Lauren Cassidy Gickling

On Monday, November 7th, our third child, Lauren Cassidy Gickling, was born! 

She weighed 7 lbs 8 oz and was 21 inches long!  She is so beautiful and healthy and she has the longest fingers and toes I have ever seen on a newborn.

Here I am, 39 weeks along, ready to go to the hospital to get induced! 

I was excited to see what this little one was going to look like!

And at 2:58 p.m., Lauren Cassidy was born!

The cool thing about this was she was born at the exact same time as Luke (2:58 p.m.) at the same hospital, with the same delivery nurse.  And they were both born on the 7th day of a month! 
We just thought the coincidences were kind of fun!

Here is our beautiful girl just after her arrival.

 Shortly after she was born, the rest of the family came to visit her. 

Here are some pictures of our new family of FIVE:

So far Lauren has been a good baby . . . she does the normal newborn things, sleeps, eats, and poops! 

She hasn't cried  too much yet, but she definitely cried when we bathed her for the first time - poor baby that is never fun!

We all LOVE our new addition to the family.

And we are so proud with what good siblings Luke and Kayla have been to our little Lauren!

Happy Halloween!

Our kids had a weekend of Halloween fun. . . Saturday night it was Trunk or Treating at the church, where they scored a lot of candy quickly and ate chili and cupcakes.  

Here they are all ready to go to the Trunk or Treat:

On Sunday, Kayla and Luke wanted to carve pumpkins, which really meant mommy and daddy carved pumpkins while the kids ran around the house!  But Kayla and Luke got to choose the designs . . . they both wanted something a little scary . . . a cat with wings and the Grim Reaper!

And finally, On Monday it was time for the real thing!  

It was cute to watch the kids run up to the doors by themselves. . . Luke was the funniest. . . He always wanted to "choose" what candy he got from the neighbors (which didn't always go over so well) and then as soon as he got a piece of candy it went straight into his mouth!  The most embarrassing part of the night is when Luke ate a piece of candy and then gave the candy wrapper back to the lady at the door! 

After about an 1 1/2 hours of trick or treating, we were all ready to come home. . . everyone was cold and my back couldn't handle any more walking around with my big preggo belly!   

After returning home, it was cute to see how excited the kids were to hand out candy to other trick or treaters  . . .I think Kayla liked giving out candy just as much as getting candy.

Our cute, ferocious lion . . .

Kayla with a friend. .  .

Kayla and Luke at Papa's house . . .Papa was brave to sit out on his porch all night handing out candy as it was quite chilly!

Returning home from trick or treating. . . don't they look spooky!

 Here is a picture of the kiddos with their pumpkins!

Hope everyone had a HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

October Happenings!

October is such a beautiful time of year here. . . it doesn't get too cold so we can enjoy going to corn mazes and farms as well as picking pumpkins. . .

 

So many pumpkins to choose from . . .

This year Kayla had Columbus Day off of school, so we took her to the Original Pancake House for breakfast. . . it was so yummy and it put Kayla on a sugar high for the rest of the day as she had the chocolate chip pancakes.

 

Later that day, we decided it was time for Kayla's front tooth to come out since it was hanging from a thread!

This month, Luke and I ate lunch with Kayla a couple times . . .lunch is so fast at her school that we have to scarf the food down fast!

 We also celebrated Hunter's birthday.  All of our extended family members wrote him special notes and we included them all on this poster for him to read. . . so nice of everyone and he loved it!  

Then we had ice cream cake, presents, and played the candy bar game.

 My friends threw me a baby shower this month too . . .the food was delicious, the atmosphere was fun, and let me just say that  my little girl is going to be spoiled as everyone was so thoughtful with their gifts. 

 All in all, October was a great month until this past week when we all got sick . . . hopefully, we will all be feeling better by the time our little girl arrives!

Packing It ALL In

As we get closer to the arrival of our third child, we are feeling the need to pack our weekends full of fun things that are hard to do with a newborn.  So, the weekend after returning from Utah, we decided to explore more of North Carolina.  We went to Brevard, which is cute little town in the mountains surrounded by beautiful waterfalls and a natural water slide. 

 

 

After spending the day exploring the waterfalls, we decided to spend the night in Hendersonville so we could go apple and peach picking while we were in the mountains . . . the weather was perfect all weekend and we had a great time enjoying the outdoors.

  Over Labor Day weekend, the majority of my family got together for a quick family reunion.  We had a lot of fun hanging out and catching up . . . we had a girl's day out which included manicures/pedicures and lunch, we went to the movies, the pool, and lots of yummy restaurants of course!  It was really fun. Here are a few pics of everyone.

My sisters and I getting our pedicures.

 My sister-in-law and two nieces at our favorite breakfast place, Flying Biscuit.

 My sister and brother-in-law are all smiles after a delicious birthday dinner and ice cream cake.

 The BOYS. . . Luke and his cousin had lots of fun together!

This past weekend, we went to Hilton Head with my parents and Hunter's mom and sister.  We had a wonderful time doing our favorite things, sleeping in, relaxing at the beach, and trying new restaurants.  

Unfortunately, the only pictures I took were of my kids at the beach . . .

 Luke loved crawling and rolling around in the sand as well as feeding and chasing flocks of birds!

While Kayla enjoyed those activities too, her favorite was boogie boarding with dad!

 One thing I have to add is . .. We went to a breakfast buffet in Hilton Head and I recognized the head chef, Orchid, my favorite contestant on this past season's show of The Next Food Network Star.  She was as nice in real life as she seemed to be on the show. . . so bummed she didn't win! (Here's a pic from the food network's website since I didn't have my camera with me)

Now that fall is just around the corner, I can't wait to continue to enjoy more fun festivities.