The Moment we've all been waiting for... Announcing Sophia May Starkey!!

Here are some pix of our last couple days. We were scheduled to be induced Dec 18th and I had started having some serious contractions that morning at 3:30am so we're happy to announce that by 3:03pm we had our little Sophia May. She weighed 7 lb 5 oz at birth and was 20 3/4 " long. Not bad considering she was 10 days ahead of the due date we had. She came out looking for her hand to suck on and she's done great nursing so far. Look at all that hair! So cool! Her eyes are dark blue right now, we'll see if that changes. Katie and Taylor are excited to have her here with us and Katie keeps saying "Baby Sophia is my favorite sister". I keep telling her "That's wonderful, because she's your only sister!". I'm happy to have the pregnancy and labor all over. I'm impatient to have recovery over with, but luckily with the holiday, Craig has some time off and my Mom and Dad are coming in tomorrow so it'll be a good time to take it slow for a couple weeks. You can see in the pix, the birthday party that we had for Sophia at the hospital and then her coming home and our new family pix. We'll have to get one all together!

Look how cute my kid is!

Here are Taylor's preschool pix! So cute, huh? Well, he is pulling an Amy (see my winter formal pic from 1996 and you'll understand)in his class pic, but the pic of just him is super cute! Katie had pictures taken at school this year too and they turned out pretty good. We even tried to order them, but she didn't give her teacher the form, so they didn't get ordered! I guess we'll try again in the spring (apparently, they take "spring pictures" here. I wasn't aware of that, so last year, they were really funny!

Happy NEW YEAR! KNEE-HOW!

Craig, Taylor and I went into Katie's classroom today to teach the kids about Chinese New Year. Well, Craig did the teaching, Taylor and I were his lovely assistants. After talking about China and Chinese(the are studying how children around the world celebrate the holidays), we made dragons to have a parade in the classroom! We ended by giving them red envelopes with money (fake money) in them and fortune cookies. I thought it was really cool!

Happy Holidays!

We had a great weekend! Our stake puts on a fabulous Night at Bethlehem event every year. Last year when it was really warm they held it inside the gym, this year when it was in the 30's they had it outside! How funny! Anyhow, they put on a really nice program. They have people bring food for the food bank, then they give them little bags of "narble money" as Taylor says and they can go to the Headdress booth (as Taylor did) and the pottery booth and the bakery and visit the Women at the well (for living water). Mary even rode on a real donkey this year(I'm really happy that I didn't have to play her despite our due date). They have an Inn where they go to ask if they have room and lots of people dressed up as Wisemen, shepards, Roman Soldiers, priests. It's really cool! Casey Eichhorn wsa there dressed as a soldier (it was kinda chilly for shorts, if you ask me but maybe the chainmail was a good insulator). Katie and Taylor were pretty good posing as Mary at Joseph. Christina Eichhorn was the one who did up Taylor's headdress, not bad, huh? On a different note, we are scheduled to be induced on Thursday to have our baby. I'm dialated to a 2 already though, so I guess we could go earlier, we'll keep you posted! (ha! get it? posted?)

Did you know that John the Baptist was a wise man?

This is our nativity scene. Last year one of the wisemen's head's fell off and I glued it back on. Well, I guess it fell off again when Craig set it up for me this year. Anyhow, I set it on his box of frankensense or Murr or gold and then it reminded me of all those statues and pix of John the baptist holding his own head. I guess since John the Baptist wasn't much older than Jesus himself, it's impossible that he was a wiseman. You'll all be relieved to know that I fixed his head (with super glue this year, not the hot glue gun, hopefully it'll hold better). On a similar note, we awoke this morning to, not my water breaking, but a huge crash of our enormous Christmas tree falling down! Craig goes "what was that???" I said, "probably the Christmas tree". We had been trying to get it straightened out before bed. He had said he hoped it didn't fall over and I really didn't think it would, but it did! Good thing we switched to plastic ornaments this year! We still lost some glass globes, but we awoke to a freshly vacuumed house.

Where do ya think you're going to put a tree that big?

Every year as we search for the perfect Christmas tree, I'm reminded of the wonderful holiday movie, "National Lampoons Christmas Vacation". Getting the Christmas tree is always a highlight and we always wonder where we're going to put it.....now you don't have to wonder anymore!

Katie is getting so big! We went to look for our Christmas tree this weekend and had a lot of fun. Although we weren't able to cut one down, we had a lot of fun looking! We did eventually find a tree at a local tree lot down the road. After it's decorated, I'll post some pictures.

Katie had a blast taking this picture! I'm sure she'll appreciate much more when we show her what she was doing! Ha!

Taylor is getting big too! If he keeps growing a foot for every year of his life, he'll be six foot in 3 more years!

Our little Rockstar!

Katie had to do a rock project last week. We had to invent something with rocks. We made "Rock Star Sunglasses". Katie was really excited to wear them to school. They came home with alot fewer rocks on them, but they still looked great!