now and then, Anna is usually willing to write a short blog about what's going on, hopefully we will see more in the future from her. As her editor I'm not sure how much correction to give her, should I leave typo's and grammatical errors because they are adorable or use the opportunity to teach her?