In honor of an amazing woman

December 12th, my Great Aunt Margaret passed away. Over the past 6 years, Bobby and I have been able to spend time with my family living in the DC area. Growing up we would see each other but it was often every few years. As we have grown up we have seen more of each other celebrating major birthdays, weddings, family vacations and the passing of loved ones. It helps that I have a best friend in DC, making frequent trips less expensive and a double bonus seeing family and friends in one trip. (Thanks Kris for letting me crash at your place over the years!) I tried to always make a point to drive to Maryland to visit with my great aunts and listen to stories of their youth and of a time past. Aunt Margaret was unlike anyone else. She was honest and straight forward all while being loving and encouraging, those are pretty hard things to balance for most people. 
I loved hearing about all the things that she experienced in her 96 years.  I loved her spirit and her independence. She lost her husband years ago just shy of their 50th anniversary.  They had traveled to 48 states and were hoping to round out the 50 for their anniversary... amazing! She also discovered this great vacation retreat, Capon Springs, which became a summer family tradition. Here is a group photo from 2011:

Last year I went to visit everyone before Eli came.  I knew it would difficult to travel after he came so I took one last solo road trip up last January. I drove Aunt Margaret and Aunt Evelyn for dinner at the Riddle's and we had a great time catching up. This August Aunt Margaret started to have some back pain and was moved into an assisted living house, so thankfully I did not put off taking Eli up to meet her. We went up for Labor Day to visit.  She just loved Eli.  She was very excited that he had just learned to suck his toes and told me how she taught my cousin Quinn to do the same. We spent a whole afternoon together watching Eli sleep and learning even more about her life, there is a lot to cover when you are 96! I am thankful that I thought to take some pictures and videos of Eli with his great great aunts. Its wonderful to hear her voice and see her tickle his side. Here are the two together:

I am so grateful that Aunt Margaret loved the Lord.  She was always very encouraging and supportive of our church plant.  She would often talk about the changes she noticed in her church and how she was happy they were reaching the new neighbors in her changing neighborhood. She lived in a house two doors down from the house she was born in (her sister still lives in the family house). She was very active through the years at her church, she served as a deaconess, even the chairman of deaconesses and was asked to write the history of her church.  Here are some shoots of her book:

In the conclusion she says, "God's work must go on and on until He calls each of us home from our labors."  She was finally called home, and though she will be greatly missed, I am so thankful for her influence in my life and for life long pursuit and love for the Lord.

   

Week In Review: Jan 6 2013

The start of the new year is often a time for reflection, resolutions, goal setting, determining the aim of the upcoming year, etc. Since we had a nice long ride home from Florida over the holidays we discussed somethings we would like to accomplish, some habits we would like to form and some goals we would like to achieve, some personal, some as a family. 
One of the things we struggled with last year was Eli's sleeping and napping habits. I have read and re-read books, attempted numerous changes and celebrated small victories of 4 hrs stretches while enduring months and months of getting 1.5-3 hr stretches of sleep at night. Even though I do a ton of research for most things related to Eli, I attempt to hold most beliefs pretty loosely. I was really committed to the no-cry sleeping method but as much as we tried, it just wasnt working.  Not only was Eli not sleeping, he was crying a lot even if I held him because guess what... kids that dont sleep usually get over tired and cry.  So all of this is to say, we modified our nap and sleep method, we adjusted our bedtime routine so that we no longer end on nursing but instead by reading, praying, cuddling and even light playing and then I put Eli down while he is still awake.  The hard part is the rule we made... I can't go back in.  Once he is down, he is down until it is time to get up. The first two nights were not that bad, night three was awful but I think its because he is getting some teeth combined with some short naps. I do miss our middle of the night cuddles, especially since Eli is so active during the day he never cuddles but I am just having to accept our new normal. 
One day while Eli was napping I tipped toed in to capture this cute little picture:

This is his new position, he sits and looks around then face plants and falls asleep. He slept like this for an hour. 
Here are some other highlights from the week:

Monday we unpacked all of Eli's new toys, then we spent New Years Eve with friends (didnt take any pictures for some reason):

Tuesday Eli finally started crawling properly... no more army crawl, he is up on his hands and knees.
Wednesday Eli had his first bath in the tub and not his baby tub. Bobby decided to give him a mohawk in celebration:

Thursday we took Eli on a shopping spree with his Christmas gift cards.  I held up things and then bought the one he grabbed first... it was fun. And he now has his pair of chucks (uncle dj will like that).
Friday Eli had a little melt down in the childcare of the Y, for some reason he didnt want to be put down, which is really unusually since he likes to "walk" around things all the time. It was only his second time being in there so hopefully it will get better.
Saturday we signed up for swim lessons at the Y, which start next week. 
Sunday, he got to wear one of his new outfits to church (excuse the drool, he was chewing on his car seat straps). Here he is waiting for some first time guest to show up:

 We hope you had a great week!

 
 

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Things I have learned this far...

Nope the baby isn't here... still 15 weeks to go but I am already learning a lot! Now that we know we are having a boy I have been more motivated to register for baby items. As I look through thousands of reviews I realize that people are really good at sharing their knowledge.  Just this week I emailed or spoke with 5 different mom friends about things they love, had to have and things to do without, and the secrets of cloth diapering. I am really grateful for all the wisdom they shared. I spent 4 hours yesterday after work registering at Babies R' Us and Target(thank goodness for holiday hours b/c Target is nice and empty at 10pm!) and one thing I know for sure is I will NEVER buy something for someone again that isn't on their registry. I am not saying a cute outfit might not make its way in but after seeing the time that goes into picking the right nose bulb thing I am going to respect peoples time and buy what they picked because chances are they picked it for a reason. ((We will be thankful for any kind of gift for our baby!)) The other thing that I have learned during this process is that I am becoming more of a minimalist. It was nice looking at the suggested items and scratching them off, maybe I will change my mind but at this point I think it would be great to have the necessities and some splurges (hello video monitor!) but not over do it. 
Another thing I found this week might be helpful for some of you high tech moms (we now have an iPhone so I guess we count)... there is a nice wireless camera that works with iPhones and laptops to monitor your baby and its apparently under $100 (a lot less than video monitors I have been looking at). So here is a link you can check out, it was really helpful. Then when your kids grow up you can use the camera to spy on them from work... good thing they didn't have this back in the day... just kidding mom... well kind of.
Hope you have a great weekend... I have one more store to register at and some more invitations to send out and hopefully a whole bunch of fun added to that like happy hour after work and then hanging out with some girls tonight.

Our friends and "big baby"

This past weekend was really great! We ate dinner over at The Hopper's with Anna's family and Brandi in what has now become our new Thanksgiving tradition (twice is enough to make a tradition right?) Anna's mom spoiled us again by spending two days cooking for us and luckily for me she had some of my favorites... whole berry cranberry sauce, mac and cheese, and sweet potato casserole! Saturday we were able to have a quick visit with some friends who were in town before they headed back to their home away from home. Saying good bye is never fun but it was really good seeing Russ and Hil

On the baby front, things are going well.  I am getting plenty of rest and eating a lot. I feel like things have changed mentally for me over the past week now that we know we are going to have a baby boy. Its like I can finally picture him growing and imagine the future.  Tonight while Bobby was doing some school work I did a little shopping, nothing fancy just some thrifting for baby clothes and possible things for the nursery. I found a few outfits, some shoes and this nice rustic abc shelf.

 To get some practice we put an outfit on our big baby LuLu.  We gave her that nickname when found out we were having a baby, at 20 lbs she will be the bigger of the babies for a while. She was a pretty good sport playing dress up but she keeps giving us the evil eye not sure if its because we dressed her up or if because we made her wear boys clothes, but look how cute she is.

 

Update

((This is out of order, I forgot to post this before we left))
Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Life has been really busy, and I haven't even taken my weekly photos. Here are a few major things that have happened...

my beloved beetle died last month, it really felt like a symbolic life change.  Out with the car of my youth that helped me make so many wonderful memories with the road trips to the Outer Banks with Kristen and spring break in Panama City with the girls and racing back to see Steph after she had Brad. Cramming 7 rugby girls in the car to drive to a party, felt like a clown car! So many more that I am forgetting but with 170k miles on it, it was well worn and well loved. We bought a 2009 Corolla last week to be our new family car, it was quite a different car shopping experience, with the beetle I wanted something fun this go around we were thinking car seats and traveling home with a baby, good gas mileage, and safety, its like a rite of passage buying your first car without the input of parents.  
Mom came to visit this weekend and was so wonderful to clean our house top to bottom! I think she managed to do 14 loads of laundry... don't judge me. We had some fun beginning to plan a shower and trying to think through a nursery theme even though we dont know yet what we are having. We ate a lot of great food like usual and she taught me to make vanilla french toast. We even managed to squeeze in some time to make new holiday pillows for our sofa. 

Some other pregnancy related things... I am starting to have heart burn but I have been limiting the things that apparently contribute to it so it hasn't to terrible but it stinks pretty much having to drink water and cranberry juice since lemonade and anything carbonated makes me feel worse. 


Okay so that's the quick update... we are headed out tomorrow for San Francisco where Bobby is presenting a paper.  We are going to make it into our baby-moon since the only other place we will probably go before the baby arrives is Tampa for the craziness of the holidays.

And we are having...

a BOY! Majority of the people around have said they thought it was a boy... all the "signs" I guess pointed that way, carrying low, stomach wide, changes in my complexion... I heard a lot of guesses over the past few weeks and it turns out they were right. The ultrasound went really well and everything looks good, our little boy is measuring right on schedule and is an average size. 
To celebrate Bobby and I bought our first little boy outfit, though it wasn't as exciting as the a girl outfits (no frills or ruffles) it still is pretty cute.

In other news, Bobby and I spent last week in San Francisco for our babymoon.  It was great, Bobby's mom met us out there and his sister flew up from LA. Bobby presented a paper at ETS asking if you can have authentic community in online church, he has already had someone write a response so I guess it was thought provoking. I sat through some pretty academic presentations that were a little out of my league. What I did excel at in San Fran was eating! Our first night we had some great thai food, for lunch the second day we tracked down the local food trucks and sampled some of their delicious offerings. Wednesday night Bobby ate with other SEBTS people so Teri and I ate at a high ranking diner. In the morning Teri, Melissa and I ate at Honey Honey, it was really good. We rented a car that afternoon and drove across the Golden Gate Bridge up to Muir Woods to see the big redwoods, which were amazing! Since it was my 23wk mark Teri took a quick photo for me:

  Then we headed back across the bridge and drove down the Pacific Coast Highway to a great seafood place called Barbara's Fish Trap.  They had great clam chowder, huge fried shrimp and a wonderful small town feel. Friday morning we ate at Dottie's True Blue Cafe, which was featured on Diner, Drive-Ins and Dives.  The hour long wait was worth it! After that we hopped on the legendary trolly and went exploring at Fisherman's Wharf, I was really excited to see the sea lions.  We also went to Ghirardelli Square and had fresh peppermint bark. That night we found a hole in the wall Thai place (I think we were the Caucasians in the place), we ate early since we skipped lunch so around 10 Bobby ran out for pizza for us.  Oh and of course we found a local cupcake store that we frequented two nights in a row. All in all we loved San Fran and were glad for the week away.
So there you have it, I think I am going to be a better blogger for now on... Bobby got a new iPhone 4s so I will actually have photos of our fun times.  Hope you have a great thanksgiving, we are going to celebrate all of the Lord's blessings with our friends tomorrow!