Snoozing on the couch with mommy

A few baby pictures from my phone

Loyal James Frank Keever

Loyal was born at 8:23 on December 10th. He weighed in at 8 pounds 7 ounces and is 19 inches long! He is just perfect and we are so grateful for this sweet baby that The Lord has blessed us with! The surgery went great and I'm feeling as good as could be expected. Stay tuned for more updates over the next few days!

Phone pictures

Countdown to baby

As of today, we are less than one week away from meeting baby Loyal. My c-section is scheduled for the morning of December 10th (one week from today)! I am so excited to meet this little boy, but also becoming a little nervous about the prospect of being a mother of three. I hope I can handle them all! I'm sure it will be overwhelming at first, but when are children not overwhelming?  And it is my experience that God always gives me the grace to handle just about anything. 

This week we have a lot going on...Reagan has her Christmas program on Thursday night, Josh has a birthday (and a conference in San Diego) on Friday, my mom and dad arrive and Reagan is in the city Christmas parade on Saturday, then Sunday morning is Reagan's ballet recital at the Santa breakfast! Along with all of that, I'll be making final preparations for baby's homecoming. Whew! I'm tired just thinking about it all. Now we just need to keep Loyal from making his exit until at least Sunday night!

Stay tuned for pictures of all of the above mentioned activities. I can't promise how quickly I'll get them posted, but my goal is be all caught up on blogging before Tuesday.

I'll leave you with a belly picture that Heather took over Thanksgiving weekend....not sure I could get any bigger!

Thanksgiving weekend

We were very excited to have a house full of company for the holiday weekend. Josh's brother, Isaac and his family came and stayed with us Wednesday thru Sunday. The cousins (Wyatt, Reagan, Ava and Emma) played nonstop. In fact, I'm pretty sure they played so hard that they all fell asleep within minutes of going to bed each night. We ate lots of food, watched a lot of football and did a little black Friday shopping.  I also insisted that we start getting out our Christmas decorations...I mean, we are having a baby in a matter of days! Somehow, I did not take a single picture all weekend. But Heather managed to snap this one of me and the kids...hard to believe we're so close to having three little ones running around!

Rea's Thanksgiving Feast

Just as Wyatt did when he attended preschool, Rea had a Thanksgiving Feast at her school last week. Everyone brought a dish to share and the kids sang some Thanksgiving songs to entertain the parents. It was a lot of fun. Reagan had been telling us for a week that she was going to dress up as a girl pilgrim...so I was surprised when she emerged wearing an Indian outfit. Turns out, if you're an Indian, you get to wear a necklace. Surprise gone. :)

Rea's first solo trip to the fire station

Rea finally got a chance to go to the fire station without her older brother. She had a lot of fun, but was decidedly less interested than I remember Wyatt being.  Figures...she's my girly girl. Most of the kids in her class are girls, so I'm afraid these firefighters had a tough audience. At least they all enjoyed shooting the fire hose.

Fall festivals and Halloween

Leading up to Halloween, we did all of the usual things...carved pumpkins, ate candy, prepped costumes and attended Rea's preschool Fall Festival. The kids love this time of year even though we generally try to steer them clear of traditional Halloween themed things.

For Halloween we always take the kids to our church's Harvest Festival. It's a free festival for the whole community and it's always a blast.  This year the littles decided to be a pirate and a mermaid. So cute! I think my days of having them match or coordinate are close to being over...they've already begun planning next years outfits and everything they suggest do not even remotely go together. Oh well, at least baby Loyal will be here and he will have no voice in the matter. :)