11 Days Old

Ben and I took these photos when Evelyn was 11 days old. Hope you all enjoy them!!!

Evelyn's Birth

Evelyn Jane Sparks was born at 11:40 pm on August 29th, 2011 in Baton Rouge, LA. Who would have thought that we would have a baby in Baton Rouge, LA! Here are some pictures for all of you who couldn't be there.

My doctor had asked me at my last appointment if I wanted to be induced if Evelyn didn't come by her due date. I quickly responded YES! This was for two main reasons...one I was so tired of being pregnant and second I wanted my mom to have the most time she could with Evelyn. So they scheduled me for Monday morning at 4:00 am. My first reaction was 4 AM?! Holy cow that is early. Then I realized I probably wouldn't sleep well the night before anyways so might as well get the show on the road early.

We left for the hospital at 3:30 am.

We arrived right on time and everything went smoothly with getting hooked up and started. The funny part was the nurse told me I was having contractions when I got to the hospital. I was oblivious haha. As you can tell this is still early and before the contractions started to hurt. Ben was very relaxed at this point :)

Still fairly early in the morning

This is the awesome group that took care of me most of the morning. On the far right in the back is my doctor, Dr Martin. She is amazing!

Our awesome friend Helen who probably didn't realized when she came by that morning that she would be there through it all. We are so happy to have been able to share this with her.

Holding Evelyn for the first time

Ben holding Evelyn for the first time...he is a proud dad!

My mom holding Evelyn for the first time

This next group of pictures are of Evelyn after she was born

Her first bath

Footprints

Official weight 8 pounds 1 ounce

21 inches

We ended up not going home until Thursday afternoon. We didn't get to go home Wednesday because I had a fever when I delivered which gave Evelyn a fever. They ran some blood work on Evelyn and we had to wait for all of that. So this is us waiting Thursday for the pediatrician to come discharge us.

All loaded up and ready to go home

Walking in to Evelyn's first home

It felt so good to finally be home

Pictures of our Apartment

I know many of you asked for these a while ago, so I apologize for taking so long! I hope you enjoy a tour of our apartment here in Baton Rouge.

As you walk into our apartment to the right is our living room.

The view from the couch

Here is our lovely door from the hallways perspective.

We have a little patio off of our living room. It's too hot right now but in the Fall/Winter I'm sure we will love sitting out there while we BBQ.

Our dining area, which as you can see is just to the left of the door after you walk in.

Another view of our dining area.

View into our kitchen from the dining area. We eventually want to get two bar stools to put on this side.

Our kitchen is really small so this is the right side...

And this is the left side.

We put two shelves up above the sink so we have easy access to a few basic spices and oils.

As you go down the hallway and turn right into the first room you will find Ben's office...

Which is also our pantry/baking storage. Our kitchen is so small that we have a shelving unit in the closet which acts as our pantry and then we have this set up to store our spices and baking stuff.

Across from Ben's office is the first bathroom. You can't really see all of it because the bathrooms are so small it's hard to get a good picture. But to the right of the sink is the toilet and the shower.

This is a picture of the second bathroom, which is down the hall from the first.

This is the room that most of you care the most about. This will be our baby girls room. The changing table is across the room from the doorway.

Picture # 1 of crib

Picture #2 of crib

This is to the right of the crib.

Close up of the bedding, which Ben's mom made for us. We love it!!

And in case you didn't figure it out from the picture we decided to name our baby girl Evelyn. We took the pictures around Baton Rouge to spell her name.

At the end of the hall we have our bedroom.

Left side of the room...

And the right side of our room.

Something we discovered the first few nights is we can lay in bed and see all the way to the front door. The wooden door area on the right of the hall is the laundry area.

Whitney White Linen Night

Saturday night our friends Helen and Zac took us down to New Orleans for the first time. It was Whitney White Linen night, which was mainly about all cool art exhibits. Everyone wears white for this reason...

"In the years before air conditioning in homes and vehicles, New Orleanians did a number of things to lessen the effects of the summer heat. One of them was wearing white linen clothing. Men wore white suits to reflect, rather than absorb, the sun's heat, and women wore white dresses for the same reason. The white linen tradition is revisited every summer in the city's Warehouse Arts District on the first Saturday nigh in August during Whitney White Linen Night."

The street was packed with people all wandering in and out of galleries

We had a great time and look forward to many more festivals in the area!

Ben's Teaching Assignment

Yup! Look closely and you can see that I will be teaching FREN 1001 (the same level I taught at BYU, just with a different book) at 8:40-9:30 in the morning. At first I wasn't too excited because that is kind of early when my classes are in the afternoon/evening. Megan then kindly reminded me that we will be awake by then anyway because of our little baby girl. They assigned me this level because they figured I had quite a bit of experience with it, and I do! It will be nice because I know how to teach the introductory grammar and vocabulary stuff so it won't take too much preparation.