Outside fun

River helping me pull carrots for dinner. The one on the left is from last year, been in the ground for over a year. Not so tasty anymore. The one on the right is from our new crop. So sweet and delicious!

Baptized Babe

We baptized Iris a few weeks ago. It was a beautiful ceremony. It was Jon's, our new pastor at Trinity, first baptism of a baby here. He asked us and our congregation a series of questions about how we plan to raise and teach her. It's always so awesome to hear the people of our church, who I consider family, commit to help love, raise and instruct our babies. We don't look at this as Iris being "saved" but more as a commitment on our part to raise her as if she has been called by Christ into his service. 

Iris looked radiant, as always. She is the most amazing thing to Seth and I. She has such a sweet, happy and content spirit... already teaching me so much. 

Recession Ranch: beautified

Beautification is a process here. A very s-l-o-w one. We've been here for well over a year now and are just getting to things that have been on the to-do list since moving in. Seth is the handyman of all. In the last few weeks he has built a rather large fence (to keep our River monster caged), dug a bonfire pit, laid sod in the 2 side yards, and has found plenty of time to hunt. (I've been hearing 'It's only deer season for another few days!' for the last few weeks now...)

I know I complain quite a bit about Rec Ranch but it really is a beautiful, and quite peaceful place to live. Here are a few noteworthy pictures: fog rolling in at night and in the morning. And with now 2 glorious children who get up before the rooster crows, I see my fair share of mornings. (truly, I hate seeing the clock before 8am-it's a crime)

 

No matter the fog, come 10am it has burned completely off and reveals another cloudless sky.

Lovies

This is how River feels most of the time these days

Poor Kid

Iris almost 3 weeks!

The above picture is Iris and River, both at 1.5 wks old. Remarkable the resemblance! 

It's a...

GIRL!!!

Welcome Iris Anne! She came barreling into the world at 5:26am Wednesday March 31st after about 6 hours of labor. I'm a bit late on updating this blog but we've been very busy and very lazy since she came. Busy in the fact that Seth's parents came out when she was 1 week old to stay for the month and lazy in the fact that the week before that we did nothing but lay around with our new little girl, adjusting to a family size of 4. Such fun having a girl. I really thought she was a boy and Seth was totally convinced she was a girl. I was hoping for a girl but dared to dream, since the Hock genes are skewed, in favor of boys. And everyone is asking how River is getting along, well he is LOVING his new sister, so much so that he already gave her his cold. It's hard keeping his fingers out of her mouth, nose and eyes..he's fascinated with her. And Iris is such a sweet, mild tempered baby (so far). She loves to be held, rocked and sung to. She is a real joy.

So without further a delay here is our little precious girly. These pics were taken by our good friend Ken, who is amazingly talented, as you can see. (These were taken when she was just 4 days old so more recent ones coming soon :)