A Baby Girl Is On Her Way-

After much pushing, proding, and moving the monitor all around my belly the nurse announced that there was no way we were going to find out what the gender was--and sent me out to do jumping jacks. One hour and many jumping jacks later, our little one had moved enough so we could see, or rather, the nurse could see, that our little baby is going to be a girl. All is healthy and well--from heart to tiny fingers and toes. Pictured below is her cute little profile.

Blue Skies, Nothing But Blue Skies

We made this scrumptious strawberry pie to celebrate a whole week of feeling good. For while being pregnant is great--I haven't been feeling so great up until just about a week ago. The doctors said maybe at 12 weeks I'd start feeling better, then maybe at 13 weeks, but the magic number was 16 weeks. So--here's to feeling great once again and blue skies up ahead.
The strawberry pie was absolutely delicious--so here's to Costco delivering yummy strawberries across the world.

"One and One and One Make Three"

So one of those "ones" in the above title is actually inside of me, but come August 11th, give or take, a little baby will be joining our family. We are absolutely delighted, excited, thrilled, humbled, and grateful for this blessing and for knowing that a precious baby will soon be apart of our family.

Let It Snow

And snow it did.....well, for a few hours on Wednesday night anyways. We got a good inch or so--enough to cancel school, call it a snow day, and stay inside. Come Saturday we were blanketed in snow again, this time, enough to cancel church. The snow is gone now, but it was beautiful while it lasted.

Thanksgiving Visitors

My brother Chad, his wife Christy, and their two darling boys, Brent and Davis, drove down from St. Louis to join us for Thanksgiving.

Brent ready to take-out any approaching "bad-guys".

Thanksgiving Day.
Tyler making gravy.

Ready to eat!

Davis providing accompaniment as we played around in Olympic Park.

Brent playing in the leaves outside of the "Swan" house.

The happy family, outside of a farm house at the Atlanta History Center.

Tyler and I on the walk behind to the old farm house.

We had a great time with Chad, Christy and family here. We are very thankful for our many blessings, especially our family.

Blue Ridge Parkway

I can't believe it is already Wednesday. Despite all of our best intentions to post pictures from our trip up to the Blue Ridge Parkway as soon as we got home, somehow three days have passed.

We got on the road at about 4:00 Friday and arrived in Black Mountain, NC about 4 hours later. We checked into the cabin we were renting and had some soup that Rach had made ahead of time and just had to heat up once we arrived. The cabin was great for just two of us. Only one bedroom and a living, dining, kitchen area to hang out in.

We awoke the next morning to some beautiful surroundings - the colors in the trees around the cabin were pretty cool. We headed to the Red Rocker Inn for a great buffet breakfast that included caramel pecon french toast, biscuits and gravy, and some darn good hash browns.

After breakfast we headed over to Chimney Rock Park. We decided to first hike into the waterfall. I had read a lot about what a beautiful site it was. It is where they filmed Last of the Mohicans so I was ready for a breathtaking view. To my disappointment we arrived at the falls to find nothing more than a little trickle of water running down the side of the mountain. I guess that's what a drought will do. We moved on and hiked around quite awhile before taking the elevator up to the top of Chimney Rock. We were exhausted from all the hiking so we ate lunch and headed back for a nap. Later that night went in to Asheville for a Haunted Trolley tour of the city - pretty corny, but fun none the less.

We spent most of Sunday on the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was definitely not at peak for colors yet, but portions of the drive were really colorful. Last year we came a little late and found ourselves overlooking lots of naked trees, so we were very pleased with the outcome this year. We drove along the parkway for 3-4 hours stopping at lookouts and just enjoying the beautiful weather (I was glad I had changed into shorts before we headed up).

All in all we had a great weekend - fun to get away and enjoy some pretty sweet surroundings!

Ahhh--

so, once in college, i was introduced to the song "Go to East Asheville Hardware". basically, a song all about supporting your local stores over "chain stores" written and sung by singer/songwriter David Wilcox. the important part: "go to east asheville hardware, before you go to lowes." So, last weekend, we happened to be in Asheville, North Carolina and that song (well, really, I only know that first line by heart--it is a very catchy first line) and so i thought--"how great--we can go get our picture taken in front of this local hardware store". we looked it up. And that is when we found out, it was no more. Kind of a sad ending to such a good song. Well, I guess we still have the song.