Nathan Peter Guyatt

So the life of a new mom has taken over and this post is a month later than I'd hoped!
June 24, 2013 after 38 hours of labour, our little boy decided to arrive! Nathan Peter Guyatt weighed in at 8 lb 2 1/2 oz and 20 1/2 in. long. He has strawberry blond hair and a dimple on his right check.
We chose the name Nathan because it means "Gift from God" and that is what this little one is! Peter means "Rock" a reminder that God is our Rock and in Him we can trust. And Guyatt...well we didn't have to decide anything about that part of the name. =]

Our first family picture!

Presenting....Nathan Peter Guyatt

Getting ready to go home from the hospital

 Yay!!

 Ahh..the perfect newborn skin.

 1st Canada Day

 He's a Canadian citizen before me!

 He's so alert and getting more and more so everyday!

 Trying to work on some American pride on the 4th of July...as he'll be a U.S. citizen someday.

Mother of Quadruplets

While the countdown to our baby's birth is on (7 more days until the June 19th due date!!!) we got to experience an incredible surprise! I'll let David tell about it in his words:

"I went out this morning to start stacking wood in the wood shed. I started by flipping over the wheel barrow and to my surprise there was a snowshoe hare staring right back at me. I took a few steps back to let him get away but he just sat there looking at me. I watched for around 5 minutes then all of a sudden a baby bunny popped out! Apparently he was a she! I ran inside and got Sarah and we watched as she delivered three more adorable baby bunnies. It looks like our woodshed has become the latest bunny nursery."

 Do you see the baby nursing?

 Four little babies are underneath Mommy!

Do you see the feet sticking out? Apparently Snowshoe hares are named because of their big "snowshoe like" feet. 

So I am a little jealous right now as this Mommy only had to wait 35-40 days to have her babies and her labour and delivery certainly didn't seem to phase her. No birth attendants needed, she took care of everything...right down to eating the birth sack (ok so I don't envy that part!) We learned today (online) that baby hares are born with hair and their eyes open and can hop soon after birth.

This is the Daddy Hare. We saw him pacing all over the yard this morning. Everything made so much more sense when we realized that birth was happening. I'm thankful that David plans to be with me the whole time during labour and delivery...not running around like a worried snowshoe hare. =]

This was our observation point into the newly founded baby nursery. It's not just our baby that is going to get in the way of David's work!

Room Progress and Fun

 Yay for progress on the new office happening so that the baby room could be worked on and completed!

 David did a wonderful job painting everything and doing all the trim! He even did the chair rail for me that I wanted. It was fun to make a room have some lively colour.

 May 5, my last day to wear the "Harvest Kids" shirt for a while when serving. It's a good thing because I had already moved up to David's shirt and it wouldn't fit much longer.

 The lovely ladies of our church put on an incredible baby shower for us. We were so overwhelmed and blessed by everyone's love and how much work they put into it. 

Thanks to Tracy for the cake!

My friend Heather (on the right) had the ladies make an "ABC Scripture Book" as a surprise for me! What a treasure!

 We got to see the family this weekend at a cousin's wedding (Tara Lawson). (Rebekah is holding Caleb, one of Melissa's boys.) It looks like the kids all want to drool on the guys heads. =]

 Tonight David set-up the crib and hung the curtains in the baby room! We bought the crib/rocker/dresser set off of kijiji! I cleaned it all up tonight and can't wait to start putting things away and decorating a bit more.

 The crib set is also off of kijiji..the ribbons will have to go if we have a boy. =]

 The dresser/change table!

 The lady forgot to send the footstool...so that's still coming. 

 In order to have a baby's room David had to finish the office downstairs. It's definitely smaller (both our chairs don't really fit in at the same time...I guess that's a hint that it's time to go on maternity leave.)

 This picture wants to stay sideways for some reason...anyways it shows David's fabulous view from his desk. He doesn't have to face a blank wall anymore.

And...the most exciting part of the office...the storage room! David built shelves to fit the bins inside the utility room so we can finally stay organized and have a place to keep all the CEF stuff in one place. Can you believe that's all CEF stuff??? That doesn't even count all that's in the filing cabinet and on the shelves in the office!

Good News Club Visitor

 I have to say last week we had the most interesting visitor to Good News Club. Spencer was coming to teach and he asked if he could bring friend with him. "Uhh...well...he needs to have a police check and volunteer forms completed," David started to respond...

"Oh, not that kind of friend. He's a baby black squirrel," Spencer replied. A few days before, Spencer found the abandoned baby squirrel and  began caring for him. Since the little squirrel needs to be fed every few hours, he needed to be able to feed him right before club and after. The squirrel was kept in a secure box in the basement away from the kids during club. However, at the end of club while waiting for parents to come, Spencer brought out his friend for "show and tell". 

 I have to admit, he really is a cute little squirrel and it made for a unique feature to show the kids! I'm not sure we'll plan to make this a weekly event, however.

Spencer feeding the squirrel in our van on the way home

Basement Progress...

The last few months David has been working as fast as he can on the basement, as time allows.

 This was where things were at the beginning of January. Everything was framed in but we were waiting for the drywallers to come.

David worked hard to make wooden ceiling panels and tracking. Most of his Christmas break was spent painting and assembling the panels. Exciting times came when the ceiling panels went up!

 By March the walls were drywalled, mudded, taped, sanded and painted!

Thanks to David's dad and brother for their help with painting! Because of their help, David was able to get the whole basement and stairway painted in 2 1/2 days. 

 At the end of March, David began tiling the floor, one room at a time.

 This was followed by grouting. I only grouted 1 1/2 rooms while David did all the rest.

 The entry was the final beast to conquer as it meant that we couldn't use our front door for 24 hours. We still had 1-2 ft of snow outside the side door as we walked around the house. It makes you appreciate the "little things" in life...like using your front door!

 As of April 6, the whole basement (except for David's workshop) is now tiled and grouted!

 This is the back bedroom...getting close to being ready for guests to stay in. 

The focus now is on finishing the office so we can get to the baby room! The office now has a door to the storage/utility room and for entry. The last things needed before move-in are shelves and trim.We're getting SO CLOSE!!! There are only 8 more weeks until baby is due, so it's exciting to see the reality of a baby room getting closer. I so want to set it up and organize the things we've been given second hand and those we just received as gifts...but  it looks like I'll have to wait a few weeks until the baby's room is actually freed of our office stuff.

 Our wonderful Staff/Family of CEF Ontario held a baby shower for us in the midst of our staff meetings on Tuesday. They had communicated with David beforehand so it was a surprise to me.

 We felt so loved by this group that is so much more than co-workers. It was very strange for me as it was my last staff meeting before I start maternity leave in 5 1/2 weeks. In the meetings on Monday & Tuesday it was so exciting to hear of the things that are upcoming in the ministry but so strange to realize that I won't have an active part in them.

It was really fun to have David there to open the gits together, even though he says they are all for me (they're really for neither of us since they're for the baby) =]. He definitely brought a much funnier dynamic to opening the gifts than I do. 

This is one very loved and anticipated baby!

Battle of the Road

 Yesterday afternoon we packed up the van for the first week of Good News Club in Orillia and drove off to meet Dwane (a retired CEF worker who still does lots of work with CEF). We planned to drive down to Orillia together (~45 min drive from where we meet.)

We knew it had been raining a lot and the snow has been melting, creating lots of water. The night before, our road had some water all the way across it so we weren't overly surprised to find the road completely flooded about 200 ft from our driveway. It wasn't that deep but spread much wider than we've ever seen it, but we were able to drive through it. Phew! We made it through the flooded spot on our road we thought...





until we saw cars stopped ahead of us on the road and orange cones pylons cones and orange sticks. We were running a couple minutes behind, so David jumped out to find out what was going on. Only to be told that the road had washed out (the only road going in and out to our house). We quickly turned around, went home, called Dwane who should have been gone already but Praise the Lord was just leaving. We drove back down to wait for Dwane to pick us up (he lives 15-20 min away)

 

Since we had some time we were able to investigate and take some pictures.

 Notice how it's all eroded away underneath the road. This part of the road is dirt. While we were standing there for 15 min. we saw pieces of it suddenly drop into the rushing stream. One chunk was a foot wide.

This is the other side -where the water was flowing, bringing lots of water to who knows where.

Thankfully, we were able to make it to Good News Club and 3 boys attended, with a potential for quite a few more kids in the upcoming 5 weeks. 2 of the boys were so excited to invite their friends they took all the invitations we had with us and were fighting over how many they each got to give out. =] We praise the Lord that the other volunteers made it and amazingly, somehow with all the delay we weren't technically late for the club.

When Dwane dropped us off it was pouring rain. The township had dumped a load of materials into the area but it had already flooded back over and washed out more of the section so that it was undriveable. 

It poured rain all night so David just went to check the road (because we have a bunch of appointments we're supposed to leave for in 2 hours in Bracebridge, Barrie and Orillia). However, the verdict from David was that we won't be going anywhere anytime soon. The water across the road by our house is now about 1 foot deep (possibly still passable)...but the other section is washed out and unpassable.Also, we're supposed to continue to get quite a bit more rain over the next few days.

Hmm...this could be a very interesting week!

P.S. Our phone isn't working either :)