Meet Dylan

After several hours of waiting around, Dylan Noble finally came into the world at 6:34 pm this evening. It had been a day full of anticipation as Amber was scheduled to go into the hospital first thing this morning. Things went pretty slowly for several hours, and then it all happened at once. Being adoptive parents, all we could do was wait. I think it's almost like the way things used to be, when the dad would get a phone call telling him he had a new baby boy. When we got the call, we raced down to the hospital to meet little Dylan.


We arrived at the hospital just in time for Tara to get a bracelet and head into the nursery for Dylan's first bath. What a cute kid. He weighs 8lbs. 3oz. and is 20 inches long (isn't every baby 20 inches long?) and has little tufts of light colored hair. While Tara bathed him we learned immediately that this kid has a good set of lungs, as you could hear him screaming through the glass - can you blame him though, it was a pretty tough day...





Kennedy and Alex were so excited to see their new baby brother. On the way to the hospital Dede had a checklist of her new duties to care for Dylan. "Give him his bottle, make sure he has a binkie, burp him so he doesn't have air in his belly." The list went on and on. As we watched Tara with Dylan the kids were beaming. They kept trying to get the baby's attention and couldn't wait for the chance to hold him.

We spent a couple of hours with Amber and Dylan, before we needed to bring some exhausted kids home for bed. Birth mom is doing great (what a trooper!) and, much to our surprise, she gave us presents for our family and the baby. Can you believe it? Like she didn't have enough on her mind already! It was an amazing night and we can't wait to get back to hospital tomorrow to see Baby Dylan.

Baby Coming

Alex is a man of few words, but these ones matter a lot (at least some of them matter a lot - I'm not so sure about the Cheerios).

Draper Opens Up

Over the weekend we went to the Draper Temple open house. It was the night our ward had tickets, so we thought we would make a night of it. Little did we know we would make a night of it. Draper is a small temple, so I didn't think it would take very long to tour the building. It didn't, it's getting to the building that takes forever.

First of all Draper is out there. From our house it took over 30 minutes to get to the parking area. And no, the parking area isn't at the temple. To accommodate all the visitors, you're asked to park at churches throughout Draper. We were ushered into the church at 6:45 and didn't leave until nearly 7:30. Part of the slow down was the enormous crowd, the other part was a volunteer workforce that functioned like, well like a volunteer workforce.

The kids really liked the trip from the church up to the temple. Everyone is ushered from the churches onto buses and then shuttled up the hill. Alex hasn't ridden the bus much and this may have been his highlight for the night. He hasn't stopped talking about the bus since we got home. My bus highlight was driving through the neighborhood where the temple is situated. It isn't often that the buildings surrounding the temple catch your attention as much as the temple itself. Wow!

The Draper Temple is really beautiful. Murals on the walls, very cool earth tones throughout the building, the most amazing chandeliers in the rooms. It really takes your breath away. Kennedy kept saying how pretty is was and I have to agree.

It was a neat experience to take the kids inside the temple again. Even though they've been lucky enough to go through the Manti Temple, it's been a while and this building is so much different. When we first talked about the open house I thought Tara and I might go alone. I thought the kids might get bored. After going through the temple I think I underestimated our children's ability to comprehend the magnitude of the temple. They know it's the Lord's house and I'm glad they had the chance to see it, even if we didn't get home til after 9!

Blogger is back on Blurb

I know a lot of you were pretty down after you learned late last year that Blurb had stopped working with Blogger to make blog books. After months of angry users, guess what came back earlier today - Blogger support from Blurb. That’s right - you can again make your wonderful blog books using Booksmart, the free download from Blurb. You’ll need the latest version of Booksmart 1.9.9 and then it’s up to you. Bloggers rejoice!

BTW - All of you who started blogging once you saw my blog books need to remember me in the dedication of your 2008 book!

All Grown Up

Over the weekend we make a dramatic shift in our home - Kennedy and Alex moved to the basement. It wasn't some form of sadistic punishment, we're simply trying to make space for the baby. One of the downsides to our upstairs is that we only have two bedrooms. So, for the past few months we've been talking to Dede and Alex about moving downstairs. We thought we could sweeten the deal by giving Kennedy a new "princess" bed and Alex would move from the crib to a "big boy" bed (I can't believe how tiny he looks).




Saturday, we finally made the switch. We imagined a night full of tears, trips to mommy and daddy's room, and zero sleep. Much to our delight things went pretty well. With the monitor we could hear everything going on, but there wasn't anything going on. Both Kennedy and Alex took to their new room as if it was nothing new. They slept through the night and woke up excited about their new space. If only everything was this easy!