Our good and perfect gift

She's finally here!

Her name is Ivy Lora Pennington and she arrived at 11:33 am on Tuesday, November 30th, 2010
She weighed 8lbs. 1oz. and was 21 inches long. She is BEAUTIFUL!





Sunday evening I started having 'real' contractions, half an hour apart. Monday morning I already had an appointment with the midwife and a non-stress test scheduled since I was technically past my due date(Nov. 21st). Baby looked great and I told the nurses that we would probably be back that night or the next day. We decided to do some walking that evening and have a fun family date night so we took the kids out to eat, shopped at Bass Pro Shop, and walked around the mall. The walking worked...by the time we got home the contractions were 15 minutes apart. Right after we got the kids in bed I decided that they should probably go to Grandma and Grandpa's house, so we woke them all up, bundled them back up, put them in the car and Aaron dropped them off at Mom and Dad's. The contractions continued all night, but never got any closer together than 8-12 minutes. This was not unusual for me and I figured we might be getting close, so around 8:30am we ended up at the Bellevue Medical Center. Sure enough, I was definitely in labor :) Baby arrived 3 hours later!
We named her Ivy Lora. Her middle name is in honor of Aaron's Grandma Lora Pennington.

We are so abundantly blessed beyond any reason. The Lord has been so amazingly gracious to us and we give Him all the glory. Every good and perfect gift comes from above, from the Father of Light, in Whom there is no shadow.

Ivy is our good and perfect gift this year.

The Recent Adventures of Rylan

Rylan with Daddy at AWANA.
Aaron went in uniform to speak for council time at Sparks last week. He did a great job. The kids loved him, and Rylan was pretty proud!


How cute is this?!?! Rylan's first drawing of Batman. I think it's a keeper!

Harvest Costumes!

The kids dressed up for our church's annual Harvest Party out at Jordan's Place. It was a big event this year with a lot of games and fun stuff set up for the kids.

Unfortunately, our smaller princess got sick about 30 minutes after we arrived so we had to leave, which was a bummer. Mike and Leia, Cole, and Cammi were kind enough to keep track of Rylan and Bree though, so they were able to stay and enjoy the party!

The kids really wanted to choose their own costumes this year and here's what Rylan and Bree agreed upon:

A Knight in Shining Armor, 2 Medieval Princesses, and a Dragon!

If you can't tell by now, Bree is in the cheesy smile stage of childhood. :)

A pretty vicious dragon!

Pumpkin Carving

Tonight was pumpkin carving night!

Rylan wanted an "angry face."


Directing Daddy on the detailing, apparently :)


Bree actually thought it was pretty fun scooping out her pumpkin.


What a chilly October night! Rylan commented that it looked like his pumpkin stole something from Bree's pumpkin. Bree's pumpkin looks shocked and Rylan's has a pretty naughty smirk.

Applesauce!

One of my favorite things about Fall....

Making applesauce! This year our family graduated from pints to quarts :)

We made 16 quarts this weekend!

Fall pics

We took a quick trip to Nebraska City this afternoon to snap some Fall pics of the kids. Everyone was 'mostly' cooperative. I wish we would have had a little more time to do single shots of the kids, but it got a little hectic after about 45 minutes, which is really not very much time to get a lot of individual pictures of each kid. Everyone kept getting bored. :) I think we might try and take Elle to the park tomorrow to get some more good shots of her by herself.

I was so excited to get a Christmas card photo of the kids, until I got home and remembered that in a little over a month it will be obsolete and we'll have to take a new one anyway!

Oh well.

Rylan -5

Bree -3 1/2

Elle -2

Grant -1

Big day for Rylan

Look who learned how to ride his bike without training wheels this week!