Agnes: Life has Changed

Our little girl is one week old today. Amazing how much can change in a week!!

She has middle names now too: Agnes Sophia Rose Brock, born 6th March 2011 at 11:28am. She weighed 7 lbs, 15.5 ounces at birth, and 20 grams more five days later! (most babies lose weight the first week) Not our lamb, though--cleanest burper you ever saw, doesn't lose a drop!

Here's Caleb and Daddy looking at old baby photos and connecting himself with the little bundle in his arms--best brother you could ask for so far! Adam...he's coming around, gives the baby kisses and his typical greeting, the hand over the mouth, but mostly he's his own man.

Life is going well, and with all the extra hands around we are settling in, eating well, sleeping just enough and relishing in the quiet moments to hold and cuddle new life, so recently still tucked away inside my body. It really is a miracle, and we're grateful for every little thing that is new, that we are reminded of about the boys and their early days, that we need to adjust to because of this new life.

Speaking of which: I need to go to bed! I'll try to post some more soon...

There's SNOW place like home!

Aberdeen and most of Scotland have been blanketed by an early winter snowfall over the last few days. This early frosty weather has caused travel and school transport chaos big time, but also has created opportunities for winter snow play to make the long weekend enjoyable (the kids are off school Monday and Tuesday for inservice days). We all pulled out our snow boots, woolly socks, long underwear, and waterproof gear and headed outside to play.

As you can see, Caleb also needed his Ben 10 goggles to keep the snow out of his eyes! Perfect for when a car drove past him and splashed dirty, salty water into his eyes, only he didn't have them on then! But now he won't take them off....

We had friends from Baytown visiting with us last week, Shawn and Sarah Aghajan, and they too got to experience first hand the trouble caused when a few inches of snow drop out of the sky. Caleb and I took them to see Dunottar castle about 13 miles south of Aberdeen, but the snow was so bad that getting there was dodgy, the path down to the castle not terribly safe, and the castle itself was closed! In the end we had a lovely lunch in Stonehaven and took pics from a safe distance...

Yes, Shawn messed that one up! (just kidding Shawn!) It was an amazing time for pictures, as the sun shining down magnified the snow clouds over the North Sea in the background.

Yesterday was Sunday, and after church we had soup and then went outside with the requisite gear to do some sledding (well, three of us anyway). I'll try to add a video below of Adam and Brian sailing down the hill in front of our flat, with Caleb giving them the turbo boost push-off. The best part of the afternoon was Adam learning to throw snowballs--he loved the whole idea, even getting them thrown at him! His chuckles made frozen fingers and ice up the nose worth it all! And let me tell you, with the arm he's got, he'll soon be a force to reckon with!

That's all for now. Enjoy whatever weather you have...we're going outside!

A view from the top

Today was the perfect, a just-getting-over-jet-lag kind of day. Except that we're just starting to get over it, but never mind.

We slept 15 hours last night. For those of you who know us, let me say that again: We slept FIFTEEN HOURS last night. Whew, it was good. And even though I got up last (at 2pm!!), I earned it with a few false starts during the night and one round of "midnight" snacking at 3am. Adam sawed his way straight through, as did Dad, and Caleb needed some help now and again but overall did well too.

Then we used our energy to go and hike, all the way to the top, the largest mountain in Aberdeenshire called Mither Tap, or Bennachie. Adam did a stellar job, walking with one or two exceptions the whole of the 4 km route, and did the best up a long section of stone and rock steps toward the top. Caleb never needed an ounce of help, and stopped my heart a few times bounding from rock to rock at the peak. It was an amazing day, and we enjoyed the view and a small snack at the top where we also found, to my great surprise, that one of the other hikers is dad to a little girl in Adam's school. One of the others pointed to a great big black blob on the horizon that ended up to be a rainstorm. Luckily we were back down in the trees by the time it hit. We drove around for a while and then had dinner at a local pub where the boys wrestled on the floor for a while to amuse the tired parents.

I have to say I find it amazing and more than a little ironic that that rain turned into one of the biggest storms I've ever seen in Britain tonight, complete with lightning, thunder, torrential rain and hail. I waited three weeks in the states to see this and saw nothing--my faith in Aberdeen to shock and delight on occasion has now been restored!