Welcome Lauren Elizabeth!

Hello everyone! I just wanted to share some exciting news in the life of my family.

My sister and brother-in-law just welcomed their second child: Lauren Elizabeth into our family on Friday, February 20th! She was born 8 pounds exactly and that was at 3 weeks early!

Please don't be confused... this is not my 16-year old sister Sara who I have spoken about often, but rather my other sister Jenny who is 1 year and 9 months younger than me.

Here are some sweet photos of my daughter meeting Lauren for the first time (that is my mom in the picture with them):


And since we are talking about my sister and babies, this might be a fun time to share another cool story with you:

I am a born planner and this is true in my personal life as well as business. So, when I decided I wanted to start a family, I got out my calendar and started marking down dates. I did my research and figured out the best times to... well, you know. I all but kept an Excel spreadsheet to plot it all out.

So the waiting game began. I was so anxious to see if my body cooperated with all that planning and research. So, when I counted the days and was sure that I was 'late' I took a test: Negative.

The next day, I was over at Jenny's house and I told her that I was late, but that the test came up negative. She was intrigued and said that she happen to have a test in the house and said I should give it another try.

After taking the test we both stood over it eagerly as the two little lines became very clear: PREGNANT! Hooray! We were both so excited, but Jenny insisted that she go out and buy another test just to be sure.

So, she came back from the drug store with a 2-pack, just in case. Second try - Same results: PREGNANT!

We spent the next hour daydreaming about whether it would be a boy or a girl and what names we liked. Then I decided I should probably go home and let my husband in on the big news.

As I was driving home, I received a call from Jenny who was frantically asking me to come back! Why? What happened?! She told me that she decided to take the other pregnancy test just to "get it out of the house" and sure enough, her results were identical to mine: PREGNANT!

No way. That can't be.

So, she ran to the same drug store to buy another 2-pack. (I would love to know what was going through the mind of THAT clerk! Can you imagine?) Sure enough, she took the second test and the answer came back the same.

We were both pregnant for the first time and found out on the same day. Isn't that crazy cool? And to top it all off, we were due within days of each other.

As it turns out, Jenny was not really trying to have a baby, but she wasn't really trying to prevent it. So, this was not intentional. It was pure exciting coincidence.

Here is a shot of us on Christmas 2006 (that's me on the left in green):

We were so excited to have MelissaJill Photography do our maternity photos. There were a TON of really amazing shot and I will share more of those with you in another post, but here is my favorite one:

My daughter Ella Kathryn was born March 9, 2007 and Jenny's son Daniel Jacob was born 3 days later. Delivered by the same doctor in the same delivery room no less.

Here are a few photos of our little munchkins together:




They are already the best of friends and we are so excited about incorporating our new precious addition of Lauren to our clan. What a blessing!