Isaac William Goertzen

He's here! Isaac William Goertzen arrived on Thursday, December 2nd...weighing in at 10 lbs 13 oz!! (Nope that's not a typo...literally almost 11 lbs!) :) We are all doing well. Still adjusting and not getting a ton of sleep yet, but enjoying being a family of four and are just so thankful for this "little" guy. Hannah is loving him and doing so well as a big sister. She's a great helper and loves to help with diaper changes and picking out his clothes for the day. :) She's not a big fan when he cries, but handles it really well by either trying to give him one of her stuffed animals or simply asking one of us to "please calm him down." The pics (above) are in (mostly, I think) chronological order, so you can see that he's really growing and not lacking for food. :) He went from 10 lbs 13 oz to 10 lbs even two days after coming home, then back to an even 12 lbs at his 2-week appt, and now at 5 weeks weighs almost 14.5 lbs. He's definitely, as Hannah often calls him, our "big guy." Hope you enjoy the pics!

Happy Birthday, Hannah!

Happy birthday to our little Hannah Beth. Our Hannah Banana. Our little munchkin. Our little H-dog. :-) I can't believe it's been four years already! Seems like yesterday that our "little" 9 lb. 10 oz. baby girl came into the world! We love you, Hannah, and are so thankful for you and so proud to be your mommy and daddy!

Yep. I stink at blogging.

The title of this post pretty much says it all. I really did go into this whole blogging thing with the best intentions. But....obviously, that's about all that it's panned out to be: good intentions. So, even though it's been six months since you last heard from us, I figured I'd still try to give a brief update on what we've been up to in those last six months.  Needless to say (as you probably guessed), things have been super crazy busy. Busy but still a lot of fun and lots of good stuff happenin'. Here's a brief summary on some of the top things that have gone down with the Goertzens since you last heard from us:

1. Will celebrated the big 30! We celebrated a couple times--once with just the three of us, and the weekend before his birthday a bunch of people in my family came up and all the guys went to a KU basketball game. Will and Katie (my niece, below) celebrated together. Katie and her parents are big KU fans as well! :)

 

2. LOTS of travel. We've made several trips as a fam to visit other family and friends throughout the past few months. The pic below is from April when we got to take a trip back to Ames, Iowa. Will was asked to be on the engineering advisory board at ISU, so Hannah and I jumped at the chance to go with him when he had his board meetings so that we could reconnect with some good friends. The group below was most of our "original" small group when we first moved there. Such great friends! We loved getting to see these guys and see many new babies that we hadn't seen yet!

Will has also been traveling like a mad man for work lately as well. He's made several trips to Texas, Oklahoma, and Canada. Most recently, he was gone for three weeks in Singapore! Overall, a great experience for him, but Hannah and I were definitely ready for him to be home!

3. Lots of continued physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, and other support services for Hannah. We thank God and have been so humbled at the progress she's made in the past year. She's running, climbing, and skipping all over the place now. Physically, she's very close to her age-appropriate level! One would never realize that at age 2 she was not crawling, standing or walking. Such a blessing! She's also come SO far with her speech and other skills. She'll pretty much talk your leg off now (once she gets to know you). She still struggles at times with complete conversations, but her vocabulary is amazing! She continues to crack us up often with the things she comes up with...all on her own!

4. Good times with great friends and wonderful family. We are so blessed with good friends here in Lawrence and, of course, two wonderful, supportive families. It's been nice to live so much closer to most of our family now (in Kansas) and get to see many of them fairly often. Hannah absolutely LOVES getting to see all her cousins (we're up to a total of 19 now!), aunts and uncles, and of course Grandma and Granddad & Grammie and Papa.

5. So, I guess the last "big" thing going on with us can pretty much be summed up in the pic below:

Yep. If you're not on facebook or not in our family, then you might not know that we're expecting another little one! AND...we just found out a couple weeks ago that it's a boy! Hannah's going to have a little brother! We are so excited and cannot wait to meet the little guy. Hannah couldn't be more proud and thrilled either...and he's not even here yet. She's very cute and sweet. She goes around telling people that mommy has a baby brother in her tummy and she (without prompting) prays for baby brother every night at bedtime. We're officially due December 10, but (because I will be having a c-section) they will schedule it approx. 1 week before the due date. So, the little guy should be making his appearance the first week of December! We appreciate your prayers that the remainder of the pregnancy will go well and little Will Jr. :) will arrive healthy and happy!

So that sums up most of our lives lately. We hope and pray this summer is going well for everyone! I'll really try to do a little better at posting more often. But, knowing me...our next post may be announcing the arrival of the little guy! :) See you soon!

bits and pieces...

So even though my last post was the beginning of last month (yikes!), I realized that I haven't really posted many pics at all or gave many updates for the past two months! Oops. I don't know why but I just have the hardest time finding the motivation to post things on our blog lately! Sadly, it seems like I'm doing pretty well if I can post something once a month! Maybe that should be one of my new year's resolutions...to post more often! I'll work on that! Anyways...I've compiled a few pictures of...well...lots of random stuff from the past couple of months. So...here are just some bits and pieces of our lives lately:

This is probably one of Hannah's favorite things to do lately...pick out her own outfit :), and wear mommy or daddy's shoes around the house all day!

Back in mid-November (I think!) we had the chance to go down to NW Arkansas for a few days. Will serves on the JBU Engineering Advisory Board now, so it gives us a chance to go back to one of our favorite places in the U.S. and just get away and see some dear friends. We had such a good time getting together with the Primms! Seth and Will used to be college roommates at JBU and we've been blessed to be able to kinda keep in touch with them over the years. Here's a pic of their sweet family...(Seth, Joy, Oliver and little Sullivan)

A pic of us girls with the kids. Yes, it was incredibly windy that day...and yes, I do really have bangs (and now you see why I do need bangs...yikes! scary!) :)

Will and Seth

We loved getting to see them and meeting their boys for the first time! Thanks, Primms, for taking time to hang out with us! We love you guys!

Here are few pics of Hannah on that trip home from Arkansas. The girl LOVES to wear my sunglasses. I cannot, for the life of me, get her to wear a pair that are actually her size, but I give her mine and she's thrilled and would keep them on for hours. Go figure! Oh well...I have to admit it's pretty cute when she does wear them!

Singing with her shades on...

Next up was a nice visit sometime later in November (don't you love my accurate dates!) from Will's parents and Gigi! Gigi is Will's grandmother from California who just moved back to Kansas! Here's a pic of Hannah and Grammie (Will's mom):

Towards the end of November, Will surprised me and totally found a sitter and planned a wonderful evening out-just the two of us- (without me knowing) for my birthday! Props to the hubby! It was very sweet and we had a great time!

Finally, some more recent pics now...from Christmas gatherings and such. First, we had Christmas with my family (Krebs family) in Wichita. We had a great time (just too short!) and enjoyed having almost all the fam there. The only ones missing were Matt (my brother) and his family--Judy, Landry, and Anika. They are (and have been for several years) in Kosovo but are coming home for good in June! Yay! We're so excited! Here's a pic of all the fam minus Matt, Jude, and girls.

On Christmas day, we headed to Will's family Christmas in Hillsboro. Also enjoyed time with almost the whole Goertzen family-minus Phil (Will's older brother) and his wife and 4 kiddos who live out in California. Unfortunately, I didn't get a big family pic there, but here's one of Papa reading a Christmas story to all the grandkids.

These next couple of pics are what we came home to after Christmas....SNOW. Lots and lots of snow. It was so deep and there were so many huge drifts that we couldn't even begin to get into our driveway. Poor Will spent about 3 hours solid...mostly in the dark cause it was already getting dark when we got home...shoveling lots and lots of snow.

One "lane" done...still half to go in order to get the Camry in the garage!

And finally, a couple days after returning from our family gatherings, we celebrated Christmas just the three of us back here at home. Hannah hadn't opened any of her presents from us yet, so we were really excited to give them to her. We got her several smaller things and one bigger thing that she had been asking for and talking about for weeks prior to Christmas...

A kitchen!

This girl loves her a play kitchen and can spot 'em from miles away. I think a kitchen is her favorite thing to play with, hands down, at MOPS, Mother's Day Out...and anyone else's home that we go to that has one! :) So, needless to say...I think she was excited! We finally got her room re-organized and arranged to fit it in there, too! We had a very nice, relaxing time-just the three of us-being together and focusing on the true reason of the season. Now that Hannah's old enough, it's been fun to start some traditions of our own for our little family...like reading the Christmas story from the Bible each year with her. She actually did really well sitting and listening this year as Will read it to her...

Well, I think that about wraps it up and gets me somewhat up to date! :) We pray the year is starting off to be one of hope, joy, and peace for you all! Happy New Year from the Goertzens!

family pics

here's a few family pics that we had taken over thanksgiving. thanks to will's sister, amy, for giving of her time and talent to take them for us!

something to chew on...

I've seen this video on several blogs and thought I'd share (in case you haven't seen it). So true and challenging...and convicting. 

more fun with the jayhawks

Last night we rock chalked...again!...and had the opportunity to take Hannah to her first mens KU basketball game! It was actually my first time to a b-ball game as well (Will's been to several in the past couple years), so we were pretty excited. We thought Hannah would especially LOVE seeing the jayhawk in person...and we were right! She did awesome the whole time we were there, but probably could have cared less about the actual game, the players, etc. She kept her eyes fixed on big jay and little jay the entire time! Needless to say, it was mommy and daddy's goal to try to track down one of them during a time-out or during halftime and let her get an up close and personal view...and maybe even a pic with them! Here's a few pics from the evening:

 Spotting the jayhawks for the first time

And then...the big moment...we spotted big jay while we were down on the main level at half time. Checkin' him out from a distance...

...and then this really nice staff person/guard spotted Hannah eyeing big jay and (I think) realized how excited she was to see him. So he so sweetly went and got Big Jay, pointed Hannah out to him, and had him come over to say hi AND get a picture!!! Oh my. She was beside herself. I think she wasn't quite sure what to think when the big ol' bird was right there in front of her. A bit bigger up close and personal than he looked from a distance up in the stands (as you can see as she's kind of leaning back, away from him, in this picture below). She never did cry, though, just kept staring at him, wide-eyed.

Such a treat and so much fun for her (and for Will and I, too). A great evening as a fam...and something Hannah will not forget anytime soon!

(Note: I do have some other fun, recent pics to post sometime soon...and I promise it's not at a KU sporting event! Sorry to all you non-jayhawk fans (like Grandma and Granddad) for all the rock-chalkin' recently! :))