It has been 11 years since this little munchin joined our family!
Jessica May was born on Sept 22, 1997
and made us Mom and Dad!
She came eight days early, much to our surprise. The Doctor was leaving town for a week and wanted to induce and told us to think about it over the weekend and let him know when we showed up at our appointment on Monday morning. We stressed all weekend trying to decide. Finally on Sunday it came to my realization that this would be the last time in our lives EVER that we would be without children. Never again, no matter how old we were would we ever not have kids, so why rush what nature had planned. We went to bed comforted and happy knowing we would not be induced, until my water broke about 30 minutes later. Instead of us meeting the Doctor, the Doctor met us at the hospital and Jessica was born on a Monday morning.
Because she was born before we owned a digital camera, we don't have a lot of pictures of her growing up on the computer. They are in those old dusty photo albums you have to open up to look at!
We have scanned a few pictures, but apparently the quality wasn't that great. We'll have to get on that project!
And finally we reach the digital age in our house when she was six years old. Here she is at her Aunt Melissa and Uncle Will's wedding in October 2003.
And here are all the kids in Nov 2003.
Jessica always seemed to trip over her own feet and stumble a lot as a toddler. Being our first child we thought that was normal. She broke her arm when she was 18 months old by falling down the stairs. Then broke it again when she was 5 and climbing out of her sister's crib. Finally on her six year check up the Doctor did an eye test and we all realized she could not see! Oops! She has an astigmatism and can't see deepth. We felt like bad parents. But now she has had the chance to wear lots of really cute glasses.
Our good friend, Lori S, drew this picture of her when she turned eight years old.
Last year for her birthday we went to the hairstyling college and got their hair done. We thought they all looked so grown up.
But for some reason, we just can't stop her from growing up and looking older every minute. Here she is with her favorite cousin, Rebekah just a few weeks ago.
She is such a joy in our lives. She is responsible and a great organizer. She has always gotten a straight A report card in school. For the Primary program yesterday she did a piano solo of 'Called to Serve' and she did awesome! Both Mark and I cried through it. We can't believe it is only a year until she enters Young Womens.
We Love You! Happy Birthday!
And the baby blue bedroom with rose carpet! Trust me when I say NONE of the wallpaper was easy to strip. Lori S can testify to that. She was such a gem and helped with so many hours of stripping. And I now realize we never got pictures of the half walls in the living room that we took down. I think that was one of Mark's favorite projects. Who knew he had so much pent up aggression in him? Of course that project was not as easy as we had hoped and required an Electrician to come in and move the light switches to the wall. But we do not regret that choice. It really opened up the living room.
I'm not good at visualizing things that aren't there so I was really excited when I came up with this idea. The bathroom off the laundry room and kitchen had this not so beautiful tub in it (picture on the left) Since we had two other tubs and another shower we didn't see much use for it. So we ripped out the tub and installed these lockers on the right. You can't see in the picture, but there are 3 lockers where the tub used to be so each child has their own spot. It has turned the bathroom into a great mud room for the kids. We were able to customize the insides with shelves and baskets. Don't look closely, they all need cleaning out. But you have no idea when the doors are closed how messy they are inside. I LOVE it!
And I love my yellow office on the main floor. Especially the built in shelves in the closet left from the last owner.
And if you have ever toured the house with John you know about his Captain Midnight bedroom. We were at the paint store and I was trying to convince him he did not want a black wall and when I told him this color was called Captain Midnight he fell in love with it. I think I had to put 4 layers of paint on the wall. And I'm sure the day I want to paint it lighter I will have to put another 4 layers, but for now it is a fun accent wall in a little boys room.
And the girls have a fun Lilac room. One day they may have doors on their closets (but don't ask Mark about it).
We didn't do much with the basement besides adding our hand me down couches to the family room. 
But you can't tour the house without seeing our incredible food storage room. We are grateful for the rolling shelves for cans on the one side and narrow shelves on the other side of the room. We only pray the toilet above this room never breaks and floods the house.
