Merry Christmas 2013!

We had a busy month of December with a couple Christmas Programs (school and church) and multiple Christmas parties. But what a fun month! Here are some pictures to recap our month.

Church Christmas Program. This captures their personalities so well. Henry with his shirt untucked and a funny face. Jack all put together and posing and Evelyn just along for the ride!

 We had fun with a weekend visit from Kim, and we talked her into helping us with decorating cookies.

 Kylie helped us with our gingerbread house!

 Boys slept out by the Christmas tree.

 My favorite picture from Christmas! Love that they are actually looking at the camera.

 They each got 3 presents this year, 1 which was a family gift of a trampoline!

 Went to Iowa City while Steve went on a High School Youth Retreat. It was perfect weather to be outside (for 1 day!).

 Knuckles and Evelyn watching Elmo on someone's phone.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas!

Thanksgiving 2013

Henry was ready to show us all he learned about the 1st Thanksgiving at preschool! 

My dad and brother came down from Minnesota on Wednesday. We started our time off at our church's Thanksgiving Eve service. It was fun to have them there with us.

Thursday morning we had rolls and donuts that my dad brought down from Toby's...yum! Evelyn loves donuts! Every time we say 'what does Bapa bring' she says..donuts! 

We had a MN Thanksgiving with Walleye and some side dishes and fresh blueberry pie for dessert! Yum! 

We are blessed! Steve, Nels and my dad went to a movie and stopped at Walmart for some shopping and the kids and I stayed home and watched a movie and ate popcorn! And the kids took a bubble bath. 

What a great day! 

Year in pictures!

Since I haven't blogged in over a year I thought this would be a quick way to get caught up! 

We spent a lot of time swimming...in Lake Vermilion, our local pool, and any other place we could! Henry learned how to swim on his own this summer! (This is a picture of Jack)

Evelyn kept us really busy with all her growing and new tricks! She is a busy one! 

Made use of the many boxes we were saving...boys made a combine, tractor and grain cart! Yes, we live in NW Iowa!

We went to the Underground Mine when it was freezing and windy on vacation!

Spent time in Duluth. And yes, this happened.

Had a football player, pirate and ladybug for Halloween. 

And most exciting is we bought a new house!! 

Blogging from phone?

This is a test to see how well this really works! I obviously haven't blogged in over a year so maybe I would if it was from my phone? Who knows. But I sure do enjoy going back and seeing what I wrote in years past! 

Here's what I woke up to this morning: 

Month of June

Okay, I know this is going backwards but this is the only way I can think of to get the blog back up-to-date! I thought about it and didn't want to skip the summer because we were getting adjusted to a new town, friends, etc. It was hard at times but we're coming through on the other side.

We officially moved to Albert City on June 2nd.  I can't explain to you the emotions as our entire house (that we LOVED) was being packed up into the back of a semi.  It was hard to leave our first house that we had bought and spent a lot of time fixing up to be just the way we wanted it.  We lived in Marshalltown for 8 1/2 years and our house for 8 years.  Of course I was experiencing all these emotions while having a 5 week old baby.  I still have memories of walking back through the house with all the rooms empty as I reflected in each room the tears were falling and I could hardly face that we then had to say good-bye to our friends, who became more like family to us.  Looking back at this time it still brings tears to my eyes. Thank you friends for everything! We love and miss you terribly!

Loading the semi....can't believe how much stuff we had!

We were thankfully able to all ride in the van together, another person that came to help us move from Albert City drove our car.  That was such a relief, I was wondering how I  was going to drive a van with 3 kids and deal with all the emotions I was having.  The church sent a van of people to help us and a semi to haul our things.  Once we arrived in Albert City to our "new" house there seemed to be 1/2 the town here to greet us.  I seriously think that there were 30 people waiting to unload our things and help us set up our house.  We took a break and people had prepared a meal, and then it was back to helping us set up.  We arrived in Albert City around 5:00 and went to bed that night with all our beds set up and made and our kitchen unpacked.  What a blessing!

Bapa came to help and we took a night off to go to Storm Lake

We spent the rest of the month getting settled and organized.  My dad came to help with the big organizing (the garage and basement), Linda came and helped with the kids (just when I was having a break-down) so that was perfect timing, and the Bolands came to help me decorate! 

Evelyn at 2 months old

Father's Day picture of Super Dad

2 months old....a great sleeper at night!

Swimming at the local pool, walking to the library and playing with new friends at the church park quickly filled our days.   Our neighbor hosted a baby shower for Evelyn and I, which was a great time of getting to know ladies in town.  Our goal was to not drive anywhere unless we left town, which I think we accomplished that goal!  I was also introduced to Bunco as a ladies night event once a month so that was a nice mom's night out!

Stay tuned for July and August!

Evelyn!

It's a girl! Evelyn Ann Stepec was born on April 25th at 10:45am.  She weighed 8 lbs 1 oz and was 20 inches long.  We were so excited that she was a girl! It was a fun surprise and we are blessed.

Here's the story:

I was put on bed rest because I had Pregnancy-Induced Hypertension on April 17th.  I was really bummed and it was a lot harder emotionally than I ever thought it would be.  After a week I was really starting to lose my patience.  I was only 36 weeks when I was placed on bed rest. I had 2 appointments a week for an ultrasound and a non-stress test.  It was neat to see a baby at 37 weeks since the only other ultrasounds I had were at 20 weeks.  I was finally determined to enjoy the time that I didn't have a newborn in the house and spent time watching movies with Steve and playing games with Jack and Henry. At 1:30am my water broke, when I got up to use the bathroom.  We headed to the hospital around 2:00 because I was having contractions.

I was settled into my room with everything set to go around 2:30am, with hopes to get some sleep. Yea right! Steve was snoring away in the chair next to the bed....but I watched all kinds of TV and couldn't shut my mind off knowing we were going to have a baby in a matter of hours.

The doctor came in at 7:00am and I was at a 4, which was a surprise since with the boys I had to be induced once my water broke because my body didn't go into labor on it's own.  Before I knew it I was at a 8 and the party was starting! I didn't have to push for too long...and before I knew it they were yelling for the doctor to come (who had to run over from his office at the clinic). I had to wait to push her out. That was by far the worst part of the entire delivery.  It seemed like it took him 30 minutes to get there, even though it was probably more like 30 seconds! :)


When they told me it was a girl, I was so shocked! What a gift.  I seriously thought I was going to have a boy. 

Saylor

After 9 years, we said good-bye to dear Saylor. She is staying in Marshalltown, and has been adopted by a wonderful family with 6 kids. It was not an easy decision since she was our first "baby" but it was what needed to be done. Jack has had the hardest time with all of it, he cried and cried when she left. He wrote a letter to send with her so she could always remember her. The saddest thing was that he wanted a picture taken with her so he could put it in his room.

This picture just breaks my heart:

It is so weird to have a pet around for 9 years and now have none! No one runs and greets us at the door or cleans up all the food that gets dropped.

She is missed.