Anders' Blessing

We were lucky enough to have Abe's parents and sister Abbi here when we blessed Anders. Dale and Margie have attended every one of our babies blessings and it means a lot to us! Abe did a really good job with his blessing and of course was choked up throughout the entire blessing. My friend Kelsey was kind enough to write down part of the blessing for me.

Abram Anders Barker
-Bless you to continue to grow and become a young man who prepares to serve a mission
-Bless you to add strength to your family and to lift those around you
-Bless you to have a solid heart and a deep sense of compassion
-Bless you to find a way to have a deep testimony of the Savior's love for you and others with a deep understanding of that love and a desire to share it with others.

-Bless you to have a disciplined mind to study hard and learn as you reach out and serve the lord
-Bless you to one day become a loving father and husband and make good decisions along the way
-You are a choice son and have enormous potential

Anders' Newborn PIctures

I always have these grand ideas for what I am going to do for my own kids newborn pictures. It's like a newborn photographer's dream. You can experiment and try new things with your own newborn. You can take advantage of their super sleepy moments to take some awesome pictures. Of course when the time came, I had absolutely no motivation to do them. When I would have a moment to take them, I decided that I was too tired or unmotivated to do them. Two weeks rolled around and I practically had to force myself to take SOME pictures of him. I even had Julia here to help me with the shoot and with the other kids. Even though I didn't do too many pictures and didn't try any new poses, I liked how the handful I had turned out. I am especially glad that I finally got my butt in gear to take some. Babies just grow too darn fast and the "newborn" stage really doesn't last very long!















{For Abe… not for me!}

Anders' first two weeks of life and Julia's last two weeks in Germany

I felt really bad that we were cooped up inside so much with Julia here. I was either really pregnant, or just had a newborn and that doesn't make things very easy! After Anders was born, we were able to get out a little bit. Abe took Julia and the girls to a 4th of July celebration on base. Abe tried to talk me into going, but I just didn't feel good about it since Anders was not even a week old. I was in a rough spot during that time frame. I was amidst my baby blues and was having internal battles with myself. I should go to the celebration to be with everyone....It's crazy to go with a newborn... I HAVE to go... It might rain and be horrible weather...etc. etc. I ended up staying at home by myself and that's probably what I needed. It happened to rain the entire time they were at this outside event, so I definitely made the correct decision. Julia probably thought I was crazy because I was so emotional. I'm pretty sure I cried a handful of times while she was here because I was so hormonal.

We took the kids to a fun park that they had been asking to go to for awhile.






We went to the pool on base when there was actually a really hot day. That doesn't happen very often around here!

Me, Julia, Adeline and Anders went to Maastricht one evening.




I had been wanting to go to a village in Belgium called Dinant for quite some time. Since this was on our bucket list, we decided to head out and take Julia with us. It was really nice to get out of the house and I loved this little town. It was so charming with the cliffs, cool looking church, unique buildings and the river running right through it. We mostly just walked around and explored. We did walk up to some caves that were supposed to be neat to tour. We ended up spending about 60 euro and it was pretty lame. Well, I guess it was somewhat neat, but completely overpriced and WAY too many people on the tour. I felt a little claustrophobic the entire time. Oh, and they told us the tour was in English and it was in Dutch. Go figure.






















Julia, I am so grateful to have spent a lot of quality time with you. I miss watching the bachelorette and chick flicks with you, going to get ice cream, having you with us at the market every week, etc. We thoroughly enjoyed having you here! You were so good with the girls and helpful to me! We miss you!!



Some random pictures of Anders in the first two weeks

{First Bath}





















And one last one of Meika holding her babies :)



Here they don't circumcise baby boys at the hospital. In fact, they don't circumcise boys at all here and think that we are crazy for doing it to our babies. I really has just turned into a common procedure in the States and is not really done very many other places. I toyed with the idea of not getting him circumcised at all. I did all my research and it didn't really seem that necessary to do it and I had heard of so many circumcisions going wrong. At the end of the day, I let Abe decide and he wanted him circumcised. He had the procedure done when he was 8 days old. They tried to schedule me for when he would be 3.5 weeks old and I put my foot down! The sooner the better in my opinion for the baby and my mental state. It all went well, but was so very sad. Luckily he healed up after about a well. Roni was probably annoyed at me asking questions almost every single day what was normal and what was not! Oh the joys of having a boy!