So much to share...

So much has happened since my last post. Which is probably why I haven't posted. Life has gotten a whole lot busier!!

So I'm going to try to touch on the main events of the last several months:

Let's go back to mid April. Dave and I have been wanting to sell our house and move to a more family oriented neighborhood for several years. With Anderson on the way and the market for selling a home not getting any better, we finally decided that we would just rent out our house and move. We already have one rental home so we figured "what's one more." It is a risk but we really wanted to get settled before Madison started middle school. We ended up finding a really cute young married couple to rent out the house. They wanted to move in by the end of May. We had just signed a contract on a house so we figured we would be out way before then and it would give us plenty of time to move out. Wrong!!! (I'll come back to that later).

On April 15th (38 wks pregnant), I started to have contractions that night. Nothing too bad but definitely there. That was Thursday. On Friday, I went about my day- took Madison to school, picked her up and then she went to her dad's for the weekend. I went for one of my long walks during the day hoping to get Anderson moving. I was so ready to meet him!! Throughout the day on Friday I had contractions here and there but again nothing too bad. When Dave came home from work we went to his mom's house for dinner. Once we got to her house the contractions started getting a little stronger and closer together. I started timing them but they were still 20-30 minutes apart. Then I noticed that I was bleeding a little bit. That kind of concerned me and Dave's mom finally convinced me to call the doctor. I did and she said it was normal but she would feel better if I just stopped by the hospital to be checked just to make sure I wasn't leaking amniotic fluid. Our friend's R.J. and Kim (who are expecting their daughter Sophia in September) had just come over so they decided to come along with us. None of us, including me, thought I would be staying. I really thought they were going to laugh at me and tell me to go home. I just wasn't in that much pain.

When we got to the hospital around 9:00 p.m. they checked me in and the nurse got me into the triage room. When she checked me she said I was almost 5 cm and my water had broken already!! What??!! I was in shock. We didn't even bring our bags or anything. Dave had to run back to the house and get my bag, car seat, camera, etc. Luckily I had just packed my bag a day or two before.

Shortly after he got back they gave me my epidural. The nurse said that would probably slow things down a lot. A few hours later I felt like I needed to push. She checked me and I was 10 cm. I started pushing before the doctor got there. She nurse at one point said "o.k. stop pushing because the dr. is not here yet." Altogether I probably pushed for 20-25 minutes including the time we had to wait for the doctor. He was born at 1:24 a.m. on Saturday, April 17th, 2010.

The first thing I thought when I saw him was,"Oh my goodness, where did all of this dark hair come from??!!" He has a ton of hair!! He weighed 6 lbs. 14 oz. and was 19 inches long.

So back to the moving part of the story. Like I said we had a contract on a house. Due to the state of our economy and the downfall of the housing industry the loan process is quite different from how it was a few years ago. A few years ago if you had a pulse, you were approved for a loan. We had run into a few problems with our loan. We had to get a few things cleared up and one thing in particular was going to take longer than we had before we would need to close on the house. So the day that I went into labor we had to back out of the contract in order to get our earnest money back. So the Monday after Anderson was born on Saturday we had to start looking at houses again. Remember we had renters moving into our current home at the end of May. That gave us a little over a month to find a house, close, and move. All with a newborn!! Let's just say the next month and a half were CRAZY to say the least.

We ended up finding a great house that was about $50,000 less than the original house. It was one that we had looked at to begin with but it was under contract. We decided to just go in and look anyway. Our agent called the selling agent and the contract with the other people fell through that day!! So we put a contract on it before it even went back on the market. It just goes to show that God has a plan!!

The end of May came all too quick and we had not closed on the house yet. So, we had to pack all of our stuff (and let's just say we had A LOT of stuff!!) in PODS and stay at our parents houses. I went to my parents with the kids for two weeks while Dave stayed at his mom's to be closer to work. I had the back of my car loaded down with all of Anderson's stuff. The last week before we closed I came back down with Anderson and Madison and stayed with Dave at his mom's.

It felt amazing to finally be in our own home after three weeks. Although we really did enjoy spending time with our families and they loved getting to see Anderson full-time. I finally was able to actually pick up Anderson's crib and furniture from the store and set up his room.