The Holidays are here!

I love the holidays, the decorations, lights, the food... After this Thanksgiving break I have realized that I really am looking forward to a longer break. It was nice to relax for more than the weekend. But I still have many things to do before the Christmas break, and some fun parties to attend, so I don't want to rush it too much.

I went to Azle (near Ft. Worth) for Thanksgiving. I will soon post some of those pictures. Chris stayed home to study for his finals. When I returned he remarked that my stomach grew over the break. I feel the baby move now sometimes in the evening, and I love it! In Azle, we did the "ring test" to see what the baby's gender is, and it predicts a boy. My family thinks it is a boy also, and we have a name picked for a boy, so we are also leaning towards that guess. Tomorrow we will find out! We are giddy for tomorrow, and I know that tomorrow I won't be able to concentrate at work because of the anticipation. I am now nearing 21 weeks- so I am in the 5th month.

While in Azle, our friends, Karen and Kevin Isley, gave us a beautiful baby cradle, and I just love it! We set it up next to our bed and I put the blanket that I made in it. I can picture our little baby sleeping in it, and it makes me so excited!

Last Summer

I know it is passed, but I wanted to include some pictures of this past summer. We went to Peru and fulfilled one of my life dreams to do a trek in Peru and see the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu. I put a bunch of pictures on Facebook, so I will just put a few here, but we had decided together that we would do a large vacation before we had kids. We spent a few days in Cusco, which used to be the heart of the expanisve Incan Empire. We saw a bunch of ruins around Cusco and then we hiked a trek for about 4 days through the Urubamba Valley. We ended our trek near Aguas Calientes, which is the gateway to Machu Picchu, the mountaintop and somewhat mysterious city built by the Incas. It was a wonderful vacation, and it was fun to speak Spanish the whole time. We made friends, and well, I plan on returning there one day to see all the other parts that we didn't get to this time!

Silly as it may sound- one of the highlights was holding Pancho- the smoking and beer drinking monkey!

Intro by a First Time Blogger

Well, this is my first attempt at the whole blogging thing. Chris and I have been doing great! He has 2 internships this summer in Houston, so between visiting family, I will be in Houston. The best news EVER is that I am expecting in April! I am 4 1/2 month along. The due date is April 16th.

I actually always said that I didn't want to have a blog until we have children, especially since we don't take many pictures here in Lubbock. So now that I am closer to that, we decided to start.

Here is a little summary on us to start the blog off...Chris and I got married somewhat over a year and a half ago. We truly are the best match for one another, even though we both have different hobbies and interests at many times. Chris is in law school at Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas. That is now the home of the #2 football team in the nation for those of you that follow football! I teach first year Spanish and coach volleyball and soccer at a high school here in town. It keeps me very busy! In my free time (when and if I have it) I play soccer on indoor soccer teams, sew and enjoy cooking and baking. Chris loves movies, going to the huge rec center on campus to work out, and when we get a chance we meet up to play some raquetball or tennis together. We also like visit the local ponds here and feed the ducks and geese bread. They all crowd around us and honk for the food. They come right up to you and will even take it out of your hand! If you have ever wondered where the Candadian geese fly when they go South for the Winter, well, here is one place. They crowd our ponds and really are beautiful birds! But do you know what I think of when I look at one of those beautiful plump birds? I think of eating it for Thanksgiving! Isn't that terrible?

Well, I am putting some pictures of our growing addition here, and I just can't wait for a few more weeks when we find out what this little gift from heaven is. You can guess- what do you think it is... a boy or girl? My family has requested that I post pics here so they can see how I am growing. Really, this is a dream come true, and I am soooo EXCITED!

I have also been doing some sewing in preparation for the baby. I made this adorable quilt, and although it is unisex, it definitely leans more to the boy side. The pics don't really show all the fun detail, but it has little duckies on it, and I just love it!

First Blog

So we've set up a blogger account. I know, it's pretty lame for a someone with a technical background, but frankly, I've gotten tired of installing new WordPress updates every other week on the Linux server. I'm busy, and considering I only actually type up a blog like every other month, that means I'm installing updates four times more than I'm actually blogging. Not a very efficient use of time. Plus Carrie wants to get a blog going and this will be the easiest method for both of us to use. And since she will be blogging, there may actually be regular updates instead of my usual apathetic nothingness when it comes to these. :) Enjoy!

Chris