More Hospital Pictures

Going home!! We went home on Monday, November 1st (James' original due date). It was a beautiful fall day, crisp and sunny.

Introducing James Warren Julien

Better late than never! We are introducing James Warren Julien. He was born exactly 3 months ago on Saturday, October 30th, 2010. I finished teaching on Friday, October 29th and officially went on mat leave that Saturday. We had a busy day; a baby shower in the morning, fall yard cleaning all afternoon, and a bonfire in the evening. Stef and I finally sat down to relax at 7:45 that evening and turned on the Gopher game.

15 minutes late, my water broke. Man, what a feeling! I felt a really strong jab, his foot or something, and it started gushing. My parents got there 4 minutes later. My dad said my mom must have broken multiple traffic violations to get there so quickly. We jumped in the car (I slowly waddled, as I was panicking that my water kept gushing - when they mean break, it's literally a flood) and headed to the hospital. On the way, we called the nurses line. They said for us to go back home, take a nice long bath and call later. Not happening!

By the time we reached the hospital at 8:45, my contractions were around 4 minutes apart. After they did the initial check-in, my contractions were down to 3 minutes apart. The immediately started me on an IV (I had to have that before they would administer the epidural). Contractions were a nightmare. God must have known I could only handle them for 1 hour (I know, a big wimp) and at 9:45, the epidural was in and starting to take affect. 20 minutes later, I was ready to push. Just like with Addie, 3 pushes later, James came into this world!

Again, just like with Addie, we didn't have a name until the morning. We had been 99% sure he was going to be a boy, and hadn't really discussed girl names. Stefan feel in love with the name James about 2 months before he was born. James is a family name and Warren is his dad's name! He has a quiet demeanor and LOVES to eat. Addie was in love instantly. She wanted to hold, kiss, cuddle, you name it. When she was finished, she'd push James back into my arms and say, "All done!" Classic.

Canadian Thanksgiving

TC Marathon Movie

TC Marathon 2010

Stefan and his dad Warren ran the Twin Cities Marathon today. We are SO proud of them. They did an amazing job, finished with a time of 4:40, no injuries, didn't get sick, and were still smiling when we left the capitol. :) Lots of friends and family came out to cheer them on. Addie loved waving the Canadian flag in support for her daddy and Papa.

Addie's garage sale treasure

Addie picked out this treasure last week at a garage sale. Bapa Gene fixed it up on Friday and she has not put it down since then. She LOVES it!! Her favorite features are the rhythm section and the demo buttons (as you can tell in the video). The volume automatically turns on at "loud", so even though I'm constantly showing her how to turn down the volume, every time she turns it on and off again, it goes right back to where we started "loud". This toy is going to be my lifesaver and worst enemy all at once. :)

Our "working" kitchen

We finally got our kitchen in "working condition this weekend. We still have lots of mini projects left to complete (backsplash, painting, trim, etc) but had our first two meals in the kitchen already (pizza last night and eggs and hashbrowns this morning). Man, it tasted yummy! So fun!

Summerland - 2010

James and Megan's wedding reception!
Our last night in Summerland we went out to eat at Zia's. Addie enjoyed a dinner of ketchup, washed down by a few fries.
Papa JJ and Bobo watching the Blue Jays on TV.
Catching Rainbow Trout up at Pennask Lake. We had a perfect day and limited out.

Summerland - 2010

Hanging out in Summerland. The first part of our trip was spent up with Stef's family at home.

Addie - Flower Girl

Getting ready!!
Addie made it halfway down the isle... But she did a 5 second scan of everyone in the pews and realized that she didn't recognize anyone. So she made a beeline back towards the doorway.
The first bridesmaid picked her up and helped her perform the rest of her flower girl duty. We thought she want to go right to Stef after this, but she marched the rest of the way to the altar.
Her last job was to put her flower in a vase. As you can see this took a little while, but she was successful and pretty proud of herself. :) We had a blast, what a wonderful wedding. Congrats James and Megan. :)

Cabinets are being installed and stained

So...last week we had the rest of our kitchen, dining room and hallway floor put in. We had a floor guy match our old red oak floor in the living room and he was able to use old boards (that we had pulled out) and new boards to make our floor look amazing.

This week our contractor put in all the cabinets and the finisher came to our house, taped and put plastic up everywhere and spray stained everything. My parents were able to go over and get pics of all the steps.

We've been so impressed with the quality that our friend Brian has done. We can't wait to see everything finished in 1 week! :)

Mudding the Walls / Strawberries

This afternoon, after lunch, I found Addie in the corner of our basement surrounded by some of her random toys. Baby, cow, spatula, truck book, toy car, camera, daddy's guitar case, not sure what her activity was, but it was pretty cute!

Vic has about 3 days left of our wall mudding. It looks amazing and he does such an amazing job. We are so happy that we hired him to do this section of our house. He's a friend from church and I love hearing our local Christan radio station playing all day long!! :)

My VERY healthy strawberry patch....

is producing an entire pail full every 2 days!!! So much fun! Good thing Addie LOVES eating them.

Camping at Sibley

Addie had a blast camping this weekend. We only "camped" for the day. No sleeping over this time (we were busy with the kitchen). She loved playing in the woods and her favorite activity was riding in the hiking backpack. We borrowed it from our friends Trevor and Sarah. She squealed with delight every time she saw it and almost couldn't contain her excitement when we finally put her in for our Mount Tom hike. :) My mom has some fun pictures from the weekend. The best is of Addie's backside. We only had her in shorts on Sunday (when we left Mtka it was 80, and 2 hours later at Sibley is was 60) and were not prepared for cold weather. So my Auntie Julie rummaged through her doggie clothes for Sadi and Sami and found an old pair of Vikings leggings (with a hole for the dog tail in the back), and so our daughter walked around with tight holey leggings all day. Priceless!

Addie loves playing Mommy

She's sitting in the middle of our kitchen reno feeding and burping her baby!

One sip for you...

One sip for me!!

Now for a burp! :)

Finished Sheet Rock - YEAH!!!!

We are finished with the sheet rock!!! Yippee!! Stef and my dad worked SO hard this weekend. We were blessed with awesome weather and lots of good food provided by our family! :)