Dear Friends and Family,

What a year it has been! Last year at this time we were living with Stephen & Heather, and expecting a baby. So much has changed! In February our house in Tukwila sold. In April we moved into Tammie’s Grandpa’s old house (still in Ephrata) so as not to put Stephen & Heather through the fun of having a newborn under their roof. (Nothing like moving when you’re 8 months pregnant!) The house was a block from the High School so Tobin was able to walk to work every day. He walked home for lunch most days too, and it was really nice getting to see him mid-day.

Our due date fell right on Tobin’s biggest event of his career – the Art Show. So when I probably should have been taking things easy in the last weeks of my pregnancy, instead I matted 500+ pictures that his students had created during the school year. The Art Show was quite a success, and thanks to Tobin’s fervent prayers that I’d hold off on having the baby, we were able to tear everything down and I was STILL pregnant.

I went all the way to 41 weeks, and finally my doctor scheduled an induction. That scared the baby right out of me, and an hour or so before I was due to be induced, I had our son, Ransom James Springs (on June 2). He was born about a half hour after getting to the hospital and was a healthy little guy at 9lbs 8oz and 22” long. At 6 months, he’s now over 28” long (95th percentile) and 19lbs (100th percentile). He was born with a full head of hair, and has had 3 haircuts to date. :)

Evangeline absolutely loves having a little brother (I think she was a little lonely after living for 8 months with her cousin Claire). They play together a lot, and Evangeline is looking forward to the day when Ransom can finally walk (he does a mean roll right now). Evangeline is quite the little person now. She talks all the time and has quite the personality. :) She’s off the growth charts—still. At 2 and a half years old, she’s now wearing 4 year old little girl clothes.

Since we’d moved to Ephrata, we’d been looking for houses and were getting a bit discouraged that after a year+ of looking, we hadn’t seen much of anything that we’d want to raise our family in. We knew that the Lord had brought us to Ephrata, and trusted that He would provide a place for us, and over the summer, He did! Stephen’s friend knew we were looking for a house, and mentioned to Stephen that his family was selling one in Ephrata. We figured it was probably outside of what we could afford, but we went through it anyways and totally fell in love. Turns out that we lived just long enough without a house payment that we were able to save enough money for the down payment. We spent much of the summer buying the house without a realtor (as that shaved the price down enough for us to be able to afford it), and the weekend before Tobin started up school this fall, we moved in!

The house is great! We live just north of town, 2 miles from Tobin’s school in the little community of Shady Acres. The 13 houses that make up our community sit around a shared living space with a pool, tennis court, basketball court and park. Our house is in the middle of the loop. It is vintage 1965 with a dash of 80’s carpet and wallpaper, so as we have the money and time we plan to update it to better fit our family. We’ve got nearly an acre of lawn (and a riding lawn mower!), lots of trees, a great patio, and the house is huge at a whopping 3800 sq feet. We could nearly fit our old house in this house four times!

The view out our front window.

Anything else? Well Tobin’s a legitimate Basketball coach this year (he just volunteered last year). So here’s hoping that the D squad has a better season than varsity did last year (didn’t win a single game). :) Tobin & I became members of Ephrata First Baptist Church a few weeks ago. It’s really nice living in our forever home now, and becoming official members at church, especially after living in transition for so long. What else? Well we got a pretty nice espresso machine – so if you come to visit, we can make you all the mochas you want. It’s been; VERY helpful having the capability to make coffee seeing as Ransom still isn’t sleeping through the night and is up at least 2 times every night. Tammie’s still working for Biblesoft and Tobin’s still at EHS.

We wish you a very Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year. May God bless you in the coming year as much as He has blessed us in 2011.

Love,

The Springs Family

p.s. You can read all the blog posts from 2011 here.

Last Thursday we drove to Anacortes for a Springs Family Reunion. It was a lot of fun. There wasn’t really a schedule, we just hung out as a family. The first night we walked to downtown Anacortes from Tobin’s parents’ house with Peter, Lisa and Amelia and had some Thai food (we don’t have a lot of eating-out options in Ephrata – at least outside of Mexican, Chinese or Pizza!). That worked suprisingly well considering we were both packing little babies and we had a toddler too! We ate outside and everyone was happy – especially Evangeline who beamed at her Uncle Peter (or “Unca Peeta”) the whole time. She sure loves her uncles! :)

The next day we were going to try and go to La Conner for a long boat festival, but we couldn’t sync everyone’s schedules and ultimately Peter, Lisa, Amelia, Tobin, Evangeline, Ransom and I went for a walk down to the water. It was a GORGEOUS day and we had a great time. Evangeline especially liked touching the water and throwing rocks in the water. :) Oh and once again she really enjoyed her Uncle Peter. :)

Friday night everyone showed up and we had a good time visiting with everyone.

Saturday morning was the Anacortes Farmers Market, and we thought it would be a fun thing to go to – we’ve been enjoying hitting up the Ephrata Farmers Market on Saturday mornings (we can walk to it from our house). The Farmers Market in Anacortes is HUGE compared to Ephrata’s, and it was a lot of fun. We bought some bread and would have bought some cherries for Evangeline but couldn’t cough up $7/lb for them (organic, but we bought them the weekend before in Ephrata for $2.50/lb). Evangeline hung out with Kristen and Asher and had a great time petting all the dogs she could find. She even found some kitties that she got to pet (for an animal rescue booth). Everyone had a great time. Unfortunately Evangeline tripped and fell on the way home from the market so that was a bit dramatic. She’d already skinned one of her knees quite badly, and this fall reopened that scab. Needless to say there was blood and tears everywhere. Oh I suppose I should mention that Ransom was asleep in the frontpack on Tobin the whole time. He’s pretty laid back. :)

Saturday afternoon we drove over to Washington Park where Evangeline (and Peter) got to play on the toys, then we threw rocks in the water, and walked the loop. It was all pretty fun. By about halfway into the loop Eva hit her wall (she didn’t take a single nap during our time in Anacortes, and that’s pretty tough). Fortunately she was able to rid in Peter and Lisa’s stroller while Peter was carrying Amelia, and then Kristen carried her. (She just about fell asleep in Kristen’s shoulder.) Once again, Ransom slept for the duration of the walk. :)

Saturday evening we celebrated Peter and Tobin’s birthday’s along with Mother’s day/Father’s day and Greg & Carol’s birthdays. (All the kids went in on a Kindle for Greg & Carol.) We also had some BBQ’d Salmon (my absolute favorite meal), followed with ice cream cakes and a carrot cake for Tobin. Good times.

Sunday morning was church. We all went but our little family ended up leaving early. Evangeline was a tad scared of the nursery and we decided that when Ransom woke up famished that we’d take a rain check. We ended up driving to a pretty awesome park where Evangeline and Tobin played while I nursed Ransom (everyone was happy). This park was so cool, it’s sure to become a staple of our trips to Anacortes from here on out.

After church/playground, we ate lunch and proceeded to pack the car and say our goodbyes. By the time we left I think it was after 3pm. Ugh. That’s a lot of driving for two little people! Fortunately, they both slept to North Bend but the leg from NB home was anything but fun. Suffice it to say we had one very unhappy little girl all the way home (including a stop in Ellensburg at some toys)… Oh well.

 All in all it was a fun, laid back weekend, and it was really fun getting to see everyone! Looking forward to our next summer get together! (Last summer we hit the peninsula, view pictures here (7/3/10), here (7/4/10) and here (7/5/10).)

You can see the pictures from this year’s reunion here (7/29), here (7/30) and here (7/31).

The other day we felt like doing something, perhaps a quick road trip, so we called up my parents and asked them what their plans were. They were going to ride their bike to Chelan so we tagged along behind in our car. I’m not sure Tobin had ever made the trip to Chelan from Ephrata before, so he got to see some new scenery. The kids were great on the way up – Ransom slept the whole time, and Evangeline had fun looking out the window – even spotting a deer at one point.

Once we made it to Chelan, we stopped for coffee, and Evangeline had fun trying on Grandma’s motorcycle helmet and do-rag. Ransom was quite a hit – we had several people stop and exclaim how long his hair was – especially for such a little guy. :) Yes, we agree, the hair is pretty cool.

Of course no trip is complete now without a visit to some “toys”, so we drove down to Lakeshore Park so Evangeline could have some fun. She had a blast with Grandpa catching her at the bottom of the slide, and swinging her on the swings. She really wanted to touch the water, but that was ruled out when we realized that there was no beach, just a retaining wall to the water. No thanks.

We checked out another park in Chelan – it ended up being mostly just a boat launch, but we did discover a pretty cool walking trail along the water above the dam. If we would have had more time, we would have walked more of it, but as it was, we were out of time, and kids needed to go to sleep! We ate Express Specials at Safeway and then headed home. My parents stayed behind enjoying their ice cream bars. The assumption was we had driven ourselves up there, we should be able to make it home fine. Unfortunately, Tobin and I discovered that we really need an atlas of WA as our cell phones had NO coverage, and apparently we weren’t paying good enough attention when we were following my parents. Long story short, we took a left where we should have taken a right, and 2 screaming kids and several hours later we were home. Not fun. I can assure you we won’t make that mistake again! :)

View all the pictures here.

June came and went quickly, probably due in part to having a newborn in the house that didn’t abide by our sleeping patterns (instead he liked to sleep as much as he could in the day and stay awake at night). When we weren’t oohing over our new baby, and when Tobin wasn’t away at Basketball camp, we did have a chance to get out and do a few things. We did several drives, and spent a lot of time at Grandma and Grandpa’s where Evangeline could play in their kiddie pool. :)

Here’s a sweet picture of Evangeline enjoying the swings at Coulee City. (Her new favorite thing to do is play on toys – so now we have to hunt down every park it seems, wherever we go.) :)

Margie Lou came over and did a photoshoot of Ransom. Isn’t he cute?

Here are our June photos: Ransom (6/2), Ransom (6/3), Ransom (6/5), Ransom (6/9), Coulee City, Drive, Grandma & Grandpa’s House.

A week ago today at 4:10pm, Ransom James Springs was born. We love him!

Why Ransom? Well Tobin and I have liked the name since I was pregnant with Evangeline. We like that it is Biblical in the sense that Jesus paid the ransom for our sins (Matthew 20:28, Mark 10:45, 1 Timothy 2:6, Hebrews 9:15). We like the meaning of the name Ransom – Deliverance, Rescue. Tobin and I love reading C.S. Lewis’ books, and we both love his Space Trilogy. The main character in that book is Dr. Ransom, and we really liked the character he portrayed. (If you haven’t read that series, I highly recommend it.) Oh and it was a relatively popular name in the 1880′s (OK, maybe not popular, but it did make the graph from the 1880′s until the 1920′s). :)

The rest of this post is about the actual birth – so if you don’t want to read that, consider yourself warned.

I started  having contractions on June 2 at about 3am. These contractions woke me up and there was no sleeping through them. I briefly attempted to get Tobin to wake up and help push on my back (that helps make the contractions more bearable for me), but it must have been too early for him and he pretty much slept through them until his alarm went off. :P I tried timing the contractions, but they were relatively irregular so I figured I was just in for another bout of prodromal labor (last time it was 30 hours with Evangeline).

Tobin headed off to school and I continued having contractions. Evangeline was sweet – I didn’t tell her it was the baby’s fault that I hurt, just that I hurt – but she figured it out and for a few contractions, she’d reach out and put her hand on my tummy and say “baby, baby”. She’s so sweet.

I called up my sister and asked her to get over STAT as I figured even if I was in prodromal labor that the baby would be coming soon (our doctor had planned on inducing me the same day). She showed up while I was trying to nap after working a half day, and when I did get out of bed around 1:30 pm she was at Stephen’s. I called her and asked her to get down here as at least she could push on my back. At about the same time, Tobin came home for a few minutes on his plan and helped me make it through a few more contractions. They still weren’t terribly regular, but they were happening more often, so I told him that he should probably see if he could get coverage for the last period of the day so we could go to the Dr sooner (we had an appointment scheduled for an ultrasound followed by a NST at 3:45pm). I texted my doctor and asked if we should go to the appointment or maybe hit the hospital. She said go to the hospital. My water still hadn’t broken (I was 5cm last time when it broke), so I figured that even though I was in pain, I still had hours of labor left.

So around 2:45pm or so we headed off to Moses with our hospital bags – leaving Evangeline with ML. We drove straight to the hospital, and checked in around 3:25pm. They took me right in and checked things and I was at 8cm!!!! I just about cried, I figured I was still at 1-3cm with hours left. (I was at 1cm no effacement just 2 days prior.) The nurse said she figured we’d have the baby within the hour so I went ahead and called my family and let them know (they headed right over). Well the nurse was right. The doctor went ahead and broke my water and the contractions got worse (but were still at 5-6min apart). There wasn’t even any medical staff in our room when I started pushing – by the second push, everyone was rushing in to switch up the bed so we could have the baby. 2 more pushes and he was OUT! 4:10pm. Good thing I didn’t wait for my water to break – which is what I was planning on doing as I didn’t want to get sent home like last time.

Here are the stats:

Weight: 9lbs 8oz
Length: 22in
Head Circumference: 14.25cm
Apgar: 9
Born at: 4:10pm

And if you’re wondering, yes he was an all around bigger baby than Evangeline who was 9lbs 4oz, 21.5″ (though she measured at 23″ on her 2-day checkup).

Ransom is perfect. He’s got a FULL head of hair and pretty much looks identical to Evangeline’s baby pictures. :) Tobin and I have decided that it’s much more fun having a newborn that is not our first child. Now we kind of know the ropes (though I realize there’s a lot that we forgot in just two years), and so most of the stress is gone, and we can just enjoy being parents! :) Actually the hardest part so far has probably been keeping up with my two-year-old as I’m trying to heal from having a 9 1/2 pound baby.

Evangeline loves her baby brother. She has some baby dolls – a pink one and a blue one. She now refers to Ransom as the Real Baby. It’s cute. :) Here’s a pic of the two of them that I snapped with my phone the other day – right before I took this picture Ransom LAUGHED! The next day he laughed too. It was the sweetest thing ever. :)

Well that’s the story. Welcome to our family Ransom! We love you!

Lots of pictures in the photo gallery – Day 1, Day 2, Day 3+. A special thank you to Margie Lou Colyar Photography for many of the pictures.

Still haven’t had this baby, so we figured we’d actually get out and do something today. We headed out to the sod farm and watched ultralight trikes flying (there was a lot of touch-and-goes, and landings and takeoffs, so it was actually quite interesting), and kites.

Daddy brought his powered parachute, but he couldn’t launch while we were still there as the wind kept kicking up. (There were plenty of other PPC’s there, but none in the air due to the weather.)

Though I’ve been to the sod farm before, for the life of me I wouldn’t remember how to get there (it’s off road 9), so we followed Stephen & Heather out. My parents showed up right after we got there, and the girls had a great time saying hi to their grandparents (and each other for that matter). :) The sod farm is like a big park, and the girls had a great time running all over (especially Evangeline after she got a taste of Heather’s frappe and a dose of sugar!). Wow. There was no way I could keep up with her in my state, so I put Tobin on two-year-old duty. Ha.

We sat for awhile at the edge of the “runway”, and watched all the action there – it was pretty cool – there was a lot of stuff to watch. I think there must’ve been at least 3-6 ultralight trikes in the air at any one time, and several kept showing off (I suppose they could have been testing, but I doubt it).

After awhile, the kite people broke out some huge circular kites and that was very cool. I walked over and shot some video with my phone and a bunch of pictures. In the process someone dropped a kite on me (well the kite string hit me TWICE), so that was a little exciting. Ha.

Here’s that video:

Aren’t those kites cool? I thought they were just beautiful.

Evangeline got so tired she started running in circles, so we decided it was probably best to head home and get her down to bed (this was around 6:30 – she is  normally in bed between 5:30 and 6:30). So that’s what we did.

This is going on all weekend, so if you’re in the area, you might want to check it out.

View all the pictures here.

Yesterday in an attempt to get things going (we want to meet this baby!), I went to the airport and walked the trails and roads with my mom and Evangeline.

Mommy was nice enough to push Evangeline in the Bob the whole way, and we had a fun time seeing the airplanes do stunts - but seriously, being in the plane would make me sick, just about made me sick watching them. Once I was in a plane with my brother practicing stalls. Never again I tell you. Ugh. Anyways though I had some contractions last night, I’m still pregnant today <sigh>. Pictures here.

Stephen called me up today and told me he’d caught a horned toad at work yesterday. He brought it by today and Evangeline was especially interested in it. Poor thing, Stephen kept prodding it, and it kept puffing itself up and hissing at us. Fortunately, Stephen didn’t keep the thing in captivity for too long – he turned it loose in his garden after he left our place. :) Pictures here.

In other news, we had a great time at the sod farm tonight – but I’ll put that in another post.

Well my due date came and went (May 23), and unsurprisingly I am STILL pregnant. Oh and not only am I still pregnant, but the doctor says there has been no change for weeks. Nothing is happening. Cool. I think it was the same way with Evangeline…

I went a full week over with Evangeline and am HOPING that we can keep it under a week with this one! Apparently these Springs babies just like to cook. I was hoping too that I would have a smaller baby this time around – Evangeline was 9lbs 4oz, but I’m not getting my hopes up on that…now. And yes, just like last time, everyone I knew that was pregnant and due around the same time as me has had their babies – just not me. Sigh. I’m hoping for this weekend seeing as my doctor is on call and it’s a 3-day weekend AND Tobin’s art show is over! Woo hoo. Anyways, Baby Boy Springs – we really want to meet you! Hurry up and get here! :)

Anyways, Margie Lou popped over a few days ago and shot some maternity pictures for us. Nothing like waiting until the week you’re due to take pics. Ha. Thanks ML, for the shots. We love them.

View all the pictures here.

Hard to believe that Evangeline is now two years old. Wow. We wondered if she’d have to share her birthday with her little brother, but her birthday came and went and still no brother. :S

We took it pretty easy for her birthday – no big shindig like last year, as this year we didn’t know if we’d even be at home (wishful thinking on my part put us in the hospital adding child #2 to our family). We lucked out and the high school FHA was putting on a petting zoo for Grant. We (my parents, Margie Lou, Evangeline and I) snuck in right at the end (the last kids from Grant were just leaving), and Evangeline had an absolute BLAST getting to pet a calf, sheep, puppy, etc. We looked at all the animals very thoroughly, then walked to the gym where Tobin was setting up the art show. Everyone got to look at the show, then we headed off to my parents house (well everyone but Tobin who had to keep working on the art show).

The weather was beautiful so we pulled out the kiddie pool at my parents’ house, and Evangeline got to swim in it (we left a suit at my parents for just such an occasion). She had an absolute blast, and then Claire came down with Heather and that made it even better. The girls played in the pool until the sun went behind a cloud, and we packed it up and moved inside – just in the nick of time! Not two minutes after we came inside, there was literally a cloudburst. It was quite something! It was sunny but downpouring.

Tobin was finally able to join us – and he brought with him pizza from Safeway, cake & ice cream. Evangeline got to open her presents then – she got a super cool marble toy from Stephen & Heather, and we ate, sang Happy Birthday to her, and then fed everyone cake and ice cream (an especially huge hit with the girls).  It was a fun time.

View the pictures here.

My dad heard at work that due to some maintenance on the dam above Summer Falls, there was a lot of water coming over the falls (usually there is only a little bit of water if any at all).

So after he got off work, we piled into my parents rig and drove out to see for ourselves. Sure enough there was a bunch of water coming over the falls – it was actually quite impressive. Summer Falls is at the northwest end of Long Lake (Billy Clapp lake for you dems). Usually when we ski on the lake we don’t really make it up to this end of the lake at all (there is a boat launch on the south end of the lake), but there’s actually a pretty nice park at this end of the lake – all grassy, even with bathrooms and picnic tables. Tobin was impressed that something like that existed basically in the middle of nowhere. :) (It’s fun showing Tobin the local stuff he hasn’t seen before.) :)

Evangeline had a blast hanging out with my parents and running in the grass (fortunately we didn’t see any snakes in the grass though we did see TONS of fish – mostly carp – jumping in the lake). My mom had shown her earlier how you could blow on a dandelion gone to seed and they were ALL over the place so she kept picking dandelions and blowing them. It was a lot of fun. :)

When we came home, we drove a slightly different way – through a canyon, and that was an area that I hadn’t even seen before – we had to stop for some rock chucks that decided to cross the road RIGHT in front of us. Evangeline got a kick out of that too. Good times.

View all the pictures here.

Here’s a video of the falls that my dad shot: