Introducing....Ian Spencer Willis

Merry Christmas to all and to all a Sleepless night!

December 7th brought a new addition to the Willis family. Ian Spencer Willis arrived at 12:49 pm and weighed in at 9 lbs. 6 oz. (Yes, that is a 30% increase over our last one). He stretched 21.5 inches.

Now for the details... We got to the hospital at about 7:45 am. Check in took quite a while and then waiting to be induced takes forever. I don't understand, you're scheduled - so you think they'd have everything ready. So we finally got the drip going at 10:15. I got an epidural, but just barely in time. At 12:49 a very blue little Ian shot into the room, right after the doctor came literally running into the room. The cord was wrapped around his neck pretty good, but by 1 minute he got a 9 rating.


His little newborn outfits didn't fit. His feet were to long for the footies and his head was to big for his little hats. He was pretty swollen at first, I guess the cord wrapped around him made his face swollen and bruised.

Nate's 2!

Nate's invitations...Rescue Pack from Diego

His cake minus Diego. You'll see in later pictures that some how the gorilla moved from the bottom of the cake to the top where he smashed things in. Those crazy gorillas, you'd think their moms would watch them closer!

Nate has been asking for a snake for forever. Not sure why, but he was pretty happy.

Finally getting to have his cake. He'd been asking to have it at every meal. It was even polka dot inside just like he wanted.

Nate cutting his first piece - ok, so he just scraped off frosting. Which is all he eats of cake anyway. Don't dilute his fat and sugar with flour and eggs.

Opening his cars from Breven and Kyla. He loved them. He was happy to play with the first one he took out and really didn't care about seeing what else was in the bag.

I wish I'd gotten a picture of him with baby Becky. He loves sitting and holding her.

Happy Birthday Nathan!

Nathan attacking balloons by foot and four wheeler. He loves his little four wheeler. Even if he rides it into everything and gets stuck. We'll work on his driving over the next couple weeks.

Sick Nate

Last month was a tough one at the Willis house. It was one sickness after another it seemed. Emma had pnemonia, Nate had a double ear infection that ruptured his ear drum and then right after that he ended up with a nasty cold that was giving him problems.

I had to put up these pictures of his nebulizer. He loved it and would snuggle with it. He'd even fall asleep during his treatments. It was a cow and he thought the noise it made was it mooing.

He looks so sick....what I don't have is the videos of him running around like crazy after treatments. He's not one to let sickness slow him down.
If you can understand he is telling you its his cow and it says moo.

Halloween

Emma and Nate in the neighborhood costume parade. They were so cute. Emma is so good at taking care of her little brother. He loves doing anything she is.

Walking in the parade

Emma and Nate in the cupcake walk

Nate after the cupcake walk....Gotta love the mess.

Snuggling with grandma while waiting to carve pumpkins.

Carving pumpkins. Yup, Emma has gloves on. She wouldn't touch the inside of the pumpkins. Oddly, niether would Nate. I really thought he'd think it was slimey and cool.

Our little dinosaur

At the ward trunk or treat

Grandma and Jenny

Our little witch. She was so cute! She told us she was a good witch.

The loot. I really thought we'd get Nate's wieght in candy. There was so much. It weighed in at 15 pounds. So we needed about 10 more pounds to equal Nate's weight. The kids had to keep emptying their bags, because they would get so heavy they'd be draggin them. Nate wore holes in the bottom of his pumpkin. Good times.

Races

So its been a month of races in the Willis house. Jenny and Jake ran a half marathon and then 2 weeks later Jason joined them for a 5k in our neighborhood and they had a 1k that Emma and Nate ran in.

My little 1k champs. Nate was the youngest racer in the race.

Savoring the victory medals
Emma was so proud of herself. She loves collecting medals.

Here is team Willis

The 5kers

Jake and Jenny after the 1/2 marathon

Emma dancing for her warm up before the race

More warm up dancing

Nate coming in to the finish line

October Pictures

Thats why we live in Texas...

For Labor Day weekend we drove down to Port Aransas. Jake had Friday off so we let Emma skip school and we headed down first thing in the morning. It was a gorgeous day and the beaches were empty most of Friday and didn't really start filling up until Saturday midday.

We spent the whole day at the beach just hanging out. We spent the night in Aransas Pass and then headed back first thing Saturday for another fun day of sand and sun. We did drive over to a bird area where you were suppose to see alligators, but no luck. They said they think with the drought that they have moved some. We did get to see dolphins jumping in the water, which Emma thought was really cool.

The kids loved it when an ice cream man came walking down the beach with a cart. They even had the blue one that Nate loves (see earlier post), but we were able to talk him into something less messy.

The sand was perfect for building stuff with...or burying things. The sand looks dark in these pictures, but that is just because these are down by the water where it was wet. It was a 13 mile beach of gorgeous white sand.
We found that the reapply on sunblock doesn't work so well. The dried salt on your skin works as a great exfoliater, but the sunblock just never seemed to rub in during the later applications. 2 days spent in full sun and I got a little burn on one shoulder, Jake got a line at the top of his shorts and Emma got some on her back, but really not to bad. So I call it a success.


This is nap time beach style. Boogie board, sun hat, towel and a bottle. What else do you need?

Emma with a hermit crab. They were down in the sand and if you dug you could find them all over. Some were in really cool shells.

This is Captain Nate in his boat. We thought he'd love it, but not so much.

Emma out floating in her tube. You could easily walk out 50 yards and it was only waist deep.

Emma spent hour upon hour out on her boogie board.

We built so many sand castles. Nate's favorite was a sand couch that he could sit on. He loved it and then we had to keep making them.

Jake and Nate out in the water.

Sunblock+sand+salt water= great hairdos

Nate didn't want to get his feet wet when we first got to the beach, but by the end he was a little fish. He still had a hard time remembering not to bend over when a wave was coming.

These don't really need a caption, but its Nate with his Frisbee.

Nate checking out a hermit crab

Boogie boarding.

Building sandcastles...alot of time it meant you had to build faster than Nate could knock down.

Playing with a hermit crab - I love his little laughs on this.

Getting clean before the drive home on Saturday. Yup, ocean water to clean off the ice cream.