Easter week in review

Warning: this post is pretty long and contains a bunch of pictures! It seems not long ago we began the "hi agains" in America, but now we are starting our final round of goodbyes. Maybe I'll just call them "see-you-laters" because that sounds much better. Last week we had fun times with friends and family, beginning on Monday with our last visit with Kevin's sister for a while. Nana, Pappaw, and "Aunt Kimmy" came up for one final trip before Kimberly heads back overseas at the end of the month. It was her first time to meet Trinity. Here she is holding her niece (#4!) for the first time. Bless their hearts, every time Nana and Pappaw have driven up to Lubbock the wind has been fierce. Here we are at the park, only we didn't stay very long because we were about to blow away!

Trinity seems to really enjoy sleeping on her Pappaw. One afternoon right after Trinity was born, Pappaw held her for nearly 3 hours while I took a big nap!

Of course she loves her Nana too!

Grace soaked up all the attention she got between Nana, Pappaw, and Aunt Kimmy. As you can imagine, she was sad when they left.

After we said goodbye to family, we had a reunion with some dear friends. The 4 girls you see here called ourselves BEAK in college, as in Brigitte, Elisabeth, Amy, and Kristen. (Clever, ain't it?) We had a blast doing all kinds of silly things together our freshman year at good ole' Hardin-Simmons. Now we are all married with 2 kids each and living in 4 different locations. But Bill and Elisabeth drove up from Houston, while Steve and Amy came in from Clovis. We had a fun and relaxed evening, catching up and talking about old times. Kristen and Mike, thank you for all the work you did to host us!

We love to line up for pictures in correct BEAK order.

Here are our BEAK boys. We all met our wonderful husbands at HSU. Is it unusual that they all have goatees?

The kiddos played well together and loved having a picnic outside!

Steve and Amy headed back to Clovis, but the next day we had a fun Easter party with the kids. Kristen prepared 4 dozen hard-boiled eggs, and we all dyed them surprisingly quickly!

Right after the outdoor hunt...

And right after the indoor hunt with the plastic candy-filled eggs! (It was way too cold to spend much time outdoors!)

Uncle Mike told the Easter story using the Resurrection eggs.

An Easter Sunday pic...That morning, I told her, "Happy Easter Grace. Jesus is alive!" To which she replied, "You're right, mommy. He IS alive!"

Daddy and his girls.

One fun thing I remember about Easter this year is that we got our first BIG smiles from Trinity that day. Technically she's given us some half-smiles recently, but Sunday morning we got the first real ones.

I'm so thankful for the fun memories we got to make over the past week. It truly helps us savor the time knowing we are leaving soon.

snow day

Today the temperature outside reached 80 degrees, but LAST Friday we had a little winter weather make a brief appearance. Since we live in tropical Asia and Grace has NEVER in her life seen snow, I had been hopeful for at least one snowfall while we were here in the States. We've had an unusually warm winter here in West Texas, and I had given up hope altogether until last week. There wasn't a ton of snow and it was gone by the afternoon, but it was enough for Grace to see. We talked it up and Grace was all excited to go stomp in the snow...and then we went outside. My not-too-adventurous 2 year old decided it would be better to have Daddy hold her. She wanted nothing to do with it. It probably didn't help that the West Texas wind was blowing in her face and she was freezing. Oh well, at least Mom got a few photos. It's probably best that Grace lives where it's hot. Blistering hot. No, really Dad, I don't want to get down and walk!

You can tell how excited she was at this point!

But it was warm inside. There is always time to hug sister.

Here's Trinity wearing Evyn's panda bear outfit. I think it's pretty fitting for a made-in-Ch!na baby, don't you? In these photos she's 3 weeks old. I can't believe she will be a month old this coming Sunday. I'll have to post more pictures soon because she has really seemed to pork-up in the last week. I have forgotten how quickly newborns change!

I love "stretchy-face." It's my favorite. Trinity's still such a calm baby! Many thanks have gone up for this fact!

family time

March and April will be fun months for us as we have lots of family and friends coming to visit before we head back to Asia in May. This past week my brother's family came to meet the baby. We had fun! Too bad I didn't take more pictures because somehow I didn't get any photos of my brother or nephew Max. But we did have another photo session with Cassandra while they were here, and I can't wait to post those pictures! Anna Kate loved holding the baby; If she lived here I'd have her come over to hold Trinity so I could get more housework done! :) Jake and Grace are quite the pair...

I thought this was sweet.

the little momma; she LOVES babies!

Papa Jim and Granna on Papa Jim's birthday

decorating Papa Jim's birthday cake

And, I'm really falling behind already on taking pictures of baby #2. I always said I'd take as many (or more) pictures of the second kiddo, but now I see why it doesn't usually happen! Here's Trinity at 19 days old. She's such a sweet, calm baby and is already changing so fast.

Yesterday we finally found a pacifier Trinity seems to love. It made last night easier!

pictures, pictures

We came home from the hospital on Sunday and are enjoying every moment with this baby girl! Thankfully, Trinity seems to be a VERY calm baby. Hey, Kevin straight-up will tell you: with Grace he prayed that God would give us the child that would most glorify Him. With this baby, he simply prayed for a calm one! :) Well, it seems this prayer has definitely been answered. Grace was pretty colicky, but thus far Trinity mainly cries when she's getting changed or is hungry. I've been proud of Grace; she's been such a good big sister so far. She's even taking to throwing away diapers for me (at times without being asked.) She's getting lots of good attention from Nana and Pappaw this week, so we haven't seen the jealousy-factor yet (which I'm sure will come later.) If you think of it, you might pray that Trinity stays healthy! Grace was running fever/snotty nose tonight. Here's hoping this is one thing she doesn't share. Enjoy the pictures!

meeting Granna and Papa Jim

Grace's first time to hold sister

Grace had to make sure Trinity met her all-time favorite Lammie!

meeting Nana and Pappaw

Kristen took off work and was there when Trinity was born!

Trinity loves to be swaddled, so at times Grace also wants to be "wrapped up like a burrito!"

We were so touched that our family in East Asia sent these gorgeous flowers. Thanks guys!

It's a girl!!

We are thrilled to announce the arrival of our baby girl, born March 5 at 12:29 pm. She weighed 7 lb. 6 oz. and is 20 inches long. And her name is...For those of you who have not heard, this whole name thing has been huge for us. It's been a secret from even the closest of friends and family until last night, when my 2.5 y/o daughter spilled the beans to her pappaw (Kevin's dad). You see, Grace has really been into letters lately. So any letter she sees is followed by a word that the letter starts with (for example, "D" is for "dog", "G" is for "Grace"). Well, Grace was watching a show with her pappaw and saw the letter "T". So naturally she blurted out "T" is for "Trinity". That's right, our daughter's name is Trinity. Trinity Elise. Thank you all for loving on us while we've been in the States. At this point, we are looking to go back to Asia some time in mid-May. More pictures and stories to come soon! For now, we're going to try and sleep.

waiting yet savoring the time

D-day is coming; this Thursday's the day! I have such a mixture of feelings as we wait for the baby to come. I'm ready to hold her yet savoring the last moments we have as a family of 3. And I'm trying to remember what in the world I ever did with a newborn. Somehow those first few days with Grace are a little foggy now! Before we get very focused with baby #2 on this blog, I feel the need to journal a few things about Grace. The 2's have been more challenging than I ever imagined, but I can honestly say we've had more fun with Grace in the last few weeks than ever before. These have been such happy days lately, and she just makes us laugh with what comes out of her mouth! She's grown up a bit in the last 2 months. I know toddlers have their ups and downs, but I'm willing and ready for the 3's coming in a few months. I love to watch her learn. She talks almost non-stop while she's awake: telling stories, pretending, coming up with toddler jokes, and basically verbally-processing everything we do. She's fascinated with letters right now and picks them out wherever we go. One of my favorite things right now is to hear her pray at night. And she's extremely excited to be a big sister. I hope it lasts once the baby's here. Here are just a few hodge-podge of pictures from the last month. On one of our warmer days, Daddy and Grace went on another date. She always comes back from these times very excited about their adventures! Here's Grace and her good buddy Carter reading books in his room.

She loves pajamas and/or nightgowns right now. At times I put her down for nap in her regular clothes, but when she wakes up she walks out wearing pajamas.

And on one of the colder days last month, we stayed inside and let her dress up in various outfits. Note the bright orange skirt underneath her dress. We put on coke boxes and chased each other playing "robot." It's fun to pretend with a toddler!

Next time, I hope to post some pictures of our two girls together!