Maternity Photo Shoot

A few weeks ago, our friend Jennifer took some maternity pictures for us.  She did a great job!  Her photography business is called Robin Grace Photography, and you can check it out Here.

We had a great time.  I’ll have a real baby update soon, but for now, we hope you enjoy these!

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These last two are ones I had extra fun editing.

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We had a great time taking these pictures!  Thanks, Jennifer!

Oh–and if you’re interested in some of the Photoshop actions I used to edit these pictures, you can get them FREE Here.

We’re so excited for Josiah to get here!  I have big news for the next update!

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–Michael and Staci

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A Year Ago-ish Today – By M

I feel like I can’t say this phrase enough, and I know I’ll just say it more and more as time goes on, but “time flies!”  It’s hard to believe that it has already been over a year that we began the process of building our house!  About a week ago, last year, we signed all the paper work and got everything all picked out, and our house started the preliminary stages of being built.

This was all we had… Smiles and an empty lot!

Over the summer (which was, by far, the craziest summer of my life) we saw our house go up and have been so blessed to be in our first and brand new home!

And here we are a year later…

We have now been in our new house for nearly 8 months!  And I remember when it felt like we would never be moved in!

God has blessed us so much!   And we couldn’t be more thankful!  We have been given an awesome and beautiful new house! And a little one on the way!  I don’t think we’ve posted anything with his new bedroom that we have been working on, so I’ll go ahead and post a little teaser pic (I know Staci will want to do a full post sometime later on).

And now we’re only a little over 2 months out from our son’s due date!  ….so speaking of crazy summers…. 🙂

That’s more or less what’s new with us… What has been going on with you over this past year?  I know a lot of you are having babies too!  I think Staci and I counted up about 14, or so, couples of our friends who are expecting or have just had their first baby this year!  So Crazy!  So what’s going on in your neck of the woods?

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– M

Best of 2011 – By M

Ok… I know that this is, like, 3 weeks too late, but I figured, Hey why not?!

Besides, there were a whole lot of awesome things to highlight in the year of 2011.  So, here goes!

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Favorite Once-in-a-life-time Event:  Skydiving with my wife

This is something that has been on my to-do list since I was in middle school, but I never thought I would have the opportunity to actually go do it.  The craziest part for me was watching Staci fall out of the plane with her instructor right before me and knowing that this was “Go time!”  Check out THIS post that we wrote about it afterward.  And here are a couple of pictures from it.

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Favorite Youth Trip:  California for the Youth 2011 Conference

Although Staci and I had plenty of incredible experiences with our students this year, I think our trip to Cali takes the cake.  The conference was great, the kids were fun, and the sites were awesome!  Can’t beat it for 2011.

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Favorite New Toy: iPad 2

Yeah, it’s pretty awesome!  But I waste too much time on it… but I am getting better!

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Favorite Movie (and Book Series): Harry Potter 7.2 (Harry Potter Series)

I know this is a completely nerdy pick, but you have to admit, the way that the HP story culminates into HP 7.2 is absolutely incredible.  And it makes it even better if you’ve read the books.  I don’t care what anyone says… if you can’t see the story of true love and self-sacrifice through this epic story then you’re crazy!

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Favorite New (or New-to-me) Album(s): Gungor – Beautiful Things, NEEDTOBREATHE – The Reckoning, Owl City – All Things Bright and Beautiful

This is a toughy because we got tons of great music this year, but these are definitely ones that find their way onto my iPod more often than not!  And if you want to see more great music from 2011 check out THIS post.  We also had our best Christmas music of 2011 HERE.

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Favorite Accomplishment: Building a covered porch for a woman in need for our HS Mission trip, U.M. Army

I’ve dabbled in renovations and remodeling with my in-laws, but never have I built something from the ground up.  I blogged more about the whole week of work on THIS post, check it out.

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Favorite New-to-me TV Show: Parenthood

Ok, I have to preface this one by saying, I find a hard time recommending this show because of certain content in this show.  However, I love that this show is themed around family and how important it is to have family in your life no matter how dysfunctional.  I have to admit that this show has put a lump in my throat many-a-time.

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Favorite Concert: David Crowder*Band (House of Blues Houston, TX)

DC*B has been my favorite band since high school.  David Crowder has had a huge impact on me as a musician and worship leader.  I love their music and their concerts are loads of fun.  I’m heart-broken that they’re breaking up and that this was their last tour together, but it is awesome for them to go out on their own terms and make it solid!

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Favorite Event: Catalyst Dallas

Catalyst is an incredible Christian leadership conference that began in Atlanta.  They now have a small version they do on the West Coast in California as well as in the mid-west in Dallas.  Great speakers, musicians, entertainment, and more!  Someday I hope to make it out to the Atlanta conference!  You can check out a post we wrote about it HERE.

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Favorite Purchase: Buying a house

‘Nough said…  There is nothing like having your own home, and it’s even more special to pick out what you like, and watch the building phase from the ground up!  It’s been an awesome journey for Staci and me to be in our new home.

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Favorite Overall Moment: Finding Out We’re Pregnant!

Many of you have read through our pregnancy story and know that this has been a long and difficult journey for the two of us.  So seeing the positive on the pregnancy test was such an incredible thing!  And it’s been fun getting all prepared for the little one to arrive this summer.

Then…

Now…

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Those are my tops for the year of 2011!  I’m sure there are plenty more things I could go on about, but I’ll keep things short there.

What are some of your faves from 2011?

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–M

Caption Please

I was going through our pictures and found this.  It was taken before Easter.

Caption please.

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–Staci

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December in a Nutshell

Now that December has come and gone, I guess I should finally get to posting about it.  Needless to say, it was a BUSY month!  I’m sure you can relate.  Instead of trying to go back and do an update for each individual part of December, I’m going to just write one big update with little glimpses of everything that went on in December.  As always, feel free to just look at the pictures.  🙂

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Gingerbread House Decorating

Michael and I decided to buy a gingerbread house to decorate.  I hadn’t made one in years (my Meme used to help us make them out of graham crackers and milk cartons), and Michael had never made one.  We were super excited until we started making it.  It just would NOT stay together!  We even tried blow drying it.  By the end of our decorating, it would have made Hansel and Gretel cry.  Let’s just say we’re pretty convinced that the box lies.  (We found out later that some of our friends hot glue theirs together before they decorate it.  If we ever try this again, we’ll be “borrowing” their method.)

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Road to Bethlehem

The first weekend of December, our church put on a huge event called Road to Bethlehem.  Our gym was transformed into the village of Bethlehem, around the time that Jesus was born.  We had people of all ages helping and taking part, from a four month old baby, to elderly men and women, and all ages of families and people in between.  People from all over the community were invited to come and “meet a beggar and the King on the Road to Bethlehem”.

Guests would enter our gym and find themselves in the Bethlehem marketplace, complete with weavers, brick makers, a wedding procession and feast, food stands, a beggar and a thief, and plenty more village people.  Michael and I were the inn keepers.  We all stayed in character, and the guests were able to ask questions and interact with us.  At the end of the “road”, they came to the manger scene with Baby Jesus.  I loved being able to be a part of something like this.

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Festival of Lights at Moody Gardens

The next weekend, Michael and I went to Houston to visit my cousin, Paul, and his wife, Elizabeth, again.  We had a great time!  On Friday night, we went to Moody Gardens in Galveston to see the Festival of Lights.  All four of us have been to the Festival of Lights in Chickasha, OK, which is absolutely incredible.  So we weren’t expecting a ton from this Festival.  However, we were pleasantly surprised.  Even though there were some very strange displays (zoo scenes, pirates, blooming flowers, and lots and lots of ocean scenes), it was really nice!

We stayed around and hung out on Saturday, and Paul even taught Michael how to take someone’s blood pressure.  He was pretty excited.  (Paul is in med school, and you can read his story here: http://storyofawhitecoat.wordpress.com/)  It was a GREAT weekend!  We’re so thankful to have family/friends so close!

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Anniversary Trip in Dallas

For our second anniversary, I planned a trip to Dallas.  (We’ve decided to take turns planning each year and then plan our multiples of 5 together.)  I did the “name your own price” thing on Priceline, and once again I was VERY pleased.  If you’ve never tried this, try it!  You pick your destination, star rating, and price, and then you see if anyone accepts your bid.  We stayed at the Grand Hyatt in Dallas for $60 (regularly around $230)!  And we stayed at the Hyatt Regency the next night for $50 (regularly over $100)!  Anyway, I love using this feature.

Since we have Fridays off, we drove up to Dallas on Thursday night and checked into our hotel.  It was really nice!

The next morning, we slept in (after waking up at sunrise), grabbed some breakfast at Panera Bread, and went to see “The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader”.  The theater was empty when we got there, and only two ladies came during the movie.  It was fantastic!  We’d just finished reading the book, and we loved the movie even more than the book.  If you didn’t get a chance to see it, be sure to rent it when it comes out!

We went to check in at our new hotel, and we got a free upgrade to the Deluxe King room just by asking about free upgrades!

After we dropped our stuff off, we went to downtown Grapevine to eat dinner at a local Italian place called Napoli’s.  Grapevine was decorated so nice!  I wish we’d had more time to wander around, but we were on a mission.

This was the part of the trip I was most excited about:  ICE! at the Gaylord Texan.  My cousin had told me about this, and I knew that Michael would love it.  Every year, the Gaylord Texan brings in ice sculptors from Japan to make an ice display.  They use colored ice, and some of the ice even has lights inside of it.  It was so cold inside that they issued everyone parkas!  But the ice sculptures were definitely worth it.  This year was “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, which is one of Michael’s favorite movies.  It was incredible!

After we went through ICE!, we walked around the hotel and looked at all of the decorations.  It was absolutely gorgeous.

We both loved seeing ICE! and exploring the Gaylord Texan.  It had been a perfect day!

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Christmas with Mom’s Side of the Fam

The next morning, we went to my uncle’s house to have Christmas with my Mom’s side of the family.  I was so happy that it worked out for us to be there, since we didn’t think we’d be able to make it up for Christmas this year.  The adults play “Dirty Santa”, and the gifts were hilarious, as usual.  We also took a new family picture, complete with Maddison.  I loved being with my family, even for a few hours.

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Kayla and Sean’s Wedding

To complete our Dallas trip, we went to two of our close friends’ wedding.  Kayla and I have been friends since we were on the same hall our freshman year, and I think Michael and Sean have been friends since freshman year too.  Sean was one of our ushers.  Needless to say, we were SO happy for them.  The wedding was beautiful, and it was great to see some of our college friends.

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Christmas with Michael’s Mom and Sister

Michael’s mom and sister, Sarah, came to visit for a couple of days before Christmas.  Sarah lives in New York, and we hadn’t seen her since last Christmas.  We were SO happy that they were able to come visit!  We went to dinner, opened presents, and played lots of games, including the BluRay games on Beauty and the Beast (I’ve said this before, but they are so much fun!).  Even though we wished they could have stayed longer (and that Michael’s dad could have come too), it was sooo good to see them!

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Christmas Eve

Our church has three Christmas Eve services, and this year we chose to go to the 6:00 and 11:00 services.  For the 6:00 service, we sat with one of the families that we’ve gotten close to since we’ve been here.  I’m so thankful for their family!  The service was wonderful, and the candle-lighting was beautiful.  Afterwards, we went to the associate pastor’s house for tamales and chicken tortilla soup.  Yum!  We helped run sound for the 11:00 service.

When we got home from the 11:00 service, it was already Christmas (technically), so we decided to go ahead and open our gifts from each other.  We’d decided that we just wanted to do stockings from each other, and then plan something special instead of getting traditional gifts.  For my big gift/event, Michael is taking me sky diving!!  I’m SOOO excited!  It’s something on “my list” (which I plan to post sometime soon), and I can’t wait to go!  I planned a mini vacation to Destin, FL for us for this spring.  (We may or may not be taking it though, because we’ve decided to start saving for a house.)

It was fun opening our gifts and starting our “just the two of us” Christmas early.

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“Just the Two of Us” Christmas

This was our third Christmas since we’ve been married, but our first to celebrate “just the two of us”.  Even though we both missed our families a lot, there was something sweet about just being together for Christmas day.  Since we were up way past midnight, we slept in late and then had a big breakfast.  We played some games, watched a few of our new movies, did laundry (we had to pack for our ski trip), and just relaxed.  It wasn’t like any other Christmas, but it was really nice.  That evening, I made a big dinner.  We’d bought a pork tenderloin from one of our youth, and we saved it for Christmas.  I also made red skinned potatoes, green beans and carrots, bread, and my apple roll-up.  (I took some pics for recipe posts that I’ll post sometime.) It was yummy!  It turned out to be a wonderful Christmas at home!

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We left for our ski trip a couple of days later, and I’ll write about that in another post.  Thanks for catching up on the December happenings with us!

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–Staci

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Q for You:  What was your favorite thing you did in December?  Did you stay at home or visit family for Christmas?

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2 Years, 1 Mission

I just realized that I didn’t post a picture of Michael and me at Halloween.  We wore the same costumes as last year since we already had them, didn’t have to buy anything, and no one here had seen us last year.

I’m pretty sure I’ve already mentioned this, but we are HUGE “24” fans.  So last year, I made us CTU (Counter Terrorist Unit — the Federal Agents that are in 24) badges complete with photos of us and an FBI seal.  We wore black pants and white shirts and carried toy guns.  It was a lot of fun!  And this year we reused those same costumes.

2 Years, 1 Mission:  Operation CTU Agent.

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This Year:

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Last Year:

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So did you dress up for Halloween?  Or if you have kids, what did they dress as?

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–Staci

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