In all the waiting for Luke to arrive we've been able to finish up all loose ends in the house (trying to find a bright side!). It's been wonderful having Mom here to help me get everything ready for his arrival. Here's his room. You will notice we opted for a twin bed in there along with the crib, rather than a rocker. Matt had this when Kayla and Nate were babies and loved it, and since then many friends have convinced me it's the way to go. You'll notice on the wall is an empty frame - as soon as Luke is here and able, we'll take a picture of him and fill in the empty space. The other baby picture is of Matt.
We chose a "dog" theme for his room, as I'm pretty picky about theme's in general (couldn't bring myself to commit to a Winney the Pooh or Disney something or other permanently). The dog theme, however, totally fits our family and is cute for a boys room. We love how it turned out.
If you can click on this picture and see it larger, you'll see that the three photos on the wall are of our three dogs... Kona, Sadie, and Lilly. Though Sadie is not with us any longer we still had to include her. The caption says "snips and snails and puppy dog tails" - our neighbor, Julie's, idea. I think she's single-handedly decorated most homes in our neighborhood and we don't know what we'd do without her!
So this is the "update" portion of this post. Last Wednesday, Dec. 1st, I/we had a lovely false alarm. I am not a fan of the word "false" these days as the term "false labor" was taught to me the hard way. I learned that what that really means is simply laboring without progress/dilation. At 2pm I began, at 11pm it stopped all together (after my contractions got to 4 minutes apart). The clue was that contractions should get more intense/painful as they get closer together, whereas mine were becoming easier, so we knew something may not be happening this night. For the last 6 days since this happened, I've had inconsistent and uncomfortable contractions every day. Only yesterday did I learn that I'm finally dilating, so we'll give it a day or two and hope that Luke comes on his own. I'd really rather not induce but am willing to if too many more days go by. More soon!
These pictures are of the false-labor night - the family gathered round and made me laugh between contractions. I think I've scared Kayla and Ashley permanently from having children, which I don't mind since they're only teenagers. :)
Christmas Day, finally home from the hospital! 
