Layton Brooks Flesher

Layton Brooks was born Friday, Jan. 22, 2010 via c-section at 5:38pm after a long day of fun labor:) Layton was quite the linebacker weighing in at 9lbs. 7oz and 20 inches long. Matt and I could not be happier. The love you instantly have for this little person is so strong and amazing. We just stare at him and don't like to be far away from him.....I am sure that changes once you are ready for date night to start back again:) Here is Matt holding Layton for the first time after he was all cleaned up. The sad thing about a c-section birth is that I had to wait about 20 minutes before seeing or touching my little guy....brought tears to my eyes to hear him but not be able to see him. Plus some added nurses and doctors came in to assess Layton because he was having trouble breathing when he was born....they think he was just stressed out from the labor and then the sudden c-section. He also could have swallowed a lot of the amniotic fluid on his way out.

Our first picture as a family of 3. Lovely picture of me but what can I say after about 10 hours of labor:) Layton is such a sweet baby and tends to be very laid back so far.....but he is still only 5 days old. He has light hair (not much of it) and blue eyes. He has the sweetest little face that I kiss on all day long. He loves to hear his mom and dad talking close by and he can't seem to get enough of me holding him. He also loves to be swaddled and put in his crib. We got to come home yesterday (Tues.) and it has been a lot of work. 5 days in the hospital can get a little old....Layton had some trouble feeding and got a little jaundice so we wanted to make sure everything was perfect before taking him home.

Here is my sweet husband reading Layton a bedtime story. My mom bought Layton a book and stuffed animal that is too cute. Matt read to my belly during my pregnancy so Layton calms down easily and loves to hear his Daddy's voice. Matt has taken the role of being a wonderful Daddy like a champ....makes me love him even more.

Sweet Layton sleeping the day away:) More pictures to come...........

Thank you for all of your prayers...we could not feel more blessed!

Matt, Lindsey and Layton

Little peanut!

Well it is about 8:30pm on Thursday night and in about 8 hours I will be heading to the hospital to have precious Layton. When I look back on his 1st sonogram picture so many memories fill my mind of what the last 9 months have been like. I remember hearing his heart beat for the first time and being so joyful for how the Lord had blessed our lives. Matt and I can't wait to hold Layton in our arms tomorrow...what a gift! I am sure that Matt is ready to have a less hormonal wife soon but I hate to tell him that I will probably do more crying in the next week than I have my whole pregnancy....joyful tears, scared tears and tears for no reason I am sure.

Matt and I want to say thank you to all of our friends and family for all of the love, support and prayers that you have given Matt and I on this journey.....we can't wait for the journey that will begin tomorrow. The next time I post I will be a new Mommy....what a wonderful feeling that will be. Until tomorrow...........Happy Birthday sweet Layton!

Julie and her Julia's

A few weekends ago my young & married community group decided to get the girls together for a yummy cooking lesson by the wonderful cook Kris Gurry! All of the girls in our group have a love for cooking or baking so it just seemed fitting for us to all cook together.....and we had a great time!! Liz made us all name tags that said Julie and Julia's...they were really cute. Kris taught us how to work with yeast. We each made our own fresh dough for some yummy pizzas to share with the guys. The guys all watched football for about 3 hours while we cooked away in the kitchen. Pictured above is: me, Liz, Kris and Katie.....we were missing a few of the girls from our group since we did this over the holidays. Here we are with our final products...all of the pizzas turned out great!

Kris teaching Katie how to "love" the dough:) Working with fresh dough was fun and it made me have more confidence to try to make different types of bread and not to be scared of the yeast:) We all wore aprons and as you can see from the pictures Katie and I had half aprons so that we could wear them over our baby bellies.

Liz and David have a great kitchen for cooking so we all had plenty of room to spead out and really have tons of room. Here is Katie after our brownie pizza mess.....we may have set off the fire alarm due to the brownie batter running off of the cooking stone....but I am not saying a word:) The guys got a kick out of the fire alarm going off:) We really had fun and we can't wait for another lesson from Julia aka "Kris"

Christmas fun with Gray

Well it is now Jan. 2010 and I can't believe how time flies:) We are expecting little Layton any day now which is so exciting!! I went to the doctor yesterday and Dr. Campbell thinks he may come sometime this week. My last day of work was this past Friday and it was bittersweet. I can't wait to meet little Layton and I have had some great time this week to rest and get everything organized for his arrival.

Here are some pictures from right before Christmas when Matt and I got to keep Gray (my adorable niece) for about 5 days. Matt and I had so much fun with her......she wore this pregnant girl out! We made a ginger bread house one night that was a BIG hit with Gray. All she wanted to do was eat the candy of course:) One piece of candy for Gray one piece of candy for the house was about how the decorating went. We also drank hot chocolate out of Santa mugs which was so much fun!

Here she is with her finished house....so proud!! We had to finally put the house on the top shelf in the kitchen because she kept wanting to eat all the candy off of it:)

Another night we took Gray to Santa's village in Richardson. Every year Santa's village is open to the public right in front of the Richardson public library. She had tons of fun seeing all of the different little houses filled with either...Santa, Frosty, reindeer.... and even a princess. Matt is always so fun to watch with her....I know he will make a great dad just by watching him interact with little Gray. He took Gray to the grocery store with him twice and every time they came home he had bought something else for her at the store....I tell you he is a sucker for Gray!

Here is a cute picture of her playing in Susu's backyard. She had fun running around in the leaves and thankfully it was not too cold yet. We had not gotten the Texas blizzard weather yet.

Here is Matt and Gray sitting and reading Gray's new Mickey Mouse Christmas book....Gray LOVES LOVES Mickey mouse....and little does she know she is sitting with the famous Mickey Mouse from her bday party in Sept.

We had fun with you Gray.....come back and visit aunt JoJo and uncle Matt...We love you!!!!