It's been a while!

So we've decided to ditch Facebook and come back to the good ol' blog.  Nothing against Facebook, but we tend to waste WAY too much time on it and found we used it more for just "spying" in on other people's lives.  We really don't want to lose the art of good old fashioned communication (talking face to face, or even on the telephone), but still want to be able to share with you, whom we love that are far away.  There are many wonderful things about all the technology we have today, and the ease of communication, but at the same time, we don't want to live a life so heavily dependent on convenience.  Our main goal in all of this is to be more intentional in our relationships with all of you!

Since we've been on Facebook in the meantime, I won't try to fill in from our last post (2009!!!).  I suppose with Ruby's arrival any day now and the holidays quickly approaching, this is a great time to start fresh.

Love you all!

Austin's Birthday!

Yesterday was my (Adam) nephew Austin's 14th birthday! Yikes-14 already! I wasn't even quite 14 yet myself when he was born! Geesh! He has grown up really fast. We got the chance to celebrate his birthday up in Muncie last week at the best place on earth...Pizza King!

Many Family Visits!

Adam has had many of his family in town recently to visit. His dad was here one weekend, followed by his sister Brandi, and two of her kids, Ella(3) and Osias(1) the next weekend.

Mike's 50th Birthday!

ok, so I know it's been a crazy long time, but here are some delayed pictures from Mike(Abby's dad)'s 50th Birthday party! We threw him a surprise party at Squealers Barbeque!

New Years Eve

We got together with Brandon and Lisa Rigg, Clay, and Nate and Laura Ridderman at the Ridderman's to ring in the New Year. The evening was filled with board games and Wii playing as well as us nearly missing the ball dropping! Laura made it down with 4 seconds to spare. It was quite fun. We played a new (to us) card game called "BANG," which we found very fun, even though Clay won. Also, Laura, Abby and I had a lot of fun playing "Boomblox" for the Wii. This game provided many laughs late into the night! Below are a couple of pictures before we left, one serious and one goofy. If you look closely, you can see Purdue basketball coach Matt Painter made an appearance for the second picture!

The Last 3 months plus!

Hey friends- Sorry about such a long gap between blogs, but I finally made myself sit down to post. So, the following is the last few months in pictures with some captions.... Enjoy!

Clockwise from top: Rooster as a "rooster" for Halloween; our new dining table we got
in October; Abby and I on the "Incline" in Pittsburgh in October visiting Melissa, Eric,
and the boys; Eric, Nolan, and baby Simon.

The next five are just some selected photos from Christmas Eve and Christmas morning:

Ellis stuffing his face!

followed by Jake doing the same!

everyone around the table...

it was so good to see Heather and the boys! They're so grown up!


Abby holding our "rooster" ornament present from Rooster

Abby showing off one of her gifts from Megan

Happy Birthday Nana!

Tuesday, September 16th was Nana's birthday! Isn't she beautiful!

We actually celebrated on the previous Friday because Susan was in town. Dad grilled steaks, delicious, and Mom ordered a Heavenly Sweets cake (same place we got our wedding cake), which was devoured very quickly. Oh man, that stuff is soooooo good! Fun times!