First Finals

Clayton took his Criminal Law and Contracts finals this week. He has two more to go. Thanks for your prayers.  He has two more and then he gets to take a few weeks off. Yay!

Nicole had a work out buddy this week. It was nice. Nicole is feeling a lot better and more able to function as human being. She is even doing the dishes now, without a mask. She takes great care of Clayton while he studies. At twenty-four weeks Nicole can still fit in most of her clothes, but her friends tell her that she is hardly showing at all.

On Sunday, we had a couple, who both attend law school with Clayton, the Sessions, over for dinner. We had lots of fun with them. It was very therapeutic to talk about finals and freaking out about law school. Its nice to know he's not the only one freaking out. We made a yummy dish we learned from Nicole's Cousin. Clayton made some delicious fudge sauce to go with our ice cream sundaes. The Sessions said it was the yummiest fudge sauce.

We will see you all soon. We are excited to spend Christmas and New Years with you.

С наступаюшем празником
("with the coming holidays" a traditional Russian holiday greeting)

It's a Boy!

This week we found out, for sure this time, that the baby is a BOY! The best part about the ultra-sound was that we got to watch our baby kick, yawn, punch, and infuriate the tech by hiding. The tech said that the baby was really stubborn. Baby must take after Clayton, because Nicole is not stubborn at all.

On Thursday, Clayton turned in his final paper and completed the last day of class. He has two weeks of intense finals and then a break. We are looking forward to visiting family in Kentucky and Utah. Clayton really wants to dust off his ice skates and play hockey.

Not much else happened this week, and we thought you all would rather look at baby pics.

Baby's Arm and Face

Look at that foot!

Baby Mouth Yawning

Baby Mouth and Nose

Peace and Blessings

Thanksgiving in Kentucky (it's that friendly!)

Monday of last week we were supposed to find out the gender of the baby. But due to some scheduling difficulties the imaging center would not see Nicole until this Friday. Apparently they thought Nicole had canceled the appointment. This new appointment is actually more convenient for Clayton. He will be able to come to the ultrasound and finally see the baby in action. Last night marked the first time Clayton felt the baby kick. It was very exciting.

Tuesday Nicole and Clayton traveled from the Baltimore airport to the Indianapolis Airport. It took, what should have been a one hour drive to Baltimore, 2 hours to reach the airport because of holiday travel. Thankfully Catherine, Nicole's cousin, had the foresight to leave an hour earlier than Nicole thought necessary. We made our flight just in time and arrived in Indianapolis to drive 2 more hours to Louisville. Thanks to David for going to such lengths to get us there for Thanksgiving. When we arrived we greeted Brittany, Reagan, Roxanne and Nicole's Grandparents, Fred and Kay. Fred is on a strict organic diet of sorts that allows him to eat mostly raw foods. We stayed up late chatting and got out salted nuts and chocolate to snack on. It was so sad to see Fred watch everyone else eating with out him. We felt like we were smoking in front of a drug addict (because we all know how it feels to smoke in front of drug addicts.)

Wednesday was a pretty casual day of hanging out with Nicole's family. We went to the park with Brittany and Reagan and Clayton taught them how to do some Tai Chi he picked up on YouTube. Clayton is trying to find more creative ways to make himself exercise. We just recieved a book about how to do all the Tai Chi moves. He likes it because it too involves meditation. We'll see if he goes back to yoga, but for now he's all about Tai Chi.

That night Roxanne was sick so Nicole volunteered to make dinner. She made Beef Dorito Casserole, one of her favorite dishes since childhood. Unfortunately this meal caused her to vomit and feel nauseated all night. It was a rough job to wake up on Thursday morning.

David had of course assigned everyone a thanksgiving task so that all would go smoothly for dinner. Nicole and Clayton's task was to make 2 peacan pies, but Grandma Kay thought that 3 would be better for the volume of people we had coming. Because of Fred's strict diet, we had one regular butter ball turkey and one organic coconut oil turkey. Clayton is a fan of organic turkey's so he was glad to help Fred eat his turkey. Fred was so happy to eat food that wasn't raw spinach and there was finally a big smile on his face.

Friday Nicole, Amanda, Roxanne and Brittany went to go see the first part of Breaking Dawn. It was Brittany's birthday wish. Afterwords Clayton and Reagan started a bonfire in the backyard. (The pile of wood scraps has been there for over two years.) Brittany and the girls made a rendition of Harry Potter butter beer to serve to everyone around the fire. By the time the fire had died down, Clayton had only singed his hand a bit. David decided to make a dutch oven peach cobbler to cook over the coals. While we were waiting for the cobbler to cool we played games and opened presents for Brittany's party. Finally it was time to eat the cobbler and David was so excited. Apparently, so was Reagan because he was the first to open the lid...and dump all the lid ashes into the cobbler. The result was a bit charcoal-ly, but no one was harmed.

Saturday David put all the boys to work putting up Christmas decorations. David was tasked to get all their old baby stuff for us out of the attic so why not get all the Christmas decorations out too? This is Clayton's most favorite thing about Christmas. He loves decorations almost as much as he loves exercising (NOT). Nicole will be hard pressed to get him to put lights on their own home one day. (He secretly had fun.)

The baby stuff included a crib and a "wonda-chair." This wonderful chair includes an assortment of attachments that will turn your chair into a fancy stroller, a car seat, a high chair, a baby bassanet, and an infant stroller. It was pretty amazing that it all fit inside the van, David was excited to get rid of it.

Sunday Roxanne made us delicious chocolate croissants to send us on our way. David and Roxanne gave us a mini-van. We've only been marred 2 years and we're already in a mini-van, but we are delighted to have a car that will be able to fit the baby too. The van drove smoothly and without a hitch. Thank you for all the preparations that went in to getting the car ready for us. We got in only an hour later than it usually takes due to holiday traffic and today we are adjusting to civilian life. Thank you for having us for Thanksgiving and Thanks for the car. Hope you all had a happy Holiday!

Peace and Blessings!

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!