Still alive

We've been a bit busy lately. Sorry for the absence of posts. I'll try to capture the last couple of months briefly.

12/5 Paul was born
12/16 Esther's wedding to Chris Crane in Cleveland, OH. We all went.
12/22-25 Christmas holidays in Bloomington with Larsons and in W. Lafayette with Magills
12/26 We got word that Ben's grandpa's cancer was back in full force.
12/27-30 We directed the high school winter conference. Paul was the youngest conferee on record. My mom stayed with the girls at our house.
1/3 We switched the water piping in our house from the old system to the new, including a new water heater and softener which we needed. Over the next several weeks, we had to keep working out the details of this and finishing the hooking up of our fixtures to the new piping.
1/6 We went to Indy and visited Ben's grandpa with the whole family
1/8 Ben's grandpa passed away.
1/11 Lily's birthday
1/12-13 Calling and family gathering remembering Ben's grandpa
We spent one more weekend in Indy helping with Grandpa's house
2/2 Immanuel Reformed Presbyterian was organized. Ben was elected to be an elder.
2/4 First morning and evening worship of IRPC
2/7 Ben's first session meeting
2/9 Paul weighs in at 13# 6 oz.
2/13 Record snowfalls for Lafayette. 4+ ft. tall drifts.
2/14 Purdue students having a snow day come over and help us nearly complete the last pieces of our piping project. Thank you !!
2/23-24 We are having a little family trip with Ben's family to Chicago to shop and visit the important Czech places from which Deda always purchased Czech food for us. Lily is more excited about staying in a hotel (she remembers this from Esther's wedding) and going swimming.
I am so thankful that the recovery from Paul's birth has gone amazingly well. God's grace, some mental preparation, and Dr. Wickert's skill came together to make his birth as smooth as possible.

Must go, it's late. Hope to get pictures posted eventually.

He's a Big Boy

Yesterday morning Paul had his first well-baby appointment, and we were somewhat suprised to learn that he now weighs 9lbs, 5 oz! In his first week of life he gained 11 oz (more than 2/3 of a lb.) This doesn't take in to account that he was down to 8 lbs. 5 oz. at one point (baby's always loose some weight in the hospital). This is an increase of almost 8% of his total body weight in one week - if you weigh 125 lbs, 8% of your body weight would be 10 lbs!

All of this weight gain is perhaps explaining why Paul seems to spend most of his time sleeping and eating, and relatively little time awake right now.

Hopefully by next week we'll have some more pics to share. Stay tuned.

Here are some more pics...

Okay, so this is the first time we've tried anything like this, but here is a link to what should be a Web Album with pics from Paul's birthday. If this works, we'll try to use it more in the future. We hope you enjoy!

Paul Gerhard Larson

It's a boy!

We were glad to welcome Paul Gerhard Larson into the world at 5:50am this morning. Paul weighed in at 8 lbs, 10 oz. (our biggest yet), measured 21 1/4 inches long, and was born right on his due date (recall that Lily was 13 days early, and Mariah 10 days late). Anna and Paul are both doing well, and you're welcome to come visit us in the afternoon or early evening, or just drop us a line. Stay tuned as we hope to add more pics soon.

Indiana

Conversation today with Lily:

Lily: "Where does daddy work?"
Mom: "At Eli Lilly."
Lily: "No, at Eli Mariah!"

Indiana has such a great climate. Where else can you experience all 4 seasons, and have an occasional 70 degree day in early November? Though we are on the verge of winter, I finished planting spring bulbs today in a short sleeved shirt!

Finding ourselves

Ben and I took a counseling course at Faith Baptist Church in Lafayette in 2003. It was a great class and we sure learned alot. We were recently reminded of that when a friend of ours from Washington D.C. mentioned that he saw a picture that looked an awful lot like Ben on a 2007 FBC counseling conference brochure on his boss' desk. We were unaware of his picture being used in their publications, so our friend emailed us and gave us the online link to the brochure...http://www.faithlafayette.org/page233.aspx and scroll down. Nice smile and nice sweatshirt, too!

Home-grown

The Wagners gave us fruit from their apple and pear trees this year - we got 16 qts. of free (not counting labor) applesauce, and slightly larger muscles from scrubbing the apples. The pears are amazing. I've never eaten pears so juicy in my whole life. Ben, who doesn't usually like pears, even liked them. We're now considering how we can stick a pear tree in our yard, just for fresh eating in a few years.

Mariah is really learning the advantages of speech. She can put 2 words together, she can get help when she's stuck, she can tell on Lily, she can ask for a beverage of choice, she can ask for someone to read to her... Tonight she climbed in my lap and started tickling me (unprompted) and told me that was what she was doing! She also gets lots of milege out of the word "hiding"... Mariah (heading behind the couch), where are you going? 'iding. Mariah, where's duckie? 'iding. Mariah, where's (name anything else)? 'iding. Meaning: I don't know where it is, you go find it!

Tonight, we drove by SIA (Subaru Isuzu Automotive) where they have a huge parking lot with rows and rows of newly manufactured cars. Lily commented as we drove by, "There are cars all over the place."

Oh yes, we bought a van tonight. We've joined the ranks of 2-kid families with mini-vans. It's a Toyota Sienna. 8-passenger. Desert Sand Mica is the color. Theoretically, this is the best mini-van to fit six car seats into, just in case we get to that point. With the IN car-seat laws, we might get there. And then again, we don't really want to dwell on the logistics of 6 kids under 8. Three seems like plenty for now. At least we have room to tote them all around and the myriad of things that seem to go with. I guess the best feature is that there are three spots for car-seat "latches" across the middle seat. The second best feature is that you can be 9 mo. pregnant and get into the back seat without having to do a) gymnastics moves or b) pivot on your big belly. We like Toyotas. But don't tell that to Deda.