Molly Mae Girl

What a sweet day!  I love it when you think a day is going to go a certain way, but God has a completely different story written for you.  And of course...His story is always better and richer than any storyline we could have written.
I want to record the story here so that I don't forget the details of the day.

Around 11:00 on Sunday night, October 23 I started having some painful contractions.  They were sporadic in nature and I thought, "Oh well!  I'm being induced in the morning, I might as well try and get a good night's sleep."  And that's what I tried to do.  The alarm was set for 5:00 so that we could get to the hospital by 7:00.  However, JUST like with Cait, I started having some contractions that could not be ignored at 3:00am.  I woke Paul up and he timed and coached.  They were close together and painful.  All kind of out of the blue.  Well, whatever!  I was 41 weeks at this point, so not really out of the blue.  More like, ABOUT time!!  Anyway, by 5:00 we called in and told them we were on our way, as my contractions were already less than 2 minutes apart.


We arrived at the hospital at 6:00am and they took forever to check me in.  I was having to sign papers and answer dumb questions while working through contractions.  Well pretty much any question seemed dumb at the time.  Finally, I got in a room and all settled in.  I was ready to labor and meet my baby girl!!!  But things never go like you planned, which is okay.  My labor kind of slowed down to a crawl while they had me on the monitor.  Bummer.  So my doctor, Dr. Wood decides to break my water.  Okay, never had that done before.  HURT, hurt bad!!  Seriously coming off the table on that one.  When she broke my water, this was the news that sealed the deal in messing up my plan.  There was miconium in my water.  That meant no walking around.  That meant being monitored constantly.  That meant I'm freaking out because my plan to go natural and walk the halls, rock and bounce on the ball are all out the window and I just can't seem to cope with the change and the pain.  Oh, did I mention she added a little pitocin?  So....at this point I am grabbing my sweet husband's arm begging him to help me!!!  His response, "What do you want me to do?"  And my reply?  "Get me some drugs!!!!"

So they called for the anesthesiologist and he was there in .5 seconds.  Grateful!  He asked Paul to leave his writhing in pain wife only to come back to a smiling, relaxed wife 15 minutes later.  It was sweet relief!  This was at about....not sure what time.  Maybe 12:30 or 1:00?  I had labored quite a while with it really going nowhere.  I wasn't dilating anymore.  I wasn't progressing and the contractions were sporadic in spacing and in intensity.  So once I got the pitocin and the epidural I sat back and tried to rest.  The kids came in, mom and dad came to say hi.  Our photographer, Taylor, was there and ready.  Paul's family was there, ready and waiting.  Everybody was just chilling and waiting for the long stretch.  I was just sitting back talking to mom and Paul when Taylor came in and wanted to get a little video clip.  She asked if I wanted to leave a sweet little message for Molly...and my answer was, "No."  She looked surprised, as did everyone else, but I had one thing on the brain.  All of the sudden I realized that I needed to push!  I asked them to go get the nurse but the nurse didn't even want to check me because she just had.  After insisting, she told me that I was ready, and in fact, don't move a muscle.  Don't even cough until she got my doctor.  Molly was right there, trying to be born all by herself!

Long story short, after the doctor and nurses scurried to get everything ready, she finally told me to get in position to push.  As I'm getting in position (aka sitting up a little), Molly just slipped right out.  Seriously, I never even pushed.  She was just here.  Ah, and the look on Paul's face was priceless!  Tears, disbelief that she was perfect and whole and healthy and finally HERE!

What a sweet little blessing she has been from the first second of her birth!

Molly Mae Lewis
7lbs. 8ozs.
21 inches
Born at 2:45pm

It was a great day!!

Jude Asher Lintelman has hit the scene

There is not much sweeter and more unreal than the gift of a fresh little life joining us, sent straight from heaven.  Jude Asher is one of the cutest, sweetest little things God has created so far!  Look at that face, people!!!  Could anyone dare to disagree????

We're so thankful that God has given him to us for one whole month now!  He just got here and he's already awesome...that's what we say about him!

The real honest truth of it is that even though he is one whole month old, Paul, the kids and I haven't gotten to meet him yet.  Yes, that's right.  He's my sweet baby nephew that I love SO dearly and I haven't even gotten to smell him yet (that's my favorite part after all...that smell!!!).  He was born 4 weeks before my due date for Miss Molly.  Doc said NO to my proposed 5 hour trip to meet him.  Bummed.  I cried all day the day he was born and STILL cry every time I hear his sweet sounds over the phone.

Look at that face...how could you NOT love him????  I haven't even met him and I already love him SO much!

Jude, we love you sweet boy!  We can't wait to meet you and introduce you to your cousin Molly!  She will love you and you will love her, I just know it!  You will cause all kinds of mischief together, I'm sure.  And that's just as it should be. 

Until we meet know that you are loved and prayed for every single day and we thank God for giving you to us!!!

Love, Auntie, Uncle Paul, Benjamin, Cait and Molly

Molly's Room

So these are the long awaited (for me) pictures of Molly's little room!!  YAY!  They are long awaited because we've been plugging away on little details for what seems like forever!  Truth be told, we're still working on a few things, but we are mostly done and she has a sweet little room waiting for her now!

 Here is her bed.  LOVE IT!  Had to be pink for our girl!  Paul is of course...AMAZING...and he built all this board and batten on the wall for a great effect.  He's got crazy cool skills like that!

 Here's her window where we splurged on some blackout curtains that will hopefully aid in the sleeping department very soon!  Yes, that's a little birdcage hanging in the corner with some branches and a little pink bird perched inside.

 The last feature to be added was this sweet chandelier.  It was back ordered when we sent off for it weeks and weeks ago.  Well, it finally came and now it's in place too!

 Here's a better look at it with the medallion on the ceiling.

 A few little surprises here and there...

Here's her little changing table/dresser.  We did this grouping of frames above that is clearly not finished yet.  Most if it requires her to be born...like her REAL footprints and not the side of her momma's hand, trying to LOOK like footprints.  Also, the empty white frames are for pictures of this little baby girl.  They're sitting empty waiting for that!

Look What he Built!!!

My hubby is so amazing!!  Like, seriously amazing!  He has gone and done it again.  I shared with you awhile back the bookshelves he made for Cait's room and he has worked with me to refinish and repurpose lots of different pieces of furniture.  But this latest project might be my favorite (next to Molly's room which I'll share soon).

This is our home school room. 


Steps of progress so far:
1)  Bought farm table off Craig's list for $100 and painted the bottom a rustic red, distressed it and glazed over with antiquing stuff.
2)  Found 2 chairs in neighbor's trash that were, well, trashed.  Cat claw marks, no salvagable cushions...an utter mess.  A little sanding, wood putty, paint, new foam and cute material, and viola!  New chairs.
3)  Bought a desk and chair set off Craig's List for $70.  Painted the bottom part white, sanded and then stained over to give it that old look.  LOVE!!!!


4)  Built 2 HUGE bookshelves to fit the space we had to house all of our home school goodies.


5)  Paul thought up the idea to recreate a huge vintage ruler.  He even made a huge deal about it to the kids regarding what it said.  "The Royal Standard" being a reminder that God wants them to work with all their hearts as working for Him and not for men (or mom in most cases).  LOVE it!  LOVE him!


Still to be done...paint/stain some crates for more home school goodies to fill up bottom shelves. and frame in map on wall.  Also, add a few more globes just cause we want to!

Fun, huh? 

I have to keep a record here or I'll never appreciate all the work we've done and how far we've come in the year and half that we've lived here and been setting up house.  I'm tired just typing all this!!  HA!!  Thanks for letting me brag on my man a little!

School So Far

 We've been busy this year!  I can't believe we're already on week 10 of school!
This post is mostly going to be pics, but I wanted to highlight some of our fun year so far!

 Geography Fair
The kids got together with some of their other home school buddies and did an in depth study of a country of their choice.  This was a great learning experience for both of my kids and they really took a lot of initiative, which is encouraging to see.

Benjamin chose China.  He did a great job choosing books, reading al on his own and even taking great little notes.  He taught us all a lot about China.  Did you know that The Great Wall of China is the largest man made structure in the world?  Did you know that it's the only man made structure that can be seen from outer space?  Well B learned that and a lot more!

Here he is by his poster.  He is giving a chopstick lesson here to some buddies.

 Here's Cait standing by her poster.  She studied France.  She taught me a lot as well.  The first thing she taught me is that France is the fashion capital of the world...oh really??!!!  She would care about that fact!  HA!  She served up french bread to all her passersby.  We were originally going to make chocolate mousse but momma got a tummy bug the day before and we figured no one would want anything prepared at our house that week!

Here's Cait's sweet friend Lilly.  She presented Colombia.  Isn't she cute?

 All the kiddos did a GREAT job and they had a super time.  They got their passport stamped at each country they visited around the room and got to sample a food from each as well.

 Look how cute they all are!  Can't wait until next year when we can pick two new countries to dive into!

Another fun thing we got to do a few weeks back was go to a play.  We saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.   friend of ours from small group was Mike TV in the play and he did a superb job!  The kids loved getting together there with lots of our home school buddies from church.

These pictures were taken with my phone and are terrible quality, but you get the idea.

 Because of that nasty tummy bug that landed this 38 pregnant woman in the hospital for the day our plan to make homemade egg rolls for B's China display had to fall by the waist side too.  We were all bummed about that!!  So after the sickness had passed and the house was thoroughly sanitized we went ahead and made those egg rolls.  YUMMY!

Studying the WORLD

As an intro to our studies around the world this year we studied the earth as a whole.  We learned about hemispheres and longitude/latitude, the continents and oceans and how to read maps, etc.
  Here the kids are each decorating a cake to reflect their given hemisphere.  One picked the east and one picked the west.  They did a great job and had a fun time too!

 

 Can't you tell this is the east?

Doesn't that look exactly like Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia?  Come on!

 And of course here's the west.  Florida is on steroids man!!

Studying Mexico!!  Ola!

The kids really enjoyed getting the first stamp in their passport when traveling to Mexico (virtually that is).  At the end of our week we had a fiesta to celebrate all we learned!

Here are the kids working on the first steps of the pinata.  They wanted to make a Sophie pinata.  A little morbid if you ask me, but whatever!

 These are our sad, sad homemade tortillas for the fiesta.  Yeah, I know you're really jealous, but they actually tasted pretty good for being so gross looking!

 Laurie and GiGi were visiting when we had our fiesta so that made it all the more fun!

 SOPHIE!!  The homemade pinata.

 Told ya, morbid!  I'm sure Sophie our dog was watching in horror from a safe place!

 CANDY!!!!!  And yes, of course I bought MY favorite candies!  Tootsie rolls and Three Musketeers!!


So that's our year so far.  We're having a great time!  After we studied North America for several weeks we've just moved into Brazil and South America.  We're excited about more stamps in the passport!