Henry has some news...

He's going to be a big brother! We've let our families know the exciting news and now lots of friends and co-workers know, so I thought I would make it official and post these pictures! My first ultrasound was last Tuesday. We saw the sweet little baby and the heart beating and the little arms and legs swishing around. It's always so surreal and an ultrasound makes something very abstract feel very real. My due date based on the ultrasound is October 22, which is also my birthday! It will be an exciting year! I'm about 10 weeks along. So far this pregnancy has been totally different than my first with Henry, so I'm thinking maybe it's a girl, but for those of you who know the family I married into, having a girl would be an extreme rarity, and nearly an impossibility, so we will see at 20 weeks!

Henry was so excited to see the pictures on Tuesday of the baby and whenever I ask him now, "where is the baby", he rubs his tummy! So he sort of gets it, he understands that it's in someone's tummy.

We are very excited and definitely feel blessed.

Cousin Fun

This weekend we went to Chicago and stayed at Dan and Sara's house Saturday night. We missed Sara--she got home from France yesterday! Henry and Gabe had a great time together, though. They are almost the same size now and it's fun to watch them play...sometimes together. They played with play-doh together, colored together and the cutest thing of all was that they ate breakfast at Gabe's little table together. There were times when they were looking at eachother and babbling to eachother. It was the cutest thing! The other cutest thing was on Sunday morning before they sat down to eat breakfast I put some Fruit Loops in a bowl for them to munch on and they were sharing them. But if I would ask Henry to give one to Gabe he would take one out and Gabe would lean over and then Henry would put it in Gabe's mouth! They did that a few times. It was so sweet! I wish we lived closer. I would love for them to be able to play together more often.

On the farm

The weekend before last was our first real dose of Spring weather. We went to Patrick's parents farm so that Patrick could help his dad with a few things and to give Henry a chance to play and ride on some tractors. Tractors are his favorite thing in the world, but he was really hesitant to ride on one. When he finally decided to go for a ride he shook his head and said "no" the whole time! And he would only ride on the smallest tractor and the forklift tractor. The pictures of Patrick in the tree are to illustrate how they get things done out on the farm. Patrick's dad drives the tractor over to the base of the tree, Patrick rides up into the tree on the forklift and then stands either in the tree or on the forklift and trims falling branches. It seemed unsafe to me, but I'm sure it's been done many times!

Owl updates (for anyone interested)

The saga of our porch dwelling owl continues. He actually left his stoop on the porch sometime during Sunday night and we didn't see him again all week (which made Henry really sad! Everyday when he woke up we would ask him if he thought he would see the owl that day and he always nodded his head with a strong belief that he would.) Then yesterday morning I opened the blinds before I left for work and guess whooo was back? Our owl! Except he switched stoops on the porch to the opposite side and also (this is a very sad part) we're pretty sure the nest he is sitting on belongs to some morning doves that nest there every year. And we saw him with some eggs that we are pretty sure don't belong to him. So sadly we think our owl is a nest stealing, egg robber. Henry is totally fascinated with him and is usually glued to the window when the owl is there. So that's cute to watch!