Baby Shower

We were given our first baby shower last week. It was hosted by two of Sirron's dental hygiene school friends, Jennifer and Brittney. We are so thankful to all of our family and friends for coming and for their wonderful gifts. Below are pictures of Caroline's gifts...you can click on them to make them bigger, and sorry for the differences in spacing. Thanks again to everyone who attended and made it a great afternoon.

Nursery, and the past 2 months

Sirron has kept herself very busy working around the house the past couple of months. She waters our sod daily (we do have grass now), and has planted several plants to spruce up our home's exterior. She has also been piecing Caroline's room together for the past several weeks. Different pieces of her furniture have come in at different times, and her friend Jill has used her artistic skills to customize several nick-nacks in the room. It is coming together, but until it is complete, Sirron doesn't want to show pictures of the entire room...they will be coming soon though.

I recently completed the first phase of flight school, which had absolutely nothing to do with flying. The 4-week course was an overview of various, basic officer skills. One practical portion of the course was dunker training, or Helicopter Overwater Survival Training. For this training, we were placed in a helicopter simulator, submerged in water, then flipped upside down, while strapped in a seat. After flipping, we had to unstrap and get out of the helicopter. This training gave a lot of people problems, including me. I had to go back for some remedial training, and still have to complete the course before I leave Fort Rucker, so there is no hurry, but I want to get it done soon. The best thing about the 4-week class was that it allowed me to meet a lot of people here in Alabama. For the first 6 weeks I was here, I only knew a handful of people, either from Arkansas or from a previous army course. Now, I don't go anywhere without knowing several people, which is always nice.

Sirron made her final trip to Alabama before Caroline is born this past week. We went to Birmingham to the Mc Wane Science Center in downtown. It's a lot like Mid-America museum in Arkansas...a lot of hands-on, fun stuff that explains scientific processes. We had a lot of fun just being goofy.

My next course is SERE school, and it starts on September 7th. It is 21 days straight, during which I will have no contact with the outside world. When I get done on September 27th, Sirron will be at 38 weeks, so we will be waiting for the next couple of weeks for Caroline to come, and I will be making the trip home. We have decided that we will be giving birth at St. Vincent's in Little Rock. Sirron was able to get a tour of their birthing wing and get all of her questions answered, and we are very pleased with them. The pictures below are of the room where Caroline will be born.

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Caroline....T-minus 7 Weeks!

The arrival of Ms. Caroline Ainsley is fast-approaching! The October 16th due date that once seemed so far away, is now less than 8 weeks. Sirron has done great throughout the entire pregnancy, and her daily routine has changed very little to this point.

On August 7th, Sirron went to the doctor for her routine visit, but as an added bonus, we were having sonogram pictures of Caroline taken. Caroline weighed in at 3 lbs. 2 ounces, but when it came time for the pictures, she would not cooperate. The doctors told Sirron that "she was deep," and would keep turning toward Sirron's spine, immediately after they would force her to turn. Our little girl is camera-shy, but the doctors said it was no big deal, they would do them again on the next visit.

August 19th, the next visit. Caroline is not only camera-shy, but very stubborn. Doctors tell Sirron we have a little mess on our hands...we are very excited about that. This time, Caroline was facing toward the camera, but kept her face covered with her hands and arms. The doctor would push down and move her arms away, but just as quickly as she would show her face, she put her hands back up. We were able to get a couple of snapshots, but Caroline is waiting for her grand entrance into this world to show us what she will look like. Her poochy nose and lips are obvious in the pictures, but what can't be seen is the possibility of some curly hair, according to the doctors.

Sirron goes back to the doctor September 4th, then will begin going every week. She plans on working up until Caroline comes, or as long as she is able.

Another Move-In...

I came home the first week of June to gather and move my things to my apartment in Alabama. My parents made the trip with Sirron and me, and pulled a trailer for us. We made the trip down on Friday, arriving late that night, and got everything unloaded.

Saturday morning, we left out on a two hour trip to Tallahassee to watch the Hogs play Florida State in the Super-Regionals of the NCAA tournament. It was all four of our first Razorback baseball game, and it couldn’t have been a better one. The Hogs won with a walk-off hit in the bottom of the 9th to clinch a birth to the College World Series. We all four had a blast…and got very sunburned.

Sirron came down a couple of weeks later and we went to the beach…we had a blast…and got very sunburned.

It's a GIRL!!

We have had some computer issues over the past couple of weeks, so our apologies that we haven’t updated more recently. That being said, this post will cover the past month.

On Memorial Day, Sandy Corbitt, a Guinn family friend, made time for us to go in for an ultrasound at her clinic. We did this because we weren’t sure if I (Matt) would be able to be at the June 4th doctor’s appointment , where we found out if we were having a little boy or girl. I carried our video camera for the entire ultrasound, and we will attempt to get it on here…it’s a little long, but it goes pretty in-depth. Mrs. Sandy did tell us that our baby is a little girl! She did tell us that she was “about 95% sure” about the sex, but that was good enough for us and we started telling. I was able to make it to the June 4th appointment, and much to our relief, they did confirm that we will be having a baby girl.

Sirron came down to Alabama on the weekend of Father’s Day and we went to Ft. Walton Beach and Destin. While we were on the beach, we discussed names for our baby. It didn’t take long for us to come up with Caroline Ainsley. We let it soak-in over night and we found that we love it: Caroline Ainsley Ritchie.