A Special Thank You

A special thank you goes out to my sister who flew in from Seattle to spend 10 days with Hayden and I (and the rest of the family!) She was such a big help in so many ways...words cannot describe my gratitude. She is a pediatric nurse so not only did she help take care of Hayden, but she also helped take care of me and show me the ropes! We had a wonderful time and we were really sad to see Auntie Amy leave, thank you Sis for everything, I love you very much. It looks like the Bunch's will be making frequent trips to Seattle in the future :)

Tucker has been adjusting to his new life, and is doing really good. He was a little scared of Hayden at first...he would get antsy when he cried. But he got over that quickly, and now only gets up in our face when Chris talks to Hayden.

My boys have enjoyed their nap time...yes even Tucker needs to nap on the coach! Tucker gets up with me when I feed Hayden, so he has been tired! Speaking of getting up in the night, I am so blessed with a good child....so far (knock on wood). Hayden has been great, and sleeps for 4 hours at a time. He is eating well, and as of Wednesday he already weighed 9lbs 11oz.

Grandpa and Grandma have enjoyed their new grandson, and as you can see we all can't smiling, even Hayden!

I think that Hayden looks JUST like his dad and I swear I was just the surrogate!!! I am glad that he got his dad's good looks, and who really wants a little boy to look like their mom ;)

We were fortunate enough to have Chelsey Mach spend the afternoon with us again and share her amazing talents with us. She took newborn pictures with us when Hayden was 6 days old. She posted a couple of sneak peak pictures on her blog...take a look at her beautiful work. www.machcphotography.com. She has two posts with our pictures on July 15th, scroll through her pages at the bottom to find them "Wordless Wednesday, Baby Love" and "On His Own Time". We can't wait to see the rest of her work, I will let you know when she posts our gallery.

It's a Boy!!

Hayden Michael Bunch was born on Monday July 6th at 6:03pm.

I am not sure if you can read his stats on the picture below, but he was quite the big boy! Thank goodness I wasn't all belly and was mostly all baby, I was a little worried there at the end when I was getting huge!! He was 9 pounds and 7 ounces, and 22 inches long...phew!! It was kind of funny because our doctor came in a few hours into labor to check on me and felt my belly to see how big she thought he was going to be and said he was about an 8 pound baby. Then when she pulled him out she was shocked to see how big he was!!!

The labor went well, it was long....but my husband was amazing through it all and seeing my little angel made it all worth it. Because Hayden was on Bunch time, our doctor decided he had been cooking long enough, and so we started induction on Sunday at 8:00pm. I had the second round at 1:00am, and contractions started about 5:00am. They continued to get stronger and stronger, but I wasn't dilating so they put me on Pitocin at 10:00am. Then Hayden still didn't want to come out quite yet, so the doctor broke my water at about 11:00am. Well the combination of Pitocin and breaking my water made my contractions unbelievable, so for an hour and a half I had contractions a minute apart that lasted a minute. My contractions beforehand were 40 on the monitor, but between 11:00am and 12:30pm, they were 90. At that point I decided I didn't want to continue like this for hours longer so I got an epidural (which was a good thing because I didn't deliver for another 5 and a half hours). It was smooth sailing after that, I told Chris that I thought it was cheating and fake labor because I could not feel an absolute thing!!! It was awesome, we napped, talked, watched TV, and hung out until about 5:00...we had a great afternoon together.

I then pushed for about 45 minutes, and out came this beautiful little guy.

The doctor said "daddy what is the sex," Chris looked down at me with the most amazing proud look and could barley even talk and then smiled the biggest grin I have ever seen on his face and told me that we had a boy. Those few seconds were worth the 10 months of waiting.

We stayed in the hospital for 2 more days and enjoyed all of our kind friends and family visiting with us and the opportunity to catch up on sleep and rest up for our new adventures. Here is a picture of our family (minus Tucker, who was at home waiting for us!) on the day we left the hospital.

I just wanted to share a picture of what I looked like a few days before Hayden's birth at 41 weeks. We took the boat up the Chena river to have dinner on the deck at the place where Chris and I got married. It was in celebration of my dad's birthday, which was on Tuesday....Hayden almost shared a birthday with my dad!

Bunch Time

Well we are past 40 weeks, and still hanging in there. Nobody thought I would make it this long, but this little monster is proving us all wrong. We have decided that it is on "Bunch Time," which if you know my husband, means that it will come out whenever it feels like it!!! I am feeling good pregnancy wise, I am just fighting a cold that is really dragging me down. But, we are trying to stay busy and have really enjoyed our time together this week. It has giving us just a little more time to get all of our little projects done and get even more prepared for our new bundle of joy!! We celebrated our 2nd anniversary last Tuesday, and as you can see from the picture below Chris surprised me with some beautiful flowers. The only downfall is that I know those lilies smell wonderful, but my nose is so stuffed that I can't enjoy them !!

I have been slacking and haven't posted the final pictures of the nursery, so here they are!!

Chris did an amazing job, and pretty much did it all himself so I have to give all the credit to him.

It turned out perfect, and I know that I will truly enjoy the countless hours spent in there with baby Bunch!!

I also celebrated my birthday on Sunday, which was my due date...but hey I didn't really want to share my birthday with the baby anyways!!! We had a wonderful day up the Salcha river with some really good family friends and my parents.

It was nice to get out of town and also enjoy the last bit of boating that I will be able to do for a while. But who knows, at the rate things are going, baby Bunch might give us another opportunity to go boating this weekend :)

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You

Although I am reminded constantly how blessed I am, this past week I realized how blessed and lucky I am to have such an amazing family. My parents and my husband worked really hard to get all of our house projects completed for our baby shower/bbq and for the upcoming arrival of baby Bunch. My parents were kind enough to host Chris and I an amazing shower. It was exactly what we wanted, a chance to celebrate our upcoming arrival together and most of all a chance to see all of our friends. I want to thank my parents for everything that they did for us and to thank my husband for not making a peep and completing every silly task I asked of him.

Starting Sunday my parents went to the flower store with us and helped pick out a huge variety of flowers for the front of our house. My mom and I were strategically picking out specific colors and quantities for certain parts of the flower box (yes we are a little ocd) and Chris and my picked out tons of really random flowers. My mom and I bit our tongue and went with the flow, and it turned out great...the random flowers added tons of color and spontaneity to everything!

I tried to help as much as I could, which wasn't much because it is difficult to bend over and plant flowers with a huge belly attached to you! So my parents spent hours planting all of our flowers for us.

Although Chris wouldn't admit it to anyone that asks, he really enjoys helping out with this kind of stuff and jumped right in. Even though we had a huge variety of flowers to work with, my mom and I had a plan for where everything was supposed to go and Chris and my dad were good sports about following our crazy rules!!!

Sunday set the stage for the rest of the week and I have to spend a moment bragging about my wonderful families accomplishments because I am so proud of their hard work: my dad and I built and painted a picnic table, my mom washed the inside and outside of all my windows, my dad and I mowed and fertilized our lawn, Chris set-up and took down hundreds of feet of sprinklers, 2 trees got planted, Chris dug out a walk-way and hand shoveled in 1 yard of rock into it, Chris built stairs for the back door, Chris finished putting up trim in the house and then cleaned the garage after he was done, my dad vacuumed and steam cleaned all of the carpets while my mom and I mopped the rest of them, my mom folded all of laundry, Chris and my dad helped Chris's little brother stack 3 cords of wood, and did I mention all of the scrumptious food that my parents spent 2 days cooking. Yikes, I could go on and on, but I think you get the point, and no they aren't for hire!!!

Baby Bunch is also blessed because a lot of people came over and gave us some very nice generous gifts, and we are all set for him/her to greet the world! By the way we are getting very anxious to find out what the sex is, hopefully that will help me get through the labor :) The time is coming soon, only a few more weeks. We are doing great and both of us are healthy so keep your fingers crossed it stays that way for just a little bit longer!

Take a peak by May 31st

Last weekend was beautiful in Fairbanks, and Chris and I soaked up every bit of sun that we could. We had a very relaxing weekend and enjoyed our time together. We were supposed to go up to the cabin on the Salcha river for the weekend, but Chris's dad's airboat was having problems, so we ended up staying in town. On Monday we took my dad's boat up the Chena River to have lunch on the riverbank.

We didn't know if the boat would scare Tucker, but obviously he did just fine!!

Chris worked really hard this weekend to get Tucker used to the water, and as you can see Tucker caught on really quick. It was the strangest thing, he would get into the water about chest deep but wouldn't take the plunge in to swim. He would duck his entire head under the water to get rocks and sticks from the ground but he was really uncomfortable swimming. Chris threw him in the water, but that didn't work out too well because he just panicked and almost drowned himself. So we remembered that he is a Labrador so he would be food driven, and lured him out there with treats....sure enough he started swimming in minutes!!

We also got maternity photos taken by Chelsey Mach (thanks to Michel for finding her....she is amazing). We took photos late at night on Friday at Skiland, and it was such a fun time. She did a wonderful job and captured some amazing moments the 4 of us had! She has a gallery of the session online, but it expires on May 31st, so please take a look before they expire!

They are located at http://machcphotography.com/clients
Email: clutz01@hotmail.com

Access code: Tucker

Click on My Favorites to view the ones that Chris and I fell in love with.

On The Road Again

Chris and I headed out of town again last weekend and took a road trip down to Valdez. We left late Thursday night after child birthing classes and Chris booked it down there in 5 hours. The road isn't the best and so between going 800 miles an hour (I might be exaggerating a little bit) and the windy bumpy road, I was feeling a little queasy. We made it down there all in one piece and met my dad, Aunt and Uncle as well as one of my cousins. My Aunt and Uncle were kind enough to invite us down to go shrimping in with their boat, just in time for me to actually enjoy myself (I am getting bigger by the minute).

As you can see we were quite successful in getting some huge shrimp. Yes I am a weeny and had to wear gloves because the little creatures scared me a bit, and yes the shrimp laid down comfortably on my belly!

I did not take part in the processing part because frankly I am a bleeding heart and felt bad for the shrimp. So my dad and Uncle ripped the heads off the shrimp while my Aunt and cousin deshelled them. Chris and I do not eat seafood but we tried the fresh shrimp and actually enjoyed them, they weren't fishy tasting nor did they have a rubbery texture.
In between shrimping we toured Valdez and got to see some amazing sights and wildlife. I saw more Alaskan wildlife on this trip than I ever have. On our way down we saw some caribou hanging out on the side of the road, some porcupine, and a ton of rabbits.

While driving around in the boat we saw sea lions, sea otters, whales, dolphins, bald eagles, and even a black bear.

It has been warm and a big section of a glacier had broken off, so we ran into a bunch of ice coming out of the Narrows. The colors and mass of the chunks of glacier was breathtaking.

Like I mentioned to you before I am growing by the minute. My belly is getting HUGE, and I still have a month and a half left...yikes! But baby Bunch and I are still doing great, we are staying as active and busy as possible, although at times that can be challenging :)

A Bunch of Busy Bees!

Chris and I have been really busy these past few weeks, and are trying to take full advantage of our time and energy before baby Bunch arrives!! Over the past few months we have been taking Tucker to retrieving classes and not to be a biased bragging mom but he is really starting to shine! Chris got a little frustrated with us this past weekend because he has been busy the past few weekends so I ended up taking Tucker to class, and so at the beginning of class Tucker brought the dummy to me instead of Chris. Hey I can't help it :) But the two of them quickly fell into sync and did an amazing job!

The picture above shows a tricky test for Tucker, he had to watch people throw 2 different dummies, memorize where they fell, and then go retrieve each one individually and drop it at Chris's feet. Notice Chris's shorts, it was 75° this weekend....yea summer is finally here!

We got Tucker August 1st last year, and so he was too little to learn to swim. Well, we thought that swimming is instinct for retrievers....but we thought wrong. This was his first time swimming through the water, and he wasn't too sure about the freezing cold water. Chris and Tucker had to climb in the boat and then someone shot a gun and threw a dummy in the water. Tucker had to jump out of the boat, swim through the water, get the dummy, swim back through the water, and then jump back into the boat and bring it to Chris. It was quite a task, and about half way through the pond Tucker decided that it would be way easier to swim to the side of the pond, run on land to the dummy, and then run on land back to Chris. After a few tries, he got the hang of it!

At night, we have slowly been working on the nursery when we have a chance. We decided we wanted to keep Chris's red wall, but tone it down a little with stripes. Easier said then done, stripes take a LOT of time...but we are really happy with the end result. Chris spent hours taping the lines for the brown stripes and then decided we would paint the next night. Well then Tucker decided the next day that he was bored because he got left home and he would have some fun taking the tape down. So then Chris re-taped a few stripes and we painted a few every night. After we finished painting the brown stripes, Chris had the creative idea of adding little dark brown stripes on each side of the light brown. Yikes, he had to tape 36 lines! But it was worth it! While he was busy with the stripes, I painted the other walls a light brown. Because I am a little OCD, I had to make life interesting and trim the ceiling and sides by hand. Which for a normal person isn't that big of a deal, but with my huge belly it proved to be a little challenging. My belly had to fit between the steps in the ladder, and I had to hold the paint can because I got tired of going up and down the ladder!

Last weekend Chris and I took a road trip down to Anchorage for a hockey tournament...and shopping of course. We left Thursday night, and happened to pick the worst weather to travel in. It snowed pretty much the entire way down, but we still managed to make it down there in 5 and a half hours. We relaxed the entire weekend and didn't get very much shopping in but we really enjoyed our time together. Chris's team won 1 game and lost the other 2, they were close games and he had a fun time, so it looks like we will be going down next year!

On the slate for this week is to finish up the nursery, work on cleaning up the outside of the house (yes the snow has finally all melted away!), and go to birthing classes. I will keep you updated!