Baby Pictures (Sabrina Ahern)

Here's a sampling of the pictures that Sabrina took. She's been photographing lots of recent babies of friends and family, but we're the only girl at this point, so we had a ton of fun. Again, many thanks to both her and Alissa - great friends and great photographers! :)

Baby Pictures (A-Frame Photography)

Our friends Sabrina Ahern and Alissa Dangler came over to take baby pictures. I absolutely love having friends that have a passion for photography - and a willingness to use us as guinea pigs! They showed up with carloads of props and cute ideas for Danica. This post highlights some pictures taken by Alissa. She's with A-Frame Photography - feel free to visit the website for information about her services: http://www.a-framephotography.com/.

Welcome Home, Danica

If you're not on Facebook, you may not be aware that a stork had apparently been hunting down Grant and I. (Thanks to a little help from Megan and Jamie. ) Needless to say, it ended up at our house upon our arrival, along with some pink decor and flamingos. :)

Just to be sure she's acceptable, Mia had to give her approval...

Pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Dinner 2010

We hosted our 2nd annual Pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Dinner a couple weekends ago. What started as a college tradition with Grant and his friends has become our excuse to prepare a ridiculous amout of food and hang out with a few friends. Plus, it seems to kick off the holiday season for us! :)

Retaining walls done!

It was a long Memorial Day weekend, but our front retaining walls are done! Padraic Stack and Nick Nice came over (pretty much for the whole weekend) and helped Grant move block, set block, level block, glue block... I think you get the picture. :) The block is natural-cut blue granite. With traces of brown and gray in it, we thought it complimented our house without adding yet another shade of brown.

Happy Memorial Day

We had a few friends over Sunday night for an early Memorial Day grilling and firepit. Grant and I got inspired and bought a flag too.

On a serious note... although I'm in military service, I can't begin to imagine what this holiday means to other military families. Take a minute and pray for a soldier. Every day should be Memorial Day.

Birthday Tree!

True, it is not yet my birthday, but I got an early present this week... a tree! Grant had asked me what I wanted, and I said a tree. So he called up our friend Tom from Ahern Hardscapes and Garden Design - and he and Grant walked a nursery and picked out this Red Point Maple. It's so exciting to see some growth - my new tree and our grass are the first color, other than brown, on our lot since we've lived there! Plus, I had no idea it was even happening! I came home from drill in Lincoln, and surprise - a tree! :)

Viva Vdara!

We're back! Have been for about a week now, but have slowly been getting back into the swing of things. We went to Las Vegas last weekend, April 8-11, as a pseudo-family vacation. We met up with Jeane and her boyfriend Matt, and Greg & Collette (Grant's parents) at the MGM Grand on Thursday. When we arrived, we were even upgraded to the MGM Signature Towers - no objection here! Thursday night we walked the strip a couple times and feasted at the MGM Grand Buffet. Friday morning, we went out to Greg and Deb Wolfram's house for breakfast - it was nice to see something off the strip! If I remember correctly, Deb is Collete's cousin. During the afternoon, we walked all over the strip, ducking in and out of casinos, from the Wynn back to MGM. Friday night, we ate at Todai, an amazing seafood and sushi buffet. Mmmmm! Saturday, we walked around even more, and scored some free tickets to Blue Man Group from Bill Lager, a close friend of Greg's. Thanks Bill! I've posted a lot more pictures on my facebook profile, most of the ones in this post deal with the following paragraph...

Saturday morning, we cleaned up our room and the MGM, and Grant and I headed over to Vdara in CityCenter for our one night there. I worked on Vdara for my first 2 years at Leo A Daly. It was so amazing to see something you draw stand before you in built reality! When we checked in, were were upgraded (again) due to availability to a panoramic suite! Basically, a room with 3 walls of glass, 270 degrees of views! Check out this site to see a description and floorplan of our suite: http://www.vdara.com/suites/panoramic-suite.aspx. Enjoy these, and check out facebook for more from the rest of the weekend!

Pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Dinner 2009

We finally broke in the new place! The weekend before Thanksgiving, we hosted ten for the Pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Dinner. Apparently, Grant and his roommates in college took this dinner very seriously - one huge meal before everyone went home over the break. I made my first Turkey, with a little prep help from my mom that morning :), and as the pictures illustrate, we had a ton of food to plow through.

We had three separate counters of food. Relish trays, deviled eggs, cranberries, rolls, pumpkin cheesecake, cranberry/cream cheese dip...

Mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, turkey...

Sweet potatoes, grean bean caserole, wassail...

Joel carved our turkey and prepared the gravy from the drippings. ...You can just call him Betty Crocker. :)

Here's one table checkin out the Nebraska vs. K-State game that night. Notice the fine entertainment center! And I'm sure Grant will be disappointed to see how small the TV looks in this picture. No doubt we'll just have to buy another... Ha, we'll see...

New House: Lights, Appliances, & a Backsplash... oh my!

So, a lot can happen in one day! Yesterday, our lights were delivered and installed - we're only missing one vanity light and the ceiling fans for the living room and bedrooms. We have a mixture of can lights and hanging pieces in the main area (kitchen/dining/living/entry). As you can tell, we also got our appliances - only the refridgerator is installed in the pictures because we spent all night tiling the backsplash that FINALLY came in. We literally waited almost five weeks for it. But the range, microwave, and diswasher were all there, just sitting in the living room while we tiled. Padraic Stack (BCDM co-worker of Grant's, former roommate, best man in our wedding) came along to help last night, and he and Grant finished laying the backsplash. Grant and I will be grouting and getting things cleaned up on Thursday night hopefully. I also included a picture of our fancy kitchen faucet. A little industrial, but the finish matches the appliances exactly, and I think the hook is really fun. The last picture is of the master bathroom. All the casework is finished, facuet mounted, mirror and vanity light hung. As of now, we'll be getting carpet Wednesday or Thursday along with the ceiling fans, remaining vanity light, and garage door openers. Getting really close now...

p.s. This is how much I enjoy having finished plumbing - I didn't have to drive back to our rental house to go to the bathroom while we were working! I guess it's the little things in life. :)