Introducing: Owen Robert Myers

It only took me a month, but I'm happy to announce that Owen Robert Myers was born on June 22, 2011 at 3:43pm. He weighed 7lb 13 oz and was 20 inches long. He is truly perfect in every way and we thank God for this blessing in our lives.

It feels like he's already so big and it's only been a month. Big brother Caleb is doing amazing. He loves to give Owen hugs and kisses - almost too much. We have to tell him often that he needs to let Owen sleep. It's a good problem to have. And for the most part, we haven't had any additional discpline issues since Owen joined our family. It helps that Gabe is home for the summer and can keep Caleb occupied during these first few weeks of marathon nursing.

Gabe and I both go back to work at almost the same time, so it should be interesting how everything pans out. I'm a little nervous about having both kids, while trying to get work done too. Maybe Owen will be closer to sleeping through the night by then. I looked back and Caleb was sleeping through the night by 3 months....here's hoping that Owen follows suit!


Here are a few pics of our last month:

First day home!

First bottle from daddy - he loved it!

We visited the Schwab family last Friday. Baby Maggie was born about a week before Owen, but she is such a cute little peanut. The boys love babies!

Seriously, doesn't he look so big already?! Here he is at 1 month. Check out his monstrous feet! :)

Squeezing one more in...

Well, how about that! I'm getting at least one more post in before this baby. A miracle of miracles!

The Silders came to visit! (Toby, Caleb, Katharine and Ian) I just think that Toby and Caleb could be brothers with that red hair. And Ian has some red in the back too. What are the odds of our families having so many red-heads! I guess we'll have to see if "Ralph" has red hair too!

My baby bump at about 38 1/2 weeks. He's going to come any day now!

Enjoying a little water in the backyard. He was shivering but loved every moment of it!

Now the question is, why doesn't that love for water transfer to the pool? First swimming lesson of the season. He was hanging onto Gabe like a monkey most of the time. Here's hoping the rest of the week goes a little bit better!

Photo Update....again

Who am I kidding? I barely have my head screwed on straight. I have no deep thoughts to ponder or incredible words of wisdom to bestow. I'm just trying to keep my head above water before this baby comes. It's officially been more than a month since I posted something. I would gather a guess that you probably won't see something again until the baby comes (but I might surprise you!). Here are some photos of our last month (I have videos to post, but I've been tryin all night and they won't upload - I'll try tomorrow). There's a lot because, well, we do a lot and never seem to stop and it's my blog so I can post as much as I want. :)

Easter in Highland

All of the kids hunting for Easter eggs

Caleb getting his Easter basket with sweet pajamas and spiky hair.

The Myers family


The 2011 Strollathon

Amy, Sophie, Andy and Ryan

The whole reason we "stroll" for a cure - our sweet Sophie!

Go Team Sophie!

The girls we're strolling for and their families. If you didn't come out this year, I encourage you to join us next year. And so many thank you's to my friends who came out to support Sophie.

Hey, what's better than free cookies with a buddy on a spring day!


Mother's Day

Me and my boy(s)!

All of the Maxwell and Myers' moms on Mother's Day: April, Marilyn, Muriel, Candy and me.

Swinging is a new favorite activity - we've discovered "spinning" really fast.

Our neighbors, Bob and Ellen, have a huge maple tree in their backyard. Yet, somehow those little whirlybirds seem to always make their way to our yard. We had an incredible wind one day and it looked like a scene from "The Birds."


Yes, Caleb still has imaginary friends - all girls. In this video, he's decided that he's going to push Ruby on the swings.

Caleb drew this picture for me a few days ago "to cheer me up." I know I'm a little biased, but I think that's a pretty good racecar for a 3 year old.

My ever-growing belly! It sticks out so far now that it's even hard for complete strangers not to touch it....or comment on it. 4 weeks to go!!!

Photo Update

A lot has happened in the last 20 days, so I think it's just easier to give you a photo update. It also explains why I've had no time to blog on a regular basis. I think we've been gone every weekend, and we plan to be gone most of the rest of April and May. Guess we better do our traveling now! Pretty soon people are going to have to come see us!


My friend Jenny got married a few weekends ago. It was such a beautiful wedding and I was honored to be the reader. Angie (baby bump), Janeice, Julie, Jen, me (baby bump), Emily.

I'm such a slacker, I don't remember. I think I'm 29 weeks and Angie is 32 weeks?? Ang is having her first baby girl on May 21st.

Ryan and Caleb "painting" at Grandma's house. This is great on a sunny day because it keeps them busy for a long time. All you need is some old paintbrushes and a bucket of water. Wa-lah! A good time had by all!

The first weekend in April, all of my girlfriends from Walker Hall came to visit with their hubbies and children. I think we had close to 15 people here (and growing). I prayed for a sunny day because that's a lot of boy energy to be couped up in our house. The Lord answered...it was beautiful! After brunch at my house, we went to Anderson Park for some playtime at the playground, on to ISU for some reminiscing and then Avanti's back at the Myers' homestead.

Tug, Caleb and Sam. Ready to play a little soccer on the quad.

The Walker kids: Cooper, Tug, Cami, Caleb, Calli, Sam (Cary was there too, but she was sleeping in the house and this was the best picture with all of the kids in it)

The Walker Girls (plus Caleb): Sara, Jenny, Aubrey, me, Jennie

Baby bumps! I'm probably at about 30 weeks, making Jenny somewhere at 27 I think. Close enough.

Easter in Danville. Marilyn always likes it when we all sing when we're there. We tried to do all 6 of us, but it didn't work out. That's okay though, it's nice to hear the Myers family sing together.

Gracie and Caleb being very patient as we fixed lunch

Last Saturday, Gabe and I decided at the last minute to take Caleb to the Gamma Phi Circus. He was so excited. He said he needed to be dressed up in a costume...we opted for his "SuperKid" shirt. He loved it! I heard things like "mommy, they're amazing!" and "I would be so nervous if I did that!"

Gabe has been spending a lot of time making our attic more suitable for storing things. It's been a long project, but Caleb loves climbing up the ladder, and taking our portable DVD player up there to spend time with Daddy while he works.

Baby Moon #2: Nashville

(I don't know why blogger is leaving all this extra space - annoying)

Gabe and I made the decision that we wanted to use some of our tax refund money to take a second baby-moon before #2 gets here in July. So after much research and a few wild ideas, we ended up deciding on Nashville, TN. I figured it was a good distance that was driveable, but not so long that I would be terribly uncomfortable. Plus it was south, which means warmer, and I always love that.

So we headed off last Tuesday after dropping Caleb at my parents house along the way. This was the longest amount of time we've ever left him and I'm proud to say that Caleb and his parents did just fine with the distance. It's amazing how much time you can save by not getting a kid out of a carseat 15 times a day - luxurious, I tell you!

Off we went after lunch on Tuesday. Along the way, we had to pass Benton, IL which holds some bad memories. We held our breath as we drove past hoping we would never need to stop there again. We soon found ourselves faced with a dilemma - stop in Metropolis and see the giant statue of Superman or keep chugging along. Well, if you know us, you know what we did.

We arrived at the Hyatt Place on Music Valley Drive with enough time to call Caleb to tell him goodnight and run to the Bob Evans before they closed to catch a late dinner. We spent the rest of the night planning out our week. The hotel was nice, but definitely the strangest place I've ever stayed. The location was exactly what we wanted however, so that was nice. We checked in at a kiosk rather than a front desk (which isn't bad, just different). The room was roomy with a king bed and a nice living room area and flat screen TV. I wouldn't say it was the cleanest room I've ever been in, but I'm uber-OCD when it comes to cleanliness so I'm not sure any hotel would have passed the test. If you ever go to Nashville and want to know about hotels, I can give you the full report - I'll spare the rest of you.

The next day we got up and went to check out what we could find on Music Valley Drive. For those Dukes of Hazzard enthusiasts out there, we did stop at the "Cooters Museum". This one is lost on me because I've never seen a single episode, but it was apparently nostalgic for Gabe.

We also hit a discount boot store and Ernest Tubb's Record Store - both totally worthy of our time being in Nashville. I mean, how else would I get this awesome pic:

Then we headed out to make Wednesday our historical day of the vacation. We ate a dive called Fat Mo's for lunch (yummy of course, because almost anythign that is a dive has great food) and then headed to the Hermitage (the home of President Andrew Jackson) for a tour. Right as we got there the heavens opened and it started to pour. We spent some time in the gift shop and then finally decided we were just going to wing it. By the time we got out of the pre-tour movie, the sun was shining again. It was a great tour and I took some fun photos. I'd like to say that I made it through the whole tour, but I couldn't make it around he grounds. By the time we made it through the gardens, I told Gabe to go on ahead to check out the cabins further out on the property. I was exhausted.

We went back to the hotel to rest my weary legs and then attempted to find some good ole bbq for dinner. We found a place called Mary's that sounded perfect, but when we got there we were clearly not where we were supposed to be if you know what I mean. So we settled for some good fried food at another restaurant closer to our hotel.

The next day was Downtown Nashville. We started with trying to find parking downtown, which wasn't necessarily hard, but we ended up in the strangest and probably most dangerous parking garage we could have found. Dangerous in terms of parking hazards, not hoodlums. Yikes! But you get what you pay for! We then went to the historic Ryman Auditorium. This is where the Grand Ole Opry was housed before it was relocated to the building it is currently in today.

This was a really great tour and a beautiful building. We weren't allowed to the backstage tour that day because they were taping the finale of the "The Next Big Star", which is basically CMT's American Idol. I don't know anyone who cares, but it's cool to think that I know who the two finalists are. Gabe and I stayed to listen and we know which one we would pick.

After the Ryman we had a very late lunch followed by walking by a few of the landmark places on 2nd avenue (Wildhorse Saloon, Coyote Ugly....Charlie Daniels Museum). Then our plan was to check out the Country Music Hall of Fame. We walked there, but by the time we finally got there we only had 1 hour to tour and I was totally spent. I feel a little bad we didn't make it there amongst our stops in Nashville, but I literally would have needed some motorized transportation to make it through. We found dinner and then headed to Belmont University's campus for a night of comedy. We saw an improv comedy troupe from Northwestern. They were pretty good and I was thrilled that we weren't the oldest people there. :) That only lasted an hour, so we found a movie theater and went to see a movie at 9:45pm (I know, we're such rebels!)

The next day was our last official day there, so we wanted to make the most of it. Our hotel was right across the street from the Gaylord Opryland Resort, so we knew we had to check it out. I've been there before when I was 11, but I just remember it being huge and that my sister and I got lost on our way to mail a letter at the front desk. It's as big as I remember if not bigger and I know they've made renovations since the flood they had in May.

Our last stop of the vacation was the Grand Ole Opry. We weren't going to do it. When doing our research for this vacation, we saw that the headliner was Pam Tilles. I knew who she was, but wasn't so sure I wanted to spend money on seeing her. But apparently the venue at the GOO is set up differently. A few days before the event is when they plan their line-up (basically, whomever is in town and wants to come and play will be on the program). Right before we left we found Diamond Rio was one of the acts. That solidified it for us - we love Diamond Rio. We don't listen to a ton of country, but we do like them a lot. So we got tickets and I'm so glad we did! Each half hour has a host and then two acts and they each sing two songs. And they do a really good job of mixing it up between the really old-time country singers, the new recruits who don't even have their first CD out, country, bluegrass, you name it. So it was a really nice mix of everything. We were one day away from seeing Carrie Underwood.

Another cool thing about the GOO is that they let you go right up to the stage and take pictures. It's really quite nice! Check out these guys (Riders in the Sky)- sweet get-ups! I especially like the guy on the far right. You probably can't tell, but his tie is actually a cactus. Classic!

When Diamond Rio came on stage, I was the first among many to flood the stage. I got some great pictures!

I took this one right after the lead singer reached down and touched my hand. I never felt more like a giggly school-girl. It was just so cool to be one of those people who reaches out their hands to a celebrity and then have them actually shake yours. I was a bit star struck.

After the show we took one final tour of the backstage of the GOO. It was pretty cool. We got to see the dressing rooms where the stars get ready, the internal post office where members of the GOO can get their mail and then they let us on stage for picture. The circle in the middle of the floor is the a remnant of the original GOO stage floor from the Ryman that they transferred to the new GOO. So that was kind of cool to stand on knowing how many other really iconic people had also stood on that stage.

We headed back to Highland the next day. We stopped in KY for lunch at Hutchin's BBQ (just so we could finally have our BBQ). I wouldn't call it as good as Lil' Porgy's in Chambana, but it was pretty good. We drove from nice weather, to rain and then into a couple of inches of snow. We knew the baby-moon was over!

We're glad to be home! We of course brought Caleb a souvenir. Every time he puts it on he says "There's a snake in my boots!"