The Frooks-Brasers

Friday, June 25, 2010

A star is born!

He finally made it! Liam Daniel Brooks was born on Saturday June 19 at 7:13 pm. He was 7 pounds 14.5 oz, 20.6 inches. Labor went very well, we had an outstanding doctor, resident, and nurses. Dr. Whitworth ran the half marathon in the morning and was at the hospital by 11 am! She is an amazing family practice doctor - I highly recommend going with a family practice doctor for anyone. They are far less likely to use a lot of interventions (even though we had quite a few) and less likely to turn to cesarean births. Our nurse during the delivery, Jennifer, was perfect, too. It was an experience I will always remember fondly. I wish all women had such great birth experiences, it makes me sad to know that some are a lot harder than mine.

We are getting used to life as parents. It's a big change! Nights are no longer for sleeping, that comes in short bits during the day. At this stage, if Liam is awake, he is feeding, otherwise he sleeps most of the time. He has gone on a few outings and done very well. He is the cutest baby I have ever seen, and unless everyone is lying to us, it sounds like a lot of people think he's pretty darn cute. Apparently he looks like Dan! Not a bad thing! He has spent this week getting to know his aunts and uncles and grandparents Bob and Mary. This weekend his Fraser grandparents and aunt are coming for a visit. It should be fun.

Enough chat, here are pictures!

Thursday, June 17, 2010

The waiting game

This is our little boy Liam. He was supposed to be here last week. This picture is from 9 weeks ago now! They told us back then that if he made it to his due date (now well past) he would be a 9 to 10 pounder! Mom was hoping he would make an early appearance or even an on time appearance, but no such luck. Those weight estimations can be wrong, though, and lets hope he's not quite that big. We've had rain and cool temperatures for the last week, so maybe he is just waiting for a warm sunny day to come out. Well, its sunny and supposed to get up to nearly 80 degrees today, buddy! Good day to come out and play.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

skijoring with Billie!

6 below this morning at Boulder Lake. Warm in the sun, though. Billie was on fire today, she just kept going and going. She usually doesn't pull me that much, but today she was definitely giving me an extra boost. So much fun.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Fungi in the forest

We saw so many mushrooms in the Porkies, more than I have ever seen, and in many varieties. We tried to take pictures of the more memorable ones, here are some of them.

Phew!

Wow, time has flown since our last post and a lot has happened!

First, I finished my program! August 1st was our "pinning ceremony". It was a jam packed weekend with Dan's mom and sister coming to Duluth, grad parties, the Brewhouse Tri on Sunday, and a baby shower thrown in there for fun.

Monday the 3rd I hit the road and went to Chicago for 4 days, which was a blast! I love that city. I got together with my girls Heather and Kerry. We did a lot of biking, drank some good beer, and enjoyed the hot weather. It was fun to talk, laugh, and be together again.

I got home on the 6th and on the 8th went to the Twin Cities until the 15th. I did a Kaplan board exam prep course with some other people from my program. I stayed with Maddie for a few days and with Nick and Louisa for the rest of the week. It was another really fun week. Class was pretty much every evening from 6 pm to 9:30 pm leaving lots of time for biking all over the metro area. There are spectacular bike trails and paths all over the twin cities and Nick and I explored a lot of them. Dan came down one night and he and my nursing school friends went to a Twins game.

Last week I took the dreaded board exam and passed! So now I am officially and unemployed RN... shouldn't I be getting a check or something? Ha, just kidding. I have been spending my days searching for and applying for jobs. I figure I have applied for over 70 jobs at this point and have not gotten one call. Its an ugly market right now.

Dan and I went to the Porcupine Mts in Michigan's UP last weekend to celebrate our 2nd anniversary, my finishing school/board exam, and Dan finishing at the Scenic!!! Thank god he is out of that place. He definitely stayed too long and should have quit being a manager there long ago. Its has been wonderful to spend time together, eat dinner together, and live a normal life! Our backpacking trip was wonderful, I wish we could have stayed longer. It was a nice way to enjoy a little bit of summer. He starts school at UWS tomorrow, so that should be something to stay tuned for.