It's a girl.

getting more ready everyday

OK - I totally get that people are not that interested in the baby clothes that I am gathering for my baby. But being a first time parent is so exciting and the clothes make it so much more real that I love to share them. It's exciting to think that we will have a little one that will soon fit into these clothes.

Our friends Nate and Melissa gave this to us. It has cute little dogs up the right side of it and I love it.

It even has little dog feet:

Since we went to the Blazer game last Friday night, the baby started moving so I wanted to have something memorable about that night and got this cute baby sleeper. I love it! I guess he/she will be a Portland TrailBlazer fan.

quilt and a pair of new converse shoes

Here's my latest quilt I made and gave to Kristin. It's a flannel Christmas quilt. I'm making more flannel quilts! I loved it and it is so comfortable. Here's the print on the back of it.

Some of the front blocks had writing on them:

Lap quilt. Each individual block is 6 inches by 6 inches.

When I gave Kristin her quilt, so had brought me a baby gift!! I loved it. They are so cute. Black converse shoes.

rehearsal dinner for team jk

Last night we had the rehearsal dinner for Kyle and Jenny at the Venetian in downtown Hillsboro. My mom did a great job choosing a good, classy location and made sure we had wonderful, yummy food! It was great.

Stacey's cousin Sam and Uncle Bill.

Stacey's cousin Cam and girlfriend Stephanie.

Me and Michael.

The stars of the hour: Jenny and Kyle. They looked so happy.

Christmas at the Graves'

Michael worked hard at putting up the lights outside. I want lights on the top of our house but so far we haven't really figured out how to do that safely and Michael walking around the roof doesn't seem like a good idea to either of us.

Our beautiful wreath from the Festival of the Trees.

Michael cut our tree and then put all the ornaments and lights up. It looks great babe!

Yes, we already have enough stockings for 5 children.

We put garland around out stairwell and I love it! And here's this years' Christmas quilt.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

finding the perfect tree

Yesterday we headed out to Thorton's Treeland. It's a family operated Christmas Tree farm in Vancouver. They have three generations working there and it couldn't be a better place to take the family (even if your child is still inside you). We've gone there every year since we moved here and it's become a tradition.

A small part of the tree farm:

Michael standing next to our tree of choice. It was a very cold morning!

Getting the gloves on.

Last year, we picked a tree that had long branches at the bottom and was rather difficult for Michael to saw. This year we found this one that had no branches at the bottom and it was much easier and Michael stayed a lot cleaner!

In the car, ready to head home and decorate our house.

our first gift

It was really exciting to get a baby gift, although we totally don't expect any. I was surprised at work and given something fun.

The spoons each weigh a couple pounds, so they might just be for decoration but they are sooooo cute!! Thanks to Chris and Chris Dudley for our first baby gift!!

starting do to the firsts

With a baby coming, we're about to do all the 'firsts.' It's pretty exciting for us. Here's our first baby purchase.

Since our baby will be 5 months next October, we thought this was fun.

Since we had something that talked about mummy love, we needed something that talked about daddy love, too.

We don't know the sex yet, so, so far, everything is unisex.

Fall Pics

Michael's Early Birthday Gift

Michael got new ski boots for his birthday this year. They cost a pretty penny but the last ones he got lasted him 15 years and he skis in them all winter. He likes them!! It's so fun to give your spouse a nice gift for them to enjoy. We've skipped out on giving each other gifts for the last two years of our marriage, and this year we got serious about gift giving! Since my birthday is on May 9th which is Mother's Day this year and my due date is May 14th (which could end up being 5 days early) I keep telling Michael that I will need a big gift on that day! I wonder what he will get me. Here he is with his boots.

They were a little tight at first.

Lookin' good.

The boots are "walkable" which means with one flick of a strap, they become easier to walk in. It was one of the things that sold me on them when we heard about them at the patrol banquet. So when Michael comes up on a scene, he can just pull the strap and be able to walk to the patient. Michael has mastered the skiers walk, especially inside a building and with patients, so I don't know if he'll even use this feature, but I (the non-skier) thought it was cool.

And they are off as fast as they are on.

Happy 35th birthday babe. I LOVE YOU.

We're expecting!

Michael and I are excited to share that we are expecting out first little one on May 14th, 2010!! We will post some pictures soon.

Jenny's Shower

Kyle (my bro) is getting married to a wonderful girl, Jenny. Last Sunday, I got to throw her a bridal shower at my house. It was a blast and fun to meet Jenny's friends. We did the typical shower games, ate some yummy appetizers, had some cake, and opened gifts. It was fun.

Top Row: Bernice (Jenny's mom), Ann (my mom), me

Sitting: Jenny, Nana (Jenny's grandma)

Mary's Shower

I feel really luck to have such good friends. Erika (second from top right) and Melissa (bottom right) threw Mary (second from top left) a baby shower at my house on Saturday. We had about 15 girls come and got to shower Mary with lots of love. The shower was really fun! We all (the book club girls) stayed and talked afterwards for a while. Mary is expecting her first baby boy in mid-December and Sheila (top far right) just had a baby girl, Abby, who was 4 weeks old that day. Congratulations Mary!!

Thinkin' about my adventure that took me to Africa.

We haven’t been up too much lately, which is why I haven’t blogged in a while. Today I was trying to think about something to blog about and thought about sharing my Africa story. A lot of people who read my blog won’t know it and it’s something that I’d like to rewrite and put it in a file because I’m sure someday I’ll forget it. So, here it is.

I was at a Youth Specialties convention somewhere in California and decided to sponsor a Compassion kid. I wanted to choose one in Central America because I had traveled there a lot and because I knew I would travel there in the future. I went up to the booth and noticed a girl from Tanzania. It was one of those really odd moments where there were probably 50 pictures of kids on the table and all I saw was her. I kept thinking, no, this isn’t right, I shouldn’t sponsor her, I want to visit the child I sponsor and I can’t see myself ever going to Africa. I’m a 'Mexico Mission Trip' kind of a girl. But, oddly, I didn’t really see any of the other kids on the table. It was all about the Tanzania girl. I walked away very frustrated. I decided not to pick the girl from Tanzania and just forget the whole experience. Maybe if she was still there the last day of the event, I could settle for her, but I wasn’t interested in choosing a child who I would never visit.

I really frustrated over this at the time because I had decided to sponsor a compassion kid so that I wouldn’t give the devil a foothold in my life. That’s just a fancy way of saying that I wanted children, wasn’t married, wasn’t dating anyone, had ZERO prospects, and didn’t want to get sucked in the “I want a family and can’t have it” type of attitude. So, my response to the depressing state that I was in, was to make lemonade out of lemons and sponsor a compassion child who I could correspond with and visit occasionally. (Of course this was 8 years before I met my wonderful husband.)

The Tanzania girl's packet was there the next day at the Compassion booth and she was still the only one that I noticed on the table. I still remember the picture of her. It’s so clear in my head. So, I threw what I wanted out the window and picked her packet up (not very willingly) and told the Compassion person, something like, 'I guess I’ll take this one.' I opened her packet and found out that her name was Judith and started writing letters to her and praying for her and Tanzania. They weren’t especially great prayers because I didn’t have a lot of time to pray for a child that I never thought that I would meet, so they were something like, "I pray for Judith and Tanzania". Amen.

You guessed it, I ended up in Tanzania a few years later. Some relatives of one of the families that I knew at my church were traveling to Tanzania and leaving 8 weeks from the day that I met them. They offered for me to tag along, and I said, no, not interested. 8 weeks is not enough time to prepare for missions/aid of that magnitude. I left them and didn’t expect to see them again. And of course, even without my willingness, everything worked out. 6 weeks before the leaving date, I thought maybe I wanted to go, but really didn’t see that it was possible. So, I thought I’d just check a few things out and see if the doors were closed or open. First, could I afford it? Yes, I had the $2,500 cash so I could send the check the next day. Second, did I have all my shots? Yes, I just had gotten back from Guatemala and it was mostly the same shots only needing to take a few other pills and they were covered by insurance. Third, did I have 3 weeks of vacation? I talked with my boss at the time and he decided I should go and that it wasn’t vacation, therefore they were still going to pay me my paycheck and I didn’t have to use any vacation time for it. So, the next day I sent in the check, got my malaria medication and blocked my work schedule out for those three weeks.

My time in Tanzania with Judith was really amazing (and another story). This time I thought I would just share the journey that got me there. Anyway, it was an interesting time in my life and I just wanted to write it down for memory sake.

Rojo the Llama

This summer I got to meet Rojo the Llama. (Click here to see his website) He is a DoveLewis certified therapy llama. How cool is it that he gets to walk thru children's hospitals! The kids go crazy over him.

He doesn't even spit. He travelers in his owners minivan to visit the sick and the elderly. He is just fantastic! And very well behaved.

Kathy and I with Rojo.

carrie's quilt

One of my best friends Carrie is having her first daughter. I made her my latest quilt. It's a friendship quilt for her and she can give it to her daughter one day if she wants. I based the design off of Proverbs 8 which is called "Lady Wisdom." The proverb talks about God's wisdom being found in the busiest of life (I thought it would be applicable to a new mom.)

Cheetah Conservation Fund

I don’t usually share on my blog a lot about what I do at work but yesterday I had an amazing experience and I wanted to share it with my friends, family, and blog readers.

My boss and I went to a house in Lake Oswego to meet Dr. Laurie Marker. Dr. Laurie is American but has lived the last 19 years in Namibia (just above South Africa) where she manages a staff of 150 people and a land mass of 100,000 acres to keep the Cheetah population from going into extinction. We learned that 100 years ago there were 100,000 Cheetah’s and today there is around 12,000. The main reason for this is that farmers are shooting and killing Cheetah’s because Cheetah’s are eating the farmers livestock. Dr. Laurie has developed a program that trains certain types of Turkish dogs that she raises and then gives away to farmers. These dogs bond with sheep and goats and become somewhat of a mother figure to them and will fight a Cheetah to the death if a Cheetah comes close to one of the livestock. The dogs protect the farmers and then the farmers don’t kill the Cheetahs. She has had huge success with this program and was a remarkable person to meet.

Tainai was the at house for a photo op and we got to see her too. Tainai was born in captivity but her mother only had her, no other cats in the litter. When a mama Cheetah only has 1 baby, the mother abandons the baby because they don't produce enough milk for the 1 to survive. So the Wildlife Safari adopted Tainai and she has become a really beautiful Cheetah. Her handlers treated her with so much ease, respect, and care that I asked if I could pet her, but the answer was a very quick "no." She's still a wild cat and that is not allowed.

For more information on Dr. Laurie and the Cheetah Conservation Fund click here

PIE SEASON!!!

I love to make pies. We made our annual (well, second year) trip to Hood River and picked up 22 pounds of peaches for my pies this year. I can't wait to have one. We'll probably have our first one on Thanksgiving. YUM. The secret I found to freezing pies is to only freeze the inside of the pie (not the crust). Freeze it in the shape of the pie pan, remove the pie from pan after frozen, and then seal it for storage in through the Fall. When you're ready to cook it, put a bottom crust down and then place the frozen pie on top of the crust, add butter, and then put the top crust on, adding sugar. Bake for 30 minutes longer than if the center was thawed.