Pictures of Emma

Mom and Baby Girl!

Tah dah!

Isn't she a cutie?

The happy grandparents.

Emma's had a hard time learning to feed. Here we are using a 'finger feed' method. Luckily we don't have to do this any more.


Here's the happy new family!


Ready to take her home from the hospital.

Emma has arrived!

Well, she's finally here. Emma arrived to us on Friday, November 23, 2007; seven days ahead of schedule. It was the day after Thanksgiving and both Laura and I had the day off. We both slept in and I popped a DVD in to watch while I ate my bowl of Fruity Pebbles. The DVD was one I had checked out from the library and was, ironically, about how to take care of new babies. Just after the DVD ended, at about 10 AM, Laura's water broke. We already had bags packed, so it took just a few minutes to get ready to go to McKay-Dee hospital in Ogden. When we arrived at about 11 AM, the nurse examined Laura and said she was dilated to a 5 and fully effaced. She was surprised to hear that Laura hadn't had any contractions to that point. We were shown to our room and they gave Laura some pitosin to induce the labor. We spent several hours in the labor and delivery room waiting for the pitosin to work. Laura was finally able to feel some of the contractions. They were minor at first, but then she felt one that made her pretty uncomfortable. Time for the epidural! By the time the epidural was completed and working, she was contratcting pretty regularly at about 2 minutes apart. Finally, at about 6 PM, the nurse said Laura was dilated to a 10. Our doctor was out of town, so the on-call doctor was paged. She got to the hospital at about 7 PM and had Laura start pushing. At 7:31 PM, Emma was born. The vital stats: weight: 8 lbs, 11 oz. Length: 19 1/2 inches. Hair: dark. Eyes: blue. Mother, father and baby are all doing well. I will add some pictures tomorrow; right now Blogger is not working well.

Quinn

Baby Showers Galore

Well I am now 38 weeks. I have been so lucky to have been given a few baby showers. I almost have everything I need now. All our family is so excited and has been so generous. I am getting very anxious for Emma's arrival. At 36 weeks the doctor said I was already dilated to a 2. So I am on my way. It seems more real now and every night I go to bed my dreams are filled with baby related things. My bag is packed and the car seat is in the car.

Quinn is also getting ready. He will finish his last class of the semester tomorrow. He was able to finish both of his classes early just in case Emma came a little early. He has also been helping me to get the house cleaned and organized. So I think we are ready. We do hope that she holds off until after the 24th of Nov., which gets us through Thanksgiving, my Dads B-day party, and my Doctor is out of town for Thanksgiving. I would really like him to be present for the birth.

However I am starting to feel uncomfortable because Emma now sits really low. So I will take her whenever she decides to come. I can't wait!

Pregnancy and the Nursery

Well, today I am 31 weeks pregnant. It has gone by fairly quickly and I have been really lucky. I have not been sick once and despite the frequent trips to the bathroom things are going pretty well. I am just starting to fell uncomfortable. We are so excited to start our family and welcome a little girl into our family. We have decided to call her Emma Mary Lavender. I am due on November 30Th. This also happens to be Quinn's nephews birthday and he thinks that's pretty cool, but I hope she comes a little before that. I don't really want to chance a December birthday for her. That month is already so full of things. We are hoping for sometime before or after Thanksgiving because we just found out my Doctor will be out of town for the holiday. Oh well, nothing much I can do about it.

We have been working on the Nursery over the past months. When we moved into the house the room was a bright blinding princess pink. Just the color an 8 year old girl would pick out herself. Even though we are having a girl, this color is just too much. We decided to paint the walls a pastel green so that if the next baby is a boy we won't have to paint again, Yeah. I forget how much work painting is until I start doing it and I end up asking myself why am doing this again. We are going to go with a Noah's Ark theme. We'll see how it turns out. As of now the painting is all done and I am very excited to start moving stuff in and decorating. Check back for updated pictures of my progress.

This picture does not do the blinding pink justice.

The Painting Crew included Dad!

Mom and I created these one of a kind curtains.

Our Nursery is starting to look like a Nursery now!!

-Lauralee

Our Trip to Portland

In July, Quinn and I drove the 12 hours to beautiful Portland, Oregon. We were very excited to be able to go somewhere new and to stay with our friends the Greens who moved there about a 2 1/2 years ago. The drive was long but we made it. We had hope to escape Utah's hot weather but ended up going during Portland's heat wave as well. It was just as hot there and humid too.

I was also 20 weeks pregnant at this time but did just fine with the drive and sleeping on an air mattress for a week. Will Green and Quinn grew up in the same ward and we were very sad to see them move, but Will decided to go to Chiropractic School up there. Will and Challene were great hosts and their two kids even liked us and didn't seem to mind us invading their house. We were even able to drive ourselves around Portland with its many freeways, one way streets and bridges. I think it was all due to the GREAT navigator Quinn had. (That would be me.)

We spent every day sight seeing. Sometimes on our own but Will and Challene joined us when they could. Will was in school at this time. The first day Quinn and I walked around downtown exploring the parks, churches and doing a little shopping. The second day we visited OMSI - the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. It was amazing. There were tons of exhibits and lots of stuff for kids to explore. Quinn and Will viewed the Body Worlds exhibit, which consisted of preserved human bodies with different muscles or veins exposed. Challene and I took the kids to the playroom. Quinn and I also toured a WWII submarine that was also in the movie the Hunt for Red October.

A plastinated body from the Body Worlds exhibit

"Be careful what you shoot at. Some things in here don't react well to bullets."

(Sean Connery, The Hunt for Red October)

On day three we all headed to the big flea market and then to China town which has a beautiful Chinese Garden on a full city block right in the middle of downtown. It was so beautiful and green.

Here we all are at the Chinese gardens: Challene with Joshua, Nob, Ethan peacefully sleeping, Quinn and Lauralee

On day four, Sunday, we attended their church which is full of other Chiropractic students from Utah and then took a beautiful drive over to the famous waterfalls along the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Parkway. This one of favorite parts of the trip. Its just amazing how green everything is, the trees were completely covered with moss.

Don't go chasing waterfalls.

On day five Quinn and I were on our own again. We visited the turn-of-the-century Pittock Mansion which included an intercom system, central vacuum and an elevator. It was gorgeous.

Next we hit the World Forestry Museum. This was the only thing that was not worth the money we paid. The brochures made it sound like it was a real forest, it was not. It was all fake and set up for grade school kids.

This was one cool thing they had -- it was a firejumper parachute simulator. There was a target projected on the ground from above and you had to steer your 'parachute' toward it as the projection gave you the impression you were descending. It was pretty cool.

Next we visited the Japanese Garden. We loved this. It was so peaceful and larger than the Chinese Garden. We spent a fair amount of time exploring it.

Our last stop of the day was at the International Rose Test Garden. In case you didn't know Portland is the City of Roses. This Garden is where they test all their new varieties of roses. There were roses everywhere and all in bloom. When you walk in the smell hits you, it was just amazing.

Well our trip had to end sometime and we had to make the long trip home. We had a great time and would like to thank Will, Challene, Ethan and Joshua for letting us stay with them. We had so much fun and felt so comfortable in their home we really wanted to stay.

-Lauralee-

Can you smell that? That's nature.

Back in April, Lauralee planned a trip for us to Arches National Park. I haven't spent much time in any of the national parks, so I was excited for this trip.

We were planning to camp at Arches because the campsites there are nice and have running water. We were going down during a 'non-peak' time, and we figured we'd be able to find a campsite there relatively easily. Well, we got off to a rough start when we got down there and found that a) only a few campsites were open and b) the open sites were already full. We got a list of nearby campsites and quickly discovered that the sites at Arches are the only ones with running water. After some frantic searching, we finally came across a pretty nice site. It was centrally located between Canyonlands and Arches and served us well.

Here I am at our campsite. Starting the fire was more difficult than I had anticipated due to the high winds, the cold, and my lack of kindling. Thankfully, Laura had brought some magazines with her; when she was done reading a page or an ad, she'd tear it out and let me use in to kindle the flames. What can I say? I'm not a very experienced camper.

Canyonlands is full of ... well ... canyons. Lots and lots of canyons. Here's one of them.

Here's another canyon. Laura is contemplating the mysteries of life.

Here we are in Arches, right? Wrong. We're still in Canyonlands. Nobody told Canyonlands that there's a special park just for arches.

Here's the special park for Arches.

This is Balancing Rock. We actually met a guy from England who was afraid to stand by it. After he left, his girlfriend told us he was afraid it was going to fall on him.

Two! Two! Two arches in one!

Landscape Arch is looking pretty sickly these days. A huge chunk fell off a few years ago and geologists wonder how much longer before the rest of it collapses.

We experienced some bad weather on this trip. The first day was beautiful, but each subsequent day got a little worse. On this day it got cold and windy and rained a little bit as we set up our picnic lunch.

We wanted to hike to Delicate Arch hike when the light was best for photographs and when the weather was cooperative. We ended up putting it off until the morning of our last day. As we pulled into the park, a downpour began. At this point, I was willing to call it a good trip and head home, but Lauralee convinced me that you can't drive all the way down to Arches and not hike to Delicate Arch. We drove up to the trail head and the rain did let up some. There were several other groups starting the hike so we thought 'what the heck, we're not the only crazy ones.' Off we went. I've never been to Delicate Arch before. It's a moderately strenuous hike, but was worse thanks to the cold, the rain, and the heavy winds. However, we did make it.

The winds at the top were immense. It was enough to blow you off balance.

Still, it was an awesome experience. Since the weather was so bad, we got to spend a few minutes up there by ourselves, which is pretty rare for a landmark so popular.

There were lots of other funny/weird experiences on this trip, including:

• Our adventures cooking over a campfire (we're both rookies)
• Our super-loud, quarrelsome, non quiet time abiding campsite neighbors on one side
• Our super-annoying, guitar-playing campsite neighbors on the other side
• The bikes we lugged down there but never rode (except one time to the dumpster)

It was a fun trip. I'm glad Laura made me hike to Delicate Arch.

Welcome to the 21st Century....almost

I've finally caved to pressure from the technoratti to start a blog. Welcome to the 21st Century, Quinn! Creating the blog was surprisingly easy, but now I have to figure out how to maintain and update it, so I'm still not calling this a technological victory yet.

I used to think that blogs were kind of pretentious (no offense to you long-time bloggers out there). Who is so important that they think perfect strangers from around the globe are going to enthusiastically read about their daily events?

But then our good friends Nob and Challene moved away to Portland. We exchanged e-mails irregularly, but then they created a blog where they write about what's going on. The rest of us family and friends can go there at our leisure and check out what's happening in their neck of the woods. Lauralee's aunt and uncle, Heather and Ken, also started a blog as well. We don't see them very often, so it's fun to check up on them, too. So now I'm sold on the blog idea, especially with the scheduled arrival of our first child (scheduled to arrive 11/30/07).

We thought this might be a good place for family and friends to see how things are going. Perfect strangers from around the globe need not read any further. We're not THAT important. Family and friends always welcome.

Note to readers: if there are no posts after this one, then you'll know that I was either not smart enough to figure this 'blog' thing out, or else too lazy to continue. My apologies in either case.