Living The Dream

So a lot has happened these past few weeks in our family. Chris was offered a job at Southern Utah University in Cedar City. We were more than excited to be given this opportunity. He is the Academic Advisor for pre-business and associate degree seeking students. This was him on his first day of work wearing his SUU Thunderbird shirt for orientation. Things moved pretty quickly after he was offered the job. We drove out and found a place to live, drove back, packed up the house and moved back, all in less than a week. We wanted to get out here and settled before the baby arrived. Chris is really enjoying his job. We like living in Cedar, and were so happy to find a job in Utah. SUU has such a beautiful campus and everyone is super nice here. It's really been great so far.

So this is the three of us on the 24th of July. Chris said why don't we go drive around and see some of the area. He had heard about a lot of these places from people at work. So we took a drive up to Cedar Breaks and Brian Head and had a picnic. We were driving around and enjoying all of the beautiful scenery and discussing how this was a good time to go because the baby would be coming soon and we probably wouldn't be able to go for quite some time after that.

THE NEXT DAY......

Sunday July 25th at 8:12pm, we welcomed BROOKE HOLLADAY SUTHERLAND into the world. She was 7lbs 1oz, 19 1/2 inches long and 10 days early. She is just so beautiful.

We were both slightly surprised that she decided to come so early. The whole process went really smoothly. Our doctor and all of the nurses were great.

Our new family of four. This was about half an hour after she was born. Burton came back to the hospital to see his sister. He didn't touch her until the next day. I think he was a little unsure about her at first. He's been doing pretty well. Now he'll say, I want to touch her, or I want to tickle her, or Mom, where's baby Brooke?

Here's the proud daddy. He could not be more in love with his kids. He takes such good care of all of us.

My little angel baby. She is just so precious. I couldn't get over how small she was.

Another family shot, this time Burton's holding her.

This right after we got home from the hospital. Chris had to run out and buy more newborn outfits. We had a bunch of 0-3months and 3month outfits. I did not expect that I would have a small baby.

I think these were at about four days old. She just gets prettier every day. She has been sleeping well and we couldn't be happier that she is here and healthy and well.