Ava's Blessing

This past Sunday we had Ava blessed. It was such an amazing feeling to have Steven bless our daughter. I really can't explain it, but those of you who have already been through this experience probably know what I mean. The spirit was with me so strongly all day. It was such a great day!
Here are a just a few pictures we took of Ava, she is just so beautiful! I know some of these are kinda blurry, I don't know why I have such a hard time getting a clear picture, no one else seems to have this problem, I think I just have shaky hands or something.

The blanket was made by Ruth Wilder, a good friend of my family.

I love this picture of her and Steven! He didn't know I was taking this, I'm so glad I caught the moment! It shows how in love with her he is. Steven is an amazing father, I can't believe how well and how fast he transitioned into fatherhood. He has been so great since day one, I am so thankful for him and love him so much!!

New pictures of AJ

So here are a bunch of new pictures of Ava. I know it's been a while, I've been meaning to get on here and put these up I just haven't sat down and done it. But my dad told me that Linda has requested more pictures asap, so here you go :)
Also, we had her two week well baby check up last week (she was actually three weeks old, her Dr. couldn't get her in any sooner). She is now 9.4 lbs and 21 inches! I can't believe how much bigger she is! And as of yesterday she is no longer in new born diapers. It's crazy how fast babies grow!

She is definitely her daddy's daughter!

I love this pic because it looks like she is annoyed with me that I put that big ol' hat on her.

This was this morning before church, her first time going.

My dad is a baby hog, he won't let anyone else hold her when he has her, it's pretty funny!



She is such a sweaty baby! I don't know if all babies sweat this much, but the poor girl is always sweaty. You can see her shinny sweaty face here.

Napping on grandpas lap.

Introducing....

Ava Janae Astle

4/4/08

7lbs 8oz & 20.25"

8:37am

We are so happy to finally have her here!

Just getting ready to leave the hospital. Sorry for the bad picture of Steven.

She is a very happy content little girl, with big blue eyes and lots of dark hair that we think will probably fall out and grow back blond. So far, everyone is saying she looks a lot like Steven, she has most of his facial features.

She is a very loved little girl!

Birth Story...

For those of you who haven't heard, I'll give a little recap of the loooong labor/birth.

I went to the Dr. on the 31st to have my check up, one week over due. He decided to have me induced the next day. So Tuesday 4/1/08 we went to the hospital at 7:00am they put a little pill (I can't remember the name) on my cervix that is supposed to make it thin out and then cause me to start having contractions. When I got to the hospital I was only 2cm, 70% effaced. After a couple of hours the contractions started coming, not very strong, but slowly getting stronger and closer together. By mid afternoon, my contractions seemed to be progressing quite well, so we were pretty excited thinking that night we would have her here. But little Ava decided to pull and April fools joke on us. Around 4:30 everything started slowing down...eventually to almost nothing. So my Dr. decided at midnight to send me home to get some rest and eat some food. He told me to stay home all day Wednesday, hoping that I would go into labor and if not then to come back Thursday morning and they would induce me again. We decided to do this to try to avoid having to have a c section. So, nothing exciting happened all day Wednesday, just very light contractions about 30 min. apart. So on Thursday we were back at the hospital at 12:00pm. They checked me and I was 2.5 cm and 80% effaced. Not much progress at all. They put the pill on my cervix again, and again a couple of hours later the contractions started coming, but not very strong and still not very close together. And my body wasn't making much progress. So at 4:30 my Dr. broke my water and then shortly after that the contractions came on! I endured them for 2 hours (2 of the most painful hours of my life) They checked me after two hours of really good contractions and I was only 3 cm, 90% effaced! I thought I was gonna die! So I asked for the epidural, and then life was much better. I was in labor for 13 more hours!!! Thankfully not feeling the crazy contractions I was having. Finally after an hour of pushing and the Dr. having to help with the vacuum, she arrived at 8:37am!

It was a very long week! But so worth every minute of it!! And Steven has been so great through all of it! I couldn't have asked him to do anything better.

I think my dad has some better pictures on his camera, so as soon as he gets those to me, I'll post some more pictures.

4 days past due!

So this picture was taken of me on Easter Sunday, my actual due date. It's still weird for me to see pics of myself, I can't believe how big my belly is!
It's now 4 days past my due date, and I'm just waiting...I want to be done so bad!!! I'm so tired all the time and I just want her here! So hopefully she will be here sooner then later. If nothing happens over the next few days I go to the Dr. again on Monday to see if any progress has happened. But I'm crossing my fingers that there will be no need for that appointment! :)

Still not here....

Just a quick baby update...I am now two days past my due date! I went to the Dr. yesterday, he said I was just barely one cm dilated and my cervix was about 50% thinned. But, told me not to get excited because it's possible to stay that way for another few days to a week or more! I am soooo ready! He also told me that she is going to be a big baby, he is guessing around 8.5 to 9 lbs! I'm actually not freaking out about that too much, I don't know why but I kinda expected to have a big baby. So we'll see... I have a picture of my belly that we took on my due date, so I could document how big it is, but I don't have it loaded on my computer yet, I'll try to get it on here today sometime.
Hope all is well with everyone! After looking at all your blogs it looks like everyone had a great Easter!!

Two years ago today...

Happy Two Year Anniversary!!

I can't believe it's been two years since we got married!! It's crazy how fast time flies and how much can happen in two years! I love him more then ever and can't wait to see what new and exciting changes the next year will bring!
Happy two years to us!

P.S. Happy St. Patty's day!

Baby Shower!!

A couple of Saturdays ago, my mom and some of her friends threw me a baby shower! It was a lot of fun, with good food, and good friends!! I have a bunch of pictures from it, so I'll just go down the pictures and make comments on them to tell you a little about the shower. And for those of you who are my Kelly cousins and the wives of my Kelly cousins, yes this is at Grandpa Kelly's house. He has a lot more seating in his living room then my mom does, so she decided to have it over there...it worked out great and it was so nice of him to let us all take over his house for the morning!

This was the little sign in table. My moms friend made those sheets for everyone to sign and write a little note on, they fit perfectly in the scrap book she started for me. And then there were also some things pick-up for some of the games that we played.

It was a brunch, so we had some really yummy egg casseroles, fruit pizza and my Grandma Empey's homemade cinnamon rolls. It was all sooooo good!!

A couple of pictures of some of the people who were there.

The gift table.

Some pictures of me opening gifts. Sorry, I'm not really looking at the camera in any of them. And some of them are a little dark. (and I really should have taken my jacket off, it makes me look so wide in all the pics, oh well) :)

I'm telling you this little girl is going to be so well dressed!! I love baby girl clothes!!

All the gifts sitting on the floor in the baby's room. I can't believe how generous everyone was!! We were given some really nice gifts and almost everything we needed for the baby. We hardly have anything left for us to go buy! Thank you!!

My friend Carrie made this really cool diaper cake! Those are all diapers for us to use! Such a pretty way to give a gift of diapers! I don't want to take it apart!

I just had to take a picture of the crib set, I love it!! Isn't it so cute?! We are decorating the room in frogs and lady bugs, so far it's turning out really cute! I'm going to take pictures of it when it's all done.

I'm going to have to do a quilt/blanket show and tell blog, we've had so many hand made quilts/blankets given to us! I feel like they deserve a blog of their own, ha! And just another side note, I was soooo sick on the day of my shower! That was the only bummer, but thankfully there is no close-up pictures of me, I had big ol' circles under my eyes! I went home afterwards and crashed out for awhile!

24 years!!

HAPPY 24th BIRTHDAY BLAKE!!

Well, his birthday was actually yesterday, the 27th, but I didn't get a chance to do this post yesterday. So here it is a day late. We went out to eat, at you guessed it, Casa Loupe! Here are a few pictures from dinner. Sorry, the pictures are not so great, I am a horrible photographer!

Gotta love the "chewing" pictures. :)
He has that "just hurry up and take it" look.
They came and sang to him and brought him, his free birthday dessert.

So, here goes my list of 24 things about Blake!

1. He is very trustworthy.

2. He has waay too many "toys"

3. He can be very shy

4. But when you get to know him, he is actually very funny.

5. He is a very hard worker.

6. He loves to fish, but doesn't always have the best luck at it. :)

7. He is very smart.

8. He can be quite annoying when he wants to be.

9. He is my moms "Bwakie Wakie"

10.He'll always talk on the phone with me when Steven has to work late and I get spooked at home.

11.But then he'll tease me about it later.

12. He loves to tease!

13. He is going to be a great uncle.

14. He can sleep just about anywhere.

15. The boy has some major eyebrows!

16. He is always willing to help.
17. He has a strong testimony.

18. He is my dads sidekick

19. He is a night owl.

20. He is the only one of us that ended up with curly hair.

21. He loves going riding, even though he doesn't race much anymore.

22. He's always got some kind of project going with my dad.

23. He is a great brother.

24. We love him a lot!

Hope your day was great Blake!!

He's legal???

HAPPY 18TH BIRTHDAY DEVAN!!

Today is Devan's 18th birthday, this post is dedicated to him in honor of his birthday. We celebrated it last Saturday with pizza and garlic twists from Round Table (his fav.) and deviled eggs. Yes, I know wierd combination, but he has been on a huge deviled egg kick lately! Below are a couple of pictures of the night. I know there is only three, but I managed to take not-so-great pictures of everyone, so to spare them embarrasment I'm not going to put them up. The first two pics are of Devan obviously. The last one is a cute one I got of Nana and Cassandra.

To continue on with my tradition of listing random facts/things about the birthday guy/girl here are 18 random things about Devan in honor of his 18th birthday!

1. He is very witty

2. He has good style.

3. He is fun to play bored games with.

4. He is very smart.

5. He plays the roll of pain-in-the-butt brother very well ;) Just ask Em.

6. He is a hard worker when he wants to be.

7. He always has a really good tan. (yes it's natural, thanks to their mom)

8. He makes me laugh.

9. He has a really good ear for music.

10. He always smells good.

11. He made me feel welcome in the family right from the start.

12. He has two great older brothers who are great examples for him.

13. When him and his brothers goof off together, it's always hilarious.

14. He thinks he is just oh so cool, we don't bother to tell him otherwise ;)

15. He is going to be something great someday.

16. We're always protected from our land scaping when he is around, lol.

17. He has seriously great hair!

18. We love him a lot!

Happy birthday Dev, hope you have a great day!

V-Day & weekend fun!

I know I'm a little late getting a post on here about Valentines and our weekend. But I honestly have been soooo busy, I really haven't had a chance to sit and type. And of course I forgot to take one single picture of all of the events over the past few days! Sometimes I wonder why I even bother carrying my camera around.
Anyway, it started of with Valentines day. My hubby gave me some beautiful flowers, a sweet card and some really pretty smelling candles. (I love having lit candles around the house) We then had our friends Jason and Rosalie over for some games for a while to kill time until our dinner reservations. After some games we went the the Hibacci(sp) Steak House, we met up with another couple Art & Shiree there. It was a really fun dinner! It is one of those places where they cook your dinner in front of you, our cook put on quite a show for us!! So we all had some really good food and Steven and I also ordered some sushi, they have a great sushi bar there. I haven't had sushi since I've been prego, it was sooooo good!!! So, dinner was great, with some great company, although a little more exspensive then we would normally spend, it was woth it to celebrate Valentines Day with each other and our friends. We gotta spoil ourselves sometiems right?
On Friday night our ward had a Mystery Dinner Party. It was really cool! Even though it was a church event, they had it at a beautiful big house about 15 min. south of Yuba City, pretty much in the middle of no where. We all were givin a person we had to be for the night. It was set during WWII time period, so everyone was dressed so cool, depending on who they were and where they were from. They sent out formal inviations a few weeks ago inviting us to join the Contessa such and such (can't remember the rest of her name?) to a Resistance gathering at her home. While we were there we learned that there was a spy among us who was against the Resistance. So we had to go around and talk to everyone to try to figure out who it was. We were given some clues to get us going. Oh, let me back up again, also a few weeks ago we were given the information on who we were to be for the night. There was quite a bit written about each person, so we could learn about who we were to be so we could act accordingly. I was Ursual Braun a german midwife, currently living in Frankfurt. My husband and I ran a clinic there. Steven was Tomas Farkas a Hungarian gunsmith currently residing in Germany. He was also quite wealthy. It was a fun night, everything was fancy and done so well!! The people who put this on put a lot of time into it!! I am so mad I didn't take on single picture!!
Lastly on Saturday night we celebrated Devan's (Steven's younger brother) 18th birthday! I did actually get pictures from dinner and stuff. But I'll put those up later when I do his birthday post. It was fun hanging out with the family as always! I'll get to more about this later though.
So, all in all it was a really fun weekend! I do have a new belly picture to put on here, but I'll have to do it later because I don't have it loaded on my computer yet. Sorry if this is really bad grammar, I don't have time to proof read it right now, I just want to get it posted!!