Christmas with the Westermanns

Ian and I had an eye opening experience today. We went to the Gaver Tree Farm to get our Christmas tree, and it felt a lot like we were the Griswold's. Except they had plenty of saws for us to use and our tree fits in the house. It just feels like we are entering a new phase in life....driving the station wagon to the Christmas tree farm, listening to Christmas carols. Next year we will have a 9 month old baby along with us...strange to us now, but I'm sure it will feel completely normal by then. We are looking forward to it. Also really looking to coming home in a few short weeks to see everyone! Merry Christmas!!

Thanksgiving '09

Happy belated thanksgiving! We have been on the go and finally back home. As you can see we were no where close to home (WI or MD) this year. We drove down to Destin, FL to spend time with Ian's grandpa and his siblings, who drove from WI. It was such a fun time and nice to catch up and spend some good quality time together. Of course we made a trip to the beach, it wasn't swimsuit weather though, only in the 60's, but still beautiful. While we were there Julia took some pregnancy/family photos of us which will be up shortly, so stay tuned.

Surprise!

I came home from work today to find this surprise! Ian had put together 2/3 of the furniture we bought for the room! I was going to have a blank before picture of the nursery to show you, but I guess not! So this is the stripped room with the first pieces of furniture in it. We got our furniture from IKEA for many reasons, so we weren't going for elegant, refined, expensive looks by any means. In fact, most of the furniture we've purchased in our marriage has been from IKEA. I will sleep well at night knowing that the crib was given an 'A' rating by our baby book, and the furniture is solid wood, no/little MDF, which was important to me. For the health/eco friendly/safety reasons, I am happy that we didn't have to sell a body part to afford decent nursery furniture!

Mom's visit

As many of you know my mom came to visit last weekend, we had a blast! We started out at my work on Friday morning taking a sneak peek at baby W. I think mom got a good picture for her frame. We headed down to Shenandoah to find lots of fog, but some good scenery in between. We hiked to the top of the mountain where we took the picture above (my 25 week picture) and drove down Skyline drive (not excluding seeing bears!) to Luray. We had an awesome dinner after a long day of driving and hiking at the Artisan Grill in Luray. The next day we went to the Luray Caverns, which were absolutely incredible! The 1st picture is of Dream Lake, which is an illusion, its a large lake only about 10 inches deep, and it projects an image of the ceiling. Its so real looking you sometimes can't even tell the water is there! We finished out the weekend doing lots of baby stuff: registering and buying furniture! We had a lot of fun, and plenty of good food and good times as always.