A long, long, long awaited update!

Ok, so it's been quite a while since we updated our blog and, as many of you know, a lot has transpired with our family.  On May 11th at 6:33 PM we welcomed Gemma Lyne Smith into the world.

Jody did an amazing job throughout the labor.  When she went into the hospital at 9 AM she was already dilated to 4 cm.  Jody giving the thumbs up to let the games begin...

After laboring for about 6 hours on her own she finally asked for the epidural and it was pretty smooth sailing from there.  She pushed for an hour and was able to enjoy a peaceful moment with her new daughter...

Gemma opened her eyes pretty much from the moment she came out.  This little angel has just melted my heart.

She weighed in at 7 lbs 7 oz and was 20.5 inches long.

I just love her little feet!

The nurses at the Morristown hospital were awesome!!  The nursery made her this cute little hat.

After two days in the hospital we were ready to come home.  Gemma was pretty happy to see her new home, too.

After 7 years of trying to get pregnant Jody and I cannot fully express our gratitude to our Heavenly Father for the blessing of this sweet child.  I have such a strong testimony that He hears and answers all of our prayers accordingly.  He does so on his schedule and not our's, and the last 7 years have taught us the lesson of patience.  Many times our patience felt like it was running on empty, but the reward was so sweet!

She's now 3 weeks old - I cannot believe how quickly the time has gone by - and she is doing great.  She's been sleeping on a really consistent schedule at night and is just the most pleasant, sweet baby.

It's a GIRL!!!

Ok, so I think most of you probably know already that we're having a girl.  For those of you who haven't heard the news yet...SURPRISE!!!  Baby Girl Smith is expected to arrive on May 5th (Cinco de Mayo) and we couldn't be more excited to welcome her into the world and into our family.  Jody's doing well.  I swear her baby bump grows everyday, which tells me that our little girl is growing more and more everyday.  She's been really moving around and kicking a lot lately.  In fact, momma isn't getting much sleep because baby has been so active.  I guess the little one is just preparing us for the lack of sleep that's coming our way soon.  I'm not looking forward to that aspect of becoming a parent!

To reveal the gender of the baby to our family we decided to have Rebecca (Jody's sister) bake one of her amazing cakes and color the filling with either blue (boy) or pink (girl).  It was suppose to be a secret, outside of telling Rebecca ahead of time so she could make the cake.  However, between the sneakiness of Jody's sisters and Jody's inability to call the baby "it" instead of "her" when talking with our friends and family, nearly everyone pretty well knew that we were expecting a girl when we carved into the cake.  Nevertheless, we had a good time with the family and this was a different twist on "the big reveal".  Perhaps we'll try a different approach next time.

Here are a few pics of the big reveal, followed by some of the ultrasound pics where we learned that we were having a girl.

This one is a bit fuzzy, as I had to use a scanner to copy the pic, but it's a 3D ultrasound.  Again, not the best quality but it is pretty wild to see you baby in 3D.

Anniversary in NYC

On Dec 17th, 2011 Jody and I celebrated our 7th year of marriage to each other.  It has been a glorious 7 years together and I look forward to so many more years and memories to come with my wife.  For our anniversary we decided to head into NYC for the weekend to experience the "New York" style Christmas.  We booked a night in a boutique hotel downtown and bought tickets to the Rockettes Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall.

Here are a few pics before we went into the theater...

                                         

                        

Before heading in to the show we stopped by Rockefeller Center to check out the infamous tree.  It's hard to tell from the pictures but the tree was enormous!!  

     

      

You can almost get a good perspective on the size of the tree in this picture.

      

The Rockette's show was amazing!  I highly recommend it to anyone coming to NYC at Christmas time.  They ended the show with their Nativity spectacular, which was really beautiful.  It's nice to see at least one thing in today's world that celebrates the true meaning of Christmas...the birth of Jesus Christ.

                   

Although the evening was a lot of fun I made one costly mistake - not making dinner reservations.  I actually had two places in mind but we couldn't decide before we drove into the city.  Bad move on my part because literally every restaurant was packed by the time we wanted to eat dinner.  After walking around for a least an hour or more we decided on a Mexican restaurant near our hotel.  The food was decent but we paid typical NYC prices...$60 for something that would have cost $15 back in Arkansas!  Lesson learned.

Boy or Girl?

Tomorrow we go in for the Week 20 ultrasound to find out the gender of the baby.  Jody and I are both on pins and needles.  We've got our own slight preferences, but ultimately we just want to have a healthy baby.  Nevertheless, we want to have some fun with the big reveal.  Next week we head back to Arkansas for Christmas with our families and will reveal the news at that time.  In the meantime we wanted to get your guesses about what you think it is.  Also, for those that have children, did you do anything fun when you revealed the gender to your family and friends?  Or was it a surprise?

Stay tuned for the big reveal.  Don't forget to take the poll on the right side of the blog to cast your vote!

Thanksgiving in New York City

With the high cost of airline tickets to travel home for Thanksgiving, Jody and I decided that we'd make the most of the holiday on our own this year.  One of the things on our "to do list" while in the Northeast was to attend the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  Since Jody is 4 months pregnant we came to realization that next year would be practically impossible to attend the parade since we'll have a 6 month old baby.  The stars sort of aligned as we found a good deal on a nice hotel right on Central Park South, which is right by the parade's route.  From the hotel we could easily get a front row seat on the parade route and get back to the hotel and out of the city afterward.

Wednesday night we headed to the city after Cace got off work and we had dinner at this fantastic restaurant called Buddakan, which came as a recommendation from one of my co-workers.  The restaurant was beautiful and the food was amazing!

Afterward dinner Cace's co-worker suggested we head next door to the Chelsea Market for a milkshake at The Milk Bar.  We gave it a shot and were pleasantly surprised...the milkshakes were awesome!!

The Chelsea Market is this really cool, funky little grocery market with a bunch of bakeries and grocery outlets.

After dinner and dessert we headed uptown to check out the inflating of the parade balloons.  We had higher expectations that what we actually saw.  They inflate and store the balloons on two streets (81st and 79th), which is on the North and South sides of the Museum of Natural History.  By the time we got there all the balloons had been inflated.  The streets were packed, as you can see in the pictures.

Thursday morning we headed down to get our seats at 6 am (yes, that's 3 hours before the parade began).  There was already a crowd gathering on every street so we had to get a spot quickly.  Jody held down a spot behind a really nice family from Queens while I ran into Starbucks for a Hot Chocolate run.  It was a brisk, cold morning but we had a great time watching the parade.  It really was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and is one that we'll always remember.  If you ever get the chance we highly recommend you take the family to the parade, as it is quite different watching it in person.

The Muppets made an apperarance...

...even Oscar popped in!

Ingrid Michaelson

Scotty McCreery

The one and only Neil Diamond.  His float stopped right in front of us as they started playing "Sweet Caroline".  I swear he looked right at me when we sang "Sweet Caroline...bah bah bah"!

NYPD Mounted Unit (the guys on pooper scooper duty behind them got huge applause)

The below video might have been the best part of the entire parade!!

A bunch of dudes dressed up like fairies

And, last but not least, Santa and Mrs. Clause wrapped up the parade.

It was a ton of fun.  Now onward to Christmas!!