More pictures!

To satisfy grandparents and others who are curious.

My Little Turkey

Junior has arrived!

Its been a long wonderful day!

George (yet to be determined middle name by which he will be called) Tripp arrived at 3:57 pm after a fairly short official labor. Kimberli began feeling contractions around 6:00 am and we headed in to the hospital at 9 only to be rejected in triage by 11. We returned at 1 pm leaking amniotic fluid to prove this was for real. They put the epidural in right off and by the time they checked Kimi she was dilated to a 9. After 30 minutes more she started pushing and pushed George Jr. out in about 45 minutes.

Kimi was a champ pusher and the baby had some significant decelerations in his heart rate just right at the end but did great once he got out. He has a little (1 cm) cyst at the bottom of his cord that has us pediatricians scratching our heads a bit. Final verdict is its either a umbilical cord cyst that will shrivel up in a couple of days or its part of the urachus and is likely connected to the bladder and may eventually need a small surgical procedure to tie it or cauterize it closed.

He weighed in at 7 lb 10 oz (Lucy was 7 lb 7 oz). He was 21 inches long.

Lucy and Elise were in great spirits when they came to visit.

Thanks for everyone's prayers today and through all the past couple of years, we truly have more reason to give thanks than we deserve.

Thanksgiving Roll Prep

I am trying to get a bit of prep work done before Thanksgiving dinner and of course, my baking helper has been by my side. Lucy loves to cook with me and it cracks me up when she does little things that I know she picked up from carefully watching her mother. Sometimes she's a big helper... sometimes its a bit of a challenge. The "why" questions seem to never end and it takes three times as long to do anything because she wants to do it all herself. Such was the case the other night. I had to tell myself to chill out... we weren't in a hurry... and enjoy the time with my roll making buddy. I thought maybe if I videotaped it, I'd lighten up a bit. And it worked. So... here is roll making according to Lucy...

Note how she rolls up the corners of the triangle first...

Don't those look delicious!

If you've had my rolls, no worries... we set aside the "special" rolls made by Lucy for family consumption. But Lacey, you are family so I bet seeing this has made you especially excited for Thanksgiving dinner!!!

Bouncing Elise

Elise is 6 months old! Wow... how time flies! Her favorite toy is the Jumperoo. My good friend loaned it to me and Elise thinks its the greatest. Her little feet barely reach the ground, but she can still get it moving and flaps her arms along with it. She does the same motion when I pick her up from a nap.... kicks like crazy and flaps like a bird. She also likes to watch Lucy do crazy things. Elise (finally) rolls over, but still prefers to be held. She can sort of sit up on her own, but not for long. We've also added a few new things to her menu... green beans and peas! Yummy!

30 to 31

I turned the big 31 last Sunday (16th). It was a nice, relaxing day. George cooked waffles for breakfast... yum! I must admist, I don't love getting older. I get that from my grandma Barbara. She celebrated her entire birthday month so it wasn't so depressing for her. I like the idea and have adopted it. So when we've been shopping this month or go out to eat, I'll say to George, "This is for my birthday! I'm going to buy that!" or "I think I'll get desert since its my birthday." He rolls his eyes, but I think its great.

The younger "30" Kimberli with 30 lilies

Naturally, whenever a birthday come arounds, I reflect on the events of the past year. This year, it brought a smile to my face. I didn't love the idea of turning 30 last year and the last year of my 20's probably wasn't my favorite. Nothing major... it was just a trying year as a whole. I think I added quite a few stress wrinkles. But the first year of my thirties... wonderful! I still added some wrinkles of course, but I've really been blessed! I NEVER would have guessed we'd welcome two babies to our home in a year. Pretty incredible! Sure, there have been challenges, but overall, 30 has been great to me!

My good friend Tovi baked me a cake, but she only had a "2" and "4" for candles. I didn't mind one bit! I'm just glad they weren't arranged the other way....

Happy Adoption Day Elise!

Friday was a great day for our family... our Adoption Finalization!

Elise is legally a Tripp!!!

During the past six months, our social worker has made four visits to our home and checked up on Elise and our house. We've filled out paperwork, payed legal fees, and arranged a court date and at last everything came together. (Our court appearance was in Houston and with the hurricane, it was a bit tricky to schedule.) We were the first family to appear in court on November 14... National Adoption Day. We were sworn in and then our lawyer asked us some questions. The nice judge told us "Congratulations" and gave both girls stuffed animals. It took about 10 minutes, but what a great 10 minutes! I must admit, I got a bit chocked up as the judge talked about what a great day it was and how different the children's lives would be if it weren't for adoption. And I thought how different our lives would be too. Elise has been such a blessing to our family and fits right in. We love our little sweetheart... who is now legally ours!!!

Answering questions in court

One happy family!
Because it was National Adoption Day, they had a reception in the rotunda of the courthouse. They had breakfast buffet, news people to cover the event, and some nice gifts for Elise (and a few for Lucy too). I thought it was really thoughtful and a fun thing for us to be involved in.

Lucy and Elise with their haul of stuff... books, stuffed animals, quilt, gift card to Build-a-bear, and gift card to Luby's (which is kind of funny... if you live in TX you might understand :).

We drove straight home because George had to work the night shift. So we postponed our celebration until Saturday night. What a wonderful event to celebrate!!!

It was quite tricky to get her to stay out of the cake AND look at the camera... look how badly she wants some... drool is all over the place!

officially Elise April Tripp

(up to this point her official name has been "baby girl")

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Now, I realize I am a little out of order here, but I wanted to put the most important stuff first. We actually drove down to Houston on Thursday. I've only been to Houston twice, but it still impressed me with how huge it is! The buildings downtown are amazing! Last time we went to a bunch of cool museums, but never made it to the Johnson Space Center. I was really pushing to go there before we left TX, so we made our trip into a two-day so I could see it. And I thought it was pretty cool.

Lucy was not impressed with the astronaunt suits. By the end, she did fine, but at the first she was scared to death whenever she saw one.

Trying to be tall like a rocket

One of Lucy's favorite things was a big play center. She loved the ball exhibit. Kids would put balls into these slots and they would shoot upwards, then all of the sudden dump on everyone. Kid paradise. These videos are only a couple seconds long, but you'll have to turn your head... sorry!

Both girls were very well behaved on the tram tour and throughout the space center. They didn't do so hot when we ate dinner. Or lunch for that matter. At lunchtime, Lucy was excited about something and knocked George's full 32 oz Sprite into his lap. I couldn't stop laughing and he was a good sport about it. For dinner, we ate at a mexican restaurant. Elise was so naughty that one of us had to stay in the foyer while the other ate with Lucy, who hardly ate a thing and just wanted to be silly. George says its "fast food only" with the girls from now on!

One of George's hobbies is to try to find us nice hotels at great prices (usually at the last minute through Hotwire). He did a good job this time! I think this one was the nicest we've stayed in. Lucy kept saying "ooooo... fancy!" when she saw the beds, bathroom, lobby, etc. I was dead tired and wanted to get a good night's rest so Geo slept with Lucy and I had a bed all to myself. Aaaaa....heaven! Real romantic, huh?

Terrific Treehouses

Another fun outing with our pre-school co-op... a visit to the San Antonio botanical gardens to tour their "Terrific Treehouse" exhibit. Some of the houses were more exciting than others (as you can see from the photos below), but the whole morning was really enjoyable. The weather was perfect! This is my kind of "school"... lots of fieldtrips!

More fun visitors

Grandma Liz was in town for a couple days at the end of October. We always love to have her around. A big highlight for Lucy this time was making a "haunted castle". But the ghosts were "nice ghosts." Fun times! Thanks Grandma!

Lovely black teeth

Grandma was a great sport about going to our Halloween festivities and was a big help with the girls. I got to do something I haven't done in a LONG, LONG time. I soaked in the tub ALL BY MYSELF, WITHOUT INTERRUPTION for an hour. Can you say, HEAVEN?!?

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The following weekend, we had our great friends, the Stephenson's, in town. We go way back and it was so fun to laugh and laugh with them about old times. Jim said all he wanted to do was "EAT and VISIT" and we definitely did both of those things! One game we played as we traveled from place to place was to name all the families we could remember from Village Green. When you couldn't think of another family name, you were out. It came down to Jim and I, but he really creamed all of us when it came right down to it. It was really fun and brought back some great memories just by listing all our friends. We miss the Omaha days and having Jim and Mindy as our neighbors!

Thanks for coming to San Antonio, Stevos! Come back soon!

Candy police

Lucy loved the whole "trick-or-treat" thing. She doesn't eat a ton of the candy, but likes to make pieces into "teeter-totters" or groups them into "families" or sorts them by type or color or whatever. Very imaginative. However, sometimes she forgets to put her piles back in the pumpkin. I threaten Lucy that if I find her candy on the floor, I will throw it in the garbage. A couple nights ago, she woke up in the middle of the night with a nightmare. She was crying pretty hard, but you could still make out the words, "mom threw away all my candy." Ummm... I guess I should lay up a bit, eh?

P.S. The pic is Lucy sorting the candy for trick-or-treaters... not her own personal haul... thank goodness!

Boondoggle!

Every year in October or November the residency program gets a weekend where the attending physicians cover the inpatient services and the residents and their families get together for some socializing, "team building" and friendly competition. We call it Boondoggle and usually we spend most of the time somewhere in the texas hill country north of San Antonio and this year base camp was at the Fort Sam Houston recreational area at Canyon Lake.

Friday night folks trickled in after work to a Halloween costume barbeque. The Tripp Family represented with our "101 Damlation's picnic" ensemble - Lucy was Cruella Deville, Elise a dalmation, Kimberli a watermelon and I was a picnic table. Sadly I was edged out for the most creative costume award by a Harold and Kumar duo.

We spent the night in "cabins" that were actually nicely furnished 3 bedroom trailer park trailers. There was a fancy playground for the kids nearby and lots of deer if you got up early or stayed up late to look for them.

Saturday was the competition portion of boondoggle. Each year there is a 'driftwood award' that is based off points accumulated in various class competitions. The third year class is in charge of organizing the competition and we had been lucky enough to win the overall competition as first and second years so we had a lot of pressure to defend our title. Luckily being able to choose the competitions is a big advantage and we did eventually prevail with wins in Volleyball and the tug of war and second place in a game where you had to flip over a tarp while your whole class remained standing on top of it. There was a fourth game involving collecting ping pong balls into your team's base and then trying to steal them from the other teams that nearly resulted in violence before it ended. I think we declared ourselves winners but not without hard feelings. In the end the intern class (first years) were our biggest competition and the second years were the biggest losers.

After the class competitions one of the cardiologists came to organize further relay races that whittled the group down to an eventual individual winner. My friend Jeremy Granger won the grand prize which was a gift certificate to dinner and a movie with Dr. Bush (the cardiologist) volunteering to spend the night in the hospital to take one night of his call. Dr. Granger (he usually sees Lucy and Elise for their checkups) is pictured here in his Halloween chicken costume.

My good mother was in town earlier in the week and attended the festivities with us Friday night and Saturday morning and Kimberli was great to take her out to the airport late Saturday morning for her flight home. (see you soon Mom)

Lucy kept herself occupied at the sandy lake beach by making "birthday cakes" and castles with her friends Megan and Kylie. Amazingly Lucy escaped sunburn despite no sunscreen applied until mid afternoon (glad it was November and not August).

Official boondoggle activities ended with a steak or seafood dinner at a restaurant on the lake and residents made their ways home Saturday night or Sunday morning.

I think its safe to say:

A great time was had by all!

More October Fun

Here are some pics of fun things we did in October. The month flew by!

These are some of my sweet friends from around the neighborhood. We have a little playgroup on Thursday afternoons and as you can see there will be two new members at the end of the month. So, we had treats to celebrate... any excuse to have desert and we'll jump on it!
Erin and I

Her baby is scheduled to come about a week and a half before Jr.

Fun times on the tramp with Elina

Wild Hair

Halloween dance class... Lucy wanted to wear a Ragedy Ann costume I bought last year, but the wig just stayed on the couch.

en pointe



The full Ragedy Ann costume


Pony rides at Alyssa's birthday party
The atmosphere doesn't quite look like a farm... but the kids had a great time!


Pumpkin Cookie making/decorating


Look-a-likes... something must be pretty exciting


trip to the Firehouse with Lucy's preschool co-op


A bunch of Lucy's buddies at the pumpkin patch... two preschool co-ops combined

A Great Pumpkin Month!