Finicky Family Fun

Last week was our official family reunion. My siblings are spread all through the country and don't get together very often. We hadn't seen some in over 3 years - before Thailand. As always it was fun to get together. My parents house seemed a little to small at times for all 28 of us, but we survived. While everyone was here we took the dreaded family pictures. I don't have one with all of us yet. My sister is the family photographer but wasn't in the picture so she's doing a little photoshopping. However, we do have the individual families. I can't believe how big all my nieces and nephews are.

Jan, Jared and their 5 munchkins

Crazy Clint, Jana and their 4 cute kiddos

Jeromy with his 2 fun kids

Natalie, Jeff and their 4 squirts

Becky and her beautiful self

Adorable Hannah. I guess I should have put a picture of all 3 of us, but this is cuter.

Here are some random pictures of the different activities we did with everyone:

Hannah thoroughly enjoying the 24th of July parade. She slept through the entire thing. However, the other kids really enjoyed the candy and the different people.

Kayla's showing off her new flower hair clip. We did the activity for the 'girls' but it turned out to be more for the moms. Funny how that works sometimes.

Ashley's holding up her flip flops. This was another activity for the 'girls'. They really liked them and they turned out really cute. It seems like there's a predominate female theme.

Just a random shot of two dancing. I don't know why they were dancing, but it's pretty cute.

Here they are making funny faces at Tony's Grove. We spent a fun day hiking and playing in the water.

Don't ask. These three are just goofing off.




Here she's sporting the newly painted t-shirt. This was another kids activity, but it included boys and girls this time!



Here are some of my older nieces. I can't believe how much they've grown. Where does the time go?

It was fun to see everyone. There was a lot of chaos, but that's the way it goes when 28 people are sharing 1 house.

Hannah

A couple of years ago I met Hanna, an extended relative in Germany and fell in love with her. We didn't speak the same language and lead very different lives, but she is wonderful. She's such a sweetheart and so kind, but she's also got some spunk. James and I decided several years that we wanted to name a daughter after her. So, here's Hannah's namesake:

On Sunday, James gave Hannah her name and blessing in church. It was a sweet and very humble blessing. James was nervous about it, but everything went really well (she even kept quiet during the whole thing - hurray)! I love watching James interact with her - it's neat to see how much he loves her. I appreciate all he does. Anyway, here she is all decked out in her blessing dress. You'd never believed I cut about a foot off of the pattern. Oh well, I think she looks pretty darn cute!

Another Project!!

When James made the first two picnic tables our neighbors saw them and loved them. He has since made two more with several others expressing interest in them. Once he started making them he must have caught a fever for it. He found an octagonal picnic table for sale online that he really liked. Since he had time he decided he wanted to try to make it. He had no plans or pattern for the table and only one picture to go off of, but he did it. After hours and hours (and some more hours) of thinking, figuring out angles, and working he completed this table. Doesn't it look great? I'm so proud of him.

1 Month

We went to the doctor today for a weight check and Hannah gained 10 oz in one week. The doctor was very happy about that (too bad the doctor's never say that about us :D). Anyway, she's quickly becoming our little chunker. Okay, maybe not yet, but she us now up to 7 lb 10 oz. She's now a month old and here are a few pictures in celebration of us surviving the first month.

Here she is all sprawled out and sporting one of the cute outfits Aunt Becky gave her.

No matter how tightly we bundle her up, she always manages to work her arms and legs out. James thinks she looks like she's hiding her face in shame.

Here she is demonstrating the "field goal" position. This is another of her favorite arm movements. I personaly like the little ears she has poking out from her hood.

James' Latest Project

A few days ago my mom mentioned she wanted to get a picnic table but couldn't find the one she was looking for. James had some free time and ended up taking on the project of building the table. It actually is a pretty nifty table. It's two benches that come together and make a table. So, you can have two benches or one table. Here's how it turned out:

The two benches

The table once the benches have been put together

My mom liked it so much she had him make a second table. It went a lot faster and in a matter of hours he produced a second one. My mom is thrilled and I am once again greatly impressed by my studly husbands abilities, I just wonder when he will stop volunteering for more projects. :D

New Wheels

Sadly, we have not purchased a new car, but Hannah has a stroller. We broke it out and took it for its first spin around the block on Sunday. Here we are with her new set of wheels:

She's still a little small for the seat and kept sliding around in the seat. We probably should just wait until she's a little older and bigger, but I was ready to get out of the house and a walk sounded like the perfect family activity. So, we propped her up with lots of blankets and the head rest from her car seat. Here's an up close look at the finished product. It has sort of a hillbilly touch, but it worked. James thought the head rest looked like massive ear phones, so we added his ipod and she looked like she was rockin' to some music, but the photo didn't turn out too well. Needless to say, we had a pretty good laugh and spent more time preparing for the walk than actually walking. But, I guess that's just how it goes.

E R

The other day James came home from work early with a bandaged arm informing me he had been to the Emergency Room. This is not something anyone wants to hear, especially knowing James and how he would avoid going to a doctor at all costs, let alone the ER. Apparently he was working on a house using a nail gun. Everything was going along fine until he shot the nail gun and the safety double fired. I'm not sure if that's the correct terminology, but the gun shot out an extra nail and instead of going into the house it went into James. Ouch. That sounds painful to me. It went into his arm (see bandage) a couple of inches deep. He was able to salvage the nail and is showing it off in the picture above. He was pretty nonchalant about the whole ordeal. I'm just glad he's okay and the wound seems to be healing without any problems.

Happy Father's Day

Seeing that James is now a father I felt a little guilty for not having anything for him on Father's Day. Then, someone (thanks Lace) reminded me that she was a pretty good gift to give. So, here's a picture of James with his Father's Day gift. Aren't they cute together? I think we'll keep her. :D

1 ½ Months

6 Weeks ¤ 42 days ¤ 1008 hours ¤ 60,480 minutes ¤ 3,628,800 seconds

A million of anything is a lot, so I felt pretty comfortable with 3.6 million seconds to prepare myself for fatherhood. My procrastination techniques did not serve me too well. Monday night at our Lamaze class Britt was talking about some contractions that she was having, but she disregarded them as Braxton-Hicks contractions (for those of you who don’t know what Braxton-Hicks contractions are you are not alone I would like to compare them to the false start in the football game called pregnancy). So around Midnight she got up to sleep on the couch in the hopes of finding the right position, but each time she was about to doze off another contraction would hit making it impossible to sleep. This went on until 6:00 in the morning when we thought it might be best to call the doctor’s office. Britt, not wanting to be a ‘burdensome first-timer’ thought it better to wait until the office opened at 8:00 at which point they told her to take a bath and if it didn’t get better within the next couple hours to call and schedule an appointment. Ultimately things did not get better and at 11:00 she headed to the Doctor’s office. It seemed that the nurses were not too concerned about the situation and went on their merry way until the examination started and the commotion started. By 11:45 she was checked into the hospital with an IV. I arrived at 12:15 (after breaking most traffic laws known to man). My honed Lamaze skills came to play and at 1:30 Hannah Lynn Flammer decided it was time. Britt did great with labor and she had done so much of it at home that it didn’t take long. She went without the epidural, but I asked for one. I honestly believe I could have enjoyed the process a little more if I hadn’t been so worried about Hannah and what it was going to take to get her healthy. The 3 doctors in the room (along with 3 nurses) did a great job in keeping it light. When she was born they were pretty sure she was going to weigh around 4 or 5 pounds so they were really surprised when she was 6 pound and 4 ounces. Hannah got hauled away to the Newborn Intensive Care Unit and Britt got put in a room for recovery, I kind of went back and forth. I really didn’t want to spend too much time with Hannah due to the intimidation of all the machines she was hooked up to. Britt and I did get a chance to go down together and spend a little time with her. Hannah did great in the NICU and we were able to take her home 6 hours after Britt checked out. Taking Hannah off of the machines was a little nerve racking. As intimidating as the machines were and as much as I struggled holding her with all the cords I took a lot of comfort in being able to look at the machine to see that her heart was beating and that oxygen was being distributed. All in all I am not sure that the extra 3.6 million seconds would have done much to prepare me for fatherhood, but it was kind of nice living in ignorance before. I have been a dad for a total of 78 hours (4680 minutes, 280,800 seconds) but it is by far the most humbling thing I have ever done. This is just the beginning. As for the picture, don't let the blue fool you, it is just the outfit they have for laying on the tanning bed. I kind of think that was the real reason Hannah came early, she wanted to work on her tan and she figured between the bed and having all of July she would be sitting pretty.

This is us hanging with Hannah. It kind of gives you a good idea of what she was hooked up to. On her right hand is the IV and if you look at the monitor the top number is her heart beat, the middle is her breathing, and the bottom number is the oxygen monitor that is on her right foot.

Hannah Invades

Finally, I think it's all done - all of the little projects I planned related to Hannah are finished. I'm sure lots more unplanned ones will come, but for now I'm done. Here are a few of the small projects I've been working on that have invaded my life.

I mod podged the letters above spelling "Hannah" and I painted these picture frames to give us some wall hangings.

I made a baby quilt. It was my first time piecing anything and it's very amateur, but it's good enough for me. My friends mom, Joleen, quilted it and did an amazing job. It makes me wish I'd have done a little better job on my part, but too late now. She quilted a baby carriage and Hannah's name in it. Amazing. Thanks so much. To go along with the quilt there's a crib skirt and material for curtains.

Somewhere I got the idea in my head to make bibs and burp cloths. Bad, Bad, Bad idea!! They're not hard, in fact they're very simple, but not worth the effort. After tracing the pattern, cutting, sewing, turning right side's out, doing another decorative stitch, and sewing in the snaps they took a long time. I don't know what I was thinking. I priced bibs at Wally World and found 10 for $13. Mine ended up costing slightly less, unless you include all the labor. Yuck! Never again will I make them. On the bright side, I now have 4 small bibs, 6 big bibs, and 5 burp cloths- all reversable. I also got to practice the decorative stitches on my sewing machine.

In addition to the bibs I made two blankets. These were much more enjoyable, not to mention cheap and easy. Double bonus. These were much faster and I got to experiment more with the fancy stitches.

My sister recommended I make a hooded bath towel. In fact, I blame her for most of these projects, majority of them were her idea. :D This was quick and easy. I didn't do a very good job matching the hood to the towel, I'll have to do a better job next time.

Lastly, I made a nursing cover aka hooter hider. That name is rather crude, but really cracked me up. I don't know how functional it is, but it was only about $3.50 and really easy to make. Yay!