Thursday, July 28, 2016

Wildflower Center

Jeremy and Audrey came to town to meet Baby Bro. We spent an afternoon at the Wildflower Center in the Arboretum swinging in the swings...in the shade.
Thanks to Uncle Jeremy for our first family of 5 photo!

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Welcome Baby Bro

We welcomed Baby Bro on Monday, July 11th at 6:17am! He weighed 9lbs 11oz and measured 20.5 inches long. We are all over the moon for the last Dertien boy to complete our family!

Friday, July 8, 2016

Life These Days

I have been mulling this post over and over in my head for weeks. I blog a lot of pictures, especially on the boys private blog, but I rarely have time to sit down and write reflections much anymore. As I sit here at 39 weeks pregnant with Baby Boy #3, it seems silly to write about "Life These Days" when life is nowhere near normal and won't be for quite some time.

Big Bro is 5 years old. He is usually a great big brother, and loves playing with Lil' Bro...sometimes a little too much. He is very excited to be a big brother again. He loves to draw, build with Legos and wrestle. Big Bro loves to cuddle and doesn't like to be by himself.

Lil' Bro is 2 years old. He knows there is a baby brother in Mommy's tummy, but certainly doesn't know what life will be like with a new baby! He adores his big brother and wants to do EVERYTHING Big Bro is doing. Lil' Bro is full of personality, loves to sing songs and is great at communicating what he wants.

Nicholas started a new business called Visual Ministry Consulting about a year and a half ago. His mission statement is to create visually vibrant worship experiences through creative worship planning and installations. His primary client is our church, and he has been doing some amazing things! His primary job is taking care of the boys, so it has been difficult to grow his business, but we are happy he has the opportunities that he does and is fulfilling a big need in the church today!

And this paragraph is the reason this post has not been written sooner. I still work for the same company I have for the past 11 years that has afforded us lots of different opportunities. Overall, I have a fairly flexible schedule and currently am able to work from home four days a week. Over the past 3 years there has been much uncertainty about whether I would still be able to work from home at all, and we have struggled with this off and on. There is never a guarantee that I will be able to continue working from home at all, or as much as I currently do, so we take things day by day. I enjoy the projects I am working on, when there are not team dynamic issues. But I am happy that I have had as much flexibility as I do, and get to spend more time with the boys because I generally don't have much commuting to do.

When Mommy is not huge and pregnant, we spend a lot of time together as a family on the weekends exploring Austin. We have enjoyed the flexibility of summer childcare and not having to work around school schedules. We are excited for Big Bro to start Kindergarten in the Fall and for Baby Bro to join our family any day now!  And that sums up life these days. Many changes are afoot.