2 weeks!

And I am happy to say that we have survived!

Sadly our little man has come down with a cold at his 2 week mark.
The girls, who managed to stay healthy all winter,
both came down with awful colds right when Ezra came home.
It was too hard to keep them from kissing and cuddling him
with all their sicky germs.
Hey, it's what families do, right?

He gets more scrumptious every day!

I think we'll keep him:)

Birthday Temple Trip!

We decided to start a new tradition:
Birthdays now mean a special trip to the temple with mom or dad.
Because Dorothy's birthday coincides with stake conference this year,
Marty took her up this past weekend.

I think she liked it:)
I'm looking forward to many more temple trips
with our children!

The first week home

This whole new baby business
is such an interesting exercise in redefining normal.

We are certainly loving having this baby boy around,
and we're slowly figuring out the new family dynamics.

This little boy gets more love than he knows what to do with
from his big sisters.

His auntie Kristi and cousins came to shower more love.

And grandma Heaps had lots of time to snuggle
and love on the little man.

He just gets more handsome every day.

Maybe it's from all that love:)

Meet Ezra Lewis!

Our sweet baby boy has finally arrived!

He was born at 10:44pm, February 25th.
He came out 6 lbs 8 oz of cuteness and 20 1/2 inches long.

He is the spittin' image of his daddy,
so now I can boast the TWO most handsome men in the world.

We love him and are so happy to be back home.

More to come later...

One week to go!

We're counting down the days now.
Lucky for us, Marty has this entire week off of school!

We started the week out with a trip to the Newport cliff walk.

No contractions from all our walking
(Lucy's pace isn't exactly a cardio workout),
but we did have a few hours of contractions in the evening.
Maybe tonight we'll actually go into labor.

And one of the last shots we'll get of our little man in the belly:

We're ready for you, Ezra!

Preparing for college...

by starting the day off with cold pizza.

I think they mastered this skill.
'Bout time to ship 'em off, I suppose.

"What is REAL?"

from The Velveteen Rabbit

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when [he and the Skin Horse] were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy up the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once." said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand...once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."


Oh, how this reminds me of motherhood. I am so grateful for my little ones that are helping me become Real.