It's a.....

Well, we had our second ultrasound today of baby #2 and we are happy to announce that we're having a... BOY!!  And he wasn't shy about it!  :)  What fun it will be to have two little boys running around the house.  Daniel seems to be excited about it.  He's adjusting to saying "brother" now because almost every time we asked him if he wanted a baby brother or a baby sister he would say "sister"!  And we are super excited that Daniel will have a playmate close to him in age.  Of course, they may bother each other some of the time, but hopefully they will also enjoy playing together most of the time!

This ultrasound was really neat for us to see.  With Daniel, when we had the second ultrasound, the tech really didn't tell us anything about what she was doing or looking at or looking for.  But with this child the tech was really great and walked us through the entire thing showing us all the limbs, spine, ribs, heart, kidneys, face, everything!  It was so neat to see our little boy this way.  We did have a 4D ultrasound (they just switch it to the 4D at the end and do all the other stuff in the regular format).  We were hoping to get a glimpse of our little boy's face as we were able to do so with Daniel.  However, this little one was very uncooperative!  He had his arms crossed over his face the entire time and refused to move even though he was wiggling and we tried shifting positions and prodding him and everything!  Oh well.

We haven't been able to scan the pictures from this ultrasound yet.  but I do have the picture from our first ultrasound at 10 weeks so I'll at least put that one up so you can see, and hopefully we'll be able to get the others scanned soon...

You know it really is something to be able to know ahead of time if you're having a boy or a girl.  It creates anticipation in a different way than when the baby's gender is a surprise.  You only have to come up with one name. :)  And you can name your child before they are born.  I'm a planner and so I guess I like all that :)  Now the real preparation begins... moving Daniel into a new room and a big boy bed and getting the nursery ready for this little one!

David and Emily visit!

Over the new year holiday we had the wonderful blessing of Bronson and Jenny visiting from KS. And I was able to meet my neice for the first time! David is 2.5 now and Emily is a precious 3.5 months old. We spent as much time as possible with them. And Daniel had a blast! While in FL he learned that "cousins" are a lot of fun and so he was very excited to get to play with his cousins.  He was constantly talking about playing legos with David and kissing baby Emily! And he was really, really sweet with Emily. I think that he will be a great big brother to our new baby!

Here is Daniel holding Emily, I think he was a bit unsure of what exactly he was supposed to do :)

 

Daniel giving baby Emily a sweet kiss.  We told him he was allowed to gently kiss her on the head, but no hugs, too much risk for Emily getting squashed!

Daniel enjoys imitating these days and so he was imitating Emily lying on her blanket :)

Both David and Daniel love having stories read to them and so they got some good quality time in with Uncle Ryan that way!

Josue gets some cuddle time with sweet Emily.

And, of course, I could hardly put her down she was so darling!

Trying to get a picture with all the cousins together... nearly impossible! This one turned out the best probably and no one is even looking!

David and Daniel wrestling with Grandpa!

Uncle BD giving dual horsey rides, takes some coordination with two squirmy wormys!

Daniel and David share a clementine on Grammie's kitchen floor - this is a very calm moment for the two of them.

It is such a mission to get a picture of David looking at the camera and smiling.  But I did it!  Love this picture!

What a beautiful, beautiful little girl!

Daniel watches Uncle B play the piano, he was quite enthralled :)

We were so sad to see them go.  Daniel keeps talking about David and Emily and I'm sure he will for quite some time.  We love you guys!

Family Gatherings

The McDowell side of the family got together on Christmas day and unfortunatly we were not very vigilant about taking pictures that evening and so we don't have any to share.  :(  However, the Hokuf family did get together on New Years day and we do have some pics from that gathering. 

Here's the whole Hokuf clan (without Grandmom), we've grown quite a bit!

My favorite picture!  My cousin Laura and I both with babies on the way.  We were born 7 weeks apart and our babies are due just 2 months apart (Laura in April and myself in June).  They're having a girl and we find out soon what we're having!

And my little boy squirming and uncooperative for this picture. :)  Oh well.