A Little Over a Week

Helena is a little over a week old. Here are a few pictures that we have taken since we have been home. Things are going well here. Hannah loves her new little sister. She is working on patiently waiting for something when Mommy can't get it right now. Otherwise we have been having lots of good company coming around to visit.

Elusive

Helena has definitely been a sleeper. I think that Ben and I are the only ones that have seen her eyes. She was awake this morning so I snapped some pictures. She definitely isn't as alert as Hannah was at this age, but the extra sleep is OK with me. She is about the same size as Hannah was but is more filled out by about 1.5 pounds. Hopefully the cookies and candy I ate right at the end went straight to her and didn't pack themselves around me!

She's Here!

I guess all it took was to post something on the blog. That night after the post I went into labor. On March 19th at 4:58 am we had Heléna Lee DuVal. She weighed 8 pounds 10 ounces and was 21 inches long. Sorry there's no picture with this post but you can click here to go to the hospital website and see her.

Everyone is doing well. So far Hannah seems to like her new little sister. I'll post some pictures as soon as I can get to it.

Still Pregnant

Just in case you are wondering I'm still here and I'm still pregnant. When we do have the little lady we will get something up on the blog as soon as we can. In the meantime we are all doing well. I'm impatiently awaiting the little lady's arrival and Hannah is having a hard time finding a place to sit on Mommy's "lap". Daddy's work has been picking up as spring is starting to show its face. Hannah and I have been trying to enjoy some of the nice days while we wait for the last few calves to be born. I hope things are going well for you where you are.

A Little Trip

Last Monday (over a week ago) Hannah and I went with Daddy to Sacramento for some California Farm Bureau meetings. Click here to read about our trip last year. Hannah and I got to do some looking around that we wouldn't have been able to do otherwise.

Tuesday morning we hit the Sacramento Zoo. It was a beautiful day and we got there not long after it opened. I felt like we had it mostly to ourselves for the better part of the couple hours that we were there. Hannah seemed to really like the zoo. She knew some of the animals and tried to say the names of the others. I wasn't sure if she knew that they were real animals but she had fun anyway. After the zoo we had lunch and then went IKEA. I really enjoy IKEA but you need a game plan when you go there. They have so much stuff it is easy to get overwhelmed. I as far as I had gotten was to read through a catalog before going. I knew of some of the things I wanted but would have loved to have taken more home. After about an hour Hannah was approaching meltdown and my pregnant body couldn't go on much more so we got a few things and headed back to the hotel. Hannah and I "rested" in the hotel room until Daddy got out of his meetings.

Hannah enjoying watching the lions.

Orangutan

Hannah riding a salt water crocodile. She calls it an alligator and I couldn't convince her otherwise. They didn't have much in the way of large reptiles at this zoo.

Flamingos

We made a quick trip across the freeway to Sears and then headed for Daddy's Grandparent's house for dinner. We had a delicious dinner prepared by Daddy's Grandma and Aunt. Without a nap that day Hannah proved to be a bit challenging. She refused to eat dinner and just wanted to play with tractors all evening and pour water from one cup to the other. We really enjoyed our visit and look forward to seeing them all again soon.

Wednesday Hannah and I went to Costco to stock up before the baby comes. We got everything that we needed and headed back to the hotel to wait for Daddy's meeting to finish up. When I got back I realized that somewhere between the check stand at Costco and the two miles to the hotel I lost my debit card. Oh joy! Thankfully we have nice gals that work at our bank who took care of me. It's just a hassle that I wasn't planning on. We checked out of the hotel but still had a little bit of time to kill so we ran over to the mall. After a little over an hour of shopping and a lot of walking we had had enough. We were loading up in the pickup when Daddy called and said that he was done. Thank goodness! We were ready to head back home!