Introducing...

...our new baby GIRL!

Johnye Rose Charlebois

aka: "Rosie"

Rosie is named after my mother, Johnye "Lynn" Harpel.

See her sweet little face, curled up next to her tiny fists?

Everything looked great. She is healthy and growing right on track. My due date remains September 10, 2010. She is currently 14 ounces. This is her little foot.

And check out these PIPES! Baby girl's got biceps!

We are beyond thrilled for a healthy baby. I think we were both a little surprised to have yet another girl, but hey, we are getting pretty good at this girl thing by now, right? Amos Arthur and Ezekiel James will just have to wait their turns. We'll get to them eventually. :)

It's really important to JP to have a boy to show his grandfather. JP is the "last Charlebois" so to speak, so when we do have a son, he'll be carrying on the family name. The other night JP said to me, "If it's a boy, we can wait to have baby #4 until whenever you want; but if it's a girl, we're going to shoot for Irish twins!" I told him..."we'll see." Ha!

People used to (and still do) tease JP that the reason God gives manly men like him girls is to soften them up. I disagree. I think God gives manly men girls so those men will raise strong, hard-working women, not blown about by every fleeting emotion.

The most important thing is that Rosie is healthy, growing, and she's OURS. Please join us in welcoming her!

New Family Member

It looks like our newest family member is going to be joining us much sooner than September! No, I haven't gone into early labor. We are adopting. One of these guys. Aren't they precious? Remember that deal I made with JP so long ago? I get my camera, he gets his hunting dog? These puppies are a very special breed called Large Munsterlanders. They are a very elite breed of hunting dogs. They are true versatile hunting dogs, which means they don't "just" point or track or retrieve -- they do everything, and darn well, on both land and water. You have to be a hunter to even purchase a Munsterlander. The breeding of Munsterlanders is extremely regulated. They have to pass all sorts of tests for hunting ability, health, temperament and conformation. These puppies come from an award winning line. We have a male puppy reserved. They are 5 weeks old now, and can't be sent out into their new homes until they are 7 weeks old. JP had been researching hunting dogs since last fall. He learned about the Munsterlanders after walking into a hardware store on a crappy day and being greeted by a beautiful, calm, friendly dog at the door. JP was impressed with the dog and asked the owner about him. The owner explained the breed to him, and JP's bad day turned into an exciting one as he learned more about this breed that are not only fantastic hunters, but also wonderful, calm-tempered family dogs. He's had his eye on them every since, and all of his research kept on bringing him back to this one breed that he found so appealing. To top it off, we found out one of the very, very scarce breeders of this dog lives just up the road from us -- barely more than 5 minutes away. We are excited to welcome one of these little guys into our home. The breeders keep an eye on the dogs and match them to the new owners based on personality, temperament, and hunting style. At four weeks old, they introduced the pups to a bird, and they were already naturally tracking and pointing! JP is excited out of his mind. I am excited and also wondering how I got myself into this! I never thought I'd see the day where I'd have three dogs before I have three kids. :) Updates to follow! (The last picture is of a full-grown Large Munsterlander, to give you an idea of what they look like once they grow up.)

Baiting the Turkey

Photos

20 Weeks

As you may have read in my last post, I had my 20-week OB appointment today. Everything went great, and the doctor said the baby is growing right on track. I've now gained 5 pounds. My weekly babycenter.com email says 10 pounds is normal at this point, so that makes me feel better about 5 pounds when the baby doesn't even weigh ONE pound yet. :)

The exciting news is that we scheduled our ultrasound for this Thursday, the 29th, at 9:30 am! We will be finding out the gender (as long as the baby cooperates).

I'm going to put a poll on the side of the blog. Boy or girl? Put in your votes now! JP and I are both sort of leaning towards a boy, but Rae is convinced it's another girl. :) What do you predict?

"Not Me!" Monday

It's already another "Not Me!" Monday. And you'll never guess what "didn't" happen this week.

On Tuesday night, just after we had put Rae down for bed, JP and I hopped in the shower (keep it clean, people. It was purely a time-saving technique). Shortly after getting all soapy, we heard Rae out of her bed and in the hallway. I hollered at her to get back in bed, but she kept on hollering something back that I couldn't understand. So I irritatedly got out, wrapped up in a towel, and wandered -- hair dripping -- into the hallway. And just then I DID NOT hear a man's voice coming from the kitchen!

Being as calm and collected as I am, I did NOT temporarily panic until I heard the voice yell "sheriff's office!" I peered over the edge of our staircase to see an officer standing outside our open dining room window. Less concerned, but still completely caught off guard, I yelled down that he'd have to wait a minute because we were, um, BOTH in the shower. I'm sure he did NOT feel embarrassed by that at all!

Turns out one of our new neighbors (who we hadn't even met yet) had called the cops on JP for riding his 4-wheeler on his property (which we thought belonged to another neighbor who had given us permission...long story). The whole situation was taken care off the next day, and now we have a new neighbor friend.

In other news, I had my 20-week OB appointment today, and I DID NOT go from no weight gain to 5 extra pounds in one month. I'm sure it had everything to do with the less than one pound baby in my tummy and NOT with the buy-one-get-one-for-25-cents blizzards at DQ this weekend. Or the swiss cake rolls. No, I did NOT buy a box of Swiss Cake Rolls and proceed to eat three packages in one day. Three packages of Swiss Cake Rolls does NOT equal six Swiss Cake Rolls in one day.

What haven't you been up to?

Two Sweeties

Click here for more photos from a beautiful Sunday.

Not Me! Monday

Yet another week that I'd be willing to skip "Not Me!" Monday because I can't think of anything fun to post. Except one thing that I need to get off my chest. I have NOT started intentionally keeping Rae up from her naps on Tuesdays so that she will go to bed earlier and JP and I can have plenty of time to watch American Idol and LOST. NOT ME!

Our Baby

"Not Me!" Monday *UPDATED*

Back by popular demand! Wow, I never knew so many of you cared so much about Not Me Mondays! I haven't done it in a while because I haven't had any "good ones" to post. You know, being the superb and unfaltering mother and wife that I am. ;) The best that I can give you this week is that I did NOT spend $10 on some sticks painted green with which to decorate my living room. Sticks are free if you find them in your back yard, and therefore it is ridiculous to spend any amount of money for them. Even if they are painted green. AND I did not also purchase some lovely wicker baskets for said living area for *COUGHtoomuchmoneyCOUGH* each. My husband did not then put his foot down about that overspending, but allow me to keep the fancy baskets up for when company was coming over (tags in the back) and return them after the social event. *UPDATED* I had to come back and mention that it wasn't just the price of the wicker baskets that was an issue. JP probably would have let me keep them if that was the only hang-up. But there was also the small issue of the baskets being slightly too large for the squares they were going into. I most certainly did NOT shove them in despite the fact that they were clearly scraping the sides of the boxes. And I did not cross my fingers and hope that JP simply wouldn't notice. Ha! I must have forgotten who I married! So...what have you not been up to the past few weeks? You can read more Not Me's at MckMama's website.

Legit

I think Andrea summed it up best in the comments section when she guessed a "super legit camera!" JP knows this is something I've wanted for years and years, and this week he picked up my very own Canon Rebel T1i. I've never had a "legit" camera before. And yes, it is mostly just for fun, but I'm also going to be able to use it to take high quality photos of JP's work to use on our website. I love this thing, and can't wait to continue to learn how to use it on my two very favorite models. :)

Have you guessed?

Two New Toys

JP and I both got new toys this week.
His is pretty obvious. Can you guess mine?

Septic Update

I am happy to say that life is back to normal in the formerly flooded Charlebois home. As I mentioned before, JP stayed home Easter Sunday to address the problem, and can you guess what he found? A dish rag in the septic tank...that our sweet 3-year-old had flushed down the toilet, unknown to us. *sigh* The good news is -- IT'S FIXED! JP replaced the whole pump with a nice, new one and we haven't had any problems since. To top it off, today our insurance company wrote us a check for damage done to the house. Was it worth cleaning up poo-water for? Yes. :)

Easter Sunday Pictures

We spent Easter Sunday first with my family and then with the Charlebois side of JP's family. It turned out to be such a beautiful day, perfect for hunting eggs and sitting in the sun. The girls looked so sweet in their matching yellow dresses. I wish I had gotten a picture with their jackets off.

Early Easter and Septic Adventures

Today, we had an early Easter celebration with G & Bompa. [Do you all know who I'm talking about when I use their nick names? "G" is JP's Mom, Gail, and "Bompa" is his step-dad, Larry.]
We feasted on eggs benedict (with steak), french toast, Larry's famous shredded potatoes, and fruit pizza. After brunch the 5 cousins went outside for an egg hunt, and somehow G managed to snap this photo of all of them together, looking in the general direction of the camera at the same time!
She also got this very sweet one of Ava & Rae:
Tomorrow we will celebrate with my side of the family and the Charlebois. More egg hunts = more candy = more crazy kids!

Unfortunately, JP will not be with us; and here's the long reason why.

Yesterday, Friday, I was home with the kids -- cleaning the house for friends we had coming over and doing laundry -- when I noticed a funky sort of smell in the basement. I followed the stench to a storage space we have under our kitchen and found that the septic system had backed up and flooded the storage space. The whole place stunk like a port-a-potty. I soon discovered that the laundry room was also flooded and had soaked the carpet outside the door. I was immediately overwhelmed and quickly reached freak-out mode. Trying to keep two curious children out of the poo-water wasn't helping the situation.

Not having any idea what to do, I called JP. He told me to check the electrical box and we discovered the pump breaker had blown, which was an easy fix. His hands were tied at work and he couldn't make it home to help clean up, so he immediately started calling people to see if someone could come help. My two heroes of the day were my brother Joe and JP's mom, who both made the long drive up to help. G watched the girls for me while Joe and I tackled the mess. It didn't take too long to clean up, and they were both headed home by lunch time.

After that, we didn't seem to have any problems. Nothing else seemed to be disturbing the plumbing and there was no more flooding.

Until today, when I tried to do laundry again. And the exact same thing happened. Again.

So, JP and I spent our evening cleaning up more poo-water and trying to find the true root of the problem. He thinks he knows what the problem is, so tomorrow (Easter Sunday) he will be staying home to find/fix/replace the problem.

It's not the way we hoped to spend our Easter holiday, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

Really, there are a lot of reasons to be thankful:
1.) the second incident wasn't as bad as the first one
2.) the girls were in bed the second time
3.) I'm married to a handyman
4.) my handyman was home
5.) we have insurance
6.) it happened on a weekend (albeit a holiday weekend) instead of during the work week

So even in the literally stinky situations, God still takes care of us.

Happy Easter to all of you!