Chris' Parents Visit

Well the time had finally arrived and my parents got here safe and sound into London Heathrow airport. The week of their visit was pretty full - starting with meeting up in London, a trip to Edinburgh in the middle, and some catching up the following weekend. Following that, they went on their own over to Bath and to meet some friends in Exeter. We had a great time hanging out with them and already they are home in Wisconsin! It is crazy how fast time flies sometimes! One parent visit gone already and we're getting ready for another here with Dave and Kathy coming in a few weeks. Anyways, here's some pictures from the visit that we liked and wanted to share...

Meeting Mom and Dad at King's Cross train station.

Just down the street from the Underground station - the London Tower Bridge.

Out in front of Buckingham Palace for the changing of the guards.

Yep. Saw that. Had to put in the picture of Big Ben!

London was a blast, although we were only there for one day and we walked alllllllll over the place. We ended up skipping dinner that we had planned because we were so tired!

The middle portion of the week was spent up in Scotland. We drove about 6 hours up to Edinburgh and stayed in a hotel in the city. After talking about it, Jen and I think that we like Edinburgh more than we like any other city in Europe. The sights were great, people were welcoming and nice, and overall the city was really fun.

This is actually from in front of the Edinburgh (pronounced Ed-in-boro) Castle.

One of the huge cannons that was given to Scotland to fight off the English...

He stole our camera...won't be messing with us again.

Jen and I hiked up "Arthur's Seat" when mom and dad went on their bus tour up north to Loch Ness. The hike was only about an hour but you could see 360 deg all around and the view was amazing! That's the castle next to my head.

On the way back we had to stop at Rosslynn Chapel. You may know it from the book/movie The Divinci Code. It was a really interesting and neat chapel, although a lot smaller than I had expected. It's located only about 30 minutes south of Edinburgh.

One last picture from walking around in the Bury St. Edmunds garden. I think mom's got some potential in being a photographer!

New 2nd 1st Post

Okay, so we put a first post on this blog and never sent it out to anyone because, well, I just didn't get to it. Blogs are a pretty big commitment if you think about it. I've seen blogs where it seems as though the people don't really have a life, they're just putting pictures up to make it seem like they do, and their real life is sitting on the computer blogging all day. So the pictures kind of serve a secondary purpose of saying, "See! I really do have a life outside of my computer!" So, you can see my (our) reluctance to actually putting a blog together really stems from not wanting to lose out too much time to the computer (I'm being a bit sarcastic overall). Let's be realistic...I read somewhere that the average American spends some ridiculous amount of time computing, like 2 hours per day. Computers are sweet, but so is life. I'm an offender, and I know Jen will make fun of me for mentioning it, but you can see the reluctance to committing to the blog life thus far. But, they do some good things for you, especially when you're so far from family for extended periods of time, and we want our family to know what's going on in our life. Plus we have a baby on the way. So I'm sure we'll get the non-stop, "oooh, send more pictures," and then I can have an easy way to deflect these comments by telling people to look at our blog. Hehe, I'm pretty clever. There is a plan out there somewhere...

For now, we'll start this out with a few pictures that I took of Jen about 2 weeks ago with our new camera. I'd put a picture of the camera on here (cause it's pretty sweet) but I can't figure out how to get the thing to take a picture of itself. Anyways, we figured we needed to take some belly pictures (which some of you probably will have seen by now).

This first one we were going for the "profile" view. Pretty good shot if I do say so myself. Not much to see on the belly front so far, but we're working on it.

I think I like this one the best so far (she didn't know I was taking pictures)...Jen was looking in the mirror and felt like poking the baby. She goes through other variations such as spanking the baby, smacking the baby, and patting the baby.

Told you...

So, that's about what's going on for now. We've been enjoying the pregnancy for the past few months (mostly) and don't have many complaints to mention. Jen, knock on wood, has not gotten any morning sickness to speak of so far, and overall has been feeling good. Lately she's been feeling things "spread and stretch," as she says, but overall things are good. I'm feeling good too in case you were wondering.

That's it for now. Hope you all are well and happy! Dani I hope little Zoe is doing well!!!