Abby goes to Church

Abby decided to cooperate and help Michelle get to church. With 9AM church it was quite the challenge. She did great with our Valiant class and pretty much just ignored them and slept. The Primary even sang the "Hello, Hello" song for her which of course she also ignored and slept right through it.

As you can see it's her first dress, tights, and bonnet. Can you tell we are first time parents?

Pretty Baby

Abby was born 2 weeks ago and it's already hard to imagine life without her. Roy and I went to bed at the same time three nights in a row. Of course I was up 5 minutes later to feed Abby, but it was exciting to us to have even that little bit of normalcy. Roy and I absolutely LOVE Abby and have had lots of fun with her so far. One of my favorite things is when she falls asleep on me. It is SO hard to put her down because she gets all warm and cozy and makes me want to sleep too. So for those of you who want to know what we have done this week, here's a rundown on the life of Abby for the week:


She already has Roy wrapped around her finger, as nearly every daughter should. On a funny side note, whenever Roy holds Abby on his shoulder, she reaches with one hand and grabs at his shirt collar. It wouldn't be so bad except she simultaneously rams her fist into his throat. :)


Abby's umbilical cord came off on Friday. For some reason, it made me think, "My baby's growing up!" even though she was only 12 days old. Dramatic, I know. Since the umbilical cord was no longer in the way, Abby "graduated" to wearing real clothes during the day instead of pjs and real baths instead of sponge baths. With only a few squeals, we had a very fun bath. She enjoyed it a ton more than those wretched sponge baths!

All clean!

We have been joking this week that Abby has the Elvis lip curl. Luckily we can now prove it with a picture. Hopefully she won't be furious about this documentation at age 16!

As for other news on the Zwahlen-front, we had a busy week! Here's a quick run-down of some of the more fun news:

• My mom (Mor Mor to Abby) has been in town visiting. Roy jokes that she is chained to the stove, but she has also had a lot of Abby time as well. It has been very helpful to have her here and we've had a lot of fun too.
• Roy started classes this week and survived week 1 of baby and school. The best part about school this week was that Roy found out he got an A- in Constitutional Law. An A- in law school is impressive and we are THRILLED!
• We had a fun Saturday with the extended Zwahlen clan and my mom. Abby was awesome especially considering that we were out and about all day and she was being passed around.

Well, Abby and I are going to enjoy a bit of sunshine this morning while my mom and Roy are at church!

Abigail Claire

We wanted to share a couple more pictures of Abby. We have had a fun couple of days and have really enjoyed our naps the last few days! :)

She enjoyed our first family walk quite well...sleeping:

Her first ride in her swing, also spent sleeping. She now stays awake for her swing rides:

All suited up for her first doctor visit. Doesn't she look cute?

She came!

Abigail Claire Zwahlen came to us on December 30, 2007. She weighs 9 pounds and 4 ounces and is 22 inches long. Both mom and Abby are doing just fine. More pictures will follow.

Halfway Through

The moment has finally come when we can say that Roy is halfway through Law School. We are very, very, very excited about that! Not that the halfway point marks anything more than about 16 classes, countless books, and about 6 weeks of stressing through finals, but we are excited to say we have survived thus far. It's not really fair for me to say that I have survived law school (though I sometimes feel like I should get some kind of spouse's degree because of all the random law information I now have stored in my brain), but Roy has most definitely survived and done well. For those of you who know Roy at all know that he doesn't get giddy very often, but he was giddy when he walked in from his last final on Wednesday night. It was so fun to see him so excited! We are very excited not only to be halfway done and through this round of finals, but we are thrilled to have a Christmas break together.

Although he did a bit of complaining at first, Roy is very grateful for the "to do" list I created for us to complete over Christmas. We managed to knock a few things off the list in the last couple of days, including finishing our Christmas shopping, doing our laundry, and installing the car seat. So, Abby, we are now very ready for you! Your car seat is in the car, your clothes in the dresser, and every morning we wake up wondering if today is the day we get to meet...we are 1 1/2 weeks away from the due date (January 1).

That is the update on the Zwahlens. If you have complaints about our "boring" day-to-day life blogs, I apologize, but blame Sarah :) who reminds me that she checks our blog every other day. Hopefully, we will soon have more fun stories and experiences to share as Abby should soon (and who doesn't like to talk about her baby?).

Here is a picture of Sarah, Annie, Tena, Carrie, and I at my Utah baby shower:

Ode to Our Smoke Detector

This blog will have no pictures attached, but if I could attach a sound I would do it. It is not a sound you would normally want to hear and thus why the sound makes this story even funnier.

On Monday, I decided that we really needed monkey bread for dessert. For those of you who have not been introduced to monkey bread, it is chopped up refrigerator rolls dipped in butter and cinnamon sugar and it is heavenly! Some of the cinnamon sugar-butter mix dripped into the oven and set off the smoke detector. We hurriedly took out our precious monkey bread and turned off the oven. A few minutes later our smoke detector went off again so we turned on the stove fan and opened up the three windows we have, creating a sort of wind tunnel. I thought I would remember to wipe out the oven when it cooled down, but alas, pregnancy makes you forget things (at least that's what I'll blame it on).

To make a long story short, we cooked again on Tuesday and set off the smoke detector once again. Once again, we had to create our wind tunnel to air out the apartment. When the oven cooled down this time, Roy was nice and cleaned it out using all-purpose cleaner. We experimented and set off the alarm again. So on Wednesday I went to the store and bought Easy-Off and sprayed it in the oven (for all concerned readers, it is fume free), letting Roy do the wiping out. And when we cooked dinner again on Wednesday, the smoke detector went off again. We decided to give it a third try of cleaning and sprayed tons of Easy-Off and let it sit overnight. After wiping it out, we discovered that turning on the oven set off the alarm again. Then we read the back of the bottle which clearly states to wipe out the cleaner with warm water....oops... In summary, we set off the smoke detector approximately 20 times in 4 days (a new record for both of us), created a wind tunnel in our apartment, and probably annoyed our neighbors at least 20 times in 4 days (sorry!). But, never fear, because the problem is solved!

Moral of the Story: After spilling in your oven, wipe it out. If you don't, you'll have to wipe it out with oven cleaner. And if you wipe it out with oven cleaner, make sure you follow the directions!

Saturday is a Special Day

This last weekend was so busy! We both managed to squeeze in a quick nap on Saturday afternoon...an attempt to make up for several restless nights. The baby, Abby, has decided that night time is a wonderful time to kick, jump, dance, do karate, and do any other moving that makes it so mom can't sleep. And as quiet as I tried to be, Roy had a hard time sleeping too. But we ended up having a great weekend!

On Friday night my friends here in Alexandria threw a baby shower. We are incredibly spoiled by family and friends. We got some very cute clothes, fun books and toys, and the car seat. It was a fantastic night and so fun to see friends and family!

On Saturday, we had a Zwahlen girls day out. It was really fun. Then we all went to dinner with the husbands and babies and then made it up to the temple to see the lights. I wish I could describe how cool the temple grounds looked! We read that there are 450,000 lights up and it was awesome. There were lights draped across trees and busheds and lights formed into the shape of flowers. It was beautiful! The first picture is of us last year and the second is from this year.

The Visitors Center displays nativity scenes from around the world and has about 10 Christmas trees that have different themes. I'm grateful for all the crafty people who can make the display and the trees look so gorgeous. Seeing the temple, the lfights, and all the nativities was a perfect way to kick off the holiday season.