Baby time!

Hey everyone! We are thrilled to announce that we're expecting our second baby in September! I'm 12 weeks along tomorrow, and we completely thankful for this baby. We've been waiting for him/her for a while now! Jude is very excited to be a big brother, and today he asked me if he could "hold the baby now?" It's so hard to explain to a 2-year-old why the baby can't come out! My official due date is Sept 18th, so it's gonna be a warm Texas summer for me =).

Praise the Lord!

Iron Chef, water, and other exciting events...

Well, yes, we're still around. We took a big break from blogging, again. Sorry.

Anyway, here's a quick update (if anyone even still reads this blog) of what we've been up to in the past month or so...

My sister came and stayed with us for most of January. It felt right to have all three of us in Austin! A.J. is loving his job, and doing well at it...and looking quite happy as you can see. We had a great time with Leah. She learned how to speak "Jude" and was awesome to have around.

Jude turned 2!!! His birthday was January 21st, but his party was the 24th. Here they are eating pizza (at Jude's request)... His cousins and his two best friends in Austin were at the party!

This is a picture of him getting ready for bed on his actual birthday.

Troy grew, and shaved some facial hair. He shaved the beard before the...ick...mustache. Can you say creepy? I think I only let him keep it for two days or so....


Last weekend we had an iron chef party with our best Austin friends, the Franklins. This was the winning dish...made by three teenage boys. Chicken and chorizo paella. WOW! It was awesome. I recommend playing iron chef with your friends anytime you want to have a good dinner!



Friday night, Troy went to a ping pong club (don't ask) in Austin, so Jude and I had a picnic and watched part of Cars. We had a good time. Later, Jude mentioned that our friend's motorcycle (parked at our house) wasn't talking....maybe too much Cars?

Last night, we went hiking in the greenbelt (every certain percentage of land in Austin must remain undeveloped..this one happens to have Barton Creek running through it). We had a great time, and were amazed at the amount of water there. Last summer, there was absolutely NO water in the same spot! Can you believe it? It seems that our drought is over. Praise God.

Also in the Greenbelt.

Oh yeah! And for all you pinnochle players out there...here's the highlight of my (Stevi's) Christmas break (aside from celebrating our Savior coming to the world):
Yes...it's true 1000 ACES!!!! I don't think it gets better than that. I've never seen or heard of it done. I've had 1500 pinnochle twice, but I never thought this would ever happen...ever.

October and November

We're back in the world of blogging, so here are a few pictures from the past couple of months. We've been busy this fall, although it's no excuse for not updating our blog. I'll go ahead and blame it on Troy...he doesn't like to upload pictures. Of course I could go ahead and do it, but then what would my excuse be?

One notable thing I should mention: Just after our last post about Ginger (our dog who escapes), Gladys (our uptight, tormented, stress-ball of a dog) started seeing an imaginary object. She barks at it, bites at it, and chases it until the point of exhaustion. We don't see it, and neither does her veterinarian, who has seen her in action. So we let her do it. We've named her friend "Sparkles," which we decided sounds nicer than "Demon" or "Hallucination" or something. We could have diagnostic testing done, or go to a doggy specialist (our vet told us she was a candidate for that!), but we've decided to let Sparkles occupy Gladys as long as the vet thinks she's otherwise well. As far as he could tell, it's not a tumor or cataracts or anything obvious. So, she's till spending several hours a day snapping and spinning circles in the yard, barking continually, and running a brown spot in our grass. I suppose the up side is that we don't have to play fetch with her!

Here are some pictures from the past couple of months:Hay ride at a nearby pumpkin patch.



Jude was a mechanic for Halloween. This is actually A.J.'s old costume from the 80's!

In mid-November, Troy attended a conference in Dallas, and we stayed with my cousin and his wife. We love living near enough to them that we can keep in touch!

These are some leaves Jude found on their street.

The three of us..also on their street. We accidentally positioned ourselves in front of someone's truck. At least it's a Chevy.


Jude rolling his new suitcase. He rolled it through all the airports on the way to Spokane for Thanksgiving.
My cousin Beth and her son, Noah. We don't get to see them very often, so it was fun to spend a day with them.
Beth's son Zack, and Jude playing on the dog beds. Why did we ever buy a crib?


Josiah and Jude playing in our toy boxes. I'm not sure who thought of it first.

The following are pictures from Thanksgiving week. We had 32 family members in Spokane on my mom's side, so not everyone is pictured, but here are a few of the fun ones!




Leah, A.J. and me..this is our best attempt at looking "pouty." I think A.J. wins.

Leah and Jude.
My mom and her two sisters! They are RARELY in the same room! (Not because they don't like each other, just because they live on opposite sides of the country!)

Leah and me..right before the Lion King!!! It was amazing!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

Ginger..aka "Houdini"

Well, we have two dogs, but Ginger (left) is the one who gives us the most trouble. She's almost always sweet and cuddly, but she has an adventurous streak in her, and doesn't like to stay in the yard. No...she doesn't dig out. She's much more creative than that. When we lived in Kentucky, she used to just plain JUMP our four-foot fence. We were often surprised to find her on the front porch, on the neighbor's front porch, under the carport as we pulled up, or in the neighbor's yard.

Naturally we were excited to move into a place with an eight-foot fence, thinking we might not be worried about her all the time. But, soon after we moved in, we began having neighbors knock on our door, with Ginger happily wiggling under their arm or at their feet, who would inform us that she had been locked in their garage, or had been "roaming" the street in front of our house. We were bewildered, and usually would find some small hole between the gate and the fence, but sometimes, there would be no explanation at all.

The good thing about Ginger is that she always goes straight to people. She's been to garage sales, on walks, to cook-outs, etc. She never just takes off down the highway. We've always had reasonable confidence that sooner or later she'd be returned by that new, exciting person she'd been dying to meet.

So once again this week, she disappeared. It was her most impressive feat yet. But, you think, how could it be more impressive than jumping a four-foot fence? Well....one evening this week, we noticed that her face was roughed up in a few places. She was missing some fur, and had some red spots around her snout. We thought maybe she'd been attempting an escape, but we were happy to see she'd failed, since she was still in the yard. The next day, Troy was mowing the lawn and found that there was a broken slat in our gate...not the bottom, or the top, just a hole right out of the middle. We're pretty sure the face injury had come from trying to jump through this hole, about two feet off the ground (and only about 4 inches wide). So, Troy nailed a board onto the back of the gate to keep her in for the time being. But, the next day when he called them inside at 11:30 for the night, she was nowhere to be found. He went out and saw that the HALF of the new board was missing. I don't know what she did, since the hole was two feet off the ground and she's only about 8 inches tall. But, she did away with half of the board, and managed to wedge her round little self through the slit that was, in the end, only about three inches wide...I would've loved to see that process.

So she was gone, and we went to bed after driving once around the neighborhood. The next day, in usual form, she was returned by our neighbor who said he had found her in his garage as he was leaving for work (I don't know why she insists on getting out just to spend the night in someone's garage). So she's back, but we assume, not for long!

First Haircut

Hi everyone. I know it's been a while. This past month has been great fun, and busy as always. A.J. moved to Austin (as I mentioned before) and he now resides in a duplex with one of his new co-workers. I think the guitar incident may have had something to do with the fact he didn't want to stay with us long... We're happy to have him here. He's getting to know his new students and enjoying it, though becoming a teacher has him VERY busy, and he's a bit overwhelmed at times (any teachers out there want to holla back?).

This month has been eventful. Jude and I took a trip to Spokane to visit family and go to my ten-year reunion...yes it's true. The reunion was more fun than I expected, and seeing old friends proved to be a generally good experience. Jude and I had lots of fun with my family, though Jude was fed entirely too many m&ms and cheetos (thank you Grandpa). We enjoyed nice weather, and saw some dear friends. The airplane rides were less than wonderful, but we survived. Troy has been working like a crazy person to get the school-year started. We're officially off and running, and things have been good. I am back to teaching dance this year, teaching a Bible class to 8th grade girls, and also getting to have a Bible study in our home with some of the 9th grade girls who were in my Bible class last year. I am glad because I think I would miss them too much if I didn't get to see them.

Veritas, our school, has an official 6-man football team, and has already launched the season with a scrimmage. In true Texas style, the scrimmage was attended by most everyone in the Veritas community, complete with a burger cook-out, t-shirt sales, and 107 degree weather. It was a sweaty-good time.

Last weekend we helped Troy's older sister and her family move out of their house, which is now sold, and we are gearing up for a major garage sale this weekend. Time to clean out the attic...which, by-the-way, isn't as fun as it sounds because it feels like appoximatley 120 degrees in our attic all the time in the summer. So much for energy efficiency.

And, probably most importantly, Jude got his first haircut. By me. While he ate his breakfast. It used to look like this:
well, after Troy styled it. But as you can see, he had a bit of a rat-tail thing going. I don't know why it grew that way, but it did. So I pretty much chopped that off, but I don't have an after picture yet. For now, here are a few other pictures I do have:
Jude playing in the mud a the lake...which is mostly mud due to our current drought.

Jude, Joey and Kate in the hammock in our yard.
A.J. mid-haircut. It was a sad, strange day.

A.J. post-haircut. Mixed feelings to say the least.


The only "funny" face Jude knows how to make.

Jude and Guitars

Well, A.J. (Stevi's brother) has officially moved to Austin, and is currently staying with us. He arrived on Wednesday after three days of driving, and "locking his keys in his car" (translated: putting them in his back pocket until he found them an hour and a half later) only once. He's happy to be here and we're happy to have him. Last night he was playing some nice calm guitar melodies for Jude and me as we were getting Jude ready for bed. Jude ran out to see him, diaperless. I think the music must've been overly relaxing, because Jude stood there and looked at A.J. sitting on the floor, and just let it flow. He peed all over A.J.'s guitar. Sadly, A.J. was starled, shouted "Whoa!", which in turn startled Jude and he started crying. It was pretty traumatic for everyone. I mean, A.J. had never had his guitar peed on before, and Jude was afraid to go near the guitar for a while after that. I think he'll come around though. Thanks for the serenade, A.J.!

Jude loves fireworks