Meeting Our New Nephew, Benjamin (December 23-24)

This trip was a long time in the making, considering this little man is already three weeks old! The weather hadn't been cooperating since Mr. Benjamin was born back at the end of November (a couple weeks early!), so this was the first time we could make the trip work, everyone was healthy, and we had some time off work at the beginning of our Christmas vacation!

We started out after breakfast and packing on Friday morning, and were so thankful that the roads were great the whole way! The boys certainly were a little weary of traveling after a little while.

We made it to our hotel around 3pm and got checked in and the boys immediately headed down to the pool, with Ryan and I following soon after. We swam for about an hour and a half before heading up to our room to get ready for supper.

We picked up some Famous Dave's on the way over to Sarah and Johannes' house for supper - SOOO yummy!!

After we ate, Mark and I finally got a little snuggle time with sweet little Benjamin!

He could not be more perfect! What a sweet little baby boy! I mean, look at those tiny little perfect lips!

Mama, albeit tired, was in great spirits and was looking wonderful!

We called it an early night (as any parents of 3 little boys probably do) and got the kids back to the hotel and to bed.

The next morning, the big kids were anxious to get down to the pool as quickly as possible, so Mark went down there with them, and I took Ryan shopping for a little while. It was fun to have just him, and he passed out pretty quickly on the way there (rough night?) and slept most of the time we shopped. Man is it ever easy to have just the one kid lol

Afterwards, we met the guys back at the hotel, got our things packed up and ready to go, and then swung by Sarah and Jay's house again as we had forgotten to drop off their Christmas presents the night before (I had left them at the hotel in my rush to get out the door), then stopped for some Runza (which in our minds wasn't quite worth the hype) before making the long trek home for the Christmas Eve service that night.

It was a fast and furious trip for us, but we all had a great time!

Welcoming my newest Nephew, Andrew!

Meet Baby Andrew Ropte :)

Andrew was born this past Saturday, November 3 at 8:16am via emergency c-section. He was born 8 weeks ahead of schedule at 32 weeks gestation, and was a whopping 5lbs 12oz and 17 inches long. He was born after a very scary situation involving significant amounts of blood loss, a trip to the ER and an emergency c-section, my sister-in-law Sarah and sweet new nephew Andrew are doing great! We are so thankful that they are doing well and recovering. We hope to make it out to see them before too long, once harvest winds down and they are up for some company.

Welcome to the family, sweet Andrew! We love you already! We are so glad you have joined our crazy big family and can't wait to meet you!