Meet Vera Winter

Baby number three is here! Vera Winter Wilson was born at 12:17 am on 12/17. She was 8 pounds, 7 ounces and 20 inches long. Don't worry, we have the details for all you delivery junkies out there. Bri was induced this time around thanks to some back-room dealing with her three-time ObGyn. We were in the delivery room for 14 hours! Most of the time was spent sitting around being bored. They gave her a very small petocin dose and refused to break her water. Bri got a little sqeamish when they put the IV in (like always) so the doctors were worried about the delivery going too fast. We passed the time messing around on Ben's laptop and the wireless network. This changed when Bri's Doctor arrived on the scene and kicked things into gear, about eight hours in.A few hours and an epideral later, it was time to start pushing. It took all of two contractions, maybe four or five minutes, to push the baby out. Not bad Bri! We were able to get a good amount of sleep then host some guests the next day. Here she is, Vera Wilson, age 12 hours. At this age, she looks exactly like Ginny and Violet did.

We're all excited to have a third little girl in our family. Ginny and Vi-Vi love their new sister.

Thanksgiving and Christmas goodies

So the girls and I have made some fun yummies we thought we would share with you.

Here is an Angel Mocha Pie (sans mocha) my grandmothers creation and a thanksgiving tradition in my family. Along with spice cupcakes with carmel frosting that look like turkeys. This is from my hello cupcake book.Up close turkey A whole family of turkeys

Here is my Gige she is excited about cake pops. Yes Cake Pops by our beloved Bakerella (see my cool stuff links for her blog).We made these for our ward christmas party on the 4th. And boy did they dissapear fast!

Yummy! oh just incase you were wondering they are chocolate inside. :)

Fast Times in North Juanita

A lot has been going on. On the 21st of November we made the big move to our new house. We got lots of help from members of our old and new wards and family. The girls love the extra space they never knew the didn't have in the 8-by-8 foot closet they had been living in. Ben has had plenty of opportunity to test his handymanness on a wide variety of minor disasters with the house. We are proud to announce we now have towel racks, a garage door that closes, hot water on the main floor, laundry outlets that work, new toilet seats, and kitchen drawers that close.

We got a helpful visit from Bri's mom and we spent thanksgiving with the Wilsons at the Williams' house (Ben's sister). They're our new neighbors. We celebrated being new residents of Kirkland by going to the Kirkland tree lighting.

The next week we took a ride on the Santa Train. The Santa Train leaves from North Bend, goes to Snoqualmie where kids and parents get cookies, hot chocolate, and a meeting with Santa.

The girls were a little scared of the big man, but we all had a lot of fun. Oh yeah, those rail cars aren't heated, it was cold!Just yesterday we took Ginny to see the Nutcracker at the Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle. We'd been encouraged by her ability to watch ballet on TV with trance-like attention. We went with Ginny's best friend Riley. It was the Saturday matinee in the nose-bleed section, so there were a lot of well-dressed kids around. She did great and everyone had fun.

No Net

Hey everyone just wanted to say we wont have internet starting midnight tonight for a whole week. So if you need to reach me call me. :) WE ARE MOVING!

Violet Portraits

So I was dissapointed with this time at the portrait studio.

Here are the ones I thought we okay. Enjoy!

Both girls

Halloween Goodness

Here are the cupcakes I made for the ward party,

from the cupcake book I got for Christmas "Hello Cupcake."

Here we have Violet attempting to gut her pumpkin.

Here are our finished pumpkins; Ben, Vi, Ginny.

Ben and I in costume at our adult costume party on the 29th.

Ben is John Adams and I am Bella Cullen from book 4 of the

Twilight series. I'm not so sure you can tell

but I am pregnant and I am drinking

blood (V8) and I have a Forks High School sweatshirt on. Here's the gang at the trunk or treatHere Ginny decided to change at the after party and match

her aunt Ashley (dressed as Elphaba).

Out front at the after party.

Here's a better shot of the octopus costume and fish

costume I made for the girls. You cant see the two

tenticles in the back but Ginny does have all eight.

And here is the back of Vi, tail and head fin. Happy Halloween!

Our house, in the middle of our street.

Lots of news

We will go from fun to big in these announcements. Last weekend we enjoyed the family tradition of going to the pumpkin patch. We prefer Craven Farms. There we had a lot of fun searching for the best pumpkins. Here are some photos.

Ben had his 27th birthday on Oct 7th. Yes late 20's. We celebrated at the Melting Pot with Brandon and Ashley. He also got some great gifts. A hula hoop picked out by Ginny, and Violet pick him an awesome new tent for back packing (lightweight and roomy!).

Ben made Brandon a card that was a flag of the their own country, Brotheria. He drew the national seal inside.
Here is Ben with some knifes that can cut through hammers and stuff, and me.

So like previously mentioned, Ben is 27 and we will be married 5 years on December 28th, He turned in his dissertation on September 27th, and is officially free of school with a PhD to show for it. He landed a great job in Bellevue at Intellectual Ventures as a Research Scientist and as of last week enjoyed his first paycheck. We are also expecting our third little girl December 17th.

When asked about the slew of recent accomplishments Ben remarked: "See-ya suckers!" to his fellow UW students. "Stay in school, kids," he thoughtfully added.

But that isn't all. Ben and I will be proud home owners on Nov. 19th. Yes we are moving. We are a little sad to leave Seattle and our great ward but we are also excited to be so grown up and independent. We have never paid rent before because we have managed apartments for free rent ever since we got married. So it really seems like a big step. We will be living in Kirkland and hope all will visit as we will have a cozy guest room set up for you and all your family. Come on over! Here are a couple pictures.

Living Room

Kitchen

(4 bed 2 bath, just in case you were wondering)

What's Been Going On?

It's been a pretty exciting month in Wilsonland. Here's a sneak peak at some of the festivities.

First we went to the beach. We had luxurious accomodation at the Bonica's beach house in Lincoln City (aka Joe's Ark). The weather was a little windy but we had a great time with the girls, including Lilly who came along to occupy Ginny.

One note about this trip is that it was a girl get together with husbands optional. I was the only husband who came. That's me in a house with six women and as many as five children, all of whom happened to be girls. The HD flat screen downstairs mixed with college football kept me happy in the man-cave while the women shopped, or whatever it is that women do.

We also had the opportunity to go to our first ever Sounders game with Brandon and Ashely. We liked the marching band and loaded up on Sounders gear. Too bad it ended up a 0-0 tie. At least it was an exciting game.

Bri has been talking about taking me to see Wicked (The New Musical!) ever since two hours after she saw it last time, about two years ago. So we headed down to the Paramount for "one short day in the emerald city", which is ironic, seeing how we live in the Emerald City: a point which was not lost on the advertisers. Gravity was defied, hearts were softened, and we all learned a valuable lesson about not judging a book by its cover.

(Isn't Bri a babe?)

Lakes, Lutherans, and Mountains

So Brandon and I saw the summer was wearing thin and we still were needing to climb a big mountain. With no volcanoes in the picture we decided to go for a remote big boy: Mount Fernow, third highest non-volcanic peak in Washington, lord of the Entiats, at 9249 feet (but who's counting right?). I have to make it sound dramatic because no one's really heard of it. Here's an idea of what we were dealing with:

The trip started with a ride up Lake Chelan on a Ferry. We got off at Lucerne, about 4/5th of the way up the lake and caught the bus to Holden, an mining village turned Lutheran retreat. Being the only Mormons within 50 miles we decided to lay low until we could retrieve our bags and head up the trail. That trail got us to this nice meadow. From there we had to go up and over the saddle you can see in the background.The other side of the saddle is the dramatic headwaters of the Entiat river. We found a soft, flat place to pitch our tent. The view wasn't bad either:

The next morning we set out at 4am and arrived at the summit just after dawn. If you're not in on the secret, the best time to do anything outdoors is at dawn; this was no exception. The views were amazing in the hazy dawn glow. Here's Brandon with the North Cascades beyond.

We had to run back down to be back in Holden to catch the bus at 1pm. There's only one bus a day. The fact that Bri didn't murder me is proof we got back in time.

Gunnar and Camping

On Wednesday the 29th- that really hot day in Seattle- Gunnar my little brother joined us for about a week. He graciously watched my girls and the Maxfield girls so I could go to Ben's defense. It was nice to have some AC if only for an hour. In case you were wondering Ben passed and it was about 103 degrees in Seattle that day. We tried to go out to celebrate for dinner but everyone was at the mall and the surrounding restaurants trying to escape the heat. Oh well.

The next day I took the girls and Gunnar to the museum of flight. Little did we know the Blue Angels were taking off that morning. They took off just a few minutes after we parked, it was pretty cool. Here is a picture of Gunnar and Ginny in front of a Blue Angel inside the museum.

Here is Gunnar as an astronaut!

On Friday we got to go on our roof and watch some Blue Angel magic in the sky. It was pretty cool. Then we got busy packing to go camping two nights with our buddies the Maxfields.

Us girls enjoyed the river, playing games, and napping...

...while the boys did a short & nearby hike up Silver Peak.

Here is our family shot with my Gunnar.

Other fun things were swimming in the river, alley-ooping the girls, and a short nature hike together. At night we enjoyed s'mores and games like Seafarers of Catan and Ticket to Ride.

We had a great time.