ULTRASOUND DAY

OK EVERYBODY!  

We had our ultrasound today!  

IT’S A BOY!!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TIMMY!

Happy Birthday TIMMY!!

Yesterday was Timmy's First Birthday! 

We attended our wards Christmas Party and had a feast.

Here's Timmy with his daddy and mommy.

On Thursday Timmy's opened some birthday gifts from his Grandma & Grandpa, Uncle Dad & Aunt Janet and mom and dad.

Afterward, we sang him Happy Birthday and he got to try to blow out a candle, and eat a cupcake. 

He thought it was very tasty! 

Here's Max, Shana, Evie and Eunji at Playgroup.  Max's mom shares the same birthday with Timmy and she said that Walt Disney also has the same birthday!  Cool! 

Shout out to Michigan Missionaries!!

Hey, I'd just like give a little praise to all of the great missionaries we've gotten to know since we've been here: Witchurch, Doxey, DeLange, May, Mohlman, Rasmussen, Lithgoe, Mecham, and Blood.  (Elder Blood, by the way, is a pretty good musician: check out his musik at http://www.reverbnation.com/calebblood or http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=196945094.  While he's on a mission, he's decided to release his music for free download!) Here's a pic with Mecham and Blood before Mecham's departure: He's been Timmy's favorite missionary so far, I don't think he ever didn't smile when Mecham made a goofy face at him.

Elder Mecham left last week and it kind of got me thinkin.  When I was a missionary in Germany, I remember people saying things like "I don't want to get to know another elder, because you all just end up leaving."  Having such close contact with the missionaries here, I'm starting to figure out why people felt like that: you build a relationship with an elder, and then he gets transferred, and you have to start all over again.  I'm sure there are plenty of reasons for the transitory nature of missionaries, and I wonder if one of those reasons is to keep the status of the position higher than the status of the person.  It seems that when you decide to devote your full attention to bringing souls to Christ, your personality can speak louder than your message, especially when you are well-known.  Maybe by transferring missionaries frequently, converts, missionaries, and members alike are constantly faced with the fact that the message missionaries carry is still life changing whether it is given by Elder Blood, Elder Mecham, or his replacement Elder Doolan.  In this way we can avoid linking the message of Christ with any one person, and our convictions can be founded on love for God and man rather than devotion to a particular missionary.  Anyway, enough ranting.  

Just in case you wondered what would happen if you leave your wife alone with the camera and baby for just one minute.  Seriously, one minute.  It's sickening to think of what could have happened if I had left her unsupervized longer.  I can't even imagine.  Sends chills down my spine.  Really, chills.  There it goes again, those dang chills.  Someone should shut the window.  By "someone," I mean anyone else but me.  Maybe you could get that window for me, your just sitting there on the computer doing nothing.  PLLLEEASE!!!! 

D-Town

Scott and I had a fabulous weekend, I just had to write about.  My sister gave us a gift of a night's hotel stay at the Hyatt in Dearborn.  It was beautiful!  We had a huge picture window view, and the hotel had a great workout room, pool and jaccuzzi.  We first had dinner, and in celebration of my upcoming birthday, I got the steak I had been craving for a week.  Then, we worked out in the hotel fitness center, swam and enjoyed the jaccuzzi, both in the evening and the morning.  

On Saturday we toured Detroit.  We took a tour of the Henry Ford Estate, which was really cool.  He had a real "state of the art" home with an indoor pool, generators powered by the Rouge River, a central vaccuum, a home movie player, a bowling lane, a huge garage to house about 10 cars, and just a beautiful home.  It was fun to see.  

Then, we went into the downtown area, and took the "people mover," which is the elevated train around the city.  It's great!  For 50 cents you can get a good view of the entire city.  We had lunch in Greektown and then toured the Detroit Historical Museum.  Both museum passes were compliments of the library system, so we had a nice inexpensive and super-fun weekend get away!

We both enjoyed a break from Timmy, as we had him babysat and had a great time together.

Thanks Mel!!!  What a great birthday gift!

It's Been a While

It's been a while since we've been a' bloggin'.  Sorry about that.  Some pretty big news on our part, if you haven't already heard.  We're expecting!  If you are like 80% of the people we've told, you might say to yourself "Another one?  Didn't you just have one!"  That's right!  But, here we go!  And we're excited to find out the gender, which should hopefully be descernable on December 15th at 2:30 pm during our ultrasound.  

The due date is May 9th -15th (ish).  I'm in my 14 or 15th week (depending on whether you go by date or ultrasound.)  I'm feeling OK - just the typical tiredness and nausea that are common, but nothing to really put up a fuss about.

We had a fun fall and enjoyed an especially warm bout of weather into the first part of November.  Halloween was warm and beautiful.  Here is us with Timmy the lion. 

This is Timmy's friend Nash.  I watch Nash once a week and we always go to the church to workout in the mornings.  It takes me a while to bundle these two up, but they enjoy getting out of the house and playing with the toys and other kids at the church, while us moms exercise.
Here are the kids from our apartments on Halloween, getting ready to parade around.  Notice one sad little lion on the front row.  He got scared when everyone yelled "Happy Halloween!"  

Here's to prove that he actually had fun!

I took advantage of the beautiful weather by hiking in the Arboretum at the beginning of November.  I just couldn't believe our luck with such warm and lovely days!  It's snowing now, but at least we had a last hurrah!

Mackinac Island Race Day

Fort Mackinac

There are no automobiles allowed on the island, so there are bikes, pedestrians and horse carriages galore.  How very quaint, eh?

The old refurbished and "touristy" buildings reminded me of Skagway, AK.

Wendy's son is named Benjamin :)

Here's us 4 on the main street walking to the race start.

Abby Road?

Here is the catholic church - so pretty!  It had some lovely stained glass and was just a beautiful site from the ferry and during the race, overlooking the city from above.
Here is us after the race.  I was about dead from fatigue, and had eaten about 2 too many cookies. :)  They were out of bananas, water and propel after the race, so I ate a ton of cookies and granola bars.
We walked (hobbled?) back through town and up to the grand hotel.  This is Main Street.
The Lakeshore Dr.  The public school is on this street. They have such a beautiful playground and view!

The view from The Grand Hotel

The Grand

Garden at the Grand

The long porch at the grand hotel.  It was the longest covered porch in the world for many years. 

Inside the hotel

The Grand Hotel

Local Stone Church

The ferry dock.

Wendy's my hero! A gust of wind literally ripped my ferry pass out of my hand.  She jumped in the lake after it to rescue it for me, completely soaking her shoes!  What a friend!

Bye Mackinac!!

Mackinac Island Day 1

So three girl friends and I drove up to Mackinac Island this weekend to run the Great Turtle Race.  Since it's off season, prices are great, gas is cheaper, the island is cooler, but still beautiful! We had a great time.  Wendy scored us this beautiful hotel room right on the lake and next to the ferry dock.  

We had this lovely view from our balcony.

Here's the girls as we're making our dinner in the hotel room.  (Deli Sandwiches :)

Here is the indoor "waterpark" that was included in our hotel room.  Hmmm....more of a kiddie playground, but it was fun for about 30 minutes.  The little slides were pretty fun.  You just have to go down 10 times and it adds up to the thrill of 1 big waterslide. :)

Here we are Saturday morning taking the ferry to the magical Mackinac Island!!  Stay tuned for more pics of the island.

Sleeping Baby

I just love to see Timmy sleeping! This picture was taken when I was supposed to be leaving. Usually, he wakes up right when I enter the room if he's not awake already. I knew he was REALLY tired when I could take pictures all over him and he STILL didn't wake up. :)
Timmy is a story man. He loves stories, and when I'm tired of chasing him around, I love to sit and read them to him.
This is during playgroup. We meet with 5-6 other moms with kids Timmy's age and play once a week. He really enjoys the other kids.

This is the playgroup at the park I missed, because Timmy was sleeping. But my friend sent me some pictures, which was nice. We have 4 girls and 3 boys. Timmy is the oldest at 10 mos. The others are between 5-9 months.

Fall in Michigan

Fall is definitely here. The leaves are changing, the weather is cooling down, the morning is darker.
This is us for a Sunday walk in Gallup Park. Timmy loves to go on walks, and this is a beautiful park with the river running through it.
Here's your garden mom! Look how big all the plants are! I finally added some in the back too with some plants from a friend of mine who moved. She let me have her petunias and some others.

Our friends, the Quatrale's, from Utah came into town and we met them for dinner at Zimmerman's Deli for dinner. Rosemary grew up in AA, and loves to visit. Zimmerman's was as good as everyone says it is! Their sandwiches were so good!