Welcome Kennedy

We are proud to present to you the newest member of the family:

Kennedy Rose Johnson.

She was born at 1:31pm Central Standard Time at St. Luke's Baptist Hospital. She weighed in at 8lbs 3oz, and measures 19.5 inches.


Kate did an absolutely amazing job, seriously, it was awesome. She went into labor at about 7:00am but wasn't sure if it was the real deal so she sent me to work. Two hours later, I was on my way back home. She labored at home for 45min before we had our doula come over. The doula checked kate and she was dialated to a 5 (she told us 3 so it wouldn't scare Kate) and we headed to the hospital post haste. Upon arrival, there were no rooms available, so she went through a few contractions in the lobby while they got a room ready. 15 minutes later, we were in triage and she was dialated to a 6. another 20 min later and we were in the delivery room. at that point Kate was checked again, and she was at a 10. They made a quick call to the doctor (who luckily is in the office building connected to the hospital) and got ready for delivery.


Not so fast, baby wasn't coming out just yet. Kate pushed like a champ for over an hour and baby finally arrived. Kate planned on, and accomplished her goal of an unmedicated birth and I am totally amazed at how tough she is.


After delivery, Kate had a somewhat shaky afternoon, she lost a pretty good amount of blood and wasn't able to go to the bathroom without fainting. So she is taking it really easy right now. I followed baby to the nursery and gave her a bath and now, a few hours later, we are finally catching our breath and enjoying time together as a family. It was a total whirlwind, and such a humbling, amazing experience. Thanks to all of our wonderful family and friends who have been such a great support to us!

Worthless Update

Unfortunately, there is nothing to update you with. Baby is a few days overdue now, despite what that countdown clock on the left says. We are going running tonight, then jumping on a trampoline, and maybe a jeep ride all whilst Kate downs a large jar of jalepenos and polishes it off with a gallon of castor oil.

Here are some recent belly shots for your viewing pleasure:

40 Weeks

                        

39 Weeks

                       

35 Weeks

                        

34 Weeks

                        

Texan Patriotism

Let's just get the fact that baby remains in the womb out of the way right now. We had a good 4th, albeit a little different than we are used to since we usually see a lot of family. We spent the morning at a flag raising and breakfast activity our ward held. It was nice and we got to know some member's of our ward better.

We hung out at the pool for awhile then, as a result of going to the ward activity, a nice family in the ward invited us to a delicious barbeque later on in the day. Topping off the evening, we went to an extremely crowded mall parking lot to watch a sub-par fireworks display put on by Six Flags.

                       

Maybe we were just spoiled seeing the Stadium of Fire show every year for the past few years, but the fireworks were not too impressive, especially with a Neiman Marcus building covering half the show.

On Saturday we headed up to Austin to see what there is to see.

We looked around at the State Capitol and that was pretty cool.

We drove around the University of Texas at Austin campus and marveled at it's hugeness, then had some barbeque at Iron Works. Good stuff.

Last but not least, we had to see the bats. If you haven't heard about the bats, go here. Sadly, we were a little late, and didn't get to see the mass exodus, but we still saw some lazy late comers flying out. We went down to the bridge and got a big whiff of the bat guano and while we were down by the lake, we took this picture of a cool looking building downtown.

                        

Still waiting

No baby yet. I can't imagine what could be taking so long. This bun has been ready to come out of the oven for weeks now. I don't want the bottom to burn, and in this heat, it just might. Kate on the other hand seems perfectly happy waiting another 9 months if necessary. How does she have the patience!?

To kill some time, we went tubing down the Comal River yesterday. It was pretty fun, and we were told that there would be lots of people drinking lots of... water. This is a picture of just the tubers entering in at one tube rental spot, but down another 100 yards the whole river is covered with tubers.

For those of you grandmothers who might be cringing at the thought of that cute little belly floating down a crowded river in a tube, she not only tubed down, but she went down the cool tube chute... twice! It was a lot of fun, and don't worry, we were very careful.

Here are some pictures from our quick trip to Fredericksburg for our anniversary. It's a cool little German town about an hour from here that is famous for bed and breakfasts. This B&B is called "A Place in Time." We really enjoyed it.

The main drag in town is a haven for all kinds of cutsie shops, most of which I had no interest in, except for the bakery. I had a German pretzel that kept me occupied while Kate had a fun time looking around.

Sea World

You wouldn't think that a landlocked, dry city 3 hours from the nearest beach would have a Sea World, but turns out San Antonio does. We decided to give it a whirl a couple of weeks ago, and now want to share the magic. We spent nearly the entire day going from one show to the next, non-stop. It was a lot more fun that I thought it would be.

Shamu. We saw the regular show twice, and then went to a "Shamu Rocks Texas" event in the evening. It was pretty good, but I've seen enough Orcas to last me a while.

I could have watched the Sea Lion Capers all day long. They were hilarious. The pictures don't do them justice, but the sea lions were very well trained to act like humans.

Viva. This one was kinda weird, but it had dolphins, so I was content. There was no shortage of synchronized swimming and acrobatics. The sea lion show did a spoof on this show in the evening, it was also hilarious.

There is a roller coaster in the background. I didn't realize that Sea World would have roller coasters. I went on a couple of them just before we left, they were alright. I am hoping that Six Flags can handily beat the ones here.

 

I like ducks. This one was pretty, friendly and swam close enough to get a decent shot.

Happy Anniversary!

             

                                      

 

            

Happy 3rd Anniversary to Zak, my amazing husband who I love so much!  I feel so lucky and blessed to be married to such a wonderful person who loves me for who I am and treats me like a queen!  He is such a hard worker and great example for me!  The past 3 years have been amazing and I can't wait until we welcome our little girl into our family this next month and we can be parents together. What exciting times and I hope to spend many more wonderful years together into eternity!  These are a few random pictures of us throughout the years.

The stars at night are big and bright....

If you don't know the rest of that line, go here for a reminder.

Just a warning: this is an unusually long post, and no, there are no funny stories involving airplanes, baggage, escalators or anything of the like.

As Kate mentioned a few days ago, we are now settled into our temporary home here in San Antonio. The trip down took a couple of days but it was pretty easy driving since we took care of 5 hours on our way to Lake Powell. Kate got caught up on her sleep and I got through the latest John Grisham book (audiobook of course.)

We arrived at our apartment complex Wednesday afternoon just in time to give the furniture people permission to enter our apartment and move everything in while we signed about a bazillion papers. When we finally got into our apartment we were pleasantly surprised at what we found. cockaroach? no. dead rat? no. Moldy walls? no. We found a decent, clean, and comfortable apartment. Since we had to arrange for our apartment and furniture rental all by phone without seeing anything, we were preparing ourselves for the worst. As it turns out, the apartment is pretty good and the furniture is much nicer than we expected. It looks brand new. We unpacked the car and had everything put away in a few hours. That fact demonstrates how extremely selective we were with the things we brought with us.

So, on to Texas related things. Our first stop after unpacking was the local HEB. Here Everything's Better is a fairly ubiquitous grocery store in south Texas and is actually pretty good for a virtual monopoly. I got some delicious blue bell ice cream and devoured the entire half gallon in less than a week. Time for another trip to the store.

We went to the San Antonio Temple on Friday and I must say that it is a beautiful, beautiful building. We were there just when the light was perfect I guess because it looked amazing inside. While we were there we ran into a couple of friends from BYU that are also doing an internship at USAA this summer.

On Saturday we checked out the downtown area and did the usual tourist stuff. We went to the Alamo and I had to see the basement first thing. below you will see a picture of the door leading to it, they don't allow pictures of the actual basement.

We went on one of these boat rides down the riverwalk, that was pretty cool.

And we visited a Mexican market where we enjoyed fine Mexican cuisine and shopping.

Other items on our list of things to do include:

-SeaWorld

-See the hill country

-Schlitterbahn

-Find a good Texas BBQ joint

We also got a list of must-see places and must-do activities from our new ward (we really like our ward), so there is a lot to do, and all before baby comes.

Speaking of baby...(I know you grandmas are paying close attention now.) We visited our new doctor on Thursday, he was pretty cool and we both feel comfortable with him. We go on a tour of the hospital next week. Kate is still doing great and not having too many problems at this point.

I started my internship at USAA on Monday and after a long first day of orientation, I have been spending most of the past two days in meetings. I work in the Electronic Funds Transfer and Fraud department and we are always in meetings with project developers and managers going over projects. Most of the time I am just trying to figure out what all the acronyms they use mean. I am told that at some point I will start doing more programming work, but for now, it's pretty much back-to-back meetings. I have been subjected to a few of the obligatory intern jokes, but everyone is pretty cool and I like what I get to do.

Kate has had a chance to catch up on a lot of things this week, but her time off is quickly running out. She will be starting a couple of independent study classes soon, and that will probably take up a lot of her time until the baby comes.