Sisters

Flowers

Lily was so well named. She got flowers for her birthday that she has to take care of. She uses the watering can she and I decoupaged to water them.

Random

Matthew and Laura have a great time together. He likes her fiesty personality and she can take his rough play well. Laura calls him 'Ma-mu'. Laura is talking much more now since mum has been here. She has also learned most of her colors and shapes, which was a goal of mine for her. Granny takes Laura off in the mornings to get ready for the day while I do school with Lily. Lily read her first 'reader' book this week in phonics. So perhaps I need to have another baby to lure granny here for a few months to help move the kids on in school!!

Fairy Laura

Laura has taken to wearing her fairy costume daily. She puts it on and then runs into the living room asking for music so that she can dance. She flies around the room a few times with her arms out and then runs off some place else. She is a hard child to keep up with.

Annie's first bath

Getting ready

Granny and Lily went to see the Houston Ballet's Swan Lake on Saturday. They got all dressed up for it. They had a wonderful time and now Lily has many new dance moves to show for it! Here they are in the bathroom getting ready to go.

BLUE EYES

Annie Rose is going to have blue eyes! They are dark blue now, but blue. The other three have brown.

Swishing skirts

Granny and Laura wore long skirts to church today. They were twirling. Even the Annie Rose had on a skirt that drew lots of attention - a Ballet skirt given to her by her uncle Andrew and aunty Karen from Ireland.

The trip

Lily and her daddy went to San Antonio for a night on Friday for fun. She was so excited all week and could talk about nothing else. Here she is getting ready to go. They stayed in a hotel on the Riverwalk and ate Mexican and took a boat ride down the river. On Saturday they did a number of tourist things and then came home. They had fun.

Growing

Annie is growing bigger infront of our eyes. Here she is at 3 weeks old.

Annie Rose 10 days old!

Annie is a wonderfully easy baby! She pretty much sleeps all day. I have to wake her to feed her. She eats well and goes back to sleep. But she is bcoming aware of her surroundings when she is awake. She turns towards voices and here she is looking at a brightly colored toy I put beside her. She reminds me a little of Matthew in this picture... a pretty pink version!

This was taken Saturday afternoon. Annie is 10 days old. She is a sleepy baby, so it is hard to get awake pics of her.

The Cole Girls

I have not yet been able to get a pic of all 4 kids together. So these are the best I can do.
Here is Laura, Lily and Annie Rose this morning. The big girls are out now with granny going to the library. Annie is asleep (it seems that is all she does, I have to wake her to get her to eat!). Matthew and I are just about to do some history reading. I am reading him a great book called 'Tales of Ancient Egypt'. It has very fantastical tales, such fun to read!

Annie and the big kids

How precious

The house is quiet. All the family have gone to church. I am here alone with my precious new Annie Rose. She is asleep and I just took this photo a moment ago. I am thinking of all the fun things we are going to do in her life!

Annie Rose had a TON of visitors while at the hospital. A total of 8 different families from our church visited her! One of our pastors and my friend Christi were with us all day in the hospital until after she was born. It was so nice to have supporters to come, visit and pray for Annie.
Here is a picture of our pastor, Ted Seago and some of his kids with Annie on Friday.

On Saturday we got to take Annie home. Here is a proud Lily and granny holding Annie just before we set off for home.

Laura meeting Annie Rose

My mum brought the siblings in to see Annie at about 7pm. She got losts of hugs and pats and kisses and pawings. Welcome to the world! She is well loved already.

Introducing Annie Rose

Here is Annie Rose 30 minutes after she was born. Her very first photo.

She was born on Thurday 1/26/06, her aunty Traci's birthday, at 2:32pm.

The delivery was pretty straight forward, minus a little trouble with the epidural. I didn't take too well to what ever drug they gave me and it slowed her birth down. I was almost doubting myself for getting the drugs as labor up to 6cm was pretty easy... but Annie was born face up and the doctor said she was glad I had the epidural as face up births are more painful.

Now we are at home, recovering well.