In my upper 20's!

I am officially in my upper 20's, not mid 20's. Life is good and I am blessed in so many ways. We celebrated with family when we were home for Christmas and then for Happy Hour with some friends. Ryan made my birth "day" very special for me! He gave me a Willow Tree Pregnant lady and the Willow Tree nativity.

We are EXPECTING!!!

Wow, that felt really good to say considering we have been keeping this secret to ourselves since Thanksgiving Day....Yes it is true, we are having a baby!!!!

He/she is the size of a bean when we shared the news with our families!! "He" is now approximately 9 weeks old and according to babycenter.com he has a heart beat already!! This is amazing! We go to our first doctors appointment January 3rd, so will have more details then.

As you can tell by the amount of "!!!!" in the paragraph above we are every excited! We shared the baby news (as you can see in the picture) with our families over Christmas and now we can share the news with the world. Please keep "her" in your prayers as she is growing quickly!

Christmas with our families in Wisconsin!

We had a wonderful time visiting with our families over Christmas. We had a busy 4 days but had enough time to visit with our immediate familes and both sides of our extended families. Lots of good food and laughter. We are so blessed to have them in our lives.

Our Christmas Tree

Yep, it's a big ole tree that we cut down at Eckerdts Farm in IL and doesn't it look fantastic in our house!?...except where Ryan gave it a trimming because he was nervous that the tree would catch on fire and we would be part of the statistic of houses that burnt down or people that died. Well, we never made the stats and that is good!

Winter snow in St. Louis

It came down as ice and sleet and then finally the beautiful snow. It came down so hard schools and work were shut down. Ryan and I enjoyed a hot breakfast on a weekday which rarely happens and a walk in the neighborhood as we were "snowed in"...plus, we shoveled for the first time..."way exciting for a new home owner." The weather remains in the lower 30's so the snow is not melting, so we are able to enjoy the white snow instead of the dirty brown snow. Ryan is traveling this weekend for meetings for the National Youth Gathering coming this summer. A weekend to myself...

Finding the perfect tree

It is our tradition to go to Eckers Farm in IL is cut down our Christmas tree. This year my sister Jenni and family (Chris, Noah and Annika) were visiting from Wisconsin so they joined us for tree cutting.

Noah, who is three, thought every tree was "just right" and was a great help in finding the "perfect tree." We cut it down and now it stands in our living room (gosh it is bigger in the house than in the fields). When the visitors left, we decorated the house and tree and slept by the tree on the pull out couch that night, which is our tradition once the tree is lit.

We also went to Our Lady of the Snows to see the Christmas lights. It was so cute, Noah and Annika got dressed up as angels at one of the booths. How adorable! We had a fun filled day of hiking, picnicking (65 degree day), to tree hunting and light seeing!