Sophie update

Sophie with Aunt Nicole
Sophie with Grandma and Grandpa Reed

Tanner wanted to hold the baby. He was so cute with Sophie.

Her new dress from Aunt Nicole

Our 4th of July shirts. Sophie's shirt says Daddy's Little American Beauty.

It's Jon's favorite onesie of hers.

A friend of ours is a photographer and as a gift to us, he took pictures of Sophie.

The best family picture yet.

This is my favorite picture of Sophie. She loves to pucker her lips.

Life has been utter bliss, with a little less sleep. We are truly in heaven with our sweet baby girl. She is absolutely perfect and we love her so much. We ended up staying in Illinois for 10 days. It was a little long, but wonderful at the same time. We had nothing to do and no one to share Sophie with. We just had 10 days to just hold her and love her. It was wonderful! It really gave us the chance to bond with Sophie and to get to know her a little. She is such a good baby, we just feel so blessed. She is a pretty good sleeper and she eats very well. She doesn't cry too much, except when she's hungry.

Our trip home was a little scary. Everything went really smooth, Sophie slept most of the way, and then we got to Wells, MN which is about 40 minutes south of Mankato and life got difficult. We happened to be listening to the radio and they began doing a weather report, reporting a tornado warning. My parents had just arrived at our house and I knew they would start to worry once the tornado sirens went off. Anyway, Mankato received golf ball and quarter size hail with extremely strong winds. No tornados touched down in Mankato, thank goodness. My mom was a little scared and the house has some hail damage, my hostas were shreded, but other than that everyone was fine. The storm was heading east, so we thought we would just wait it out, well things changed. It decided to head south and we got hit. By the time we realized how bad it was going to get, we were stuck and had to wait it out in the car. I have never been so scared in my life. The car shook and it rained and hailed like nothing I've ever seen. Luckily the hail we got wasn't quarter or golf ball size, or our car would have been damaged. I prayed harder than I've ever prayed while sobbing and fearing for the life of my baby girl. Sophie was an angel through it all, she was happy as could be, completely oblivious to the danger outside. The Lord watched over us and we were protected. It didn't take long before the storm passed through and the winds died down and the rain stopped. As we drove away, about two blocks from where we were the wind had snapped two power poles in half and the power line was going across the road that we needed to be on to head home. We had to detour through the town and we saw many huge trees blown over in he middle of the road. As we drove, it became more and more apparent how much the Lord truly had watched over us and blessed us. We ended up with several more detours, and eventually arrived about three hours later than planned.

My parents and sister, Nicole, were here anxiously waiting to meet Sophie and to see that we were finally safe at home. We had a wonderful welcome with signs saying It's a girl, balloons, and flowers and dinner. We have the most wonderful friends who are so good to us. Thanks Carrie, Shannon and Rita for all you did. My family was here for a week and a half and we thoroughly enjoyed having them here. They loved holding Sophie and feeding her and just watching her. Sophie is the first grandchild on my side of the family, so she is quite spoiled. My parents were such a big help to us, staying up with Sophie and relieving us early in the morning, so that Jon and I could get some sleep. Thanks so much Mom, Dad and Nicole. We love you so much.

Sophie is doing so well and is growing so much. It is killing me knowing that she is getting bigger. I want her to stay my little peanut. I am loving motherhood and I just couldn't be any happier. Thank you to all of you for your kind thoughts and prayers.