Baby Poll

We find out if the baby is a boy or girl on December 7. I'm curious to see what our friends and family think we're having. So, if you have a minute take the poll and we'll see who's right a week from tomorrow. Alison's still set on having a baby sister and Ben and I just don't have any idea any more.

Finally Decorating!

We weren't able to decorate the house last year because we were in the middle of moving to Virginia. I was afraid the same would happen this year since we were yet again moving. So I was so thankful we were able to move early and asked to set up the tree as soon as possible. Kent and I worked on the tree while Ben made his world famous pizza and then we all watched Ben put the ornaments after dinner. Ben taught Alison the secret art of putting up ornaments and even helped her put the topper on.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm so thankful that Elizabeth and Kent are here! This is our 3rd year to spend Thanksgiving together and I love the traditions we've started. Each year we add things and I think it's only going to get more fun as the years go on. We started the day watching the Macy's Day Parade. For some reason Alison absolutely would not keep her clothes on today. My favorite part of the morning was when she asked Granddad to get her one of the balloons from the parade.Then she asked Granddad to come play and she suckered him into play dress up. She even got him to get in her tiny little play house. I spared Kent the picture but it was one of the best things I've ever seen.We cooked all day long. I made a couple of things yesterday but we had so many dishes that needed to be cooked at different temps for different times, it just took a lot of time.
Nana took a little break to color with Alison on the kitchen floor. We had appetizers for lunch and then the guys played some Wii.
We had a family from church over for dinner. They have 3 really sweet kids and it was fun to see Alison playing with them. They took her outside for awhile and "explored the woods" and had their own little parade.
I was curious to see what Alison would like and dislike at dinner. She devoured the ham and left everything else untouched. We picked up a ham last minute when we invited the Williams' over just to ensure we had enough food. If anyone's wondering, Smithfield ham is amazing and all it's cracked up to be. I don't even really care for ham and I loved it. Her second favorite was the ice cream we had with the pie...she had 3 bowls just to let us know how much she really liked it.
We had a great day and I have so much to be thankful for. One thing I'm thankful for a the moment is that I get to keep enjoying the wonderful food we made today for days to come. I thought everything would be gone with having an extra 5 people here, but I was very wrong. We sent food home with the Williams' and still have a refrigerator full of food. I guess next year we'll have to invite more families over.


Did I mention we moved a couple of days ago? The move went smoothly and we were blessed with lots of help. Alison is completely in love with our backyard. The cats are pretty excited about being able to watch the birds and squirrels too.
We're thankful the Lord provided us with this house and we were able to move in so quickly. I'm also very thankful that we can decorate for Christmas this year and enjoy the advent season.

Our new home

Today's moving day! I was up early thinking of all the things that needed to be done today and I'm hoping things go smoothly. When we moved here I packed every last detail in our house, but for this move I left a lot of things out that I figured I can just throw in the car and drive over. I'm just hoping I didn't do that with too many things. I spent the day in the house yesterday cleaning and we moved over our clothes. Alison can't get over the yard. She keeps asking to go out and garden-she really just wants to go roll around in the leaves. I really love this house and I can't wait to get settled in.

Baby Maggie!

I finally got to see my new niece! I think she's beautiful and I can't wait to meet her!

A little housing update

We are going to be moving into a house! It's been amazing to see God's hand in our housing journey and his provisions for our family never end. Once we found out we were expecting baby #2 we started searching for a 3 bedroom house to rent. We have plenty of space where we are now, but only 2 bedrooms. While it's completely do-able, I was worried about my little light sleeper having to share a room with a teething baby. I found this house
online awhile ago and fell in love with it. There are only a few options to choose from here in Smithfield and everything we were finding was way out in the country, too small or too expensive. This house was a rare find and is perfect for us. It's in a nice neighborhood (actually it's right behind where we are now), it has 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, a 2 car garage with lots of storage, an extra room for Ben's music stuff and our favorite part: a large yard on a cul-de-sac. When we initially called on the house they told us they wouldn't allow pets and that we had to make a certain amount of money to qualify (Ben was like $50 away from the cut off). When the door closed on our face to the house we moved on and kept looking, but nothing was coming up. Last week Ben found the same house on another website that had it listed at a lower price and they had dropped all of their stipulations. When Ben called again they were now eager for us to apply and asked when we could come look at the property. We finally heard this morning that our application was accepted out of a compition of 3 other people. That in itself is a miracle. Considering what our credit currently looks like because all of our Michigan house stuff just hit it, it really is amazing that they chose us. We are really excited to be in a house again and I can't wait to set up the nursery for the baby. A family from church just asked us if they could give us their daughter's old furniture, so Alison will also get a new room. It's going to be a stressful month, trying to figure out timing of moving and the holiday's but I think it's going to be worth it.

This is a little video of Alison singing. The first "song" is the end of the song we sing to her before bedtime and then the ABC's. I love the way she says 'w'.

Chef Alison

Daddy let Chef Alison help make dinner tonight. Helping cook has become one of her favorite things to do and she always asks to break the eggs. I'm not brave enough to let her try, but stirring and dumping ingredients in a bowl are usually safe.
This is just a cute photo from a couple of days ago. I find eating shirtless is much easier than cleaning bibs that she won't keep on anyway. She insisted on wearing her sunglasses upside down all afternoon. I don't think she could really see anything, but she thought she was pretty funny.

Happy Halloween!

Well, yet again our day didn't go as planned, but we still had a great time. We planned on heading back to the pumpkin patch to finally get our pumpkin to carve and roast the seeds. They were only open during Alison's nap time, so when it looked like rain as we were walking out the door we decided to forgo the patch.
We rested up and then headed out to do some trick-or-treating. Our sweet neighbor asked us to come by so she could see Alison and then we headed downtown. All of the stores set up stands and passed out candy. We were shocked how many people were there. It was a dreary, but hot (in the 80's) day and Ben had read that a lot of parents were panicked about flu spreading through the candy. We need to learn that people in this town really participate in things going on. We made one last stop on the way home to our friends the Mitzel's house.
The night didn't end as planned either. Ben said he felt like Alison was warm, but I kept brushing it off. She's cutting her 2 year molars and for goodness sakes, she was wearing an Elmo costume all evening in 80 degree weather. It ended up that she did have a fever and it kept going up even after medicine. She slept great and acted fine, but I was up all night checking on her and giving her more medicine. Apparently we needed to be one of those freaked out parents. She woke up this morning, still with a fever, but asking for candy out of her Elmo basket.