One Week Old

Here are some pictures from Brece's first week! She is a great baby...eating well and sleeping for 6 hours at night. What a blessing! Brece is looking forward to meeting Grandpa & Grandma Call and Aunt Heidi, Uncle Jeff & cousin Josiah this weekend!

A proud Great-Grandpa Radatz
Grandpa & Grandma Radatz
All dressed up and ready to go home from the hospital
Meeting Aunt Michelle & cousin Adie

It's a Girl!

Brece (prounounced Bree-cee) Anne Call was born June 12th at 6:24 pm. She weighed in at 9 lbs 12 oz and is 20.5 inches long. She has lots of curly brown hair (with blond highlights) and is absolutely beautiful! Everything went really well and we couldn't be prouder parents of our new baby girl!


One of the nurses made this hat for me...too cute!
What a BIG girl!
Right after delivery.

Sneek Peak

We're making progress on getting things ready for the baby's arrival. I finally felt inspired this last week and got some decorating done in the nursery...curtains are hung and I made a few things to hang on the walls (you can sort of see them in the picture above). There's one last thing that I want to make but need to know the baby's name first...so it'll have to wait until after the baby...as well as more pictures of the nursery. :) I had some fairly regular contractions one day last week and decided that was as good a time as any to get my bag packed for the hospital. So now we're just waiting to see when CJ will make his/her arrival!

Home Sweet Home

Luke and I have really enjoyed getting settled back into life in Kansas. Thanks to lots of hard work from our families, all our stuff was moved and our walls were painted when we arrived home from Germany, so it's been pretty easy to get settled in to our new house in Hesston. We've really enjoyed being able to spend time with family in our first few weeks home. The first weekend home we were able to spend a Saturday with Luke's parents and brothers and then went to KC for Adie's dedication. Easter Sunday we tried a church in Hesston and then joined the Radatz's for an Easter lunch. Of course all the pictures have one particular little girl in them! :) Now we just need to see our nephew (and his parents too, of course)!

Adie before her dedication.

Adie on Easter Sunday (and CJ too!)

Adie playing with Uncle Brad

Last days in Deutschland

My parents and brothers came to visit a couple of weeks before we left Germany. Here are some pictures from their visit! I've also updated the belly shots slide show. We're happy to be back in Kansas and getting settled into our house. I'll post some pictures once we're a little more "settled".Holocaust memorial in Berlin.

Ishtar Gate from Babylon from 6th century BC.

Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.

Remnant of the Berlin Wall.

Family photo on our way up to see Hohenschwangau Castle in Fussen.

Schnee!

Over the past 3 weeks we've had more snow than I've ever seen living in Kansas! It has snowed nearly every day for the past 3 weeks and we had one day last week where we probably got 8 inches. Crazy! I think we got another 2-3 inches on Monday and again on Tuesday this week. They do a really good job of cleaning the streets here and a pretty good job of cleaning the sidewalks...especially considering all the snow! But with the sidewalks there ends up being a HUGE pile of snow (3-4 ft high in places) that lines the sidewalk and makes it really tricky if you need to cross the street or change sidewalks! Today I found out what they do to fix this problem...

Tractor shooting snow into the back of the truck.

The view from our apartment Tuesday morning.

The view from our apartment last Tuesday.

We also had our last doctor's appointment in Germany this week, which is a little hard to believe. Things continue to go well and I can't believe how much CJ is growing...and that CJ will continue to get bigger over the next 13 weeks! I'll try and update the belly shots tonight so you can see his/her progress. :) After all this snow we're really looking forward to getting back to Kansas in time for some nice spring weather and some spring thunderstorms (which they don't get here)!

Good friends & a quick update

Just a quick update...last week Luke had to travel to Atlanta, GA for work and I really wasn't looking forward to spending a week in Marktoberdorf, Germany by myself. Even though I've been here for almost a year now my German is definitely not conversational and I don't know many people (outside of our German class) in our small town. We've made some good friends in Munich, but it takes at least 1.5 hours to get there...so not easy to do more than once or twice a week. But Luke had the great idea that I use a travel voucher we had gotten on one of our trips back to the States to visit one of my best friends in Colorado Springs. I had not seen her (or her baby, Kaiya) since our wedding. So Luke and I were able to fly to Washington DC together and then he went on to Atlanta and I flew to Colorado. I had a great time with the Pettus family and was really blessed to get to spend some time with a good friend!

Things continue to go well in my pregnancy...I've updated the "Belly Shots" slideshow on here and posted a picture here. CJ definitely continues to grow and I can't believe we're getting close to the 3rd trimester! The nursery is in the process of being painted (thanks mom & dad!!!) and we've gotten some of the furniture for the nursery. So once we get home it shouldn't take long to get everything in order for the arrival of CJ. Speaking of moving home...Luke's last day of work here will be March 31st. Our plan is to then fly home either April 1st or 2nd. Not too far away!