We have a beautiful baby!

 After much trial and traumatic tribulation,
 we finally convinced our baby to join us!

 

I'll spare you the details because, let's face it, I wouldn't want to hear them, but suffice it to say, delivery was rough.  It wasn't quite Breaking Dawn, but it was close.  I couldn't even hold our perfect baby until the next day.  Lots of blood and guts.  Lots of labor (15 hours), lots of recovery still ahead.  Ouch!

Thank heaven I had some awesome designer hospital gowns to make me feel a little better.

 Annie was a trooper.  Q and I went in @ 9:00 am.  Annie arrived about 6 pm, but we still didn't have the baby until after 11 pm.  Even then, baby and I had to get patched up for over an hour after delivery so Annie didn't get to meet the new baby until after 1 am.

 Introducing: VIOLET PAULINE HADLEY

We are once again shocked to be bringing a girl home to a room full of blue!

Violet isn't even a name we carried in our back pockets, but Violet it is.  7.3 and 20 inches.

 Violet was born 6.26.2012 but I was basically delirious and outright hammered for a while so we didn't grab this photo until the next night.  Q has a house full of girls to protect now.  We are so excited!  Quite a bit of recovery ahead, but we are heading home within the hour. Good luck to us and plenty of photos to come but for now we wanted to post at least something since we've been so secluded (and sedated) these last 3 days.

Love you all and thank you for your prayers.

We really couldn't have made it to today without them!

Party Annie

Our Annie turned 1 last week. Isn't that crazy?! I hate her getting old. I want to freeze her in time so I can cuddle with her like this forever. We also moved into our amazing house after almost 6 long months of renovation. In celebration of our major hard work, a new house, birthday baby, and to thank everyone that helped us move, we held our first official party- hopefully of many. I had been looking forward to it since day one because I always knew the house was a terrific place for parties. We can fit 30 people on the back deck alone. It was a photo finish as I was still recovering chairs as the guests came and I totally forgot about a few staging elements that made me so mad when I discovered them the next morning. Oh well. Before and Afters of the Hadley House Love to come, but here are some party pics in the meantime. If I don't get to blogging the summer of 2011 this weekend it won't get done because I start work next week and I am adding more classes than ever. Oh Drudgery.

Annie does NOT, repeat, does NOT like being sung Happy Birthday. I figure it is the only song in the universe that she must hate since she loves music so dang much. I can't even sing it to her when we are alone without her crying. Strange.

We got Annie the perfect present... Baby Stella from Manhattan Toy Co.
I've been so excited for weeks and weeks. Baby Stella is super soft all over and her binki is magnetic. I also got Annie those amazing non-absorbant Boon bath toys, a birthday ball, a toy boat, and a book. Baby, bath toys, ball, boat, and book for a birthday... and I didn't even try!

Here is the limited birthday decor. I made a photo montage of Annie on our magnetic chalkboard wall and displayed some photo posters of Annie that I had hung at my school to show Annie to my students. Add the birthday banner from Gardner village and a time capsule for guests to contribute to and we were set. The time capsule was super fun. People wrote the most amusing things. We also stole some ideas from the twins like including a cell phone and CD.

Thank you to everyone who came to Party Annie!

Are You Coming Over?

You are invited to a BBQ @ OUR HOUSE.

(Did I really just get to say our house??!!)

Annie's turning 1
...and besides,
don't you want a sneak peak of the place
before I get around to posting before & afters?

NEXT MONDAY
August 1st: 6pm-8pm

PLEASE COME
PLEASE COME
PLEASE COME

P.S. If you come, you get to see a little of this and that:

The Big D.L.

Annie's First Trip to Disney Land

It is only fitting that her first ride be the Jungle Cruise.
She loved it.

The weekend school got out, we took the cloggers to Disneyland to perform. I don't have pictures of the performance yet but you might be interested to know that backstage Disneyland uses a picture of us performing from about 5 years ago to advertise Disney Magic Music Days. It marked the beginning of our summer and, though I love our little cloggers, when I said goodbye to the last girl at Toon Town after our show, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Not only did I NOT lose a clogger this time, I made it: One whole entire year of having a first baby and going to work 11 days later plus the stress of buying and renovating a house (almost done - it's taking forever)... well anyway, it was a complicated year. I'm happy to say hello to summer.

Annie loved the Haunted Mansion, even the lights out screaming part. She is quite a unique baby. We had bets going about how she would be in Bug's Life. I won: she squealed with delight and laughed the whole way through.
My baby is no wimp!

Quinn will be delighted to know there is also a Pooh Corner somewhere in the world.


Basically Annie loves big crowds of people and any chance to eat. Good thing she likes busy because D.L. was swamped with busy. We were surprised the place was so packed so early in the season.


I stand by my claim: Everything EVERYTHING is more fun with Annie. Especially Disneyland.

G & G Stirland have a stone. They love Disneyland so much in fact, that once they rented a big greyhound bus and took our entire extended family! For some reason, I kept thinking of and missing my grandpa on this trip. Death is so permanent and depressing and final. Ug.

Annie went crazy for the parade. We watched it 3 times.

Thank heaven for Meg. What am I going to do when my #1 babysitter goes to BYU?

So Annie did cry once- isn't this silly? She LOATHED Cinderella.
Give her scary rides like Pinocchio and Snow White (really, those rides are freaky- kind of like watching the Smurfs after you've grown up and had a good dose of Laura Mulvey in your system to deconstruct it), but my little girl HATES Cinderella.

G.Po. is amazingly spry.
We had some terrific moments together.

I can't get enough of these cute little feet-
and somehow seeing them sleeping in the UppaBaby Vista makes them better.
Hey, if I have to be materialistic about something in this life, at least I've picked a worthy target.

TRADITION:
We canoe every trip. Did it with Grandpa just before he died. Sniff Sniff.

Another round of S.W. and a churro please.

You should have seen me fold up the Uppa Baby Vista on the fly with 10 gallons of stuff shoved in it. I should have been filmed and observed so my posterity could admire it. But I did it! I fit it on the train for 2 stops.

Nothing like making up for a creepy hotel crib (Annie-no-can-do) with a quacking duck tub!

(Yes those are matching shirts. I just love matching.)

...And thus began the summer of only being home for 1 weekend so far. Going out of town again tomorrow and still nary a chance of getting close to caught up on the blog... or the house. Seriously, can we finally move in already? I feel like I'm on HGTV only someone hit the slow motion button, took away all the little helpers, and threw in a sick baby to heighten ratings with an added element of drama.