After-Christmas Fun

The day after Christmas, the ladies went to tea (Sandi, Lani, Jenn, Annette, Patty, JoAnn, and Mary):

Brack and I also went to a pet store and Brack fell in love with a miniature schnauzer puppy:

Christmas 2008

We had Christmas Eve over at Lani's house with Dad's side of the family. Brack and I scored a prime spot on the couch:

Brack, Jenn, Sandi, and Bill:

The girl cousins (Katie, Lauren, Jenn, and Meredith):

The next day we went over to Grandma and Grandpa's and had another feast. Grandpa was in charge of the ham:

It's a...

GIRL! Well, at least the doctor is saying she is about 90 percent sure at this point. We will have the high-powered ultrasound in a few weeks and we should be able to confirm for sure then.

Here is a cool spinal cord shot:

Here is a shot taken looking up at the baby. As you can tell, there are two legs with nothing in between them:

Our First Christmas Tree

Since we will be in L.A. over the holidays, we decided to get a real Christmas tree for the apartment. Here we are taking it home from the tree lot:

Brack carrying it into the apartment:

My favorite part is putting the angel on top of the tree:

Lakers Game

Brack and I were able to go to a Lakers game last week when they played the Suns. We had great seats, saw a few celebrities, and the Lakers won!

14 Week Doctor Appointment

We went to our second doctor appointment yesterday, and everything is still going well. My protein and sugar levels are fine, and we got to hear the baby's heartbeat for the first time! It was 145, which is right where it is supposed to be. We also had a quick ultrasound and we saw the baby moving around again. It is already 8 cm from the head to the "rump" and was measuring 13 weeks, 6 days. Our next appointment is December 29, and we are hoping we will be able to find out whether it is a boy or a girl, although it may be a little early still. We have some ultrasound pictures that we will try to scan and post soon.

Thanksgiving 2008

We went to Alabama for a week to spend time with Brack's family and had a wonderful time! We played golf one day with Pop and Rick.

We also hit the bowling alley one night for arcade games and bowling.

Palm Springs Pt. 2

We stayed at the Westin Mission Hills and had a view of the golf course.

Here are some shots of the pool area.

Hiking in Palm Springs

It's a little late, but here are some pictures of our weekend in Palm Springs. We started off with a hike up in the mountains, taking a cable car up.

The view was amazing!

Huntington Library

Last weekend, Brack's mom, Paula, was in town visiting for Brack's birthday. We went to the Huntington Library and the gardens there were beautiful. Here we are at the Chinese garden:

Brack spent some time trying to catch a frog.

Paula is enjoying the waterfall in the Jungle Garden:

9 to 5

On Sunday evening, Brack and I saw the new musical 9 to 5, which is headed to Broadway in the spring. We had a great time and the show was amazing.

Las Vegas

Last weekend we met Mom and Dad in Las Vegas for the night. We stayed at the new Palazzo hotel.

The lobby:

Our fabulous room:

We had an entire sitting area in our hotel room.

Brack and Jenn outside of the Wynn hotel:

In front of Tao restaurant:

Inside the restaurant:

USC v. Ohio State

On Saturday, USC had its first home game against Ohio State. Here we are outside of the bookstore:

We tried out Dad's new grill at our tailgate (John, Angie, Jim, Dad, Mom, and Julie).

The band before the game:

USC's first touchdown of the game:

Wintergreen Resort

We stayed at the Wintergreen Resort in the Blue Ridge Mountains.





The scenery in the mornings was simply beautiful.

Here we are before dinner at one of the resort's restaurants:

The resort also had lots of activities, like mini golf...

canoeing...

...and fishing!