Amber's First Trip to PA!

By: Shelsy

I have a lot of things to write about, so I'm going to break it up into a few separate posts over the next few days.

Last week Amber visited PA for the very first time! This will be the first trip of many. :-) We drove, so this was also Amber's first road trip. We were kind of nervous--we didn't know how she'd do. But, she did great! We drove straight through to get there. It took about 20 hours exactly, which is only 2-3 hours longer than it would have normally taken us. Considering we had to stop for about 45 minutes every time she needed to eat, that wasn't too bad!

We were all pretty beat when we finally got there, though. Amber slept most of the drive, and then got really cranky for the last two hours--understandably. Ryan and I didn't sleep at all--and I was cranky for the last several hours. :-) But we got there around 9:30 in the morning and once we all had some naps we had the whole day to spend with mom, Mindy, and Carter, which was really nice!

Speaking of Carter, he's getting so big! He's running all over the place now, becoming very independent. And he and Amber look so much alike, it's crazy! There's no denying they're related. :-) Here are some pictures of him, including a little photo shoot we had with the two of them. So cute!



The reason we headed up to PA was because Ryan's second cousin got married. It just worked out perfectly that the wedding was being held on the bride's family's property about 15 minutes from where my family lives. How convenient! The wedding was beautiful! And Amber got to meet all of her extended family on the Joseph side. Here she is meeting Situ for the first time!

Here's a video of her first slow dance with daddy!



The next day mom and dad had a bunch of family over to their house so that my whole side of the family could meet Amber. Here she is with her great grandparents:

It was so nice to get to see everyone and give them all a chance to see her. :-)

Our last day there was very relaxed. Mindy and Carter came over and we just hung out on the porch with mom pretty much all day. It was wonderful. Gram and Grandpa came over for a little while too, and we just did whatever we felt like, which wasn't much. :-) Here we are going for a little walk in the afternoon:

We got out the little kiddie pool for the kids. Amber loved it! Carter was not too interested in sharing his pool with her, but he was in there long enough for me to get some pictures:



Then it was time to come home. We took it a little slower getting backed and stopped in a hotel halfway. We ended up with a room that had two doubles, so here's Amber all sprawled out on her bed while Ryan and I shared the other one. :-)

I'm sure she liked being able to stretch out after being in the carseat for all those hours. I don't think she really appreciated having to go back into the carseat the next morning either:

When we got home we made sure we didn't go anywhere for about two days so she could recover a little. :-) It was a great visit and I can't wait until we can go back!

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Home For the Holidays

By: Shelsy

Well, it's been a busy few weeks. We got back from Thanksgiving in PA and then it seemed like we turned right around again and headed back! This time we spent a day with the Josephs and celebrated Sam's birthday and exchanged our Christmas gifts. Then we headed up to visit my parents for the rest of the week. We had a really nice time. We got to see a lot of family, a few friends, and just relax and enjoy the holiday.

We did a lot of things differently from our "normal traditions," like having a big Christmas dinner at mom and dad's house. And Mindy and Von hosted a brunch at their house the following Saturday which was really fun (and yummy!). I don't really know what else to say except that we had a great time, ate way too much, got a lot of awesome and really useful stuff--including some adorable stuff for the baby!!

And it's only going to be a few more weeks until I'm headed back up again for my baby shower. I'm glad that the 19 hour drive hasn't been too much of a problem for me--I've been making that trip a lot!

We didn't end up really taking any pictures over Christmas, but here are a few video clips of me with Carter, who was pretty much the center of attention the whole time anyway, this being his first Christmas and all. :-)

UPDATE: Video below updated to HD. If you already watched it, be sure to check it out again in high quality.

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Thanksgiving, etc.

By: Ryan

The lack of an update recently is mostly my fault. Believe it or not, we actually have been busy over the last couple of weeks. :-)

First of all, we went back up North for Thanksgiving. Shelsy and I made the 16 hour drive that turned into 18+ hours what with all the crazy traffic between Richmond and D.C. Not cool. We spent a day at my parents' house before driving with them to Pittsburgh to spend Thanksgiving with family out there.

Lots of driving, but also lots of fun. The food was great, we got to see my cousin and her fiance's new house, and we got to spend time with everyone out in the freezing cold of western PA. :-)

Black Friday shopping (a staple for me) was fairly disappointing this year, but we still went out and got a few things.

After that, we drove back east and stayed with my family for a few more days. One of those days was the shower/party that they all threw for us. That was a lot of fun and we got to hang out with people we haven't seen in a while. Shelsy's mom and Mindy were also able to make it for the party, and they brought little Carter with them, which is always fun. Between playing Mario Party with Tom and Aaron, to getting lots of cool presents from our friends, to playing Balderdash...it was definitely a fun evening. :-)

And now we're back home in warmer weather. It was actually 85 today, which was pretty nice. We've been keeping busy in preparation for the Christmas Bash, an event the church down here does once every three or four years. It's basically a big Christmas event where they sing about and almost make fun of various aspects of the church, etc. Shelsy and I have been involved in the planning of the event for months and it's going to be a lot of fun. It's on Friday night and I'll be sure to post again sharing how it went. :-)

Oh, and tomorrow, we're off to SeaWorld to watch a taping of Wheel of Fortune. You can read about that over on my blog.

So anyway, that's what's been going on down here. Somewhat exciting, I think. Stay tuned for updates!

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Our Visit Back North

By: Ryan

It's been a while since our last update, I know. That's not because we're neglecting the blog or anything...there just hasn't honestly been too much to tell. But now there is. At the beginning of the month, we headed back north for a visit.

We went to Shelsy's parents' first where we got to spend some quality time with little Carter. :-) Her family had a picnic where we got to hang out with most of Shelsy's extended family and their neighbor across the street (I am not making this up) rode over on her riding lawn mower. She called it her four wheeler.

Antyway, we had a good visit up there and then headed down to stay with my family. While there, we got to hang out with Aaron and Tom, Mike and Sarah, Leo and Melissa, and lots of other people. We also went with my family to New York City. They had tickets to a Yankees game, so Shelsy and I got to explore the city while they were there. We went to the Empire State Building, Times Square, and FAO Schwartz where we looked at baby clothes. I also dragged Shelsy with me to B&H and the Fifth Avenue Apple Store. She was slightly bored but I enjoyed it. :-)

So now we're back home in Florida, which is nice because it was cold in Pennsylvania. :-) We had a great visit and look forward to possibly going up again next month.

In other news, Shelsy had a doctor's appointment the other day and we got to hear the baby's heartbeat! That was pretty awesome. :-) She's almost out of her first trimester already, which we're very excited about. We can't wait to meet our little baby!

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Cocoa Beach Sunrise

By: Ryan



Being unemployed does have a few advantages. For example, we are able to decide last minute to spend a weekday at the beach. :-) This past Tuesday, we decided that we would get up early and drive to Cocoa Beach to watch the sunrise. The beach is a little over an hour away and sunrise was at 6:45am, so we left right around 5am to make sure we got there early enough to see the sky changing colors before the sun came up.

The beach was really nice! We both really liked it and definitely plan on going back. The only problem was the super weird sticky sand. Once it stuck to your skin, not even walking into the water would get it off. It took actual scrubbing under the little beach shower thingy to get it off. Weird. :-)

Here's a pretty cool time lapse video of the sunrise. I'll record a much better one next time. :-)




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Beach Visit!

We set off yesterday to pay our first visit to a beach on Florida's gulf coast. Rain was in the forecast, but we decided to chance it. Our destination was Fort Desoto Beach near Saint Petersburg, Florida. Fort Desoto was recently named America's Number 1 Beach by TripAdvisor, so it was a natural first choice for our trip.

Alas, not to be. When we got there, the rain was pretty steady. We got out and explored a little anyway, but with no sun, steady rain, and a strong breeze, it was just not good beach weather, so we got in the car and headed back north, hoping to drive out of the storm.

We found sunny weather at last in Clearwater, near Tampa. As an aside, the Philadelphia Phillies train in Clearwater during the off season, which I knew, but I still didn't expect to see signs with the Phillies Logo. A bit out of place that far from Philadelphia. :-)

The Clearwater beach was excellent. We both really liked it, even though the Gulf of Mexico doesn't produce the same caliber of waves as the Atlantic coast.

Overall, we had a really good trip, and like I pointed out to Shelsy, it was a fun opportunity to explore our new home state a little bit.

Here's a video of our day. Note the clip of the tiny, beach-dwelling fish at the end. This was all shot with Shelsy's underwater digital camera. Enjoy!



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