Going Home!

Today we headed home from the hospital. It was a good stay and we got good treatment and A LOT of advice from the hospital staff. It was a good experience overall. But, we were ready to head home and have a little more space. We got discharged about noon and they sent us home with a frozen lasagna dinner...how nice of them...i wonder how much it cost our insurance for that meal ;-)

We headed home and were curious to see how Kona would react to the Blake, but she actually was really excited and we're not sure if she's realizes that he's here to stay yet, but she thought he was very interesting. She welcome him with a nice lick on the hands, so we're pretty sure she is ok with having him around. She's been around a lot of our friends kids and has been really nice and likes them, so hopefully she'll feel the same about Black (after he keeps her up half the night).

Last night Blake wanted to do quite a bit of feeding and that was tiring, but it wasn't too bad and being able to sleep in was nice. Hopefully we can get him on some sort of regular schedule sooner than later, but for now I guess the benefit is we get to see what it's like to be up at all hours of the night for the first time since the college days. (maybe we'll call Rachel if we're lonely since she was the only one that responded to the text i sent at 1am on Thursday morning when we went in to the hospital ;-) )

We posted a few more pictures...same link as before:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jasen.bankson/BlakeMichael

Day 2 - Visitors

Well, day 2 Blake got his first fishing pole (thanks great-grandpa Houser!) and caught his first fish...well, kind of a whale if you look close. Things went well and so far he is excited to be in the world. We took it a little easier today and had quite a few visitors come by and say hi. It was nice to have everybody come by.

We did a video conference with Grandma and Grandpa Bankson this morning for in the hospital room. That was pretty fun and it was exciting to be able to introduce Blake to them. All the hospital staff were pretty fascinated by the video conference call...i guess not many people have done it here :-) It was fun and nice to be able to do that with them.

Rumor has it that the second night can be more difficult because they have had enough time to rest and are ready to FEED...all night. Well, i suppose we'll find out and hopefully he will sleep some ;-)

He had his 24 hour tests today and they checked out his hearing and everything checked out good. All in all he seems to be a pretty healthy good little guy. We're looking forward to taking him home and watching him grow. We sent a hat home yesterday for Kona to check out and get familiar with, so hopefully she will be as excited about him as we are. She has been pretty good about other people's kids and has been around them since she was a puppy, so we think she should adapt just fine.

We posted a few more pictures of Blake that we took today. You can see them at the same link as before:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jasen.bankson/BlakeMichael

Blake Michael Bankson

Announcing the newest addition to the family: Blake Michael Bankson!!
He was born on August 29th and is 6lbs 6oz and 20 1/4 inches long

Well, it was a bit of a mid-night adventure with Abby's water breaking at 12:45am, but it was all worth it. I woke up to go use the bathroom at 12:45 and as i got out bed Abby said, 'Jaaaassseeennnn....i think my water just broke!' (imagine a nervous, wake up from a deep-sleep tone :-) ) That sprang us into action...we got her out of bed and then she started doubting whether it was really her water that broke or not and I was like, are you kidding? (it was like someone had dumped a bucket of water on the bed). Then she says, well, i'll call the hospital and see if they want us to come in...I said, ok, sounds good...i'll go load the bags into the car (knowing we're going in and this is the real deal)

So, we let Abby's grandparents know we were headed in (they have been with us since the c-section false alarm last week) and that sparked plenty of excitement. We took off to the hospital honking the horn to let the neighbors know we were on our way (at the request of some of the neighbors...they said the middle of the night trips were the best).

We got settled in at the hospital (which BTW is great...it's like a hotel...no real hurry to get out of here) and things started to get going. It started out pretty slow, so we both tried to get a little sleep while things weren't too intense. Not much happened for about the next 11.5 hours...just contractions and slow progress. He was 'sunny side up' (facing the front instead of the back) so Abby had a lot of back labor for a while, but then after she moved around a little he turned into the right position and from there it was a pretty quick process...about 30 minutes until he arrived. Things went smooth and into the world came Blake Michael Bankson. It's quite the experience seeing a baby born and realizing the miracle of it, it's tough to explain the excitement and things you feel when you become a parent. (i'm sure other parents out there can relate).

Here are some more pictures from the first couple hours of his life...
http://picasaweb.google.com/jasen.bankson

We'll be trying to blog more regularly and there should be more pictures to come soon, so check back.

Jasen

Florida Vacation

We thought we would post some pictures from our vacation in Florida last week. Sure was a great time. We needed the break and some time at the beach. We started the week off with the annual first sunburn of the year...not really intentionally, but seems like every year we think we can head out into the sun (even with sunscreen) and not burn...and almost always do. Well, this year was no exception and we peeled off an entire layer of skin. But we had a great time. We explored West Palm Beach, Miami, Fort Lauderdale and then headed over for a day in Orlando at Disneyworld.

Here are some more pics you can check out...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8152352@N03/

Dad Visits

Here are a few pics from when my dad came out and visited a few weeks ago. We had a great time skiing, hiking, relaxing and eating good food. Check out some of the crazy skiing we did on this trip up...Pretty intense. Some of the best snow ever though and a great couple days in the mountains.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8152352@N03/sets/72157604128644599/

Ice Fishing

This weekend myself and a couple buddies went and did the ultimate winter sport...Ice fishing. This is my third attempt at ice fishing and the last two time resulted in no catch. Ice fishing gets a little difficult when you can't feel your hands or feet and you aren't catching fish :-) This time we went to a lake that took us 3 hours to get to, but resulted in a rewarding ice fishing experience. Between the 5 of us we each caught nearly 40 fish in the day and a half we were there. Not too shabby. We nearly got stuck in a snow storm that dumped about a foot of snow on us overnight while we were up there. The park rangers told us they expected about 1 inch of snow....apparently they use different rulers than we do. It was a great time though. It's pretty sweet have a fish come flying out of a little 6 inch round hole in the ice. Things started out a little slow, but then once we started hooking them up they were flying out of the ice all over the place. It was a great time. Come visit us in Colorado sometime and maybe we can plan a trip out on the ice :-)

The early morning after the storm the skies were clear and it was beautiful.

Check out some of these other pictures from the trip...

http://flickr.com/photos/8152352@N03/sets/72157603661799276/show/

Christmas in California...

not exactly a white Christmas :-) We got to go visit family in CA for Christmas this year and had a really nice time. It was a nice get away. We went and checked out Universal Studios the first day we got there..and of course made a required stop at the must-have In-n-out Burger. It was nice to have a day when the two of us could just hang out. We caught with a couple of our college roomates for dinner at Tony Romas. It was nice to catch up with them.


A highlight of the trip was going to a dedication service with our cousins and our new God-child. We are honored to have been asked to be God-parents for our cousins daughter. It was nice getting to see a lot of family that we hadn't seen for maybe a year or so on this trip...especially our Texas cousins.

We headed up to the banksons in the desert and spent the week up there. It was a really nice time checking out Christmas lights (the most amazing display we've ever seen down in Rancho Cucamonga), playing Wii sports, flying those little remote control helocopters (they are REALLY hard to control, but a lot of fun) and spending time with the whole family. The only unforunate thing was that we did miss the white christmas (actually snowing on christmas day) in denver that only happens about once every 13 years. Oh well...guess that means we need to stick around for a while for the next one.

We had a great time seeing our grandparents and all our aunts, uncles and cousins.

We also got to meet the newest addition to the family....Pearl. She has brought little doggy excitement to K & M's house. She was a lot of fun and liked to play with Molly (our 13 year old cocker spaniel) and about drove her nuts. That's alright though, Molly is pretty spoiled and needed somebody to give her some trouble.

Overall it was great trip and hopefully we can do it again soon. Maybe next year everyone should make a trip to CO...we think that's a good idea ;-)

(In case you are wondering why there aren't many names in the blog postings it is because this is all public and we want to be careful about announcing TOO much info :-) )

For more pictures click on the following link or copy it into your browser

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8152352@N03/sets/72157603665988445