Ellery Joyce has arrived!! (OK, a month ago...)

After much anticipation, the Lord blessed our family with a little girl, Ellery Joyce, on August 21!

She is named "Ellery" after grandma Velerie, and "Joyce" after Jason's mom's middle name, and his grandmother.

Tipping the scales at 9lbs. 2oz., and was 21.5 inches long.

Big sister Annica getting to hold her for the first time.

Grandpa and Grandma Engelsma

Big brother Ev.

In the carseat ready to leave the hospital... slightly out of order, sorry.

Auntie Dana

Our entire family for the first time!

Grandpa and Grandma Kuiper

Now we're back home. Here's goofy Annica after a bath.

Evan holding Ellery. He always likes to lay down to "hold" her. What a snuggler he is.

My other helper.

Just one day shy of Ellery being a week old, we took the kids to the Hudsonville fair. Here are some balloon creations that the kids got. A sword for Evan, and an owl perched on Annica's shoulder to match the one on her shirt.

A sampling of west michigan's best...

Wheeee! A ferris wheel! Don't cry Bethany. If Annica can do it, I'm sure you could too, you big SISSY!!! He he he.

Evan on the flying swings.... And I shall stop to mock another sibling. PHILIP! We all know the story of him screaming his bloody head off so they had to stop the ride.... :)

Annica on the flying elephants.

We went to the beach the week before Labor day... Jason's mom's family had a cottage out at Grand Haven, so we went out for the afternoon.

This picture isn't posed.... what are you talking about? They sit like this all the time!

Ellery on Labor Day.

Our little boy started Kindergarten this year! Waaaaaa. No, he loves it, and that makes it bearable for me. :)

Labor day morning, mom, Evan, Annica, Ellery, and I went to Uncle Gerald's blueberry fields to glean what was left after the harvest. It was kind of fun! I have a ton of blueberries to make smoothies all winter long!

Played with a giant toad for a while... which was released into my van, and we couldn't find it for a while. Good thing they finally did, or I'd have spazzed all the way home.

Labor day afternoon, fishing at the pond.

Annica and Emma Bosveld modeling some of the DARLING hats and purses that mom knit for Kathi Holstege's shop.

Annica cashed out on the floor one sleepy afternoon.

September 20 we had baptism for Ellery. Dad was in Colorado, and was not able to do the baptism... but that's OK. We had the coffee in our backyard, and it was a beautiful day.

Laura, I wish you could have made me a cute lamb cake like the ones you used to do. But I'll just have to settle for Costco, since you're miles away. Sorry you couldn't be here!

Mom holding Ellery.

Jason's parents, and his Grandma Dena peeking through the middle.

I just took these last two pictures this morning, so I'm all caught up to date now!! Ellery is starting to smile, and I managed to catch a little bit of one on the last picture. She is such a JOY to have, and is such a good baby!! We are truly blessed to have 3 healthy, beautiful children!!

Good bye for now!!

Don't fall over with surprise

So I haven't had the young one yet, so I thought I would throw some more pics up from this week....

The ducks got stuck down in the window well. So the kids seized the opportunity to hold them. (Otherwise they don't like to be caught... ) So they played down there for a while with them. Aren't the ducks way bigger than in our last posts? :)

This is the back of Evan's neck. He got stung twice by a bee. Maybe be two bees? Anyhow, he said he thought there was a fly on his back, so he squished it... but it wasn't a fly, and he got stung.

Here Dana and I are getting madly artistic....

Awww... what a cute belly... I mean baby. Hopefully I can show you the real thing soon!

CATCH UP BEFORE THE BABY!!!

Hello All- I've been a complete failure as a blogger lately. Sorry. I'll try to catch up a little bit here. We haven't really done much this summer, no vacations or anything, and the one thing that I have a lot of pics of, Bethany pretty much hogged on her blog! So after we have the baby, we should have some more interesting pics, but for now, this is what I have!

Evan and Annica took swimming lessons at the end of June. Evan did awesome, Annica did OK, so I enrolled her in a second week, which made all the difference in the world. Now they are both swimming around like fish.

We gave our house a wee bit of a facelift. Everything was forest green before, so we painted the shutters a cheery green, and the doors brown. Then we also built window boxes, and painted them brown as well. Here's the pics I have. The flowers are 10x that size now, and look gorgeous, but in June....

Here is the perrenial bed that I put in the side yard. I got to go back and dig up tons of my old flowers, so I just plugged them into the grass so they wouldn't die, and then I had to go an pull all the grass around them. Extremely time consuming. I do not recommend!! Sorry the lighting is so dark... maybe if you blow them up?? They looked OK on the camera before...

Here is a room in our house you hadn't seen before. The nursery which was too cluttered with junk to take a pic before!! So this is "before" we started working on it. Note the lovely 90's wallpaper and track lighting... Hmmmm....

Evan at Collen Park on July 4....

.... and Annica....

Okay, so for the rest of my perennials, that were still in buckets, I learned my lesson, and put Round-up on the grass before planting. Then I still had to pull it out by hand, but it was easier. Maybe b/c mom helped me for hours and hours to do it. Thank you mom!!!! :)

Anyhow, this is next to the barn, and is now full of flowers, which I will take a pic of later.

Grandma Miersma was here for a week. Not nearly long enough... I love her so dearly, and she makes us all smile and laugh continuously. Here she is with all the grandkids that were at coffee that Sunday.

And just with our family.... Don't look at the fat lady....

Mom, Grandma, me, and Dana

Here is a partial "after" picture of the nursery. We ripped out all the trim, and replaced it with nice wide stuff. Recognize it Dwight?? :) And Annica wanted to pull tape, so she pretty much did the whole room.

That's all for now. More later after the baby... I'm about 2 weeks overdue now. No big deal....!! The doctor doesn't really want to induce me b/c of baby's position, and the risk of an emergency C-section, so I'll just wait patiently!! Until then.....!