Welcome Home!

As promised, I have more pics of Ainsley coming home. We were so blessed to have so many visitors - at the hospital and at home. Unfortunately, in my "just had a baby" fuzz I completely forgot to get out my camera and take any pictures of Ainsley with her visitors at the hospital. However, we have lots of pictures with her and our immediate families once we got home.

We were welcomed home on Sunday by both sets of grandparents and uncles/aunts on both sides.

The proud uncle with his girls.



The proud grandparents - could they look any happier?




Of course, I am taking every picture that I can of our sweet angels together.

This is early Monday morning right after we all got up. The first thing Anneliese did was check on Ainsley.


Every morning before school Anneliese has to either hold Ainsley or watch a cartoon with her or something. It's very sweet! Anneliese is going through this "funny face" stage and she always wants to make a funny face in her pictures. It seems as if Ainsley was ready to play along.


This is what "our" bed looked like on Wednesday morning. We must have a newborn because everyone is sleeping somewhere different these days. Brandon had fallen asleep on the couch, Ainsley wouldn't sleep so she ended up next to me in bed and of course, Anneliese made her way our direction at some point during the night. (And if you're wondering why there's a towel in our bed - it's covering up the wet spot where the ice packs leaked. I'll spare you the details and let you figure out what the ice packs were for.)


I'll leave you with a fun task. Take a look at these 2 pictures and see if you can figure out which one is Anneliese and which one is Ainsley! Can't wait to see how many of you guess correctly.





Love to all!
Brandon, Jennifer, Anneliese and Ainsley

SHE'S HERE!!!!!!!!

We are so proud and happy to announce the arrival of Ainsley Dell Noska! She graced us with her presence 2 weeks early (thank goodness!) and came into the world on Friday, September 11 at 9:18 a.m. weighing 6 lbs. 8 oz.

Here's a little rundown of how it all happened:

I woke up early Friday morning (about 1:30 a.m.) because my water broke. I woke Brandon up, we loaded up our stuff, packed up Anneliese and headed out the door. We called Jason and told us to meet us downstairs because we were dropping off Anneliese. Luckily we had prepared him for this moment so he knew it was coming sooner or later.

We got to the hospital about 2:30 and by around 6ish I was asking if it was too early for drugs. I love the nurses at St. David's because they said "Of course, you can have something." They put something in my IV and within 5 minutes I was completely loopy! I felt like I had been drinking all day - a feeling that I fondly and vaguely remember. ;) Anyway, that blissful feeling only lasted so long and by a little after 7:00 I was telling the nurse that I'd take an epidural as soon as I could get one. Being another great nurse, she said "No problem. I'm a fan of early epidurals myself. I'll get the ball rolling." Well the ball started rolling early but it rolled for a while. By the time the anesthesiologist came in, the contractions were very frequent and pretty darn intense. When he got there, all I could say between breaths was "Thank God." It was about 8:45 when I got the epidural and he said "It will take at least 15 minutes for it to take full effect." Apparently, Ainsley didn't want to wait that long and about 5 minutes after he gave it to me I told Brandon that he better get a nurse because the contractions hurt really, let me stress REALLY, badly. The nurse came in and said "Oh, it's delivery time. Call Mankovsky (the doctor) and get a table ready." Mom says she also said "Looks like induction by epidural." I didn't hear that part because I was too busy breathing and squeezing Brandon's hand so hard I thought I felt the bones break.

Ainsley was born at 9:18 so if you do the math you can figure that the epidural never quite took full effect. I think it kicked in about 2 minutes after she was born because my right leg suddenly went completely numb. I NEVER and let me repeat NEVER thought I'd be able to live to tell about what child birth feels like. Ainsley must have wanted to prove me wrong because here I am - able to talk about it if you're interested. All I'll say is God Bless those of you women out there who did it completely drug free and on purpose - you are my heroes!

Okay, enough writing. Here are the pics of the wonderful day.

Our beautiful baby.


The perfect big sister loving her new baby sister.




The Noska girls.


The car ride home - thanks Aunt Barbsie for the beautiful eyelet blanket you made that brought both of our baby girls home!


For those of you wondering if Ainsley looks like Anneliese, take a look at this. It's a picture of Anneliese coming home from the hospital. We think they look exactly alike!




I've got more pics of the rest of the family but I'll have to do those in the next blog. It's getting late and you know how it goes - new moms have to sleep when they can because the hours come very few and far between.

Love to all,
Brandon, Jennifer, Anneliese and Ainsley

1st Day of School

It's hard to believe we're already 2 weeks into the new school year. Anneliese had her first day at St. Ignatius on August 17 and things went pretty good. I think her daddy and I had a harder time watching her march off in her cute little school uniform than she did leaving us. She looks so stinkin' cute in her uniforms and we just can't believe that our sweet baby girl is getting so old! Every morning during the first week I had to work hard to hold back tears as I left her in line with the other kids in her class. She is adjusting well and is finally starting to make new friends. The early mornings are still a little rough on all of us but they're getting better. Brandon and I can't believe that we have an awake and happening household at 6:15 in the morning! We have definitely begun a new stage in our lives.

Here are some pics from her first day of school.






As far as Ainsley goes, she's still just hanging out, waiting to make her debut. The doctor said on Thursday that she's not showing any signs of getting ready to come out yet. However, he did say the same thing about Anneliese and next thing we knew, she was here. I guess time will tell.

I'll leave you all with a fun shot of Sally and I from her baby shower a week ago. As you all can see, my belly is quite out there and if you ask me, Ainsley looks like she's ready to come out!



Maybe the next post will be about Ainsley's arrival. One can hope . . .

Love to all!

July Fun

Once again, we've had a busy month. Luckily, things calmed down a bit in July, but I would say it's never actually "calm" around here.

July started off with a nice, low-key 4th of July celebration. Jason and Bludau came to join us for the once again great Buda fireworks. Anneliese did much better this year than last year (last year a train scared her and she sat with her face covered up for the majority of the show). She picked Bludau as her best friend of the day and pretty much stayed right by him the whole time he was here. She watched the whole show, but the noise started to bother her a bit by the end so her ears did get covered.







Anneliese finally got to take swimming lessons during July. I've been wanting her to take lessons at the Y since last summer but just never got around to registering her and making the plans. Since our girl is a total fish in the pool and has no fear we decided we better finally do it. She just completed 2 weeks of lessons and she can actually "swim" a few feet all by herself. She's not quite ready to challenge Michael Phelps but give her a few more summers and she just may be there!





We also took Anneliese to see Dora Live at the Bass Concert Hall this past week. As most of you know, she's loved Dora for quite a while and she's seen the commercials on Noggin (the best thing since sliced bread, by the way!) so we thought it'd be fun to take her. It was really quite a fun show and she really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, we couldn't use our camera during the show so we only got a couple of pics during intermission.

Here she is with her Daddy enjoying a little photo op with the Dora Live poster.


And here she is showing off her Dora coloring book and her Star. She's got on her Backpack - ready to help Dora on the next adventure.


We've also done our fair share of playing and just clowning around this month.


And here's Anneliese's contribution to the photo world - don't you just love the bow in Maggie's hair!


Finally, we've got the rooms completed. Getting ready for Ainsley's arrival meant transforming Anneliese's room into a room for 2. This meant gettting all of the toys out of there to make room for a baby bed. The transition went quite well. Anneliese loves her new toy room (our spare bedroom) and I think she likes having Ainsley's bed in her room too. As you can see from the photo, she's already put her mark on the decorating by loading the crib full of stuffed animals and a baby.





She's going to be a great big sister!

It's hard to believe that we've only got 2 weeks of summer left before I go back to school (3 for Anneliese)! The next blog will probably be a back to school one. Wow, how time flies!

Love to all,
Brandon, Jennifer & Anneliese

Summer Activities

Warning - this post is super long! Sorry - the month of June has been super busy for us so I'm just now getting to sit down and get everything on the blog. Grab a snack, get comfortable, and enjoy . . . :)

Backyard Swimming
At the very beginning of the summer, we bought Anneliese a new pool for our backyard. It's quite fun and she's really enjoyed playing in it. We even had Klayton and Kenzie come over and play in it too.











The Beach
Next up was our family vacation with Mom, Dad and Jason to the beach. Every year that we go, Anneliese loves it more and more. I think she definitely had the most fun this year. The hit of the whole trip was the swimming pool. She literally would wake up in the morning and the first words out of her mouth were "I want to go to the swimming pool." That girl is a fish!









Of course, we all had fun at the beach too.









It's hard to tell in this picture but it's of Brandon and Anneliese flying her kite. You can see the kite in the sky. She had a lot of fun having that flying over us.



Anneliese's favorite part of being on the beach was feeding the birds. All of the sea gulls around the Gulfstream are about 10 pounds heavier now that we've been there.



Thanks again to mom and dad for another fabulous year at the beach!

Being a flower girl
This past weekend Anneliese got to be a flower girl in Cody and Alisha's wedding (they are friends of Jason's who have become friends of ours). We borrowed a dress from Angela (and Ella) that fit Anneliese perfectly. Thanks for letting us use the dress. She looked like such an angel. And she did a fantastic job! She stood where she needed to for all of the pictures (she was actually the only one who cooperated the whole time), walked down the aisle like a champ and just was an all around trooper.









And finally, here's what you get after a month full of so many activities!


I'll close with a baby #2 update: All is going well and we are all trying to get ready for Ainsley Dell's arrival. I've been working hard trying to get Anneliese's room ready to be a room for two and we've transformed our guest bedroom into a toy room/guest room. Both rooms are getting closer to being done but aren't quite there yet. I'll post pictures when they're ready. Now, if I can just figure out how to stay cool in this 100 degree weather, we'd be all set!

If you've stuck around through this whole blog, thanks for taking the time to read the updates on our family. We're looking forward to more summer fun during the month of July. Hope everyone is doing well!

Love to all,
Brandon, Jennifer & Anneliese

Friends

In this crazy world we live in, it's nice to have friends. Especially the kind that have been around for your whole life, or at least over half of it. :)




I got a rare chance to catch up with my 2 closest friends and their families this weekend. Ashley and Mandy, you have beautiful children and I'm so glad we got to see you this weekend. Friends like you are rare and precious.

Happy Belated Mother's Day!

To all of the mother's out there - I hope you all had a fabulous day - you all deserve it! I hope your children made your heart feel as warm and fuzzy as mine did when Anneliese started singing her mother's day song for me. We are all so blessed to have such perfect children in our lives. Here's Anneliese's special mother's day message to all of you:



We love you all!