My goodness – Christmas is here and gone!  We had a wonderful Christmas in our new home.  We spent Christmas Eve at my parent’s house with Cindy, Nate, and little Hannah.  The dinner was delicious.  We enjoyed opening presents and just getting to relax and enjoy the day with everyone.  We went to “10nite” mass at [...]

Who can believe it!?  I certainly can’t believe that Christmas is next week!  Seems like we were just talking about Thanksgiving!  The last couple of weeks have went by rather quickly for us!  West continues to work on his school work as the semester is drawing to a close at the beginning on January so [...]

Welcome to the world Hannah Joy Essex!  It was an exciting day as we anxiously awaited the arrival of little Hannah!  Everything went great – natural delivery that was semi-short and flawless!  We arrived at the hospital shortly after Hannah arrived and were finally able to see her around 6:00 or so.  She is beautiful [...]

We have all been doing good.  We went out to West Virginia for the Thanksgiving holiday to see West’s family!  It was a great visit – defintely a LOOOONG car trip to be doing at 27 weeks, but we managed!  Lots of stops for potty breaks, but we made decent time considering the holiday traffic!  [...]

We hosted Cindy’s baby shower today at our house.  It was such a good time.  Friends from all over came into town for it – allowing us to see people that we haven’t seen in years!  It was a great day and Hannah now has just about everything that she needs for her arrival!  Now [...]

Things here are in full swing – we are enjoying the fall weather that has landed in Illinois.  The cool days and brisk evenings have made for a nice fall!  I just hope that winter is still a ways away!   Since the baby has turned out to be a boy – things have started turning [...]

Well it’s official – we had our first sonogram today and found out that we are having a healthy baby boy.  The tech and doctor said that he is measuring 11 days (23 weeks 6 days) ahead of schedule so he is a little big (1.5 lbs), but not enough to change my due date [...]

Time sure flies by!!!  I can’t believe it has already been two weeks since I updated!  Doesn’t seem like that long ago!  Let’s see….West went on his much anticipated Canadian Elk hunting trip last week.  He was gone for a week with his stepdad and was quite successful!  He got his prized elk, bringing home [...]

We had our 18 week prenatal visit today with our doctor and everything went really well!  Our test results for my OB panal and AFP tests came back completely normal!!!  YEH!  The baby’s heartbeat was at 148 bpm today, which is nice and strong.  The doctor feels that everything is going as planned…..unfortunately, he wants [...]

Things here are great…we had a busy weekend.  We FINALLY got our shower door ordered and put in.  Yep – one of the first major projects we have completed on the house!  We are really excited.  Dad and West worked on the shower all Saturday, and hopefully tonight everything will be dry and ready to [...]