The Holiday Begins!

After many long months of study (and a few still more to come), a grueling summer internship, an early fall interview bonanza, & lots of prayer Kyle has finally decided to accept his offer with DE Shaw in Houston. We are really, really, REALLY excited this is settled and we know what we'll be doing come graduation. So congratulations, Kyle! And to all our friends and family in Texas...we'll be back soon (with a new Bethancourt addition for you to meet)! We should find out sometime before Christmas if we're having a boy or a girl. I'll make sure to post that info here for all the inquiring minds.....

On Sunday Bun and I put up our little Christmas tree and trimmed it with care. (By the way, Bun is the baby--as in "Bun in the Oven"--we had to come up with a name to refer to the baby instead of "IT". I credit this naming style to our friends Steve & Rachel who named their 2 children pre-birth, Dot & Milli. Makes sense to me). The tree and 2 stockings are our only Christmas decorations so "decorating for Christmas" is a fun yet very short-lived affair. I even delayed putting on the tree skirt & buying some candy cane decorations until Monday so it was actually a 2 day affair this year.

Last night I came home weary from New York and was delighted to have the tree lit while watching a Charlie Brown Christmas. Nothing says holiday like Charlie Brown! Speaking of the holiday spirit, my favorite holiday hangout is Williams Sonoma. This is a weekly (if not bi-weekly) outing for me. It's about a 5 minute walk to WS and it's so inviting that I can't resist....I go in and sip on hot cider and eat all the goodies they have out for me to taste. It's like going to visit an old friend....except my friends don't have 50 varieties of knives & cookware hanging on the wall for display? I pretend to look at the same ol' stuff everytime I go in but really I'm just there to eat and drink and feel warm & fuzzy holiday feelings for free.

Happy (late) Thanksgiving!

Hi all! We missed being around family this Thanksgiving but having the web cam sure made the distance seem less. It was great to be able to call people up...that is...until our Comcast internet went kaput yesterday. With our slooooow internet connection you'd think we were The Slowskys or something? Not having Internet is quite annoying but even more annoying is the cable company telling you that you are chained to your home until the cable man arrives "sometime between 9 AM and 1 PM". Translation: "Sometime between 9 AM and whenever we feel like it". We finally get a guy at our door around 2-ish wearing gold rimmed sunglasses (yes, sunglasses indoors??) explaining to us that our connection issue was a problem in the main apartment building box and would be fixed this afternoon. So there was no need to wait around all day....great. I love cable repairmen.

Despite the cable hiccup we're enjoying the long weekend and I hope you are too! I think it's time to start making pumpkin bread and setting up our mini Christmas tree...my favorite part of the Thanksgiving weekend!

I Smell A Rat!

So I saw it today....I was walking to the store during lunch to grab
some chips to go with my sandwich. I looked down the block and there
was a giant 40 foot tall gray inflatable rat outside an office
building. This sight was very unusual to me although I'd heard of this
practice. Whenever a building is doing renovations and does not use
union labor the unies protest by sitting this big ugly rat in front of
the building so all the world will know that they aren't using union
labor...THAT'LL TEACH 'EM! It was pretty funny because I can't imagine
grown-ups doing something like this?? But apparently they do...

Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera or camera phone to capture the
rat on film because it kinda looks like a rat that is in the
rigor mortis phase of death with it's hands and feet stretched out
rigidly....very scary but an interesting lunch time find. So if you see
the giant rat when you're in New York, it's not preparation for the
Thanksgiving Day Parade...it's the union protesting the wrongs of
society.

Hello? Anybody Home?

I know! I know! Where have we been? It seems we are quickly becoming "those people" that only blog once a month or something? What's happened to us? Well, hopefully you'll forgive us but the reason the blogs have been delayed is that we have exciting news and now that we've told everyone we can finally put it on the blog and stop being Mr. & Mrs. Shady.

Kyle and I are expecting a baby in May! Yes, May! If you can think of any other life changing events besides finals & graduation, having a baby, moving across the country and starting a new job, by all means let us know and we'll try to add that to our May calendar. We're trying to jam-pack May with as many stressful events as possible ;) With all kidding aside, it will be a fun time for us and we are very excited. I am 14 weeks along and at last Thursday's doctor appointment we heard the baby's heartbeat! I felt joyful, scared, excited, and awestruck all at the same time. Kyle was there too so we both got to experience it.

And when I was at the doctor they FORCED me to get a flu shot and now I am sick and on top of that when we went to Houston this weekend my allergies flared up so I am just feeling wuuunderful. Good night...I'm headed to bed

Return to Longwood!

I know you're not sick of Longwood pictures yet so here are some pictures from our trip out there this weekend with Kara. She graciously offered to drive us and we all went together after church. Unfortunately the flowers had been dug up in the big flower beds outside so there wasn't much to see unless it was in the conservatory. But there's always something new going on so it was still fun!


Click here for the pictures