the baby kicks

On Monday, we had a surprise visitor. Nicole's cousin, Jubal, came into town and stayed with us on his way to audition for an opera. Before picking him up at Union Station, we decided to get dinner in Chinatown! We found a neat little restaurant. The place was really busy and the waitresses were constantly shouting in Chinese. Nicole was delighted by the General Tso's Chicken. She said it was the best she had ever eaten. The restaurant also served fantastic noodles. The best part of the whole experience was that the chinese food didn't make us feel sick afterwards. Clayton was delighted with the atmosphere of hanging ducks in the window and the street view of the chef preparing fresh dumplings. For those who visit DC, the place is a real treat.

The next morning Nicole took Jubal to the opera audition and then off to the airport. On the way they got stuck in DC rush hour traffic. While Jubal was practicing his beautiful audition music with the car window open, another car with loud rap music playing pulled up right next to them. It was quite a contrast. We hope he did well on his auditions and wish him luck.

Later on Tuesday Clayton was feeling sick, so he came home early and Nicole nursed him back to health. He was able to stay at school the whole day on Wednsday, but found that he didn't need to stay late on Thursday and Friday. Nicole was enthralled. She came home from babysitting on Thursday to find that Clayton had made her dinner and brought her sunflowers.

Friday Nicole barely made it to her appointment with the doctor for her glucose testing. The test involves drinking something close to a flat orange soda exactly one hour before drawing blood for the test. The test is for diabetes, which she hopefully doesn't develop as this week's pregnacy craving was for toaster strudels. YUM! Then she rushed back home for another babysitting appointment. Clayton took a final on Friday and did pretty well and then went right back into preparing for the next finals. After Thanksgiving, he will be pretty busy studying for finals.

This week Nicole has started to really feel the baby kicking. So Saturday Clayton spent some time trying to see or feel the kicking for himself. He may need to wait a little longer before he can feel it. On Monday we will find out the gender of the baby (for real this time) and we will keep you all posted Saturday night we went to a couple's house to play a board game. It was called 7 wonders and Nicole liked it because she won. Clayton only likes games when you can cheat. This must be why he likes hockey so much.

Today we went to church and afterwards we got set apart for our callings. Our congratulations to Mike Burrow on shaving his mustache. What has it been? 25-30 years since he has been mustache free?
We are both looking forward to the nice break next week and we are so excited to see Nicole's family for Thanksgiving.

Hope you all have a wonderful week.
Peace and Blessings!