Happy Birthday Bill

It's Bill's birthday today, and it is also the Oliver Wendall Holmes mustache contest at school. He decided he would participate this year but opted for quality over quantity. So may I present to you a series of bearded birthday pictures.
1st, we have the full on beard, or shall we say a healthy neck beard. Don't hold it against him, it gets better. It's the closest I'll get to rugged mountain man, which is quite all right with me.
Next, we have completion of the beard trim.........with what could be interpreted as "I mean business" facial hair. Or, maybe a little french, "you killed my father, prepare to die".
And finally, we have the sultry shot. Bill may or may not have used some performance-enhancing substances. But he's not here to talk about the past. The picture is a little Blue Steel, no?

Anyway, to the point of the post. Happy Birthday Bill!! 27 never looked so good...or sultry.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Since we are back from the holidays, I figured I should probably update. So I'll grace you with one of our activities while visiting family.
You know L!ttle People B!g World? Well they are located just outside of Portland. I convinced Bill (which took a lot of convincing) that we should go check out their farm, despite being closed for the season. What a good husband, he appeased me and we drove down and snapped this picture at the road leading to their farm. I was mildly embarrassed of our touristy actions and rushed everyone back into the car after the picture was taken. However, just as we were driving away, another family unabashedly stopped in front to the sign to snap a picture. I wasn't quite so embarrassed after that. Can we say awesome! We should have hit up "The L!ttle Chocolatiers" store while we were in SLC (as that is another TLC show, also about dwarfs, (and no, our tourist destinations are not based on the locations of little people reality shows))

2010

I realize this post is a little premature for the new year, but we will be traveling, so I thought I would get this over with sooner than later.
Are you all ready for the new year? I think we are ready for a little adventure. We are excited for 2010 because:

We are expecting in April. It's a boy!
Bill graduates in June!
Bill takes the bar in July.
We move to Washington DC.
Bill starts a real job in the fall.

Could we have planned anymore life changing events for this next year? In hind sight, I don't think this could have worked out any better.


*of course hind sight is always 20/20.

Me and Finals

Guess what time it is? It finals time, and it's my birthday. Boo on the finals. Hurray for being old. Anyway, we were able to leave the books at home for a bit and meet my dad for dinner, who was in town for meetings. Good thing I'm making my birthday last for at least a week to make up for it's bad timing. Here's to being another year older, and the last year I have to share my day with finals!

Bill, me*, Dad.

*birthday girls aren't supposed to have such atrocious hair. I blame it on the finals.

Blogo

I walked into the bookstore on campus today and there was a huge line and it smelled like hair. Do you know why? Rod Bl@g0jevich was doing a book signing. I tried to get a closer look at his hair but he had a ton of media and a security detail surrounding him. What I saw though, was intense.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. We drove down to DC to meet my sister and her husband and then we all drove down to Williamsburg to celebrate turkey day with true colonials. Should I tell you what I'm grateful for?
My husband
Our great family
Car making it to Virginia and back (phew)

and the list could go on and on, you get it though, I'm feel very thankful for all of my many blessings.So from one colonial to another, Happy Thanksgiving to all and to all a good night.

Here is my sister and her husband. You know who she is, she looks just like me, only 5 inches taller. In fact, while looking through some of the pictures, I had to think about who was who.
We had a rousing game of pre-turkey football. I think they were planning the play "turkey stop drop and roll"

Here we are in retaliation. Play was called "the Miracle Whip". Can you see that Bill was kind of laughing at my play? Don't mock, it threw the other team for a turkey stupor.
My don't we look festive in fall colors?

Here was the meal, it was delicious, especially for being made in our hotel kitchen. We also had some mighty fine turkey day bowling, you know, to burn off dinner. After which, everyone but me hit the midnight sales at the outlet malls. I made up for it in the morning. Christmas shopping.....done!

Since we were in Williamsburg, he headed over to Jamestown, the first successful English colony, settled in 1607, 13 years before the Mayflower touched down in Plymouth. The actual Jamestown settlement is quite small, and a corner of it has been consumed by the James river. But here is a church that stood in the fort. It isn't original (it burned down multiple times), but the tower in the back is the oldest part, dating back to the 18th century.

Here we have Pocahontas. Don't worry, the John Smith statue wasn't too far from her. He was a murderer, did you know that?

Here is a portion of the fort, with a replica of the barracks built for the first colonials.

We also hit up Colonial Williamsburg (tourist attraction in Williamsburg), which is where many of the Jamestown colonist spread out to in order to start farms etc. Here we found a million tourist, the college of William and Mary, a drum and fife band and of course, colonials everywhere.

We came, we saw, and we conquered our colonial past.
Happy Thanksgiving.

Oprah

You are leaving Chicago? How could you?