Living, Loving, Learning

Well, Hello Friends! Sorry for the delay in posting...we've been busy down here in 'Tucky. Last week we were lucky enough to host 8 people 1 day, 6 people 3 days, 5 people 1 day and 3 people 3 days...all these days being in a row. We LOVED every minute of it (well, almost every minute...explanantion later.) We feel so lucky and so loved that our family would choose to make the trip to spend the holidays with us. Our new house seems to be built for this type of entertaining and everyone seemed to settle in quickly. It felt wonderful to wake up in our own bed on Christmas morning (something we have NEVER experienced together as we always traveled over the holidays previously.) I will post more pictures after I upload them. Griffin enjoyed having all his favorite people around....poor Gran and MorMor, they don't get a moment of peace during Griff's waking hours. For those of you who haven't spent time around him, Griffin is a FOCUSED kid. When one of his favorite peopl...

The stockings were hung on the chimney with care.

Sprout just got the hiccups for the first time...AMAZING!

A few more family pictures for you: Aunt Nancy and Jessica Griffin (don't ask him to smile...this is what you get!) with Great Grandpa and Grandma Meow Alethia and Griffin with their MorMor Alexis and Anthony

I finally processed some of the photos from last weekend and I will work on posting the best ones over the next couple of days. Griffin and Alethia

Hey there friends. Not much new to report here. Griffin is happily now cold free, which is great! We are headed to E. Lansing for a little reunion at my Mom's house tonight. I am excited to feel the warmth and comfort of family right now. I will definitly put up some new pictures when we get back. >>>>

For the last year or so, on cold Sunday afternoons I have been making up a big batch of homemade soup. It is a great comfort food, mostly healthy, usually inexpensive ingredients and they freeze beautifully. With Bruce home on Sundays I have the time to make my own broth and cut up tons of yummy fresh veggies. I am usually able to freeze a big batch to pass on to a friend or enjoy on a busy Sunday and still have some leftover for lunches during the week. This week was a creamy turkey/veggie soup using the Thanksgiving turkey carcass I had frozen. YUM!!!! Here is the recipe I used: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/After-Thanksgiving-Turkey-Soup/Detail.aspx

Ahhh, Christmastime....listening to BB sing about Santa love , enjoying the brilliant red of my newly purchased poinsettias and bundled up in my favorite "robe like" sweater. These are the moments that get me through the crowded stores, the long post office lines, the frenzy of the season. We are loving decorating and getting snuggled into the new house. It has been so fun to unpack my holiday decorations and actually have choices about where to put things. Bruce and I spend every evening doing a little more to get us settled here. We have even enjoyed the push and pull all couples experience while trying to hang a huge collection of art, photos and memorabilia. The walls are all plaster so it makes the job a little more difficult than it needs to be. Griffin and I have settled into a new weekday routine that suits both our needs very well. We have been loving our new backyard and the tree swing that the last owners left behind. It is still in the low 50's here and we a...

Sprout is a GIRL! She is healthy, active and right on schedule. Words cannot express how excited, thankful and blissfully happy we are right now. I will write more after this glow in my heart settles down a bit.

We had a fantastic Thanksgiving. We hosted our first, of many, Thanksgiving weekend in our new home. Our friends, Dean and Gabriella came down from Michigan (11 hours of driving in rain...yuck!) for the weekend. We ate, talked, played games and then ate again...it was a pregnant lady's dream come true! Hope you all had a wonderful weekend also. We head to the OB/GYN this afternoon...we have another ultrasound scheduled so hopefully we will find out Sprout's gender. Bruce and I are hoping for different genders, but ultimately just a healthy baby, so either way, we both win. I will try to share the news here tonight...so check back later.

OK...so we are back online as of this morning....feels good to be back. The move went well, we couldn't have done it without DNO...thanks man, we will never forget it! Bruce and Dean spent about 11 hours on Saturday with a u-haul truck and were able to get everything into the new house. We are LUCKY to have such a friend, one who would take 2 days off work to drive 20 hours to spend 11 hours carrying heavy objects - that is love, man. Now it is all about getting settled in before we host the holidays here. I haven't picked up my camera in over a week, nor composed a complete sentence so I will have to get back to you with more details. Gotta get going....the boxes won't stop screaming for me to attend to them. Have a great weekend y'all!

We closed on our house on Monday!! YEAH...it looks like we will be moving in this weekend. I cannot wait, this is worse than Christmas Eve for an 8 year old!! Also, we picked up Sunshine last weekend, so our little family is finally reunited. Things are So So busy right now, so blogging is going to be put on the back burner for a little while - I will try to get something new up next week. I want to wish Vida and Matt a huge CONGRATULATIONS! Their baby girl, Julia Madison, greeted our world yesterday afternoon. She was 20 1/2 inches and wieghed 7.13 ounces. Baby and Mama are both doing really well. We love you all so much and can't wait to meet Julia. Take care friends!

We had such a lovely time last weekend with my father's side of the family in Knoxville. It was my Granddaddy's 80th birthday and my Grandmother's 78th birthday that we were celebrating. It was a busy weekend, we played many games, had a Thanksgiving meal, opened Christmas presents, had a photo shoot, took the kids to build-a-bear, enjoyed a bounce house purchased for the event, made garden stepping stones as birthday presents, had a campfire complete with smores and had a birthday party, all in a little less than 48 hours. I have made a photo album of the weekend in my flikr account, which you can view here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mamagast/sets/72157602843316944/

Time for an update: Firstly, we had a doctor's apt. this week. Sprout is looking awfully healthy and happy in the ultrasound. We were hoping to be able to know the gender but it turns out Sprout is a little to wee yet to tell. Our next appointment is at the end of November and it should all be clear by then. I am feeling more energetic and only feeling ill about every 3 days (my hormones have gotten into some kind of cycle, I guess). The ultrasound tech. gave us a CD of some pictures and this little video of Sprout. I thought I would share it with you - the colored bits are blood being pumped through the body. Second on the table: the house. Looks like all the papers are in and our closing will happen on Tuesday. Of course, nothing is definite but we have our fingers crossed. The family who is selling the house to us are saying they should be able to be completely out in 3 days of closing (although, technically, they have up to 15 days from closing) so there is a possibility we wil...

I was changing Griffin's sheets before nap time today. I threw him a pillow and pillowcase and asked him to start working on it. He struggled with it for 20 seconds or so, dropped them both to the floor, looked at me and said, "This is a girl job, not a job for a boy." WHAT?????? Of course, we don't speak like that, and no one we know speaks like that around him... are gender stereotypes that ingrained in our society that my 3.5 yr. old, who is being raised by 2 raging liberal parents, has already picked up on them? And for the record, Bruce regularly changes pillowcases also.

Hope you all have a great weekend. We are heading to Knoxville to spend the weekend at my Dad's house. My sister and family are in the country visiting for 2 months and we couldn't be more excited to see the baby. It will be a fun time to reconnect with family we haven't seen in a long time (10+ years) and celebrate my Granddaddy's 80th birthday. Next week we will hopefully find out Sprout's gender and possibly even be closing on the new house -- I will update you as things unfold. I will leave you with a few more Lake Malone pictures.

The weather here was especially incredible here last weekend.....blue, blue skies and temps in the upper 70's. Thankfully, to a preceding week of cool evenings, the trees here have begun to change color and we had to get OUTSIDE and enjoy it all. On Sunday we headed to another one of the Kentucky state parks, Lake Malone State Park. It was small but packed a huge punch! Although we were unable to find any trail maps, we did find a trail head that said it was a 1.5 mile walk BACK TO THAT POINT. We thought that it might be a little on the long side but, ya know, let's try it, it looked like it hugged the lake. Turned out that is was 1.5 miles to the trail end which was in the middle of a field, than a half mile through the field to the campground then another half mile back to wear our car was parked at the beginning of the trail and the lying sign. It was a gorgeous trail though, with about a 1/6 of it entailing some light rock climbing. We had an excellent time, and Bruce got ...