Annual Christmas Tree Hunt

Every year we go out and cut down our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. The weather wasn't really cooperating, but we went anyways. It was cold and wet! It was the fastest we had ever found a tree - about 10 minutes! Afterwards we warmed up with hot cider and sandwiches.

Buffalo Hunt

Lilliana's class has been learning about Native Americans and their culture in school this week. At the end of the week they have a pow pow and a buffalo hunt (ok it's just a parent dressed up like a buffalo, but it's lots of fun). The kids make all their own things. Lilliana's Indian name is Thunderbolt. They had to earn the feathers in their headdress by mastering the color sight words.

Lost Tooth

Lilliana lost her first tooth. It has been loose for weeks now. She came home from school and announced to everyone that she has a loose tooth. She was wiggling it constantly so I thought it would fall out within a day or two. Nope weeks later it was still hanging in there. So finally I asked if I could give it a little tug, and out it came. Lilliana had me sew a special envelope to put the tooth in for the tooth fairy. She was very excited.

Camille

She's here. She arrived on Nov 14, 2009 at 12:20p. She came 3 weeks early. It was a very fast labor. If you want to read the birth story here it is:

I was up with the kids on Sat morning around 6:30 when I started to feel some light cramping. Both of my other labors started this way so I started to look at the clock just to see if they were regular at all. they seemed to be about 7-8 min apart. Lilliana was going to see a movie that morning with grandma and jim was getting ready to meet with a client. i wasn't sure if this was actual labor though because I had been up and about doing things I thought well I bet if i just lay down they will stop. But alas there was much to be done that morning just in case I was in labor... I got Lilliana ready to go and then started to clean up the house and get a few things ready to go in case it was the big day. (I was only 37 weeks so I was pretty skeptical that this was it). But the contractions kept on coming. Around 10 or 10:30 they were strong enough that I had to stop what I was doing to breathe through them. At 11 I called Jim and told him he needed to come home - thankfully he was already on his way and was home a few minutes after I talked to him. Called the doc and they said to come on in. By this time the contractions were a few minutes apart. Oh and did I forget to mention that Camille was breech? For most of the pg she was transverse, but that morning I woke up with her head in between my ribs. Around 11:45 Jim and my mom manage to get me into the car and off we go to the hospital. We are only about 5 min away (thank goodness). We get to the hospital and I have to stop 2 times in the parking lot for contractions. They get me upstairs and I go into the bathroom to change. While there I am starting to feel the urge to push a bit. I tell the nurse that I am feeling a lot of pressure so she checks me and I am fully dialated and my bag of waters is bulging. Now they are starting to rush around to get everything ready for a c/s. One nurse is getting my iv while the other is having me sign the papers for a c/s. One nurse asks if we have the camera and I panicked that we didn't have it, it was out in the car. The nurse said there is time to get it if we wanted to so Jim ran downstairs to get the camera. In the meantime all but one nurse had left the room. I started to have a contraction and bang my water broke. That's when things got dicey. I have never in my life felt the uncontrollable urge like that to push. The poor nurse is trying to get me to focus and not push while she's calling everyone back to get me down the hall to the OR. We get to the OR and I'm expecting them to put me out because there wasn't time for an epidural, nope I'm pushing this baby out. She was coming. Jim was also back at this point with the camera. So they tell me to push when I'm ready. Well that wasn't hard! I think I pushed through maybe 3-4 contractions and she was born butt first. It was so surreal how fast everything happened. She was born at 12:20p and we got to the hospital at 12:01! She is perfect though, 6lb 15oz, 17.25 inches long :)