Wow! A Beautiful Birth Story

(My baby Girl, born at home 2002)

(My baby Boy, born at home 2005)

(My baby Girl, born at home 2008)

Okay, by now, most of you know that I have home births, right? (And most of you think I'm crazy. I'm okay with that. As long as you're still my friend anyway.) :-)

Well a few nights ago, I was trying to catch up with some of the blogs I follow in my Google Reader and I saw CJane's blog and remembered that the last time I read her blog, she was pregnant and due any day. I immediately clicked on her blog to see all about her new one! I guess she had her a few weeks ago. And, I really didn't know that she was planning a home birth! Okay maybe I had read that once before on her blog, but with a brain like mine, I probably just forgot.

I was so excited to read her birth story. I laughed and cried. Happy cries as well as sad. Such a beautiful birth story. All births are miracles, but natural births really are indescribably amazing.

So, if you're interested, here's her story in four parts. Enjoy!

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

*Just making sure you caught the fact that those cute baby pictures are three of my four kids (moments after they were born), not CJane's cute baby. You'll have to head on over to her blog to see her gorgeous baby.
P.S. I feel bad not posting a picture of my first-born. But, I just couldn't easily find a newborn baby picture of him, it was just too long ago... plus, he wasn't born at home, so in a way, I feel it doesn't fit in in this post. (Though I love him just as much!!!)

Our Easter Surprise!

We were visiting my grandma, in California, for Easter. Easter morning my kids found some surprises in their baskets.


The first surprise was that there were five baskets out (we have four kids).


Then they found the shirts and figured out the surprise!


Yep. The Andersons are adding a version 5.0 to the mix. :-)


Another surprise we had on Easter was to be there, sitting at my grandma's table, when we felt an earthquake that lasted about 40 seconds. It was a 7.2. It was centered near Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico. About 120 miles away from us. It was the first time anyone in my family had ever felt an earthquake (except for my family that lives there, of course). My kids were all hyper and excited. Made for a very exciting Easter.

We also had another "first" over the weekend. We went to Disneyland for the first time. I have been many times in my life, though not for about 15 years. But my kids and husband had never been. It was sooooo fun!! I will have to share more about that later!

New Mexico for Fall Break

Here's what we were up to last week. In random order. I may try to go back and add captions sometime. ...and I may not. :-) We had a blast in New Mexico! Sometime soon I need to post all about my friend and all that I learned from her last week, just by being there in her home and observing her as a mother. But, that's for another day...

Quilt Finally Finished

Friday night I finally finished this baby quilt that I have been working on for two months! I don't have as much time to quilt as I'd like. This is what the package looked like, folded together with the bow, when I delivered it to my friends. Sorry for so many pictures. My husband and I took quite the photo shoot of this quilt. It was actually quite hard to want to give away. I fell in love with it as I was finishing it up. Once I got to their house, it was so fun and easy to give to them... and their baby is SOO cute!!

So much blood, sweat and tears went into this thing. I LOVE this quilt. {Probably because I spent so much time with it!}

Front of the quilt.

Back of the quilt.

Doll quilt on top of baby quilt.

Doll quilt label with baby quilt label. (Some names were smudged in photoshop). Thanks, Amy, for printing these out. Thanks, Grant, for designing the labels (with my initial ideas, of course). You guys are the best!

Baby quilt label.

This is the first time I've made a quilt label. It was harder than I thought. If I had originally bought and used the right kind of printable fabric, then it would've saved me a lot of time and effort (and Amy's ink). If you ever want to use them, make sure you get the "colorfast" printable fabric sheets, instead of the kind that you have to "dry clean only". What good is that on a baby quilt??

Doll quilt label (back of quilt) on top of the front of the baby quilt. I posted this one only because I really liked the detail and the colors.

This is the two of the quilts folded together, again, just turned around. I really like the look of all that quilted-ness, binding, crinklieness together. That's all.

Now I have to make a couple more, similar to this... but twin size, for MY girls. I have quite a bit of the fabric left over (did that on purpose). My 6-y-o daughter kept adoring the quilt as I was making it. She kept asking me to make one for her, like it. My 1-y-o daughter would take it, lay it out on the floor and lay down on it, whenever she saw it. We grew quite attached to it. Glad a beautiful little girl can enjoy this quilt and the doll quilt, when she's old enough to carry her own babies around.

Now it's on to the next quilting project...