MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

Fall frenzy and hunting traditions!

Well, its that time of year again, where all sorts of people merge around Grandma and Grandpas table for a cup of coffee and a taste of Grandmas special "goodies". Oh wait, all of these men are here for another reason as well. DEER HUNTING! Sean and I were able to come home and witness all of the hunting fun and goodness on Sunday last weekend. The season opened on Friday and several deer have been shot in good, clean, fun. Here are a few of the hunters sitting around the table after their first big "push" of the afternoon. My cousin Ian managed to shoot a really nice doe just before this pic was taken.

I was going to take a pic of Sean and Gma and Sean always does his typical "thumbs up" in almost every pic and so I told Gma that she needed to do the same. How cute did that turn out. These are the best seats in the house, right in front of the big picture window which has an excellent view of the coulee and the deer running around while the hunters are walking in the coulee. This spot of the house is equipped with binoculars and a walkie talkie so that we can hear all of the action going on in the woods. We tend to get really excited as soon as we hear gun shots and Gma often wants to push her button on the walkie-talkie and ask them "what's goin on guys?"

This is my cousin Ian after he shot his deer. Notice the grocery bags on the feet? This is an ingenious way of keeping the floor clean and saving time as the men do not have to take their boots off just to have a cup of coffee.

Here he is with his second deer shot. He did a good job but when I skinned the deer I noticed that the entire front leg had been shot off completely and was just hanging together with a small amt of fur. We all decided that was a great way to slow-em down if nothing else.

These next pictures were taken at White Bear Lake MN. When we were in the cities the last time we went here to an apple orchard and they had a corn maze and wagon rides around the orchard. We went with Sean's sister Courtney and her girls Connie and Kaisa and their Grandma Karen, Sean's Mom and Step dad Dan also came along. We had a good time and the weather was beautiful as long as you were out of the wind.

Here is a look at the orchard and all of the apple trees that they have. A beautiful lake is at the bottom of the hill.

Here we are on the wagon getting ready to go for a ride! Sean took the picture.

Here we are being silly!

These next pictures are from even farther back when we had family here for Grandpas 90th Bday party. Here is a pic of Jamie on his trusty 4-wheeler. He uses that for everything from chasing cows to just going for a joy ride.

Here we are exiting the coulee. Aunt Diane, Dad and uncle Jeff. We all went for a walk one afternoon in search of the best picture. My aunt Diane and I were taking all sorts of pictures in hopes that one of us would "out do" the other.

Here is Jamie after he climbed up a big hill. It is hard to tell in the picture that he is on a hill but you can see the sky behind him through the trees.

Here my aunt and uncle decided to sit down on an old log for a while to rest. I thought it was a cute picture.

OK so this picture is really silly and we laughed pretty hard at it. Diane wanted a pic of the rest of us (we were on one side of the crick and they were on the other) to look as though we were walking or a picture in motion. So we did it and then I did the same to her. So she is doing her best to make it look as though she is walking. She is so crazy and funny and I never did see what her picture of us looked like.

Here is a picture of my cousin Ansir jumping off of the bales. He wanted a pic of him in mid air and Diane, Melissa and I took several tries at this but I think that this pic is pretty cool.

And finally a pic of Sean up on top of the bales. He is severely scared of heights and never goes up too high as he gets scared. However he did a great job and didn't get too scared up there. Of course he wanted a pic for proof:)

I took this pic one morning of my mothers cat by the flower garden. I think that she looks so cute and quiet and I like to look at this picture often. Cats are one of my favorite animals.

Surprise!!!!

Surprise!!!!

Thats right is it a boy or a girl??? Nobody knows for now. We found out in mid August that we were about to parents. It was a scary time as we were taking it day by day until we knew that everything was OK. That meant not telling any friends or family until the moment was right. Have you ever kept a secret this big for 3 months??? It was hard but also fun for Sean and I as we knew something that no one else knew and we would glance at each other and smile and we knew just what the other was thinking about. This meant several trips and visits where we couldn't tell anyone. Like camping with the Youngbergs, and having most of my family home for Grandpas 90th bday.

I guess that I can't say that I kept it a secret completely. My best friend got it out of me right away as he knows me very well and when he asked I just couldn't quit smiling. So he knew, but I must say he did a VERY good job of not telling ANYONE until we told him that it was ok. Now if any of you know Duane that is not an easy task......

This is the picture that Sean and I showed our parents and grandparents. We had it hidden in a pile of other pictures. We also had it on our video camera and we showed my family the video of our Anniversary trip to Duluth and we had this picture at the end and my Mother didn't get it. Everyone else had to explain it to her. It was funny. We had a lot of fun making the sign. If you look close Sean drew the footballs, hockey sticks, baseballs and bats and I drew the flowers and butterflies.

I have been feeling great except for the occasional waves of nausea that creep up on me. Sean has learned when it is not a good time to hack up phlegm and eat sunflower seeds in the car:) Other things that have bothered me are things at work that never before affected my gag reflex. Such as dressing changes on a bed sore, Not a good thing! The sound of someone sucking there spit up with suction, Not a good thing! Vomit.....really not a good thing!!! But I have prevailed and am lucky enough to work some of the greatest people in the world, who are not afraid to help me out.

Below is a picture of our second Ultrasound. At the first u/s we got to see the heartbeat for the first time. It was the most amazing thing EVER. Sean said that it was the coolest moment of his life thus far. We never did see a heartbeat with our first pregnancy and so this really made it official for us. It was beating so fast and tiny, it really brought tears to our eyes.

These are "unofficial" Ultrasounds and we do not even get charged for them. Our doc just likes to give us a few min to see the heartbeat at every appointment. I know that it is hard to see but if you look closely at the second pic, Our baby really looks like an alien!!! Now everyone assures me that this is normal. But I saw a movie once.......... Well never mind!!! I asked the doc why it wasn't moving and so she poked my belly with the u/s wand and then the baby started to do somersaults and rolling around. It was the coolest thing even tho I can't feel it yet. They say that will happen in a few more weeks.

We are almost 15 weeks along, almost halfway baked. It seems like Apr 30, is forever away. But we can wait that long if that is what it takes to have a happy, healthy baby.

They say the first year is the hardest???? Than I say bring on the easiest!

Ok I give up on posting pictures on this stupid thing. If I think that I am doing it right than a picture of a sailboat gets thrown in the middle of the anniversary pics!?!? Anyway...


So it has been completed. Our first year of wedded bliss. A whole year of Sean and Amber "together forever". Like I said, several people told us that the first year together was going to be the worst. WOW, is all that we have to say, If this is as hard as it gets then I think that we can handle it. Of course me only being home a few days out of the week makes it hard for us to ever have a fight. Of course we have had our ups and downs this year but nothing we coudldn't handle. Ok so here is to One Year together!!!!!! CHEERS!

Below is a pic of us at the Minn State Fair in St Paul. We were sharing a choc milk shake at the dairy barn. AHHHHHHHH it was only like 95 deg that day, so I think that ice cream was fitting.
Next is a lovely pic of some sailboats in Duluth??? These were supposed to be at the middle of this entry but like I said before, I GIVE UP!


Oh look another pic of boats!!!! And of course my gift from my honey! Another collage of the year of happenings. I will never get used to his "homemade" gifts, they will always be special in my heart. You should click on the pic to make it bigger and then you can read everything he wrote.

And we can't forget these origami flowers that he spent all eve making one day while I was at work. Isn't that the cutest thing ever? He found a website dedicated to origami and made them just for me, each one has a differant word on it and it spelled out a saying!

Ok again these pics are not in order. Here we are at a trail at Gooseberry Falls by the beautiful Lake Superior. This was Sean's idea to take this trail from the falls down to the Lake. OK I said but remember the 2 hr parking limit honey!!! Yeah, yeah he said.

The trail went up and then down and then up and then down again. It was really pretty and the temp that day was like 65 deg so it was gorgeous weather. The only bad thing was that we weren't prepared to hike and didn't have any water or anything with us, this will be quick he said. Here we finally made it to the water of Lake Superior. It was nature at her finest. Nice breezes, smells of fish, rocks in our shoes, and oh yeah did I mention the whole nothing to drink thing!




I don't know for sure but I think that this was old Lava that we were walking on. Ok so the hike continues on and we start to see all of these old people with canes walking around and I start to think, how the heck can these old people be walking around up here, we just walked for over an hour to get here. Oh yeah then we see a building and a parking lot. Oh yeah it is a little known secret that you can DRIVE right up to the edge of the lake. Oh well we had fun anyway. So we tried to find a way to keep going on the path and we walk right into a bright orange snow fence that sais trail closed. What the &$#*% now where do we go? So we kept on walking till we found a road and then back to the car. We were both very thirsty and warm and had sore feet but we really enjoyed our little nature hike together. Next time the country girl is goin to read the map back at the visitors center!!!!!!!


Ok so now here we are at the beginning of the Falls. AHHHH how cute.





Me standing at the edge of the water fall and Sean freaking out about it the whole time. He is SOOOO scared of heights.



Ok here we are back at Duluth. This was our first night that we stayed there. The INN on Lake Superior. What a nice hotel. It was very fun and we payed for a room with 2 queens and city view and we got a king size suite with a lake view and kitchen!!!! We were excited. One thing that they do every night from 8-10 is have smores out on the patio, you can't see it but the lake is right behind me, and no I wasn't crabby he took the pic while I was talking to the neighor!



Ok this is the funniest pic that we took, well at least I think so. Sean was standing on the next level down on the boardwalk out to a little light house at Two Harbors, MN. He took my pic and if I don't look like the Jolly green giant here then I don't know who does. The angle was all wrong. We laughed so hard when we saw this pic that I just had to share it with you. That is the iron ore docks behind me where they load coal and iron ore onto HUGE ships.





Here we have a one legged sea gull. Sean thought that it was the cutest thing and just could not figure out why he only had one leg. He really believed it and was even taking a video of it until it put its other leg down. HEHE Sean is so gullable.


Graffiti we saw on one of the lighthouses. Poopie on you shooey is what it says.....HAHA classical funny!



This is where we ate supper one night. MMMGOOD and I didn't even care that it was called hells kitchen!

Below is one of Sean's long lost senior pictures that we found. haha

You can not see it here but he was SO scared to go to that side of the sidewalk on the bridge and hold on to the railing that he almost peed his pants.
So once we got on the lift bridge we got to the middle and the voice came on and said, "can I have your attention please, the bridge is about to lift, please vacate the bridge immediately." So we ran like we stole it to the other end and laughed so hard.

Here we are waiting for a big ship that was supposed to depart full of grain between 6:30 and 8:30 so we sat on a bench for 2 hours and waited. It never came but we had a great time hanging out together and watching the sail boat races and just being together. It is so funny how we can take for granted all of the time that we get to have together with the people we love the most. Sometimes it is nice to just slow down and watch the world go by together, hand in hand.

PS Sean thinks that this is the best pic he has ever taken! He calls it his supermodel pose!