Home from VT

It's official! Gabe is now a Master at the Fine Art of Creative Writing! Gabe graduated from Goddard College in Vermont this past weekend, receiving his MFA in Creative Writing. We had a wonderful time. It was great to finally meet the professors and friends Gabe has been talking about for the last two years. Here are some (a lot) of pictures from our time there, along with some explanations:

In the airport, just hanging out:

Ellis is a FANTASTIC traveler! Our doctor told us to bring along Benadryl in case Ellis was bothered by the pressure changes. I bought some but found once I was home that it says not to give it to children under the age of 4. So because I didn't know what the proper dosage would be for her, I left it home and crossed my fingers. She did splendidly traveling all day---without the help of medicine---thank goodness!

Here is Ellis' travel bed (thanks Amanda :) all set up. We

brought along her monitor and she slept great every night.

Our hotel was laughably lackluster, as shown by the "art" hanging in our room. This photograph is exactly what the actual picture looked like-- a faded or overexposed, enlarged picture of a mushroom.

On Saturday we toured the capitol of Montpelier, as well as a

Maple Syrup farm. You'll start to notice a theme developing...

Gabe in his element:

Your first clue to the theme (and we used our sling SOOOO much--thank you, Amy :):

Second clue (also it's us in front of their capitol building):

Have any guesses? Here is a MAJOR clue:

I call this one "Four Steeples" --see them all?:

Ummm...Have you figured it out yet?

Here is Ellis in the car waiting patiently for the rain to stop so we could tour the Maple Syrup farm:

Gabe in a barn during our self-guided "tour" of the Maple Syrup farm (the rain didn't stop):

Maple syrup man...a little creepy...

A barn window full of different syrups:

As part of graduation, Gabe had to do a 10ish minute long

public reading of an excerpt from his book. Here he is just

before or just after, I can't remember which. It was fun to

hear people come up to Gabe on campus later throughout the

weekend and give him great feedback. I was one proud wifey.

WE WENT TO BEN & JERRY'S!!! It was a delicious place to be.

We saw where they make the ice-cream and learned all about the

company's history and such.

Gabe and the peanut:

The theme continues:

Still sleeping...

At least Gabe and I had fun...

Here's our family photo at the entrance to campus, and yes, she's sleeping:

A funny face for her Daddio:

This is Gabe addressing one of his advisors during his graduation speech. Each graduate speaks for 2-3 minutes during the ceremony. It was very personal and fun to listen to. Of course I cried when Gabe was up:

The graduate with his wife and {sleeping} baby:

Heading home:

I took a zillion pictures of the BEAUTIFUL campus, so I'll either post them tomorrow or put them up on Flickr. And despite how much Ellis slept through our sight-seeing, she was awake to experience much of our weekend away. We must have really worn her out because she slept through all three of our flights yesterday, slept on the drive home from the airport, came home and slept until 7pm--ate---slept until 9pm---ate---slept until 5 am---ate---slept until 7am---ate---slept...and she's sleeping again as I write this!

It was a great first family trip!

Did you think it would ever happen?

Helloooooooooo, everybody!!! Alrighty roo, I have about 30 minutes before going to Gabe's writing class.  What's that, you ask?  Be patient, it's all in this blog.  There's no reason you should know yet, because as you may have noticed, it's been ages since I last blogged anything very informative.

So I am currently in the very comfortable second trimester of my pregnancy.  Amen for that.  Literally overnight (a few weeks ago, now) I woke up back to (almost) my normal self.  Rather than becoming an incoherent blob around 3:00, I now make it all the way to 9 pm.  I no longer require 18 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period, and standing up from the sofa does not cause me to need an immediate nap.  This is much easier to live with.  PLUS, my constant state of being is queasy?  No sir, not anymore.  After three months of it, I actually got pretty used to always feeling like if I thought about it too much I could throw up at any given moment.  So when I woke up that glorious day feeling fine again, I have to say, I was not just a little worried that something was wrong.  I've now come to accept and embrace this not nauseous feeling.

We have our next dr's appointment on Tuesday.  Say a little (or big) prayer that everything is on track and developing normally.  If we have an ultrasound, we should be able to find out the gender---but I'm not sure we'll have another u.s. until November.  Yes.  We are finding out if Bobbie is a boy or girl.  And I'm very excited to find out. I don't know how people can wait.

Since my last respectable blog, Tim and Kristi have been back to visit twice and since moved to Vancouver.  We were very happy to spend time with them in Aurora, as well as on a trip to Indiana...more on that later.

Here are Maci and Kya at Sonya and Kendal's the night we had dinner over there during T and K's first visit.  
Chrissie and Krisit:

This was FOREVER ago! For whatever reason, since I've been prego, I have taken an interest in cooking!  Who would have though?!  This was one of my first big endeavors, a wild rice and wild mushroom soup with garlic butter.  It was delicious and I was quite proud of how similar my soup looked to the picture.  At the stage of cooking skill I am currently at, I generally prefer to cook recipes that show me what the outcome should look like.  Very helpful.
Magazine photo on left, my soup on right:

Gabe is teaching his final creative writing class tonight, a requirement for grad school.  I think it's been eight weeks.  I took this on the first Wednesday.  Notice how bright it was at 7 pm.  No longer.  It's pitch black out now, and I need to leave soon.  He does a fantastic job, and even someone like me (who isn't all that interested in creative writing) has enjoyed and benefitted from his creativity and ideas.  
Daly basking:
Some student projects:

This was Tate's first birthday party.  Notice the four heads facing away from the camera in the second photo (Dylan, Maci, Kya, Conner)---all related to each other, either sibling or cousin.  Anyway, don't they all have amazing hair?  I get a little jealous every time I see them :)

This was on the last day of our family trip to Plymouth, IN.  Gabe's grandparents, Vic and MaryLou celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary, and we all got to be there to share it with them.  It was a fantastic weekend.  I got to meet a lot of Gabe's relatives for the first time.   We had a really nice time.   Here is the family band, Gabe, Kristi and Janae---rocking that church youth building like it's never been rocked before.  On this last day, Gabe's cousin Kristi Kavicky put together a surprise baby shower for us, which was so thoughtful.  We felt very loved.



Here is Kristi's little boy, Jacob being rolled in a tire by his dad, Eric.  There were all sorts of giggles coming from the rolling tire.
I will post some belly progress pictures soon...