We had lots of Easter activities going on this year. First, a few weeks ago we went to an Easter Egg Hunt at the Pentacrest put on by Delta Delta Delta. We actually did that one twice, because they started 5 minutes early and the Davises missed the first one, so we hunt around for the next one about 1/2 hour later. It turned out to be a pretty nice day so we all enjoyed hanging out. We saw our neighbors there and Allison shared some of her eggs with Bella - Bella had only gotten 4. So sweet.
Checking out what is inside! Awesome picture of Evie and Daddy Bella getting her face painted. This is the look she gives EVERYONE she doesn't know. Evie and Tyson hang out on the grass. The kids after the hunt.
Robin took Bella and Evie up to the Children's Spring Party at her work. They had fun seeing the Easter bunny, doing another egg hunt, getting temporary tattoos and Bella's favorite.... eating cupcakes. That might be Evie's favorite part too, she screamed at Robin until she got a some cupcake on her own.
Hunting for eggs in the plants at Robin's office. Nobody take your eyes off the Easter Bunny.... and I wonder why I was surprised that Bella realized this bunny was different than the one at the other egg hunt.
We also went to an Egg Hunt at the park by our house. Little colder that day, but was still nice to be outside and we even played at the park on the way home.
Yep, little colder that day
Getting ready... On Easter we got up and went to church. Both girls were so well behaved during the service, we even sat on the lower level and not up in the balcony (which we often do to not disturb others). We ate breakfast at church and let Evie and Bella play in the nursery a bit.
Look what the Bunny brought - Cheetos! The Easter Bunny is now very cool in Bella's book. Fun at church
Then we went home and Grandpa Groves came to visit. He put up a birdhouse in the backyard and we did a little egg hunt. Then we went out for brunch at Red's Ale House in North Liberty.
Putting up the birdhouse
We came home for naptime and then it was time for an egg hunt with the neighbor kids. The sun kind of came out and it was fun and relaxing to hang out outside.
A quick nap in the middle of all the festivities
We let the little kids start the hunt first Then the bigger ones came running out - you can't really tell from the picture the explosion of kids out of the house Rocky comes to say hi to Bella I watched Allison (on the right) sit down and open each egg and shove whatever was inside right into her mouth. The result is her mouth full of candy Post-hunt swinging Coloring eggs
This is an attempt to catch up on a post I started almost a month ago. We went to Dubuque for the annual Alumni Basketball Tournament the weekend of March 26-28. My parents met us in Dubuque and stayed at the same hotel as us. They had not seen a tournament since moving away from Dubuque over 10 years ago. You are guaranteed to play two games in the tournament. If you win your first game you advance to the winner's bracket. If you lose after that you are out of the tournament. We were lucky enough to win our first three games and advance to the Finals on Sunday. Unfortunately we were unable to pull out a victory in the Finals. In our first game Saturday morning, one of our teammates (Abe) ruptured his patella tendon. Below is a picture of Abe, he would not let us get a picture of his missing kneecap, it was too bad as we had a cameraman in place taking these fine shots from above. A picture of me being absorbed into the body of a 300lb. man. This is the same individual who fell into Abe causing his injury. What a sweet stroke! That free throw did go in by the way. Bella in my old JV jersey. I enjoy going back to see old classmates and their ever expanding families. We are all good friends, but it is tough to stay in touch throughout the year.
Bella had a blast spending the entire weekend with Grandma and Grandpa. It was kind of bizarre to only be focusing on Evelyn, because Bella was hanging out with Grandma and Grandpa. She even slept in their room. The first night everyone slept well. The second night was a little rougher. Grandma was up with Bella most the night and got up really early with her. Evelyn also was up quite a bit. Turns out everyone would eventually get sick. Robin even had to stay home from work on Monday.
Bella went swimming (but actually barely moved from this step)
Watching a lot of basketball and waiting around is a pretty good test for a 3 yr old. Bella did pretty well. A game of catch with Julia
Being entertained by the iPad. Bella slept like this through the ENTIRE championship game, should have known she wasn't feeling well. Exhausting weekend!
We got a kick out of the fact that Bella called the hotel "Buick". It was because we kept saying we were going to "Dubuque". During the first basketball game she said we wanted to go back to "Buick". Turns out she thought that was what the hotel was called.
Evelyn had her 1 year appointment on Monday. The poor girl got 4 shots and a lead test which involved drip lots of blood out of her finger. Overall she did well. They noticed her white blood count was kind of high, but said she was probably just starting to fight off a cold or teething.
I did this with Isabella on her first birthday, so I thought I’d try to do the same for Evelyn. A detailed (as best as I can remember, sorry if too detailed) story of her birth.
Thursday, April 1, I was up late working on a late night work issues when we ran into problems. I ended up working straight, until 9am that Friday morning. My manager, Claire, told me not to come into work and basically take the day off. I slept from 9am to noon on that Friday morning and then couldn’t sleep much more. I logged on to work to summarize the issues I ran into the previous night while it was fresh in my head and give others some tips because we would need to do some follow up work the next week. I sent the email out to co-workers stating, this is what we will need to do next and said that while things were necessarily progressing yet with my pregnancy, my dr had said “See you next Thurs, unless I see you before then.” It was April 2nd and my due date wasn’t until April 10th.
I was definitely experiencing back pain, but I couldn’t read my body correctly because I hadn’t slept the night before. I was super stressed all night sitting tensed up at my laptop, it didn’t surprise me that I was sore. I think I posted something on facebook about how I couldn’t tell if what I was feeling was sleep-deprived related or pregnancy related. Early that Friday afternoon, I remember feeling like walking so I went out for a walk around the park in our neighborhood, it started pouring down rain, so much that I had to stand under a shelter for a while to let it let up as it was really downpouring. I remember thinking what a waste of time, being stranded in this shelter when I really should be home sleeping and how silly I must look at there so noticeably pregnant. The rain let up and I walked home and slept a little more.
I was really looking forward to a good night’s sleep that night. Jeff was going to take care of Isabella and get up with her in the morning so I could sleep in. I crawled into bed and around 10pm I requested Jeff grab me an apple. I felt like I needed one. I never eat that late and especially not in bed, yet I didn’t really think it was all that odd.
2 am I got up to use the bathroom. I was so excited to head back to bed, sleep was feeling wonderful. I crawled back into bed. My water broke. I jumped out of bed. I said to Jeff “I think my water broke”. Jeff was asleep and said “uh huh, ok” and went back to sleep. I said louder and made sure he really woke up and said “My water broke”. Luckily, since I had just gone to the bathroom I was fairly certain that indeed was what had happened. Honestly, we didn’t exactly know what to do, since my water didn’t break with Isabella. We knew enough to call up to Labor and Delivery at the hospital. They said we should definitely get ready on come in, but we didn’t have to rush. We called John and Kristy to have them come over to be with Isabella. We had plans to have dinner with them on Sat. and one of the topics of discussion was going to be what would happen if we had the baby in the middle of the night. So, we had to wing it. It was 2:30 am and John and Kristy said they would be over. I showered and we both got things ready to go. Jeff actually took my weekly belly picture, as we hadn’t taken one that week.
We drove to the hospital. Jeff dropped me off and parking the car in the emergency lot. We went up to labor and delivery. They hooked me up to monitored and tested to see if my water had actually broke. When the nurse came in with the results she said "Looks like it's baby day". And I responded "Why? Are there lots of other people coming in to have their babies?" and she said "No, it's YOUR baby day". I still wasn't feeling any contractions so they told me to walk around to get things going. We were directed to walked around for a little bit. We started doing laps and Jeff kept telling me to slow down, because we kept having to pass the same nurses' station. I think I remember thinking it would be a long time before I'd be able to walk again and wanted to get the most out of it while I could. I wanted to keep walking, but around 4:30 - 5am just said we'd better go back to the room. At some point I started having stronger contractions. I got my epidural. That really slowed down the contractions and they had to give me pitocin to speed things up again. At some point Jeff ran down the hallway to get some food. I rested a bit. I remember wanting to the lights to be off (even though I usually don't like sitting in the dark) and remember that is one of the things they talk about in natural childbirth that people and animals both want to be in the dark. During both of my labors I always just wanted to lay there, I never wanted the tv on or to read or anything.
The nurses continued to come check on me. When we started pushing the doctor was going between 3 different rooms that had basically started pushing at the same time. She'd leave and the nurse would stay with us. At one point the nurse said "Well, I'd better go get the doctor. Not that I haven't delivered a baby on my own before, but this baby is ready." The doctor came in, because of the epidural, I really couldn't feel anything, so I was trying to push, but I really had no idea if I was doing anything. I must have been doing a bad job because the doctor kept telling me to focus and try harder. Then she recommended we get a mirror so I could watch because that might help and I really didn't want to but I said ok. It only took a few pushes before Evelyn arrived. I remember looking in the mirror and then suddenly the baby was on my lap and I told myself to look directly at the baby, not at the baby in the mirror. Jeff was freaking out because Evelyn had so much hair and he saw the back of her head first and he really thought something was wrong with her. She was born at 11:46am and everything had gone wonderfully perfect!
