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As many (or all) of you know, we are expecting a little girl in the beginning of March!! We are SO happy, grateful, thrilled, excited... I'll just let you look at the pictures first, because that's really what people want to see. (Sorry for the bad quality of pictures. We're trying to figure out our scanner.)

Her cute foot! I have definitely been feeling them kick. Andrew thinks she will be a soccer player, "or she can be whatever she wants to be, but maybe a soccer player."

We love her and her cute little nose.

I can't believe that's inside of me! What an amazing, crazy thing.

Us at our ward Halloween party. We got this cute idea from here.

It was a long road to get to this point, but I know many people have/had longer. We are grateful for all the prayers for us. Even though we had wonderful doctors that helped us get to this point, we know that it was a miracle. We're grateful for the Lord's plan for all of us. We can't wait to meet her! :)

Cabin!

These pictures are from July, and I know it is September. I am really bad a blogging! I think part of the reason why is because I really don't know what I'm doing. Like, why is all of the writing so light on our blog?! If you know how to fix this, let me know, because it's really annoying.

Anyways, in July, we headed up to Lake Wisconsin for a fun week at the cabin with the Thomas family. It was so relaxing! We fished, played games, ate food, road on a boat, watched movies/ Pysch.

The back of the cabin we stayed at, and Amber looking sneaky.

Alex, Josh, and Andrew our fishing on the dock. There was a lot of fishing going on! And almost everyone caught a fish while we were there.

Andrew's birthday at the cabin!

Andrew and I on the closest thing I have seen to a mountain in the Midwest. It had a gorgeous view!

We loved our time there! We got to spend a lot of great time with my family! Thanks Lake Wisconsin! :)

Colorblind

After working on de-cluttering our house, we came across some pillows that came with our new couches...

Andrew: But what are we going to do with all of these red pillows?

Erica: What red pillows?

Andrew: These right here! (Pointing)

Erica: You mean the black pillows?

Andrew: (Looks closer) Oh yeah.

I just hope our children don't fail preschool because Andrew's teaching them their colors.

Josh's Grad Party

A week (or 2?) before Josh graduated, my family had a graduation party for him (as is tradition in Minnesota). It was great. I can't believe my mom has done 4 of these!

The Josh Shrine.
Yummy food.
Andrew was the cake-serving master.
I think this was actually the week that Josh graduated. Trevor, Heather's then fiancee, came to visit. The boys initiated him into the family by the traditional burning of the Christmas tree. When Andrew came out to visit when we were dating, Josh, Dad, and Andrew burned two Christmas trees in the backyard. The flames seriously were 5 times higher than this one. It was a great bonding experience for them. ;)

More pictures to come-- This is just the beginning of the summer!

Josh's Graduation

My brother graduated from high school! How could this be?! He heads out to BYU next week, and I'm in denial. But he'll love it. Josh with my parents.

Oops, not the best pic of Josh. From left: Andrew, me, Amber, Josh, Nikki, Heather, and Trevor (the newest member of our family as of 8/13/11).

I don't know where he is, but he's in there.

Right after they called his name. Yay for Josh!

Chocolate Inspiration

"When you can't control the wind, adjust your sails."

I read this quote on the wrapper of the Dove dark chocolate I just ate. I really liked it-- the quote and the chocolate.
I tend to want to be in control and dictate how things in my life should be instead of making the most of situations. Trials come, and it's up to me to adjust, relying on the Savior.
Thanks Dove for giving me a better perspective.

Also, our apartment is really hot right now, so the chocolate I ate was a little melted. I think I'll have another one. Dark chocolate is good for you, right?

The Windy (and delicious) City

Andrew and I went on an adventure to Chicago! We had a blast, and had a LOT of great food. Looking at the pictures we took, I realized that pretty much all of our pictures were about food.

Ghiradelli sundae. Need I say more?

Hershey's Chicago. This bar was like $40 or something ridiculous.

A cute Swedish restaurant that had a delicious breakfast.

Andrew very happy. He's giving two thumbs up by the way.

Yum.

Oh yeah, and we saw Blue Man Group. It was a very different experience-- we liked it, but it was pretty weird. We also walked around Magnificent Mile, which was so fun. I love walking down streets like that in big cities. We will definitely go back again!

Home Comforts

Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars






View all my reviews

So I really like this book. It is HUGE and intimidating, so it took me awhile to start reading it. Andrew's grandparents got this for us for Christmas one year. This lady is seriously smart-- lawyer, professor, and homemaker. I recommend this book to everyone. There are a lot of things I don't know how to do around our home-- this is a good resource to learn how to do things the right way.

Anyways, there's a part that I think is hilarious. She's talking about food short cuts:

" Nonetheless, there are times when you would be foolish not to use a mix. perhaps a domestic emergency occurs. Perhaps cupcakes must be brought to school tomorrow morning, but when you stop at the market on your way home from work, you cannot remember whether you have baking powder, cream of tartar, baking soda, nutmeg, cake flour, chocolate, or vanilla on your shelf, or you want to go through the "five items or fewer" line. So you buy the mix. Only a glutton for punishment would do otherwise. I have a hard time imagining emergency pancakes, but stranger things have happened." (pg. 46, Home Comforts: The Art & Science of Keeping House, Cherly Medelson)

Maybe I've been reading this for too long, but the last part cracks me up. What stranger things have happened?! I love that phrase. Andrew and I use it all the time now.

Christmas 2010...better late than never.

So, these pictures are out of order, but they are all about Christmas break! We did a LOT of sledding over the break. My family has a tradition of building sled runs in our back yard. It's a blast! We had a runs with jumps and turns-- we loved it. Andrew helped put some of these runs together-- he did a great job!

Andrew's pride and joy.

Heather's 20th birthday! Woohoo! No more teenager for her.

This picture represents the countless hours the men were working on a puzzle.

We also went up to Milwaukee for Christmas Eve, another family tradition. Here we are playing a game called Celebrities-- very fun.

The fam. It was so sad when the break ended. Great memories.

No more excuses!

So my long-term teaching job is over, so I no longer have an excuse for not posting on our blog! We just had a wonderful weekend up in Minnesota to visit family, and I didn't take any pictures! I even remembered to bring my camera. So here's a picture of my family. And unfortunately, Minnesota doesn't quite look like that right now. Nat, Alex, and Heather were sadly not there. My Aunt Jinelle and Aunt Pam came up to visit! We went and saw my cousin's newest addition to their family-- cute little baby Aaron-- up in Minneapolis.

Funnies

Here are a few gems from school:

"URGH! School is so boring! Everything is so boring! Even Heaven is boring-- my uncle told me in a dream!"

"Sorry Mrs. Lowe, I just can't focus. It's the hormones."

I'll get pictures up soon! I'm just charging my camera batteries! :)

Don't give up on our blog yet!

Wow, I just realized that I haven't blogged for TWO MONTHS! I am such a slacker. Life has been good for us here in Iowa City. We just got a snow storm, and unfortunately, we did not have a 2 hour delay. I am a permanent sub for a 5th grade teacher until the beginning of March (I started December 1). It is getting easier-- the first few weeks were not so good. It's good to remember what it feels like the be a teacher again. There are definitely rewarding moments. Fifth grade is very different from 3rd grade I'm discovering, full of 5th grade romances, Bath and Body Works, Justin Bieber...

Andrew just started yesterday with his SECOND semester of medical school. He survived a whole semester! He really is enjoying it, and I'm very glad. We're very happy here.

Christmas break was amazingly good-- I'll blog about that later with pictures. My whole family was able to be home, and we made a lot of wonderful memories.

More to come!