Meet Elliana

Heather and I are thrilled to introduce to you all our daughter, Elliana Lorraine. She was born on 11 May (Tues) at 9:58pm. She was 6 lbs 8 oz in weight and 20 in long in height, with (as you'll see) lots of brown, silky hair.

But, before we get to all of our Elliana pics, let's go through the lead up.

Here we are right before going to the hospital. We found out Monday at 2pm that we needed to go to the hospital that night at 8pm. We were expecting to go on Tuesday morning at the earliest, and maybe even on Friday. Needless to say, Monday afternoon was very rushed, but we still got in a great dinner at Sweetwater Tavern!

Here's my incredible wife on Monday night, getting ready for the big day.

Heather started a pitocin IV Tues morning at 8am. Right around 2pm, when she was feeling some of her strongest contractions, our nurse surprised Heather and gave her an orange icicle pop. She was in heaven! She waited until around 3pm or so to get an epidural, which was good because any longer and she wouldn't have been able to hold still long enough. By the way, we went to Reston Hospital, and every one of the nurses we had in labor and delivery were fantastic!

A little bit before 9pm, in the middle of a movie, Heather was feeling lots of discomfort, so much so that the nurse decided to check her earlier than she planned. Which was a good thing because our little girl was ready to come out! So our nurse got everything ready, she taught Heather and me how to push (I had to assist the nurse), and then Heather went to work.

As a quick aside, for those who have never seen a woman in the last stages of pregnancy, let me say that the movies and TV shows don't even come close to getting it right. It is amazingly hard, exhausting work and I have a much deeper appreciation for all mothers after this experience.

Heather did great at this point. Within 30 mins of pushing, out popped our little Elliana. And even though her face was initially a little swollen (with good reason), she was still adorable!

Our sweet pea with her Grandma Carr. It was such a blessing to have Christine there. She was a huge comforting presence to Heather in particular, but to me as well. And a fountain of knowledge, too.

It was incredible to see how much Elliana changed in the first two hours after birth. We were lucky to be able to keep her in our room for just over two hours before they took her up to the nursery to get all cleaned up and run all their tests, and she looked very different from when she was delivered to when she left.

Here she is all cleaned up.

Here is our first attempt at dressing up our little sweet pea. We had no idea that she would not fit into any of the 0-3 month clothing. Even the newborn clothes were loose on her. She is such a cute, teenie little thing!

After we got her dressed in something that fit (relatively speaking), she suddenly stopped looking all around her and just stared at Heather. It was very sweet!

The last day in the hospital, Heather had recovered remarkably well from a very, very rough 14 hours after delivery, and so some friend stopped by to say hi.

And here are some of our favorite pics of her.

Here's me with my little princess. I like this fatherhood thing. And even though I'm getting as little sleep as people warned I would get, the nights aren't as horrible as I thought they would be. I like being able to hold and snuggle with my baby girl in the calm and quiet of the night.

Her "Going Home" outfit, courtesy of Grandma Carr.

Elliana praying that her parents will have a clue on how to take care of her (which we are trying our best to figure out).

Finally leaving the hospital and heading home for good!

Amazing Family and Friends and Baby Showers

A few weeks ago, some friends put on two baby showers for Heather: one for her friends and colleagues at the elementary school where she works, and the other for all of our friends from our church. These showers were really wonderful and really made us feel so grateful for all the wonderful people that God has put in our lives. We have made some incredible friends living in Virginia for the past two and half years, and we truly feel blessed to be part of such an incredible community.

A few months before the showers, Rochelle -- one of Heather's closest friends, who lives in Boston -- emailed me saying that she wanted to surprise Heather and come down for the shower. So we kept it secret from Heather, and I'm so glad that Rochelle wanted to. When Rochelle and her husband Jeremy walked in the door on Friday night, Heather started screaming she was so excited. We love those two and were so glad they came down and visited. Nine hours is definitely too far apart.

My sister Alyson also came up from Richmond for the baby shower. And it was a sacrifice for her, too, since she came up with her 4-month old infant Griffey who cried the entire 3 plus hour drive! Thanks so much for coming, Pookie! We loved having you here, even if it was for only a short visit.

So our friends from church put on an awesome shower for Heather. Lots of people came and there was tons of food and games. We've really felt very close to this ward, so it was really wonderful for Heather to have so many people come that she feels so close to and respects so much.

Nichole (below) planned, organized, and hosted the whole event, with some help from others. She did an amazing job! Thanks, Nichole!

A lot of other people helped as well, so THANK YOU EVERYONE for making it such a special event for my wife! Here are some fun pics from the shower.

Even one of Heather's closest friends growing up, Priscilla, was there vicariously through a humungous package sent from Nebraska, which was full of all sorts of great things. My favorite was the bouncing pink donkey in a tutu. Thanks, Priss! We miss you!

One of Heather's closest friends from school, Kimmee, co-hosted a shower for Heather as well. Unfortunately, her baby son got sick and so she wasn't even able to be there for the shower, but she did a fantastic job! You're incredible, Kimmee! Thanks.

Here's Heather with her kindergarten team! They were also very involved in putting on this shower, even complete with party favors and chocolate covered strawberries (one of Heather's absolute favorites!) She is really going to miss teaching those adorable kids with her friends.

One of her coworkers is also due around the same time as Heather, and so the shower was a joint shower. Below is a pic of the two glowing ladies!

The Sunday following these showers, Meagan and Chris invited us to Wendy's baby blessing. It was a wonderful meeting, and that Wendy is simply adorable. We like living close to those two!

Harper's Ferry

Two weekends ago, Heather and I went with our close friends Ken and Nichole to spend a day in the historical little town of Harper's Ferry, which is in the western part of Virginia, also known by some as the state of West Virginia (that was for you, Tys). Heather did some amazing research beforehand, so we knew some of the more interesting points of the town and fun things to do. We had a great day.

We started out with a nice little hike up a few of the hills surrounding Harper's Ferry. Heather set a pretty brisk pace, but we somehow managed to keep up. Here you see everyone pointing to Harper's Ferry below. It was a great vantage point.

Next, we bought some incredibly delicious homemade kettle corn and cinnamon roasted almonds and drove into town and. After Kenny found an awesome parking spot, we started walking around. Harper's Ferry is famous because George Washington picked the site to be a federal arsenal. As a result, gun factories lined the river in this city. A man named John Brown attacked this city in 1859 and held it for a little while before Robert E. Lee (a colonel at the time) led a detachment of marines and overcame Brown's band. Brown apparently raided city and in hopes of taking the weapons, sparking an armed slave revolt, and overthrowing slavery in the US. Ironic thing is, the only person killed by Brown's group during his raid was a free black man who wouldn't abandon his post. I never did quite figure that one out.

Anyway, below is a picture where Brown made his last stand before his death. It was a pretty emotional place (not really).

I took the next pic from a lovely spot overlooking the river. It was close to the very spot where Thomas Jefferson in 1783 said the following: "The passage of the Patowmac (yes, he spelled it funny; how's a guy supposed to know how to pronounce this stupid word with all these funny spellings!) through the Blue Ridge is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in Nature... This scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic."

We certainly thought that the scenery was nice, but realized that Mr. Jefferson was definitely prone to exaggeration.

We ate dinner in this pleasant little cafe.

Our highlight of the day was a ghost tour that we did at night. The tour originated with a woman who moved to the town in the late 70's to open a small cafe. Not long after moving there, some weird things started happening in her cafe (I won't go into the details; you'll have to take the tour to find out what happened). She started asking around about the history of her cafe (which was built before the Civil War), and discovered that many people had had similar experiences in other town buildings, some long before she had showed up. So she compiled all of the stories into a book and gave tours around the city at night relaying these stories. She recently stopped doing it 5 or so years ago, but this nice gentleman pictured below picked up her baton and now runs the ghost tour. It was a lot of fun, and a great way to end the day.

DC Fun

(This was written by Heather on March 30th. She just never got around to posting it, so I'm helping her.)

So- you have all heard about the marathon from Todd, and I am so proud of him for his accomplishment (although seeing him train, I too have come to a sure knowledge that I will never do a full marathon!). It's my spring break right now, and I wanted to take a minute to share the fun I had with Todd's family who came to see Adam and him race. We definitely enjoyed watching the race, but that was not the end of our adventures. Oh no.

During the race, we all (Nate, Sarena and the kids, and even me with my pregnant belly) had to run several blocks to make sure we were going to be at the right spots at the right time and luckily we never missed seeing Todd and Adam. I took a lot of pics, so that's why I am not in many!

After the race, we all had our sack lunches under the trees while the kids enjoyed some big blow up jumping things. It was the perfect day for this. Next, we said goodbye to the boys, and Sarena and her kids, Meagan and Chris and their little one Wendy, and me all decided to do a little touring. We started off going to the capital for a tour. Annoyingly enough, they allowed absolutely no food or drinks inside the capital. You couldn't even have an empty water bottle. I asked the security guard if that was really necessary and he said "for safety, no, but I guess they want you to buy the food in there--so sorry mam." Very annoying since we had brought food to munch on through out the day. Meagan really didn't want to trash all her food, since she is nursing and needs the sustenance, so they waited outside in the nice weather with all the food.

The capital was pretty cool. I had never been inside before. They showed us the halls of statues, the dome, and the most awesome part- we got to see the House in session. We got to watch the preceedings for a couple minutes and even got to see a little bit of "frustration" on the part of one house representative about how vague a particular vote had been. It was neat to see how they cast the votes and how it shows on this screen with colored lights indicating who voted. I am sure it was even more crazy there the next day when they voted for health care.

Speaking of...

(This is not a picture taken of the protest we saw, but something I downloaded off of the internet that is akin to it.)

On our way out, we immediately realized something was different. The way we came was barracaded and an officer with a machine gun was standing at the top of the capital stairs. Snipers were on the roof of the capital and huge crowds were surrounding the capital. Apparently we had the priviledge of being a part of the Anti-Health care rally. It was actually pretty awesome in some ways to be in the middle of such a huge controversy, we even got into it a little with some chants as we were trying to wield our way through the crowd to get to the air and space museum like we wanted. Finally we came to a stand still. We saw that the police had made a pathway for house reps to walk to their vehicles and both sides were lined with people yelling and screaming (at this point the kids especially were a little scared and worried-- some of those people were really mad!). So- I did the only thing I thought I could-- squirmed my way to the front and told the police officer how I was here with my family and we weren't a part of the rally, we just wanted to get the air and space museum. He said "you are going to have to go all the way around the crowd and cross way over there." Then he looked at my stomach (yeah for pregnant me) and said, "Ummm actually just go right this way." And that is how we ended up walking right behind different house representatives in the area blocked off to other people besides them. I wish I would have recognized some of them, but I didn't. There were a couple who we had seen in the capital in the house room voting or speaking though! I'd like to say it was smooth sailing from there, but we still had quite a time, crossing streets and getting through a couple more areas. All the policemen were quite on edge as well. It was crazy!

The rest of the day we saw some of the museum and by that time we were all pretty exhausted. Sarena and I took the kids home on the metro and finally got home where we enjoyed much needed rest along with Kentucky Fried Chicken and ice cream. The whole day it was really a lot of fun to spend time with my neices and nephews and to be able to see a little more of the city. Nevertheless, I think we did our own kind of marathon, not to take away from Adam and Todd--- it was a great but pretty grueling day for everybody!

Catching Up

Several things have happened over the last couple of weeks that we have been too busy (or too lazy) to write about, so here we are catching up. First, I had a little photo session with Heather the other weekend (at week 31 of our little fetus). She was sitting on the couch looking absolutely radiant as a pregnant mom, and I felt I just had to capture the moment. So here is a sampling of the pics I took that night.

What a hot baby-momma!

A few weeks ago, we had a rare chance to see one of our close friends, Brett. We don't live close to most of the friends we grew up with and went to college with, so we get really excited when we get the chance to see one. So we were pretty thrilled to meet up with Brett for a late brunch. He was visiting a good friend of his, and he was really nice about letting us interrupt his vacation for a few hours. His friend recommended we eat French toast at Carlyle's in Alexandria, and he did not over-sell the food. The French toast was amazing, and it was really good to catch up with a friend that we enjoy being around so much.

Also, we had the chance to go down to Richmond for a quick trip to attend Griffey's baby blessing a little while ago. Although it was a short trip, we love hanging around at Alyson and Nate's and rough-housing and playing Disney princesses with Trey and Jayci. We didn't get too many pics this time around, but I love this pic of Griffey. He sure bulked up fast these past few months!