Surprise!

Grancy and Emily

Woo hoo! I'm free of my stroller!

Emily does not seem to care about the chickens in the cage

Aunt Jen and Emily.

Poppy, Freddy Farm Bureau and Emily

During the weekend of Aug. 20-22, Jen and Ed came to Louisville for a visit. They brought with them some wonderful news....they are expecting March 2nd! We were all thrilled! Jen managed to keep the news a secret from the family for 12 weeks! (I had a really hard time staying quiet for 8 weeks!) Jen arrived to Louisville early in the week and worked. Ed flew in town on Friday evening. Saturday morning, Jen had a very special bouquet of flowers delivered to Don and Nancy that said something like "Pink or Blue? What will it be? We'll have to wait 'till March to see!" She is due March 2nd. We thought that it was very ironic that her baby is due March 2nd and Jeremy's birthday is March 8th and Emily's birthday was August 8th and Jen's birthday is August 4th. Both of their first born children will likely have birthdays the same week as their sibling.

I don't want to sound like a know-it-all, but I did have a pretty good idea that they were expecting (and Jer can vouch for me.) Various small clues made me think that they were expecting, Jeremy kept saying that Jen would have told everyone by now, but I knew that this is news to share in person whenever possible and that if Ed was going to be in town, she would definitely wait until they could tell everyone together. Also, I thought that Ed had gone to a lot of trouble in getting his weekend off from the Army, flying out of town late on a Friday and only to be here for 1 1/2 days. (Usually he stays longer when he comes in town.) I'll have to admit, that when Jen said that she was having a fruity cocktail in Hawaii for me, that kind of threw me off on my conviction that she was expecting. (Later, she told me it was a virgin one!)

God has richly blessed our families in the past year and added to its numbers with Hunter, Emily, Cooper and soon Baby Hannah! Will they have a boy or girl? Give me a few weeks and I'll make another prediction! ha!

Here's some photos from the State Fair! Emily got to see all kinds of new animals (and smells.) We didn't try the donut hamburger, but we did enjoy some icecream and a nice dinner at Grancy and Poppy's later that day. We had a great weekend! We did miss seeing Laura Beth on her 30 th birthday. Plans changed when Memommy Meisel had to have a pacemaker implanted on Aug. 20th (LB's birthday). Luckily, the procedure went well and she is recovering now. We are hopeful that this will take care of the awful dizziness that she was having from such a low, irregular rhythm.