Gracie

My sister came up to help me the weekend after Francie was born. Clay was in the middle of an outage, had taken off a whole week to help me and really needed to go to work. Lesa brought Gracie with her.

Everyone is thrilled with Francie!!

She's "DO"!

We celebrated Shelby Claire's birthday on the Thursday after we brought Francie home from the hospital! We had a party for her last month because we knew it would be a busy time on her actual birthday.

We started the celebration the night before with Clay and Audrey making her a birthday cake!

 The next morning we had special pancakes for breakfast and lots and lots of loving!!

 After breakfast, we opened presents and loved on Shelby Claire some more!!

 She was so precious!! She was excited about each little gift she got!

 Francie was there too! :)

 We took Shelby Claire for her two year well check and Francie for her one week well check right after breakfast. We also took Audrey because she had pink eye. All three kiddos at the doctor at the same time. Thank goodness for Clay!

When we got home, we celebrated Shelby Claire some more by diving into that birthday cake that Audrey and Clay made for her!

 She loved it!!

 Clay cut the cake for us... he cut the pieces right out of the middle because that's where Audrey put the sprinkles! :D

 All that cake called for a little dancing on the deck. Love these babies of mine!

 Happy Second Birthday, Smiley. We are so proud you are ours.

Francie's First Bath

Francie enjoyed her first bath as much as my other two girls enjoyed theirs...not so much! I had a great helper this time though! Audrey is so excited that her sister is here! 

On a side note, I think I am pretty brave to put these awful pictures of myself on this blog for the world to see. I am reminding myself that this blog is for our family to record our lives and in 30 years when my girls are looking at the books I've printed of the blog, they won't care how tired and ragged their momma looked. They will just be glad I was in the picture at all. :) At least that's what I hope they feel!

Last Day in the Hospital!

Our last morning in the hospital was an easy-breezy morning. We slowly packed our bags and got our new little one ready to hit the road. I was ready to get home and get ready for our "new" normal routine. Audrey was at preschool that day and we wanted to make sure we were home before she got back from school at 1:00. 

 We dolled Francie up in a cute, comfy little outfit that Too Too had given her and took one last photo shoot.

 I love these pictures of newborns in their carseats. They are so TINY! She was ready to get home and see her sisters!

 I was feeling really, really good on Monday but the hospital has a rule that Momma's must ride out to the car in a wheelchair and carry the baby in their lap while the baby rides in the carseat. It was somewhat cumbersome but we managed. :)

 When we got home, we were greeted my the most precious little girl ever!! She was so excited to see her Momma! I was excited to see her too and to get good, sweet Shelby Claire kisses and hugs!

 Welcome home Francie!!!

We are so proud of our girls and so glad to be home with them!!