New Crib Bedding

This past Saturday, we got a special delivery! It was Norah's new crib bedding made especially by Eppie! It looks so great.




She looks so sweeet in the crib. I know Norah likes it because she cristened it the first night and we had to take the sheet off and wash it.

I love the way the colors go together.

I love the borders and the pleating. It's all so nicely done. Thank you so much, Eppie!

Yes she does have eyes!

Contrary to the impression recieved by some who have followed our blog our baby is awake sometimes. She is just alot funnier when she is asleep...



Well here are some picture of her awake!



I think the dog likes the baby. (she did this all by herself)


This next one is just her smiling



These are of when we were playing with her she made faces. It's so cute!


This is her yawning

Sleepy baby

What a cute trio! A girl on each arm!

She likes to sleep with her arms in the air.

Candy and the baby sleeping together. How sweet!

I put her next to me to sleep so I could eat breakfast and she leaned her head against my arm while she was sleeping, or she just fell over, not sure which.

I asked David to wake her up because it was getting late and it was time for her to eat before we went to bed. As he was trying to wake her up, this is what she looked like.

Norah at home

Norah is sleeping on the blanket Eppie made for her. It is so pretty.


We had a long night and she just wanted to be by me and not in her bed because she kept waking up.


She's wearing preemie clothes in this picture.


She loves to sleep on her daddy's lap and he loves it too.


Doesn't she look like a doll?

More of my wonderful family!

This is just a photo section of my family. It feels really good to be able to say that I am a daddy and to think while I am at school I have a daughter to come home to. It is great!!!

One things I love is that Norah and I love to take naps together!

This next one is of her in her going home dress... because she was early and soooooo small nothing really fits her right! BUT SHE IS STILL CUTE...... The second one is just as we were leaving the hospital.

The Real Introduction OF Norah Heidi Hurst

Well everyone, Saturday afternoon with Katherine being 37.75 weeks pregnant, Kather and I were just doing our usualy saturday lounge around when Katherine started having contractions every couple of minutes. So, I got out the timer and started timing around 2:30. We clocked them at a range from 45 seconds to 3 min apart. Around 3:30 I called the hospital to ask when they wanted us to come in for a check up and the lady said just to wait about a hour and if they continue then come in. Well, the contractions continued consistantly about 2 min apart. So at 5:30 we got in the car and left for the hospital fully expecting them to tell us to just go home and not to worry about it yet.

They checked her and she was fully forward and dialated to 1 cm. They said they would monoter her for and hour and check again to see if she is progressing. Well, she was a 2 cm one hour later, so they decided to keep her longer, within 3-4 hours of going in she was at 4 cm and the contractions continued to be every minute or so.

This is her just after the epidural 20 hours into labor


However even with contractions that frequent she stayed at a 4-5 for about 18 hours, then her water started to leak around 9 AM and the doctor came in to finish the job by breaking it completely. Then after being completely drained of all energy she got an epidural so she could sleep.

The labor continued until 2:00 PM when she had reached 10 cm and began to push.
So from 2:30 PM Saturday to 2:30 PM sunday, a grand total of 25 hours of Labor ( yes I know how to tell time it was Daylight Savings) our beautiful baby Norah was born at 2:30 November 2, 2008. Weighing 5 lbs 14 oz, being 19 in long. HERE SHE IS:

This is her just after delivery.


This next two are of her first bath.



THis is her just after her bath. She is sooo cute!!!

Halloween and Early Christmas... not really but close!

Starting with Halloween, Katherine's school had their yearly Fall Carnival. Last year, we won the "Cutest Couple" award for our costumes. This year, we couldn't figure out what to dress up as since Katherine is 9 months pregnant so obviously nothing would fit her. This put us in a real predicament. The only thing people would suggest would be to paint a pumpkin on her belly, which is dumb, and immodest. So after much deliberation... actually not really, we kinda just forgot about it until the idea just popped in Katherine's head the night before the Carnival. Get ready... here it is... that I would dress up as HER, and she would dress up as ME. Get it?

We even wore name tags that said, "Mr. Hurst" (for Katherine) and "Mrs. Hurst" (for me). Everyone loved it. People laughed and laughed and children came running from all around just to see us. People heard about our costumes and were sending word for us to come by so they could see us. When they did the judging, people begged us to go up to the front of the room so we could be judged. As they called us up, they said the award was for "Mr. and Mrs. Hurst or is that Mrs. and Mr. Hurst?" We won the "Most Original" costume award. Some people even mistook me for a pregnant lady until they looked closer. My hair is one of Katherine's scarves wrapped around my head and tied up with one of her scrunchies. One of the parents said that Katherine's belly could be my "beer belly." We even put "stubble" on Katherine's face so she could look more Man'ish! We couldn't find shoes for her to wear to make her look more like me even though her feet have been pretty swollen for a while, they're still too small for my shoes. Here is a picture.... enjoy!


As for the early Christmas, don't worry we know that it really isn't Christmas until after Thanksgiving, but we got Norah a present. We finally found a stroller for Norah! After months of searching, and I mean months, we finally found one that we don't hate. We actually like it! No, LOVE IT! We kept looking and looking for one that was neutral yet didn't cost $300. A harder task that you would think. Anyway, we really did not want to end up like Jonny and Cassie and have a baby but no carseat. Eventually we decided to forget the neutral thing, this still was a problem because all the non-neutral strollers are dumb looking and ulgy. Well we found one and guess where we got it---KMart! Who'd a thunk?

In case it is hard to see the color the last picture is just to illustrate that. It is not "hot pink just regular pink" (to quote Katherine, whatever that means) and black.

Smelly Room...

Well for those that dont know, since the day we moved into our new (and awesome) apartment there was one FLAW... The back bedroom that will become Norah's room smelled like DOG PEE!.. It was not our dog because she has not been in that room and it was there from the first day we moved in. Well, we kept trying to figure out how to get rid of that smell. We tried covering the carpet in baking soda, letting that sit over night and vacume it up, we tried verything we could think of. Well, when nothing worked we decided to tell our apartment complex managers that they need to fix it. (Dont worry we told them of the problem when we first moved in and they told us to try and fix it first) Anyway they decided to hire some professionals to come and clean the smell.
Today they showed up to do an inspection to give the owners an estimate of the cost. The used a black light to find the pee spots, thinking it was only one big spot... it is not... THERE IS PEE EVERYWHERE!!!!!!!!! about 10-15 different sopts in that room. Now we will just see what they are going to do about it.
We will keep you updated...

Child birthing classes!

Well today we went to a child birthing class at the hospital from 9-3. It was quite informative. Anyway they had all the males put on the "empathy vest" it simulates the weight of a 9 month pregnant woman. I understand now why every morning I put on Katherine's socks and tie her shoes. She just can't reach it and if she tries she would fall over. Anyway here is a picture. (sorry that it is crooked, I had to scan it.)

Baby clothes

For those of you without a Facebook account, I thought I'd post the pictures of the baby clothes we got because they are so cute and I'm getting excited and want to share with everyone. We got Norah a coming home outfit and a really soft warm thing (I don't know how to describe it) but you can bundle her all up in it. It has zippers on the sides so you can just lay her on top and zip her into it. I also put a picture of the blessing dress our former neighbor bought for us. The picture really doesn't do it justice.

Silly Dog!

My dog makes me laugh everyday. Here are some of the recent things she's done that make me smile.

I walked into my bedroom one morning and realized that there was more there on my bed besides the covers because this little nose was sticking out.















Candy likes to have her tummy rubbed so she always rolls on her back when we wake up in the morning as a signal that, "It is now time to scratch my tummy!"















This is my favorite--The way her toes are on my cell phone and the way she is looking at me, it's like she's saying, "What? I'm just trying to text my friends!"

State Fair!!!

Hey guess what Hurst Clan...All those years ago when we were going on road trips and listening to Bill Engval joke about State Fairs I always thought he was just exaggerating but today I learned otherwise I learned that he is not lying when he talks about these strange wonders of the human realm that we call "State Fairs".

I SAW EVERYTHING HE JOKES ABOUT!!!!!!!

There was a woman who's belly was hanging out of her shirt (it was pretty nasty) and she had a cake in one hand and an ice cream in another, AND there was this pathetically skinny little man attached to her hip. It was way funny!

There was a stand selling Blow guns, and not one but 2 different booths selling SPAs, there were two fireplace stands, and RV stands... all things that I never thought would be an impulse buy.

There were even really really really ridiculously sized produce!

Unfortunately we went on the last day so if there was a large statue of Garth Brooks carved out of butter we missed it.

Anyway this being my first state fair to ever go to it was rather fun... I tell you what THE FOOD IS AMAZING!

There was an art's and crafts place and they had a doll house completely made of plastic canvas needle work (and it was about 4 feet tall and very detailed, they even had toilet and bathroom sink and faucet) here are some pictures:

They also had alot of really cool cakes, this was our favorite: