First Day of School 2011

Ellery's Blessing

We blessed Ellery during Fast Sunday today. She looked adorable in her beautiful white dress--the same dress that I wore when I was blessed as a baby, and the same dress that Addison wore.

It was wonderful to see her surrounded by worthy priesthood holders and hear the beautiful blessing that her dad pronounced upon her.I won't lie, though. It was a hard day. More than any day since we've moved to Texas I missed our family. It surprised me just how sad I felt at not having our extended family be there to witness her blessing. Our ward family is great, but it's just not the same! This was the first one of our kids who did not get to have their blessing recorded by Auntie Kara's shorthand. I sure am missing evryone today.

It's a Girl!

Announcing the arrival of Ellery Clare Hummer, born Feburary 9, 2011 at 5:00 PM.

As predicted, she was a big girl, weighing in at 9 pounds 14 ounces, and measuring 21 3/4" long! She is the first of our kids to be born with pinchable cheeks and cute chubby thighs. My doctor had advised a c-section at the last minute, when he discovered in an ultrasound a few days after my due date that she was measuring close to 10 pounds. (At a previous sonogram just 5 days earlier, he had predicted she'd be in the 7 pound range--oops!) The risk of delivering a baby that large via a VBAC were deemed too great, so a c-section was scheduled on the very day that I was to be induced. It turns out that the c-section was a safe bet, as she ended up being just as big as they had predicted!
What no one predicted, however, was that she would be a girl. After a whopping 5 ultrasounds, we still had opted to be surprised as to the baby's gender. At the last ultrasound, though, my doctor kept referring to the baby as a boy: "I can't get a good view of his face, because he's got his hands in front of his face." I left that appointment sure that it must be a boy. The whole OR staff knew this story, and knew that although we were being surprised, we suspected it was a boy. When she came out a girl, they all erupted in cheer, as it's not very often they witnes a true surprise like that one. They put a cute little feminized version of the standard baby cap on to celebrate.

The benefit of going past my due date is that Grandma Kathy had already arrived by the time Ellery was born. And by a joyful act of providence, Grandpa Steve had decided to come after all, arriving just in time the night before the c-section. How blessed we were to have Grandma and Grandpa home caring for our other kids while we were in the hospital!

In order to minimize the chaos as much as possible, Grandma and Grandpa brought the kids up to the hospital to meet baby Ellery in shifts. Mason and Grady came first, while the older kids were in school. They were very intrigued by this new little person!

The big kids came later that evening, and all got a turn holding their new sister. (Holy cow! A sister!!! The girls, especially, were very excited that we are now all tied up, 3-3!)

We are still pretty shocked ourselves. I won't lie--we had hoped for a girl to even things up, but thought that would be too good to be true, so we were happy to have any healthy baby, boy or girl. Having grown to expect it to be a boy, however, it took quite some time to get over the happy shock! We still find ourselves asking, "Did we really have a girl? How did we get so lucky?" We couldn't be more thrilled to be blessed with such a beautiful, healthy baby girl. We've been smiling for days! You can even see it on the exhausted new daddy's face:

Welcome to the world, sweet baby girl. We're so happy to have you!

2010 Family Pics

Getting five kids to eve look in the same direction at the same time is hard enough, so we consider it quite a feat that our family pictures this year turned out so well, with smiling faces all around. I try not to think about the fact that these will be out of date in just a few months and we'll have to do this all over again after the new baby comes. Oh, well...it wasn't too painful this time around, and I'm glad we did it.

These are some pretty darn cute kids, if I do say so myself. Happy New Year!

Christmas Jammies

We had a super fun Christmas this year. It was hard being so far away from family, but we tried to make the best of it by keeping up with our traditions, and making a few new ones of our own. Of course everyone got new cozy pj's for Christmas Eve, because that is one tradition we can't do without!

Our favorite addition to our Christmas Eve celebration this year was a play that Delaney wrote and the kids performed. It was about the nativity story, and the kids had a ball finding costumes and acting out their various parts. I think I got too caught up enjoying the moment to take any pictures, but we got the whole thing on video, and it is priceless!

6 Year Old Super Model

I can't believe that Addison is six years old already! She has grown so quickly into such a caring, thoughtful and fun little girl. We are so blessed to have her in our family.

Speaking of growing quickly, Addy has outgrown nearly all her clothes. She seems to be outpacing Delaney--all the clothes Delaney wore at her age are too short for little Miss Addy. Addy got several new outfits for her birthday, and the highlight of her party was the impromptu "fashion show" she put on for us with her new clothes. I had a hard time keeping a straight face as she struck her funny little poses. (My favorite is the cross-legged squat that you can barely glimpse in the one with the gray shirt below.) I think the girl has future model written all over her!

I love this sweet and sassy girl!

Santa Claus

Santa visited our ward Christmas party this year, with pretty amusing results. The older kids were actually excited to see him. but the little ones, well...Mason was a man with a purpose. He wanted that candy cane and was willing to do anything to get it--even sit on some strange guy's lap! Grady loved Santa--from a distance. We couldn't resist the typical screaming kid shot, though, so even he got his turn near Santa's lap, if not exactly on it!

Merry Christmas to all!