Baby Beckham is here!

Beckham Kellan Westbrooks was born around 8:30 this morning, June 12th. He weighed 10lb 0.8oz. Beckham has a full head of brown hair, which I still need a good picture of, but we will post more pictures very soon. Labor and delivery went well for both Mommy and baby and both are healthy and well. At 2 weeks overdue we were anxious to see Beckham and are very excited he is finally here!




Hero, Corbin and Bastian love their new brother and are very excited to hold him, gaze at him and bring him home tomorrow!

Saturday Morning Cartoons

I couldn't resist taking a picture of the scene Saturday morning when I came downstairs. The kids all snuggled up together on the floor watching Saturday morning cartoons.

No More Training Wheels!

Friday night Corbin finally decided he was ready to take the training wheels off after seeing the younger girl across the street doing it. He couldn't have her showing him up, so we took the wheels off and he did great! He even rode his bike along with me while I walked a portion of the 5K held by our church for Memorial Day. Way to go Corbin!

Visit from Uncle Mike

Uncle Mike was in town for a few days to visit and on Friday the whole family took a trip to the Asheboro Zoo. We love the zoo and usually go there a few times a year.

This was the first time we've been to the zoo since Bastian has been talking, so it was fun to hear all he had to say about the animals.


I look forward to going back to the zoo soon, because they have built a platform next to the giraffes where you will be able to feed them right out of your hands. The opening was delayed so we'll have to go back after it opens in June and give it a try.



I love elephants, especially baby ones! So cute!


It was amazing this time around because it seemed like we saw pretty much every animal up and about. A lot of animals are usually hiding and we don't get to see them, but even the nocturnal animals were all up and running around. Usually all you see of those are their tails hanging down from the highest back corner. Even the grizzly was up on the rock posing for the cameras.


After the zoo trip, we all went to Little Italy for dinner and then on to our house for a Guitar Hero jam session.


We all loved having Uncle Mike come visit!

Easter

We had a fun Easter weekend dyeing eggs on Saturday and having Easter dinner and an egg hunt at Grandma and Popop's house after church on Sunday. Her are some pics of the kids in action.

Bastian Turns 2!

On Bastian's birthday we had a small party with some family and friends. We had ice cream cone cupcakes and ice cream and then opened presents.


Bastian got some roller skates, a tricycle, a large Galactic Heroes set, a toy chainsaw and the movie, Bolt.



Bastian is our crazy kid, but he is so much fun! He is our little comic and is always making us laugh! We love him so much and love watching his personality grow!

Trip to Utah in March

Day 1 & 2 - I stayed with my brother Kenneth and his family and the first day it snowed all morning, but cleared up enough for Kenneth, Dylan and me to go out in the afternoon. We went to P.F. Chang's for lunch (yummy!) and then went to see Race to Witch Mountain. The next day the kids had a half day of school, so we headed over to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point in the afternoon. I had tons of fun getting to see their family, since I had not seen Jennifer or the kids for four years.



Evening of Day 2, Day 3 and Morning of Day 4 - Eden came and picked me up after work and we headed over to Longhorn Steakhouse for dinner. When we got there the wait was 90 min.+, so we walked over to the mall and looked around for a while until it was time to eat. We ate some delicious steak and after we finished eating, we headed to the $2 movie theatre, only to realize it was 9:30pm and most of the movies had already started. We decided to watch a movie back at her house and then stayed up until almost 3am talking.
The next morning we did brunch at a restaurant called Mimi's Cafe. This is the best place I've ever been for breakfast! It was soooo good! We went back to Eden's house, where I took a nap before we took off for an Indian festival. We stopped off on our way out of town for some gelato and started on what we thought would be a half hour trip down to Spanish Fork. Little did we know what was in store! When we got off the exit we ended up in mounds of traffic. Cars were parked on both sides of the street over a mile before the temple. As we realized we would not be finding any parking before we reached the temple, we decided to continue to inch slowly through town in the hopes that if we passed the temple we might find something closer, so we had fun talking and people watching. We were right and ended up parking not too far from the temple. As we were walking towards the temple we saw a huge cloud of pink rise over the temple. We had come all this way and missed the throwing of the colors, a ceremony where people throw brightly colored powder all over each other and into the air. We continued on to the temple where we passed people covered from head to toe in bright colors. It was quite the sight! When we got there it was a crazy mass of brightly colored people (who we tried to avoid touching as we squeezed through the crowd). We toured the temple and followed the trail of people waiting in line for food to its end. After finding out from someone they had waited an hour in line for food, we decided to leave and go to an Indian restaurant after we left. Unfortunately the traffic to get out of town was almost as bad as coming in, so we decided to eat somewhere else so we would make it to the movies. We had so much fun hanging out together! Eden took the pics at the festival, so if I happen to get a hold of some, I will post them.
The next day we woke up to snow again and headed out in the cold and snow to church. After church we went to Naomi's house for a big family dinner, where we finally got to eat our Indian food. Naomi had made butter chicken and mango lassi's - yum! I had a great time with Eden and Kenneth and Naomi's families.

Day 5 & 6 - I spent the remainder of my trip with my sister, Naomi and her family. Monday morning we went to an English store, where I picked up some English treats I haven't had in a while: pork pies, salt and vinegar hula hoops, and Kinder eggs for the kids for Easter. In the afternoon I had my first IKEA experience. I bought a couple of small things I knew I could fit in my suitcase, but made a mental list of the many other things I would like to get when I make a trip to the IKEA that just opened in Charlotte, NC. Naomi and I went out and had a great dinner, just the two of us at a place with a bakery. After 10 min. of drooling over the many varieties of pastries, we decided on two we would take home and split, while watching Australia. I made it through the dessert, but not through the movie! The dessert was super yummy and the movie...I guess I will have to rent it and try watching it again. I think I made it through 45 min. of the 3 hour movie. The next day we went to the church distribution center to pick up some things, had a ginger scone at the English bakery and headed over to the airport to say goodbye.



I had so much fun getting to see my siblings and their families in Utah! It was such a great trip and I was so spoiled while I was there. I am so grateful for my wonderful husband, who offered to take a week off of work and stay home with the kids, so I could enjoy a trip minus the kids before baby #4 arrived.

Snow Day!

We finally had a real snow here in NC! The kids were so excited to go out sledding and Daddy stayed home for the morning to take them out in the snow (luckily for Mommy, since she is not in sledding condition at the moment). They had fun and came in and took a nice warm bath. Seeing we don't have snow often they were really not used to being that cold! After they got dressed we fixed soup for lunch and had some rest time.

Baby Boy Name

We have always had names picked out for our babies before we even knew the sex. This time we had a name picked for a girl, but none for a boy. I spent hours looking through names online and made a long list which has been narrowed down to two. Dave and Hero prefer one name and Corbin and I prefer the other and no one has been willing to budge yet. I stole the idea two other friends have done to poll friends and family on their baby name preferences. I was curious to see everyone's thoughts on our two names and which one will win out. It may be our deciding factor, but it may not. I still think it would be fun to see what everyone thinks, so if you have a second, please vote on which is your favorite.

Valentine's Day

For Valentine's Day this year I decided we had way too much candy (we still have tons left from Halloween), so instead of making cute treat bags for everyone, I splurged and bought a fondue pot as a family gift. It was mostly selfish on my part because I've been wanting one for a while now, but everyone seemed to enjoy it just as much as I did! I decided we would go all out and do fondue for dinner and for dessert as well.

These beautiful flowers on my table are from my father-in-law, who buys flowers for me every year for Valentine's Day. It is really very sweet of him and this year they are absolutely gorgeous and a week later still going strong!


For dinner we did a cheese fondue from a recipe of Rachel Ray's called Welsh Rarebit Fondue. We had cubed roast beef, chicken sausage, broccoli, toasted bread cubes and grape tomatoes sliced in half with a piece of bacon in the middle for dipping. Everything was so good!


Bastian loved the dipping, but pretty much ended up just eating bread and cheese for dinner. Oh well! It was Valentines Day!


Hero and Corbin were having so much fun with the fondue, they requested doing it every night. As much as I loved it, it was still a little pricey, so we settled on having a special fondue night once a month. I am looking forward to trying some different recipes!


Bastian was exhausted (ended up only napping about 30 min. that day), so we decided to get him in bed before doing dessert. For dessert I made a chocolate fondue and we had strawberries, bananas, apples, oranges, pretzel thins, coconut marshmallows and toasted pound cake. Wow was it good! We will definitely get plenty of use out of our new fondue pot. In fact we had some friends come to visit this week and made some marshmallow fondue which was also very yummy!

Y Chromosome Wins Again!

As much as I would have loved another girl, we are being blessed with another boy, boy #3. I was pretty positive it was going to be a boy and I've been right with all the others, so I wasn't overly disappointed. Hero on the other hand was really betting on a sister and was almost in tears, but a few days later and she is hugging and kissing my belly and telling her baby brother she loves him. We have not decided on a name yet, so if anyone wants to give a list of suggestions, feel free, you may be a winner!