Introducing... Lil' Will

Surely the suspense is palpable by this point... but seriously, we're a little late in posting pictures of the newest member of our family. Ronald William, aka "lil' Will", was born at 7:09 pm on June 26, 2009. He weighed in at 8 lbs. 1 oz. despite arriving two and a half weeks early and measured 21 in. in length. As his grandparents and great-grandparents can testify, he has a set of lungs unmatched by any other baby in our family! Alina has been a wonderful big sister and is a little mommy to Will as well as all of her "babies."

Will arrived in time to celebrate the fourth of July with his sister and cousin Jace. He obviously is the runt of the group - but is quickly gaining on both Jace and Alina!
Christian has been working hard at his new job - we're so proud of all of his hard work so that Alina, Will, and I can stay at home together. (Too bad somebody has to work!) He drives about 40 minutes to work everyday and has already listened to a couple of books on CD - admittedly, his favorite part of commuting.
We love our little family! We love how much Alina sings "Happy Birthday" each day, we love hearing about her dreams and taking her tubing on Da-ma and Pong's lake, we love our home and our little pond, we love Will's sounds that don't resemble crying, we love Will's strength and hearty appetite, we love having our own home, and we love being married for 2 years 10 months and nine days. We feel so blessed and are learning so much from our two little angels!Alina loves playing with Will - she even has expressed interest in toys long forgotten... like this play mat!

Our beautiful Alina finally has some hair - curly hair! She's absolutely adorable!

These are the Days!

We are loving every day with our family! With each second Alina gets bigger and learns something new. Lately, some of her new quests are learning to eat with a spoon and figuring out how to drink from a cup. Fortunately, Alina isn't afraid of getting dirty and she has a total affinity for water!
We had the opportunity to go through the Draper Temple Open House last week and are so glad that we did this as a family. It was Alina's first time through a temple and she loved it, despite it being past her bed time! She especially loves the chandeliers and saying hello to all the people. Christian and I were so grateful for yet another reminder of what it's all about. We love our family and want Alina to know how important the temple is in our lives.


We also got to attend the Draper Dedication and we had Stake Conference this weekend. How wonderful it is to hear the words of a prophet and hear eternal truths taught for hours over only two days! We love the temple, we love the Prophet and his Apostles! We're so glad that we had these opportunities to be rejuvenated and grow closer to the Lord. Our focus is unified on those things of eternal significance though the world around us is noisy and seeks to distract us from what matters. May we all remember to build our lives on the firm foundation of the gospel of Jesus Christ that we will not fall.

It's a little blue at the Rasband House...

Despite many thoughts of updating our blog, things have been quite busy around our little house and, therefore, it has been a while - oops! So, ready or not, here comes a HUGE update.

We spent Thanksgiving in Florida with my family and played tons of tennis - Christian is quite the natural and Alina even picked up a racket a few times. Of course there was tons of amazing food and laughs with my parents, my brother and his wife, and my grandparents.

December flew by and we spent Christmas with Christian's family although things weren't exactly as we had hoped. Alina came down with some sort of flu Christmas morning and threw up twice before making it down to see what Santa had left. This continued for the next day or so and on into her birthday on the 27th. Even though her diapers couldn't quite do their job, we did venture out to the Living Planet Aquarium for her birthday party with Grandma Rasband.

On New Year's Eve we hopped on a plane back to Florida and spent New Year's and my birthday in paradise! Before we knew it, our week in Florida was over and we were back to the old routine in Utah.

Christian started his last semester of college (YEA!) and Alina dove into her second year of everything. At the end of January, my friend Jamie asked me to help coach a high school lacrosse team and we decided it would be TONS of fun. Needless to say, Alina and I go to practice everyday and she is picking up lacrosse very well... she loves yelling "GO" for sprints and even cheers the girls on as they practice.

Now for the main purpose for this post. Apparently I have a little issue with announcing our exciting family news until certain factors are determined - Case in point? Perhaps we found out back in November that we are expecting number two! So exciting, right? I just wanted to know everything was perfect and what we were having before the official blog. Well, the day before Valentine's Day we had an appointment and were at 18 weeks. Our incredible doctor felt badly about our long wait (what do we expect though scheduling the last appt. of the day?) and decided to go ahead and do an ultrasound for kicks. WE WERE DELIGHTED! After so poking and prodding the baby who did not want to cooperate, he announced that we are expecting a little GIRL! We even have the ultrasound pics to prove it!

So, for the past two weeks we have been talking baby sister to Alina and even bought her (meaning the new sis) a onesie that says "Little Sister." Alina, however, hasn't been the most enthusiastic. We'll ask her if she's excited for her little sis and she'll quickly say one of two things... either "no" or "brud-ah". Interesting seeing as we never taught her the word brother.


Any rate... we just have figured that she'll come around, but meanwhile we'll get a video for laughs later when little sis is being naughty...


Needless to say, Christian has felt a little outnumbered as now there are three against one (yes, baby has a vote... she automatically sides with mom!)


So this morning we had our official 20 week ultrasound - the doozy where they make sure everything is perfect and measure every detail and verify your due date. Everything looked good - measurements were right on except there was one detail that left us all a little baffled... it turns out our "little girl" is a "little boy!" Alina knew it all along! I looked over at her after we found out and said, "You knew, didn't you?" to which she did her dramatic head-nodding and said "ya."

So the word is out - the newest little Rasband's a little boy and his arrival date is sometime around July 14th! We couldn't be happier!

Here's one of his first photos - fresh off the press! He's even waving "hello!"

Hopefully we'll be a little better in the future... but our lives are soon going to get a little more crazy as we throw in some blue with all the pink we're used to having! Will is well on his way!