Has it really been 10 years?!?!

I went home last week for my 10-year high school reunion. I can't believe it has been 10 years!!



It was fun to see a few of my favorite friends from high school. This is Holly (right) and Courtney (middle). Courtney has been my best friend since we were about 12 and Holly lived down the street from me from 5th grade on and we were dear friends as soon as we met in elementary school.
Both are awesome women today and we still keep in touch! On Saturday morning we took a tour of the high school to see all of the changes that have been made since we walked the halls. Courtney and Holly and I made sure to take pictures next to all of the grizzlies (our mascot) on the campus.

On Saturday night there was a banquet downtown in one of the nice hotels. It was a very small turn out but it was still a good time. This is Terry, a friend who has not changed ONE BIT! Neither has Kelsey! And she has a 12 week old. She was always this gorgeous...I promise...

And of course the Cravens twins. This is Jennie. Kate took the picture.

I have to say...the food left something to be desired. This is the "ribeye" steak we were served. I've never had a ribeye smothered in mushroom gravy...have you? Haha!! Hysterical.And some quality time with family was had all weekend. Here's me with my 16-year old brother, Grant. Can you believe he's 16?! He drives and everything. Sometimes I wish he was still wearing diapers.
I don't know how to describe what happened my last night home. I invited a couple of old band geek friends over for some pancakes for dinner (because that's what we did in high school) and one of them actually brought a few people I NEVER hung out with in high school. It was sort of surreal to have them in my house drinking beer with my family. After a while, they noticed we owned "rockband" on Wii and so we all played...for about 2 hours.
The two on the left are 2 guys that never hung out in my circle of friends in high school. We always knew who each other were but we just didn't socialize. I think I had a silly crush on Dustin (baseball cap) since about 3rd grade. But I'm pretty sure every girl in high school did too. Sooo silly.

So that was the trip home. I drove our car down to Arkansas with Valarie, whose parents live in Fayetteville. It was really hard to leave the Blazer. Jason had it when we met and it's been ours for years. We went on our first date in that car, fell in love in that car, moved to Ohio as newlyweds in that car, and moved to New York in that car. We have so many dear memories with it and it will be missed. :(

Now back in NYC in our new apartment, which is slowly but surely coming together, we embarked on a project: making a headboard for our bed.


HEADBOARD!! Our first headboard. And we made it ourselves!! This is the two pieces of plywood bracketed together and covered in foam and batting.
Then we found this awesome Donna Karan fabric that we got WAY on sale and covered the foam and stapled it down. Sew a few buttons on and...VOILA! In one day!


We're pretty proud of it!We should go on one of those design shows! We are a pretty great team.

We are in full baby freak out mode (looking at strollers...counting change...turning off all the lights in the house to save money...the usual) and having fun finding out what people buy for babies in NYC. More on that later...:)

Hello again from NYC! It's been awhile!
A couple of things have come up since our last post:

First- we moved!! As in last tuesday. We now live on the isle of Manhattan. "Even farther than Harlem to northern Manhattan and maintain. Get off at 181st and take the escalator..." We are now in Washington Heights on Fort Washington Ave. Our new apartment is GORGEOUS and we couldn't be happier! There's so much more space than our last apartment. We sort of don't know how to handle it. We've been here for almost a week and are still feeling so grateful and kind of decadent.

Here's a couple of views of the living room:

The bathroom. Completely new everything. No more moldy blue shower!! All of the tiling is new too!! And there's a little shelf at the back of the shower that the cats like to sit on.

This is our bedroom. We painted the walls a nice light grey (copied directly from Mrs. Juli Goss' new bedroom color).

This is the extra bedroom (much bigger than the extra bedroom at our last apartment). There are also closets in every room!! This is a HUGE thing! We had 2 closets total in our last place and neither of them was in our bedroom. There are 5 closets in this apt!

This is part of the entry hallway, viewed from the front door, standing next to the kitchen. Living room on the left, our bedroom straight ahead.

Here is the kitchen. We put all of our dishes away and found out there was EXTRA cabinet space. We can't believe it!!

And here is the entry hallway viewed standing next to the living room. That's the front door of the apartment. It leads out to the elevator. We're on the 5th floor.

Second-here is the reason for the elevator, bigger extra bedroom, and new apartment...

Yup...we're expecting our first baby!!!!!!! We found out at the end of May. I'm due Feb. 1 and we're beyond excited.

We couldn't believe it at first so we took 7 pregnancy tests. That's right...7. All were positive. Jason called Jim and had this conversation:

Jason: So how reliable are home pregnancy tests?

Jim:

Jason: STOP IT!

Jim: (louder)

Jason: (Silence)

Guess it's really happening!!

We are so thankful that this is happening to us. We also have no idea how we are going to do it. But God shows us every day that he has got us covered. We are sure this is all in His plan. We are blessed to have family supporting us from afar and friends, who have become family, supporting us closer to home. This is going to be a great ride and we would greatly appreciate your prayers.

We are signing off for now but we'll be back soon. Cyber-space needs to know every detail of our lives, after all!:)

Sam and Jason