Annual Pumpkin Carving Contest!

We had so much fun at our annual pumpkin carving contest!

Brayden loved all the attention and was excited to meet 

Auntie Kik and Uncle Michael for the first time!

The last week...

Brayden has been such a joy and an easy going baby!  We have had so much fun with him!  His second Doctor appointment was yesterday and he is looking healthy and weighs 8 pounds and 15 ounces!

Here are some updates and a few of the hundreds of pictures we have snapped!  =)

In the picture above you can catch a glimpse of him smiling!  He started smiling when he was less than a week old!  Sometimes it is while he is sleeping and other times it is while he is looking around.  The shot above is while he is sleeping.  So many times I have grabbed my camera to catch the cute little smile, and then the moment is gone.  This time we were lucky because he smiled for about a minute!  It was sooo cute!

Sleepy Brayden!  

I just thought it was so cute how soundly he was sleeping while propped up on his hands.

First trip in the car since coming home from the hospital.

First trip to Dr. Clappers

We are so lucky because Brayden really enjoys the bath!  Here are some pictures of his first bath time!

Father - Son bonding time!

Brett got home from work and as you can see, he has the laptop out with his fantasy football team up while he watches Monday Night Football.  Just another day in paradise for the new Dad!

One of the special guest last weekend was Uncle Greg!  He flew up from California to meet his new nephew.

Brayden is Here!

Brayden Nathaniel was born on October 11th at 4:38pm!

8 pounds, 11 ounces and 21 inches long!

We love being a family of three and we are doing great!  Here are some pictures to tell the story...

On Friday night we went to dinner at Indochine.  As we were going we kept saying, "this could be our last night out for a while!"  My good friend Lizzy, college roommate from California, put in a request for a preggo picture, so we snapped this one before dinner.  Little did I know that contractions were about to start setting in!

By 8:30pm we were counting the time in between my contractions.  They got very strong and by 2:30am, Brett, Grammy and I were on the way to the hospital!

There wasn't a whole lot of sleep between that time and 6am.  Just strong contractions and finally some medicine to help ease the contractions so that I could sleep.  Grammy slept in the rocking chair and Brett in the pull out bed.  We all had a good nap and woke up at 9am to find that things had progressed!  Below is a picture of what we called, "Team Brayden!"

Around 2:00pm it was time to start pushing!  And pushing... and pushing...  And realizing that I should have gotten an epidural, and pushing...  By 4:38pm, Brayden was born!  Lots of hard work but worth every second!  =)

Brett was such a good motivator for me through it all!  He was all teared up when he saw his son for the first time.  Such a cute dad!

Here are some pictures of our perfect baby boy!  =)

We are so happy and feel so blessed to have a healthy pregnancy, delivery and son!  He is just the greatest gift and we are enjoying being new parents!  We are both turning to mush for every single stretch, yawn, facial expression, etc!

Still Pregnant!

Hi friends and family,

Just in case you are looking for an update, Jill is still pregnant.  Our due date was yesterday, so our bags are packed and we are ready to go and just waiting.

We had an ultrasound last Friday and he was measuring to be 8 pounds (this is just an estimate).  We had another one on Wednesday and he is measuring 9 pounds, two ounces (again, another estimate)!  They measure around the head, belly and then measure the thigh bone to estimate his weight.  Everything is looking good!  His diaphragm was moving which means that he is practicing breathing and getting ready to come out.  We have been just relaxing and taking it easy  and enjoying the last few evenings thinking, this might be our last night without a baby! 

We are getting really excited to meet him and to be able to hold him!  Thank you for all your thoughts and prayers.  We will keep you posted!

Love,

Brett & Jill

Maternity Photo Shoot

We had a blast during our Maternity Photo Shoot!  We were so happy with our photographer and are looking forward to doing our newborn pictures with her!

Maternity Photo Shoot

Brett and I did maternity photo shoot a little over a week ago.  We really had a lot of fun taking the pictures!

I will post the pictures when I get the CD, but in the meantime you can see some of them at:

www.HeatherMannPhotography.blogspot.com/search/label/maternity

Baby Planning Date Night

Brett and I had such a fun evening!  We have been holding out on baby shopping until we were closer to the due date.  Finally last night we went and picked out the furniture.  The store that we went to was up near Southcenter so we decided to do a little shopping too!  We found a few cute items for when he first arrives!  Then we went to our favorite restaurant, BJ's!  We used to go there quite often when we were going to school in California.  They finally opened one at Southcenter, so we were excited to go!  On the way home (to mom & dad's) we stopped by our house that we are remodeling.  It was so fun to see all the progress that has been made, although we still have a ways to go!

For those of you who know our temporary situation, you will know why we thought this shirt was really funny...

Brett was bummed this shirt didn't come in his size...

Dad is a serious shopper!

This is what we picked out!

Out to dinner!  Pretty soon we will need a sitter or a stroller to do this!

This is a picture of us in our kitchen.