Birthday Girls!

Well, today was a day that we will not soon forget in the Holst household.  Today we had the privilege of bringing Laura Madeleine Holst into the world.

It gives a new significance to the term "birthday" as it is not only Laura's birthday, but it's also Katie's birthday!  Today Katie is 28 years old.  And just after midnight, her water broke and we rushed to the hospital to deliver Laura at 6:20 am here in Switzerland.  She was born at 6 lbs 11 oz. and 18.5 inches long.  Both mother and daughter are in excellent shape and are recovering surprisingly quickly from the delivery.
But anyway, I know what you really want to see are the pictures, and as we are all exhausted here, I'm going to save the full update for later and just post the highest priority items:

Katie and Laura...happy as can be

Our first family photo!

Tom's mom and grandmother arrived from the States about 3 hours after the birth--here's a photo of 4 generations of women in the family!

Laura and Great-grandmother

Laura and Grandmother

That's all for now; I'm about to collapse from lack of sleep!  Stay tuned for a continuous stream of updates and a full run-down of her entry into the world...coming soon.

October Doings - Still Waiting!

This October has been an interesting month - we've kinda just been waiting around for Baby Girl to make her appearance, so it feels a bit like we've been living in limbo for the last few weeks. We're ready to meet her, though! Can't believe that the due date is only a week away :)

We started off the month by going to the hospital to turn baby girl around. She had been breech for awhile and it was making me nervous. We didn't want to try a normal birth if she was breech when I went into labor and I would prefer to avoid a c-section if possible, so an ECV (where the doctor turns the baby around by pushing on the belly) seemed like a good option. Things went great and everything worked perfectly. Thanks, God! The actual procedure only took 2 minutes and didn't really hurt at all - just a little bit of firm pressure. I couldn't believe it when the doctor said he was finished! We were in the hospital for a total of 5 hours for monitoring the baby before the procedure and after, but all in all it wasn't a bad experience at all. Now Baby Girl is head down and ready to be born!

We were invited to a wedding for a couple at the church, and this is where the wedding was held - just beautiful!

It was a slightly rainy day, but we did get a rainbow out of it :)

In our wedding attire with a pretty rainbow, beautiful countryside and some cows in the background.

Us in a few years? In case you can't tell, Tom is under Kacey and Cambelle while Will, Baby Girl and I look on.

Sorting out gifts after my shower - thanks everyone!  Can you find both Maggie and Cloé?  They enjoyed playing with the tissue paper.  And see the pink bag on the left?  My bags are packed and I'm ready to go...

Maggie hasn't been able to get enough of me the last few weeks - she comes and sits with me wherever I happen to be.

We thought this one was funny - big pillow for Maggie!  Wonder if little girl will "know" the cats at all.  She has to have heard them purring since they do it right next to my stomach at times.

Cloé enjoying one of the new baby things - she acts like she owns the place!  In the background you can see the crib and stroller.

Baby Shower

My American friends are great and decided to throw me a baby shower last weekend. We had a great time. I invited some of my European (and one South African) friends, and for most of them it was their first baby shower ever. It was fun introducing an American tradition to them. We enjoyed ourselves by playing a few games, eating delicious food and just talking. Here are some picture highlights.

The delicious array of goodies.

Marti is loaning us her infant car seat. Her husband installed it in the car for us and wow. Either our car is really small, the seat is really big, or a combination of the two... It is in the middle and takes up a good portion of the back seat and starts to encroach on the front as well! Tom as to fight a little bit with it to get his seat back far enough so he can drive. I still have faith that our little Nissan Micra can meet our needs, but it may be tight at times! If we put the stroller in the trunk, baby girl in the middle, her diaper bag next to her and us in front, that's basically the whole car! We will just have to see how things go!

We played a game where the ladies had to cut off a piece of string in a length they thought would fit around my waist. A few were really close and then some were twice my size! I was very glad not to have as big of belly as some of them estimated :)

In other news, it was sleeting/hailing last night!! We had to scrape our car in order to drive home. The mountains are now covered with snow and the temperature has been hovering around freezing. I'm hoping that this is just a little fluke and we have at least a little more fall weather heading our way before the long winter sets in. I enjoy winter and snow, but mid-October seems a bit early!

Family Shots!

We did a photo shoot this past weekend (36 weeks) of our growing family. Thought I'd post some of the picts here for you all to enjoy.

Thanks to Tom for running back and forth between the tripod and the shot after just running an 11 mile race that morning!

Update: Here's a picture of Tom from earlier in the day. This is at the very end of the race on yet another uphill segment.

Zurich

Tom and I went to Zurich for our birthing class the 2nd weekend of September. The class was very informative (and all in English!) and helpful. It at least made me feel better about the birth, so if nothing else I'm better prepared mentally. We also took the weekend to do a little of exploring around Zurich. We only had a few hours, but got to walk around downtown a bit. It was a gorgeous day - perfect for a sausage and some ice cream from a road side stand as we walked!
The Grossmünster is on the right and the Fraumünster on the left.

A statue of Zwingli - a pastor who helped lead the reformation in Switzerland in the 1500s.

A closer shot of the Fraumunster where the stained glass windows were done by Chagall!

The Grossmunster - Zwingli was a pastor here.

Another belly shot for all of you who have been asking :)
Taken Sept 20th when I was 34 weeks.