Hello everyone! Ashley has motivated and persuaded me to start a weekly newsletter, so here I go! This week I felt like I was in Seattle. We had a lot of rain and even woke up to a great thunderstorm Thursday morning. Of course, Moriah didn’t even flinch at the crackling and boisterous noises coming from the heavens. The more noise the better, as far as she is concerned. I do think she enjoyed hearing the rain pound on our windows. I know I did! It reminded me of our wonderful days in Fredricksburg. I remember the excitement of watching the great Texas thunderstorms from Mom and Dad’s large window, which overlooked part of the pasture. Great memories!

Well, rain or shine and in that case blizzard, hurricane or tornado (I’m sure) Moriah has to get out on her daily walk! We had some interesting moments on our walks this week. I will comment on one! On Wednesday we headed out for our usual walk, in spite of the pouring rain and crosswinds. I spent the whole walk trying to keep the rain and wind off of Moriah as well as trying to keep us from running into trees and pedestrians. This is pretty much how it went- walk a little, peek out the umbrella, walk a little, peek out the umbrella and so on. One man commented that he wouldn’t have known anyone was under that umbrella except for the legs peering out from under it! I had my huge Temple Square umbrella that can pretty much fit a small family under it! I wasn’t quite sure if Moriah was enjoying our adventurous walk but one look at her face and I knew she thought she was experiencing a little bit of heaven! This girl likes anything but the usual. Speaking of “usual” I had something “unusual” happen to me on Saturday. I thought I had experienced every yucky little thing that babies could do (the whole poop, pee and spit up on Mommy things). Oh, was I wrong! As I was holding little Moriah up in the air and cooing at her with a big, open smile all of a sudden she decided to talk back. With cute little noises? That is what one would think, huh? Well, not this time! She involuntarily sent a stream of regurgitated milk into my mouth. The warm sensation and taste is one that I shall never forget!

John finished his first year of MBA school on Tuesday. We were so excited! Moriah and I thought we would see him a lot more but much to our dismay he still had meetings here and there for the rest of the week. He was recently made president of the Babson Entrepreneurial Global Outreach Program. Much of this commitment will entail a week long visit to Shrilanka, where he will help people start their own businesses. He is very excited about this. He will also be starting classes this next week before he starts his internship at Fast Search. Busy, busy!

Well, we ended the week with a bang! Saturday morning we woke up ready to hit the garage sale that our ward was hosting for the scouts. I have wanted to find some wrought iron chairs for our dining table. Of course going this route will be very difficult. But there is the hope that if I am unable to find them that I will come across some chairs that are just as unique and cute! At least this is what I am telling myself! It’s fun!!!! Okay, so we’re poor and I am trying to look on the bright side- staking out hundreds of garage sales with a screaming baby for the next couple of months, wow we are going to have fun! After our trip to the church sale, in which we acquired a jogger, several board games, two table lamps and a floor lamp, we headed off to the Wellesley city dump. Yes, a dump! This was the highlight as I found two vintage looking table lamps that I am in love with! After about fifteen minutes there we decided that we should go home. We were all tired and hungry (okay, mostly I was!). So, we drove a whole ten yards to get in the huge line to get out of the dump. Of course little Moriah let us know that she did not like sitting in her car seat when the car was only moving a foot a minute but what do you do? My only strength comes from knowing that I hold our little bundle twenty four hours a day, so a few minutes in the car seat isn’t going to harm all the work I have done to ensure her happiness and sense of security! Well, finally we made it to the street where we could break free and get home but what caught John’s eye as we were about to make our escape? A BIKE!!!! In spite of the tears from Moriah and my growling tummy we decided we’d better go check it out. So, here we go back inside the dump. John drove up and dropped me off to run get the bike. The adrenaline was pumping now! “Get the bike, get the bike”… I was focused! After grabbing the bike, John checked it out and decided that the orange bike chain might cause him some problems in the future. Needless to say we didn’t get the bike! Even though we were only about five minutes away from home I decided to sit in the car and nurse Moriah. This left John to do some shopping. After several car drop offs, John came over to show me his new finds- a “brand new” karaoke machine, an unopened ink cartridge, two water packs (actually really nice ones), a camping mat and a hand bike pump (better than his!). We couldn’t keep from laughing after all of this. I have to admit we had a pretty good time at the ole dump! We ended the day with a picnic with some of our friends at a nearby park. Good times!

We love you all! Have a great week and don’t worry they won’t always be this long! A miracle occurred this morning, Moriah is sleeping!!!

~Oh, and I failed to mention the MOST EXCITING MOMENT of the entire week…receiving the much anticipated phone call from Ryan and Amber-

IT’S A GIRL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow are we excited!!!