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Heidi Katharine Lantz is Here!

Here she is! Mom and baby are happy & healthy! 6lbs 10oz 19" long born at 8:05pm on 7.30.08. more to come!

update!

Darcie is dialated to a 7, her water has broken and contractions are getting more frequent! we should see Heidi in a few more hours! mommy is doing GREAT! She's loving her epidural right about now. :) more soon!

Heidi is on her way!!!

We're at the hospital and mommy is doing great! more details to come!

Still Counting . . .

Well, no baby yet! We're down to one week left until the due date and Darcie is just about ready to be done with the whole process, I think. "She's all crowded in there," she says. We're expecting the baby any day now and I'll post some news as soon as we get some! :) In the meantime, I thought I'd put up some pictures of the goings on over the past few weeks:

Every summer our staff throws a picnic for the college leadership that works at camp each summer. We take a traditional sunset picture at the event and here's the one from this year.






Will this be the last belly pic? Just in case, we had to make it artsy.













One of the students from this past year's Forge class got married last weekend and, even though it had only been a couple months, we all got together and had a reuinion at the wedding. Good times!






Last, but not least, I decided to do what President Bush hoped I would do with my stimulus check - I spent it. Darcie and I agreed that it was time for us to get a riding mower to mow both our lawn and our rental property, so here I am...a veritable Bobby Bouchet!

Nursery, at last!

I think we have finished setting up the nursery! Here are a few of the latest pics. We are excited for little Heidi's arrival, and doctor says, "Could be tomorrow, could be a couple of weeks" so you never know. :-) Several of our good friends (see baby shower pictures in previous posts) have had their babies, so we're ready to meet ours and introduce her to her newborn friends.

It's a weird feeling, not knowing when she will come, and being anxious for that - but in a good way. We know it will totally change our lives forever, but I don't think we know the extent of that... not yet anyway.

More to come in the following weeks! Thanks for all the support and advice we've gotten over the past months. We'll take all we can get, so send your advice our way!

Quality Entertainment

So Darcie and I figured that we should get out of the house as much as we can the next few weeks since the baby could come at any time and, let's face it, we should become social lepers at that point. Nothing worse than a crying baby in a public place, right? Oh, please let us not be one of those people.....much.

Anyway, so we had dinner at home and then went out to see Disney Pixar's Wall-E. Darcie had been wanting to see it since the first preview and, I admit, it looked like it would be a good film.

The movie is splendid. My remark to Darcie as we left the theatre was, "That was the first time I ever really enjoyed paying a fortune to see a movie in the theatre." Not only is it an original plot, good story line and quite cute and funny, it's masterfully animated. Never did I think animation could look so life-like. Pixar continues to set the bar in 3-d animated films and I hope they keep making movies for a long time. Even the 5-minute short at the beginning of the movie was tremendous. Really, go see this movie. I don't mind feeding the Pixar empire if we keep getting quality entertainment like this.

Especially considering the other movies we had to choose from in the previews. Our choices were Space Chimps (a thrilling movie about chimps in space), Fly Me to the Moon (a gripping epic about 3 flies who hitch a ride on Apollo 11), or Beverly Hills Chihuahua (a movie that has no apparent plot whatsoever). If it's a waste of my time to watch the previews for these movies, I feel bad for the people who plop down the $8.50 to see them. And I feel worse for the people who spent their personal time and money making these films. Surely we can do better than this?

My other thought during the evening was the price of movie tickets. Yes, they are high and that's why Darcie and I would just assume buy a movie rather than see it in the theatre. But I'm confused as to why every movie is the same price. Everything else in our economy is driven by competition - why aren't movies? I actually might go see Space Chimps if it was only $1.50. You'd get more people to see it than if they had to pay the standard $8.50, that's for darn sure! All too often I walk out of movie theatres thinking, "I just got ripped off! I just paid $8.50 for a movie that was worth about $.50." I feel the same way about gas prices. I'm running around asking, "Why am I paying so much for so little!!??"

So, no baby yet. She is full term now, though, so baby could come at any time!!! We'll keep you posted.

Name Game....Gimmie that Name!

We've finally chosen a name for our baby girl! For those of you who knew the whole story, we had 3 names that we were attached to: Madeline, Katharine, and Heidi.

We decided not to do Madeline because she'd probably be called Maddie all the time - too close to Matty for us to really be excited about. Plus, it's one of the most popular girl names around these days.

Katharine was a great option as well. She could be called Katharine, Kat, Katie, or Kate - surely our daughter could find one of those she'd warm up to, right? But, again, a very popular name - and it just didn't have the ring we were looking for.

So, as you may have guessed by the picture, we have decided to name her Heidi. Heidi Katharine Lantz to be exact. We like Heidi mostly because it is a 'different' name, but not too different to be really weird. We also wanted our daughter's name to have a specific meaning. Heidi Katharine means 'the noble pure one.' Identity is so often found in our names and it will be our prayer that she lives up to the name we have chosen for her.

As a side note, if you ever come across any anecdotes, stories or other illustrations of the word 'noble' and its meaning - please let us know. We'd like to start collecting them for bedtime stories and such.

We were also hoping to tie in some family names into our firstborn, but we just couldn't find a name we were happy with. We'll have to save that for when we have a son. :)

Many of you will remember Shirley Temple who starred as Heidi in the 1937 movie of the same name. There's no connection to her or to the story itself - but it's the only image I could think to put on here since we're still 4 weeks away from meeting Heidi for the first time.

Darcie is due on August 2nd and as that date continues to draw closer and closer, we'll keep you posted on what's happening. Then, once Heidi is born, there will be more stuff on here than you'll know what to do with. :)

July 3rd & 4th

Here's the latest from the family reunion. We managed to get all four of the little girls to sit still on the swing long enough for a picture, which made for a good laugh. In the evening, we braved the camera again to take a full family photo (minus Doug and Matt) and the girls did a great job!

Today (the 4th) we did the slip 'n' slide, swimming, sandbox, then grilled out hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner. The guys put on a great fireworks show for us in the front yard and we finished the night off with the all American dessert - apple pie.

Not a bad way to spend a couple of days, and we certainly showed our patriotic spirit!

Hopefully more tomorrow!

The Fun Frenzy Begins!

Here we are, the second day of the reunion. We played sand in the sand pail this morning while waiting for everyone to get here. Lots of folks arrived today - Rich, Julie and Izzy, Dick and Jim, Duane, Lisa Sophia and Stella...

Yet, another way of going to great lengths for the comfort of the

"girlies", Dad and Dusty installed a window air conditioning unit into the little girls' playhouse so it is now officially climate controlled (with running water to the sink, and other electricity to come!)

Today's activity of choice, however, was for the sister-in-laws to sit and chat, then everyone joined the girls outside to watch them swim in the mini-waterpark Mom Dodge had the boys set up in the front yard. Four little girls, in their element. :-)

In true family reunion style, we cooked a huge dinner and ate way too much food (dessert to come in a little while), and I'm sure we'll all crash in a couple of hours after the girls go to bed.

It's really cool to have a family that will do this together - play, eat, pray, talk... Not a lot of people still do this, I don't think. Thanks to Mom and Dad Dodge who love to plan stuff like this to

bring us all together. Many more fun memories to come!

The Family Reunion - So it begins...

The Dodge/Emmerich/Jones Family Reunion of 2008 has begun, and already it proving to be a fun time with family. To demonstrate the lengths to which my parents will go to make everyone happy and comfortable, here's a pic from yesterday. Our next door neighbors are out of town, so they've allowed us to house some family in their house. However, there were no cribs for the small kids over there, so my brother and dad took apart
one of the cribs from my folks' house, loaded it on the lawnmower
trailer, and drove it up the hill to set up at the neighbors' house. Spare no expense!

My sister-in-law and niece arrived this evening as well, and Molly went straight to work playing with Mr. Potato Head, dollies and cribs, and Play Dough. She also gets along quite well with Grandpa (my dad)... I think they'll be best buds. Here she's telling him how much her dolly loves to swing, while reading a book and watching birds. Never a dull moment.

More to come throughout the week! There's nothing like family. :-)