Showered With Love

Baby Showers! Oh what fun! Matt and I are very blessed to have wonderful friends and family that threw many showers for us and Charlotte. Here are some photos from the many events!

The Surprise "Birch" Family Shower over Christmas.

Lots of fun girly dresses and outfits for Miss Charlotte!

One of the many quilts Big G made for Charlotte.

The "Hickory" Shower

(Matt's Family and Church folks)

Feb. 14, 2010

Matt is such a wonderful husband and Daddy for coming to the shower with me!

Where on earth are we going to put all of this stuff??

All of the wonderful hostesses. From L to R: Casey Bumgarner, Jeanne Davis, Gladys Shull, Susan Punch, Robyn Willis, Me, Matt, Melanie Bumgarner, Carly Beam, Sara Sain, Camellia Shull, Mary Ann Lutz, Katie Kanupp

The "Cowpens" Shower

Feb. 20, 2010

The WONDERFUL hostesses and best friends from college....and Garber (one of Mom's good friends). From L to R: Ashley Ellis, Cheri Crockett, Me, Erin Elfert, Paige Gregg, and Diane Garber. Not pictured is my friend Jill Combs who helped out from far away in Florida (she could not come because she is expecting her first child soon too!)

" The Baby Girl" tree.....with lots of goodies for Miss Charlotte

The Beautiful Christening Gown Mom and Garber gave to us

What a spread! Makes me hungry just looking at it!

Lots of wonderful gifts for Miss Charlotte. How can something so little require so much???

Best girlfriends from high school. Our friend Kyla is missing from this photo b/c she is in NYC! From L to R: Lauren Dickson, Sharon Merlette, Me, Jen McGee

My sweet Godson, Andrew Guy Prater, son of Jen McGee and Ben Prater. First Baby Shower for him!

The Cowpens Shower #2

March 6, 2010

The hostesses: Debbie Dearybury (Aunt Debbie), Linda Taylor (Auntie), Me, Wilhelmina Dearybury (Grandmother), Shirley Birch (Mom)

The Baby food tasting game (Mom and Grandmother were the victims!)

Auntie, Me, and Cousin Ky

The Asheville Shower

March 21, 2010

(Hosted by church friends)

Gifts! Notice the fabulous banner with Charlotte's name on it. My friend Cary Luhn MADE it for me. How crafty she is.

Charlotte's first tutu! How fun! Thanks Liz :)

Nursery Preparation

We chose the classic Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit theme for Charlotte's nursery
The changing table/ dresser
The NEW shade of green Matt painted in the room (I promise it is a different shade of green)

Great Expectations

So I guess the first post should update everyone on how my pregnancy and delivery went. I had a great pregnancy...no morning sickness or real issues. Here are a some pics of the my progression. Jackson was such a great helper in tracking my weekly progress!

Here is a picture of our 20 week ultrasound when we found out that we were having a little girl. Charlotte was very cooperative during the ultrasound and made sure we knew what we were having. She even had the hiccups! Before we officially found out what were having, I broke down and purchased the "gender prediction test" from the drugstore. As you can see from the following photo, the test was wrong. It predicted we were having a boy! So a little bit of advice for any expectant mothers reading this....save your money, because who knows if it will be correct!

WRONG!!!

The Beginning!

Hello! Today is the day that I FINALLY decided to sit down and start posting to my blog. My intentions for this blog is to obviously keep all of our friends and family updated on what is going on in the world of the Ostwalts. The birth of Charlotte, our first child, is obviously the catalyst..(as much as I would like to think you all would be interested in a blog just about Matt and I, I know looking at baby pictures is WAY more interesting and fun!). Hopefully you can bookmark this page and keep tabs on what is going on in our lives and watch Miss Charlotte grow....and know what Matt and I are up to as well.

I titled the name of our blog, "The Ostwalt's Front Porch", simply because our front porch is the doorway into our lives. Matt and I love to sit on our front porch and enjoy the day, friends and family, good weather, and just watch people go by...and living in Asheville lends itself to some very interesting people watching! Matt actually thought of the name, so I cannot take full credit, but I thought it was a perfect name for a blog about our family- which is a way that we can have each of you come sit on our front porch (figuratively speaking) and catch up on our lives. Of course, if you want to come sit on our actual front porch and catch up, we welcome visitors anytime!

So my first post is about 1 month late. Today, June 1st, is actually the day she turns one month old.....I had hoped to get this blog started a little earlier, but obviously I have been a little busy! SO my goal is to back date some posts so everyone can get the full story of her life over the past month. Luckily, I have written dates down and taken lots of pictures, so this should not be too diffucult. My disclaimer for this blog is that I am going try to post updates as needed. I am not going to focus so much on making sure all of my posts are gramatically correct or even formatted perfectly. Right now, my goal is to just give you updates and I can fine tune everything later on. So don't be surprised if you see some errors!

Here is a picture of our 1st day home from the hospital with our brand new baby girl. How happy we were to be home!