Announcing: Baby #4!

I'm so, so, so happy to announce that Baby #4 will be joining our family in June 2019!

I'm 11.5 weeks right now and have been feeling some pretty big feelings (in addition to a good bit of nauseousness).  This little baby is just teeny-tiny right now, but already holds such a big place in my heart. We’ve been praying for another baby to join our family and I feel blessed that he/she is finally on the way to us. 

As details that probably only I will ever want to refer back to - we've been trying to get pregnant for just over 5 months. It took us many, many months to get pregnant the first time, which resulted in a miscarriage - but then we were able to quickly get pregnant again with Lydia. Austin took us about 11 months, but Caleb was ready to come right away. It's a little amusing that they all are just about 2.5 years apart (2 years 4 months, 2 years 6 months, and 2 years 3 months), even though they all took fairly significantly different amounts of time to be ready to come to our family. 

I’ve been feeling, well - pretty yucky lately. I’m more sick than I have been in my last two pregnancies and I wasn’t expecting it. When we went in for our first appointment, I was terrified that the baby wouldn’t have a heartbeat (I miscarried my first pregnancy and that’s the pregnancy when I was the most sick.) I was equally expecting to find out that we were having twins. But nope, just one little babe, who is doing great. We are so so grateful to be here, living this life with these children, and being blessed to bring another one home to our family. 

Thanksgiving: Walker Home

We had a great time over the weekend doing Thanksgiving at the Walker home. We did not take a ton of pictures, but had a really great time. Friday night we were able to play games with Shantel's siblings and stayed up late talking. On Saturday we did Turkey sandwiches with some great sides instead of the traditional turkey dinner and everyone loved it. 

Lydia had a ton of fun making her very own Christmas tree. 

The kids favorite thing was helping Grandpa make homemade ice cream. They helped him mix it together and then he took it outside to freeze out in the cold snow. The kids were constantly heading outside to check on it. The ice cream went great with all the pie.

We had a great time and it was the perfect way to finish off our Thanksgiving week. We are truly grateful for the many blessings in our life, especially our good families. 

Christmas Decorating and Black Friday

On Friday the kids really wanted to set up our Christmas tree and we decided to spend some time setting up the tree. This is one of my favorite traditions, turning on the Christmas music and dancing with the kids while we set up the tree. 

The kids were all really big helpers this year and wanted to pull the tree out of the box and help "fluff" the needles.

One thing you might notice missing is any Black Friday shopping pictures. Since we did Thanksgiving at our house, we did not have anyone to watch out kids in the morning and could not go out. However, a lot of the deals went up on late Wednesday night (after 10 pm), but since we were up late anyway, we snagged some awesome deals Wednesday night and then did a few more online things on Friday. Not quite as exciting as the usual Black Friday shopping trips, but we felt pretty successful. After decorating, we got ready and headed up to Morgan for Thanksgiving up there.