Oh BOY!

Well, it's been awhile since I've posted on here.  

I had a baby.  

Enough said :).  

So obviously I have someone super duper important to introduce you to but first a little recap from Christmas.  

We had a wonderful Christmas in the home we are temporarily staying in while stateside.  The only sad part to our day was that Bud's mom was in the hospital.  She has had a terrible case of pneumonia and we praise God for the recent recovery and hopeful she will get to go home today.  We also missed our home and family in Kenya much on this day especially.  Thankful our Mattaw family had a wonderful day though.  Our hearts longed to be there with them and everyday we anticipate getting back.  Time is coming soon!  But I'll tell more on that soon too.

Christmas morning.

As you know, our oldest Kenyan son and only current Mattaw college student, is here in Texas with us.  Although we wish our other Kenyan sons could of been here, we were sure thankful to get to spend this Christmas with Caleb here.  Elisha and Claire loved celebrating Christmas with him.  The kids got up early that morning and we spent the whole morning together opening presents.  Not that there was a lot of presents, but we did our traditional opening of gifts where each person takes turns opening one gift and has to use the gift before the next person opens one.  So if the kids got a dvd, we watched the movie, or if they got a game, we all played it.  Their toys we would put together and since lego's is the big thing for Elisha this year, that drew out the morning quite well!  

And the best gift I think would be Bud's Texas footie pajamas.  Bahahaha.  With Elisha's new costumes it made for a good outfit.

I don't know, tuxedo Tshirt was close to being as awesome.

 Lookin smart...

(In all my glory, preggers and cooking breakfast, yikes)  If only I had known we were just a few days from meeting our newest child!

In the afternoon we headed to my parents house for a yummy steak dinner and more time with family.  Our Kenyan friend Linda met us there after spending the morning with her American family.

It was a Merry Christmas at the McKinney house.  

The kids Christmas evening on a major sugar high.  

They were still asking daily when the baby would come, both super excited to meet baby and see if its a boy or girl.  The week before Christmas I had a false alarm and thought it was "time".  I was determined not to go to the hospital with a false alarm and be sent home.  Well I ate my words and sure enough did that.  Better to be safe though, Claire came fast so we got to do a test run.  Good thing, we didn't have any bags packed and still missing a few baby essentials so the false alarm helped clue everyone in that the time was for reals about to be here.  We were given the due date of January 15th in Kenya and January 3rd once we were stateside.  And apparently only 7% of women have baby on their due date so I didn't have a date in mind.  By Christmas though, I was R-E-A-D-Y to meet baby.

Then sure enough, December 27th, we were blessed with HIS arrival....

I could just cry looking at this picture.  Ok, crying now.  That whole thought of if you could love another child the same as your others, well I found out really quick that you can.  Very easily.  I could have 10 more if it was God's plan and we had our own airplane :).  Whoever had our camera at the moment captured in this picture, I'm sure glad they snapped this.  It's probably one of the moments that stands out the clearest during the whole day, him grabbing my hand as soon as they put him in my arms.  Will never forget that!  He just gripped on for as much comfort he could find.  Oh and the part where the Dr. pulled him out and I still picture him upside down and her saying its a BOY!  The fact that he was upside down didn't occur to me then and I know its not a bad thing to pull him out and tilt him up by his feet but now I have this forever image of him being upside down and clearly seeing he indeed is a boy :).  Sorry, might be sharing far more than people care to read.  But this blog is our story!  Hey at least I put the picture in black and white so you can't see the gunk and blood on him :).

More to come on our new baby boy.  Next I'll post about our sweetest new bundle and introduce him a tad more.

Thankful the baby has arrived.

Our conversations, thoughts and hearts have turned even more now to returning to Kenya soon.  The Lord has also brought much more order, direction, dreams and visions to the mandate of Mattaw.  Thrilled about all that God has in store for us this year, will do a recap on this past year soon.  A lotta goodness to give glory to God for!