Trip to SC

Zoe Belle Jenkins was born August 1st. It seems like forever ago when Brian told us that he and Shannon were going to have a baby, and she is finally here. Mom, Dad, Sarah and I went down to see them all last week. Poor Greg had to stay home because he started his job at Children's Hospital, but hooray for the new job! He'll hopefully get to go the next time.
Of course I fell madly in love with Zoe and spent as much time with her as I could. I think I was a bit of a baby hog the first two days, so after that, I tried to share. We had a wonderful visit, it was terribly difficult to leave. Why do we have to live so far away from one another?
I'm trying to figure out the world of Skype, Brian said we can do video chats so I can see Zoe more often. But it won't be quite the same as holding her in my arms.

The last 7 months in a nut shell

Ok, so since I have joined Facebook this blog has been totally forgotten. I'm going to TRY to keep it updated at least monthly. We'll see how it goes.

But for now here is what's been going on since Christmas.


January- Greg graduates from Nursing School, we had a great party with wonderful friends.





February- I turned 40, oh my! Had a wonderful party thrown by my wonderful friends and husband.




March- Greg's 40th Birthday! Greg really didn't want to make a big deal about his birthday, must have been in denial :-) so we just had a party at home with friends. And I can't seem to find any pictures of this event. I bet he erased them from the camera!

April-Went for a wonderful Girls' Weekend at Jill's sister's lake house. And attended the CF wine opener, a fabulous event to raise money for a cure for cystic fibrosis.

May- Went to Chicago to see my good friend Andrea's baby Lucy.



June- Finished up the school year, and then taught summer school at the Autism school. I LOVE the children with autism! I'm always drawn to them in my classroom and in the summer I get the priviledge of working with a whole classroom of these fabulous children.





July- Back to Chicago. It is very difficult for me to stay away from Andrea's baby Lucy. I love her so much and it kills me that we are so far away. I get pretty weepy just thinking about it :-(
Sarah went with me this time and we had a wonderful visit. My little night owl went to bed at a decent hour and even got up early. The last morning she got up at 6:30 am to walk the dogs with Tom.


Love and miss you guys!!!

Merry Christmas

Well Sarah has been asking for the past two or three years for a cell phone, but hasn't received one, until now. She didn't even ask this year, I guess she figured she wasn't getting it. Boy was she surprised!


She hears it.





Finally she found it!

Christmas Party

We went to our annual Christmas party with our friends Friday night. This has been a tradition for the past 8 years, (I think). Santa has shown up every year to help us celebrate. Check out this picture from 8 years ago and then the one below from this year. Wow, my girl has really grown up.

Happy Birthday Baby Girl

Gosh, my baby girl isn't really a baby any more. I cannot believe that she turned 14 on December 9th. She really is a joy and the love of my life, even when she is acting like a true teenager :)

Happy Birthday Baby Boy

Happy Birthday to my sweet little Duncan. Today is his first birthday, and although he is rotten as all get out, we all love him to pieces.

We took him out for ice cream today for his special day.

Surviving the Wind Storm

Thanks to Hurricane Ike, Columbus got a major wind storm starting Sunday afternoon and ending around 9:00 Sunday night. We managed to come out of it without any major damage. Our power went out around 3:00 Sunday and it came back on about 11:30 today, Monday.
Greg was gone for the start of the storm, he and our friend Kevin were working on the brakes to the truck (thanks Kevin). Once the power went out and my cell phone battery was about to die, I was starting to get worried. I tried to call Greg to see when he would be home, but no answer. I figured I had enough juice in the phone to make one more call, I called Christa to come get me and Sarah. I didn't want to stay here by myself any longer, I swear I thought the house was going to blow down. Our tents out back did start to blow away, so I ran out and had to take one down by myself, it was falling down on top of me and at one point almost acted like a parachute and blew me away. As you can imagine, I was screaming out there and being very dramatic. I really felt like Dorothy in Kansas. I sure was glad to see Christa, but as we were getting ready to leave Greg pulled in to the driveway. I sent Sarah with Christa and Greg and I stayed here to hold down the fort, literally. The neighbors lost some shingles and our other neighbors lost one of their pine trees, that sucker snapped in half.
We spent most of the day today cleaning up the pool, there were tons of leaves in there but other than that we didn't have any damage.