Long overdue update!

My sorely neglected blog has been calling out to me lately to update. Obviously I am not almost 45 weeks pregnant, in spite of what my ticker to the right says (Thank goodness!)! We have been enjoying our little girl for almost 8 weeks now and I can hardly remember what life was like before she was here. So far she is proving to be an easy and agreeable baby, even when being mauled by her brothers. Jackson just wants to hug and kiss, but Deacon tends to go for the eyeballs- in a nice way (is that possible?). This is what happens when I try to put her on the floor for some tummy time: They're like vultures!

Lots has happened since Annie was born! We've had Yaya and Papa John come for Thanksgiving, we had our first big snow of the winter, we had my sister and her family and my brother here for Christmas, and Annie was baptized. In other words, it's been BUSY! I will update again soon with pictures from some of those big occasions, but for now you'll have to settle for some gratuitous cuteness.

Annabelle Mae is here!

All 6lbs. 2 oz. of her! She is sure a little honey and her brothers are so happy she is here (at least one of them)! First meeting with her brothers and Grandma V...Deacon was interested for about 10 seconds and then just wanted to check out the hospital.

And Jackson is very protective of "Little Annie" as he calls her.

Looking forward to going home tomorrow!

Haircut!

Not his first haircut, but his first at-home haircut. We were a little nervous about getting the clippers out, but Deacon did great and he looks ADORABLE!! Before....

...and After! Seriously, I love being able to see his sweet face!

And a good thing we took his after picture last night, because if we had waited until today, his after picture would have been overshadowed by the large lump on his noggin. Nothing an ice pack, Grandma, and some fruit snacks couldn't fix!

My Heros!

Just a few fun pictures from Halloween! Jackson's costume got lots of use pre and post Halloween. Here's Batman and Todd mowing the lawn.

And our little Superman...

Not exactly leaping tall buildings in a single bound, but man is he cute! Jackson was a really good helper. He would hold both buckets and make sure he got one piece of candy for him and one for Deacon. Such a good big brother!

And my third hero! I love all my boys!

October so far...

It's been a busy month so far! I wish I could say it was because I was diligently getting ready for the arrival of Baby Girl, but it's not. Haven't started that yet...I'll let you know if I ever actually am "ready", but we are excited to meet her! But with Jackson in school two days out of the week, it seems to go by so quickly. So here's the quick run-down in pictures of what we've been keeping busy doing...
Deacon LOVES taking baths. As soon as he hears the water turn on, he runs for the bathroom. The other day, Todd made the mistake of starting the tub and then going to get a cup from the kitchen and when he came back, Deacon had already made himself comfortable in the tub. Fully clothed.
We've been making frequent visits to Pumpkinland. Always fun to get some fun pictures of the kiddos. This one just made me laugh.

And it's so hard to get Jackson to actually look at the camera and smile so had to get this one in here since it doesn't happen very often.

All my boys in the corn maze.

The other day, this is how I found Deacon in the bathroom. He'd gotten up on the stool all by himself and started brushing his teeth. He was very proud of himself!

And, of course, we've been playing in the leaves! Jackson loves raking them into piles to jump into and throw around. Deacon mostly just likes to watch and throw an occasional leaf or two.

Can't believe that Fall has been so beautiful so far this year. I'm hopeful it means we'll have a milder winter than we've had the last couple of years, but who knows?! We'll just keep enjoying being able to play outside for as long as we can!

Chuck E. Cheese!! AKA Jackson's BD-Round 2

As promised, here are a few pictures from our jaunt to Chuck E. Cheese last week for J's big 4th BD bash with his cousins! The last time Jackson was at Chuck E. Cheese was way back when we visited my friend Allison in Michigan when Jackson was not even 2 years old. I didn't even think that he would be interested in going, or even really know what it was, but out of the blue on his birthday he said, "Mom, I've got a great idea! We should go to that birthday place that we always walk by at the mall!" I kinda played dumb for a minute or two, and then when he wouldn't give up on it, we decided to try to make it happen. And it's always more fun with cousins, so Ella and Max and Aunt Ally and Uncle Randy all joined us for the fun times! Jackson found the air hockey table to be quite a draw. I think he made sure he played just about everyone in a game. Given the kid-sized nature of the table, Todd was at quite a disadvantage when he played him!

It never ceases to amaze me when I see these three in a picture together how much they look related!

Partners in crime....I'm having visions of a birthday about 12 years into the future and it makes me scared!

Jackson turns 4!

We sort of had a week-long birthday celebration for Jackson since it was hard to get family together, so his birthday started with a little celebration at home with just us. He had been asking for AGES about his birthday and when he would turn 4 and he would say, "Can't we just say I'm 4 now, Mom?" So now that he can officially say he's 4, it's quite exciting! He has been dying for some light sabers (or light savers as he calls them), so that was one of his gifts.

And he was so excited to get this package in the mail from Uncle Jeremy! He couldn't believe how big the box was and as you can tell from his face, he was pretty pumped about the construction worker outfit!

Thanks, Uncle Jeremy!! The next day, Todd's Uncle was here working on the garage again, so Jackson suited up and went out to help for a little while. It was quite amusing watching him get all dressed up for action, and he was very proud to show Uncle Marwin what he had gotten for his birthday!

More pictures to come of our fun time at Chuck E. Cheese!

Chicago Babymoon

Last weekend, Todd and I got to take an adults-only trip with some friends to the Windy City! We counted it as our last "hurrah" before Baby Girl makes her debut in a couple more weeks (hopefully). Many, many thanks to Aunt Ally, Uncle Randy, and Grandma V. for watching the boys while we were gone! These are just a few pictures from our trip... Todd and I down at Navy Pier. Every Saturday night during the summer they have fireworks down at the pier so we all went down and enjoyed the fireworks and the beautiful skyline. Such a crazy change of scenery from home! Ryan and Shanelle down at Navy Pier also...

This is kind of a random picture, but just thought I'd give you all an idea of how HUGE and torpedo-like my belly is these days. I still have 8 weeks to go, and I'm already getting the "Oh, any day now, huh!" comments. Let this be a lesson to all of you reading this: pregnant women do not really want to hear that because basically all we hear is " Dude! You are freakishly huge!" I'm allowed to say how huge I am, but no one else may comment!

And what's a trip to Chicago without some Chicago-style deep dish pizza??? We did a lot of good eating on our trip, but my favorite was probably the pizza at Giordano's. I make sure that any time I ever go to Chicago I have their pizza. Totally worth the 2 hour wait! I can say that because we weren't waiting with kids!

Darin and Michele walking dinner off (and maybe dessert too, can't remember!) along Michigan Ave. We stayed at the Inn of Chicago and the location was perfect for being downtown. We were basically just one block off of Michigan, so it was easy to get everywhere we (the girls) wanted to go (shopping).

We had a great time with friends and it was so nice to come home and see the boys. I feel like I am officially ready to start preparing for this baby to come now. I sort of have been in denial about it really happening so nothing has been done yet...no name, no clothes, not sure where this baby will be sleeping...Hopefully we'll have every bit of these 8 weeks left to get it all figured out!

This Week at our house...

We made our first trip out to Pumpkinland to pet the puppies... ...and feed the goats and llamas. We'll be making lots more trips as the weather continues to feel more and more Fall-like, I'm sure! I'm a little sad that Baby Girl won't be born in time for a newborn pumpkin picture at Pumpkinland like we have for Jackson and Deacon.

And Jackson started pre-school this week! He seems to really like it a lot and I can honestly say I've been enjoying a couple quiet mornings a week with only a sleeping Deacon at home. I think Jackson's favorite thing at pre-school so far is the fun train table. Whenever I drop him off, he immediately heads there and basically only looks up long enough to say "bye, Mom".

Can't wait to get to school!

This kid does his best to foil any and all attempts to take his picture these days, hence the evil/mischievous grin. But it's still kinda cute!

End of summer wrap up

I am so mad at myself that I didn't take more pictures of fun things we did this month! I did manage to get my camera out at a few different occasions, but even then didn't seem like I took the time to really document it. And now I'm sad because I hardly have any pictures of my new niece, Clementine Rose, who was born July 16th. We got to go visit them a couple weeks later and she is sweet as can be. Here she is getting some love and kisses from her mom and brother. It was so fun to hold a tiny baby again, but did give me a glimpse of what life could be like for us soon-Deacon would get very jealous when I held Clementine and would cry and try to climb all over me. I'm scared! We also had a fun visit from my friend Jessica and her kiddos. They have visited us here in the OC a couple of times, but haven't seen our new house yet, so that was fun to have them here. Again, no good pictures of that, but her two boys and my two boys had lots of fun playing together!

And Deacon got his first haircut last week! I was sad to see his Justin Bieber hair go, but he does look really cute with his new hair cut. I will admit he didn't love having it cut, be he didn't really cry, just didn't want to sit still. Can't say I'm surprised really, but the end result turned out good! Here's the before: Not so happy about the cape he had to put on...

And here's the after: Happier now that it's all done!

We've been enjoying some cooler weather on and off here lately which has been fun, and we're looking forward to some fun things in the next couple of weeks. Jackson starts 3 year old pre-school next week, which he is super excited about! We had a little date the other day, just the two of us, to go pick out school supplies and get a backpack. I used to LOVE school supply shopping, so I'm glad I'll get to enjoy doing it again with my own kids! And PumpkinLand will open soon too, and we're looking forward to going to see the animals-Jackson said he can't wait to feed the Llama's. Maybe I'll be better about taking pictures this month!

Featured!

How fun to find out that other Etsyians appreciate my work! I was informed today that my banners and garland were featured on another blog. Go check it out and see some of the fun things made by Amanda of PaperUlixis, Ulixis, and SewUlixis.

Deacon's First Birthday!

A few videos of Deacon's birthday celebration, as requested by Yaya and Papa!

A Birth Story on a Birthday

Deacon, just minutes after his birth... And Deacon, last week, just days before his first birthday!

Deacon is one year old today! I realized I've never really recorded either of the boys' birth stories, so I just wanted to take the opportunity to get a start on it now.

Deacon's birth story actually starts a couple weeks before his actual birth. At 35 weeks along, I started having contractions one afternoon. They didn't really "hurt", but I could tell they were stronger and different than the Braxton-Hicks contractions I'd been having for some time. After a couple of hours of having them and it seeming like they were coming closer together, I called the nurses station at the hospital and they told me to come in to get checked out. Todd had to stay home with the kids since they were already in bed and I figured I'd be home in an hour or two anyway. Turns out I was contracting about every 4 minutes. I spent the night in the hospital under observation that night as they were having some trouble getting the contractions to stop. We had one more shot of terbutaline that they could give me and if that one didn't work and my contractions continued, it was starting to look more possible that this baby was going to come quite a bit earlier than planned. Thankfully, with that last shot, they slowed enough that they felt comfortable sending me home with medication to take to help keep the contractions at bay. I was to take the meds for at least another week, and then my doctor said I could stop and if I started having contractions again at that point, they probably wouldn't try to stop them. All of a sudden we realized we needed to hurry up and get our poop in a group at home to be ready in case we had a baby sooner than we were expecting! I finished my week of the meds and then stopped taking it and as soon as I did, it seemed that I stopped really having many contractions so I figured we were back in it for the long haul. My actual due date wasn't until August 15, but I was scheduled for a repeat c-section on August 13.

Fast forward to July 26, and Sunday morning. Jackson woke up at 5 am with a bad dream, so I got up to go lay with him for a minute so he would go back to sleep. When I got back in my bed, I felt a big contraction. I tried to go back to sleep, but I was sort of just waiting to see if it would happen again. And it did. These puppies definitely felt like they could be the real thing, but I'd never actually "gone into labor before" (I was induced with Jackson) so I kinda just laid there and waited for a while seeing if they would peter out. Todd had to get up at 6 am anyway to head to work so I figured I'd just wait and see what happened and not wake him up. When he did wake up, I casually mentioned to him that I'd been having some contractions, but I didn't really know for sure if they were the real thing yet or not so just to go ahead and plan on going to work and I would call him if I needed him to come home. So Todd got in the shower and I figured I should maybe get up and pack a hospital bag since I hadn't done that yet. I got up and started puttering, and as almost as soon as I started walking around, the contractions started getting closer together. Todd went to go get some coffee and I decided I should get in the shower "just in case". While I was in the shower, it seemed like the contractions were right on top of each other and it was hard to stand still. I remember trying to shave my legs in between contractions and then dancing around the shower while I was having a contraction. When Todd got home from getting coffee, I finally told him that I was pretty sure I was in labor and that he should probably call his work and call his mom. He kinda looked at me like, "Duh" and said he had already done both of those things while he was out getting coffee. Apparently he knew I was in labor before I did! We called the hospital to tell them I would be coming in, and they said come in asap, especially since I was supposed to have a c-section. Todd's mom lives 40 minutes away, so we knew she wouldn't get here before we needed to leave, so we called a friend to come over and get Jackson until Grandma could get here (Thanks Michele!).

When we got to the hospital it was probably about 7:30 am and I'd been having contractions for almost 2 hours at this point. They immediately put me on the monitor and checked me so they could report to my doctor. I was shocked when the nurse said I was still only about 1 cm dilated because I was thinking that if these contractions weren't changing anything I didn't know what would! I asked the nurse how effaced I was and her exact words were: "Well, I'm not really good at telling that." I think my jaw just about hit the floor. I wanted to ask her why she was checking me then, but I refrained. After 20 minutes of monitoring, and finding that I was, in fact, in labor, they finally gave me a shot of terbutaline to try to help stop my contractions and started calling in the surgical team. Mind you, this is a small hospital and it was a Sunday so they don't have all of the necessary people in hospital at all times. My doctor showed up about 10 minutes later and checked me and was TICKED when she found that I was really 4 cm. dilated. Things started to move pretty quickly from there. My contractions came back pretty quickly and were quite uncomfortable and by the time the surgical team was in place and I was already 6 cm and kinda just wishing I could skip the c-section at this point and just get the show on the road. I got into surgery and everything went quite well from there and I was happy because I got drugs so I wasn't feeling contractions anymore. Todd watched the entire surgery and after a few minutes, Deacon Jeremiah was born! We didn't actually have him named yet at that point, so all of his hospital bands say Baby Boy Vogel. He weighed 6lbs. 8 oz. and was 19 inches long. Not too bad for being 3 weeks early! I only got to see him for a few minutes before they took him to the nursery to get cleaned up. And then I had to stay in recovery for a while so it's always a good hour or so before I get to see my babies again, which is frustrating. But Todd was taking good care of him and it gave them some good bonding time together. I was amazed when I got to see him again that he looked so much like me because I remember being so shocked when I first saw Jackson and he looked so much like Todd.

Deacon amazes me still. He is the most cuddly little boy, loves to be held, loves to snuggle, and is so quick to smile. He just is generally very good-natured and lovable and I can't imagine our world without him.

In case you hadn't heard...

It's a GIRL!!! I think most everyone heard the news via facebook, but thought I should put it up on the blog for posterity! We are so excited, and I've already been dreaming about the whole new world of shopping that has just been opened up for me! Todd is very afraid!

Okoboji 2010

We just got back from our yearly trip to Lake Okoboji with all of the Vogels and it was a really good time. The weather cooperated and we had some really nice days, the kids all played together really well, and I got to take lots of naps. What more could you ask for in a vacation? I think part of the reason this vacation is so fun, besides getting to spend quality time with all of the in-laws that we don't get to see as often as we'd like, is because we can take the boat out every day for just a leisurely ride or do some tubing with the kids. I love being on the water! Deacon really enjoyed his first trip on the boat. He was so calm and engrossed the whole time and just sat and watched the other boats and looked at the water.

Before anyone yells at me for tubing while pregnant, I will tell you that we were going very slow so there was no chance of falling off and the bumps were minimal! Todd will not like that I put this picture up- he calls it the "fat guy in a little coat" picture. He was sweet and gave me the good life jacket. True love!

The kids even enjoyed the tube a bit more this year. They always had to go on with an adult, and again, we always went really slow, but they still had fun.

We also managed to take a fun Father's Day picture of all the Vogel brothers and the kids on Father's Day. Todd is the youngest of the 3 boys, Tim is the middle brother with Lilly, and Randy is the oldest with Ella and Max.

More pictures to come...