Catherine's 30th Birthday

Curt and I both turned 30 within a month of one another.  We thought about doing something together with friends but never quite got around to planning it.  Instead we decided to celebrate in ways that catered more to our individual personalities.  For me, we went up to Maine for the weekend and celebrated just the two of us.  For Curt, we got a group of friends together and went out to eat and then to a Celtics game (this post got long quick, so I'll save pics from Curt's b-day for another post).

Catherine's Birthday...

My sweet friend Sage and I have birthdays one day apart.  We've had fun celebrating at our community group the past two years. 

I took Friday off from school (gasp!) and Curt and I headed up to York, Maine on Thursday night.  The next morning we took a drive up the coast to Kennebunkport, ME and stopped to see some lighthouses on the way.

 My yummy lunch - lobster roll and french fries!

 Our cute little inn...right on the water.

The view across the street...

Curt surprised me with a spa pedicure!  What a good hubby..

Sorry this picture is so terrible, but it's the only one of us.  The parents in my class surprised us (with the help of my sneaky TA) with a very generous gift certificate for the restaurant at the inn where we were staying.  We got to enjoy a lovely dinner on the night of my birthday thanks to them!

 Overall, it was a perfect birthday for me....got to spend time with Curt, relax, and eat good food.  :)

Showers for baby girl

*Once again, I have fallen behind on the blog.  I wrote this about a month ago, but am just now posting.  My b! :)*

I'll be honest.  It's been hard being away from family during these past few years.  I am a homebody by nature.  I much prefer getting cozy on the couch to a night out on the town.  The same goes for where I live.  I would definitely prefer to live close to friends and family than set out on an adventure in a faraway place.

However, we have been so blessed by several different communities since we moved up to Massachusetts and they have really rallied around us as we get ready to welcome our baby girl in just a little over a month (whaaat??!!) - (*update - about 2 weeks! double whaaaa?!)   Warning:  LOTS of pictures to follow and please excuse the fact that I'm wearing the same outfit in pretty much all of them (hey...whatever fits!).

One of those communities is our church community.  Personal opinion alert:  we go to the best church in the city of Boston and probably a lot of other places too.  We LOVE our church and especially the people that make up our church.   Some lovely ladies from said church hosted the sweetest shower for myself and another girl who is expecting in December. *update - she had her baby and she's precious!)

 Jess and me (she just had her baby!)

 Our sweet hostesses

 A second wonderful community is the one we live in right here at the seminary.  I was afraid before we moved here that seminary was a place for nerdy people and that I wouldn't find any friends.  I'm really glad I was wrong because we've met some really great friends that have been such a wonderful support to us over these past two and a half years.  Some of these sweet friends threw us a shower for our baby girl!

Hostess gifts I was really proud of :)

 

 Hostess friends!

The third community we are thankful for is my school community.  I work at a satellite preschool, so I don't get to interact with the other teachers (other than my TA) on a regular basis.  However, my principal and the other preschool teachers and I get together regularly and they were so sweet to throw my a little shower.  I'm thankful for these sweet ladies!

We also had an amazing shower in Richmond over Thanksgiving, but I'll post about that in my Thanksgiving post...promise I'll get around to it soon!

Lately

In an effort to get caught up on the blog in the most efficient way possible, I've decided to do a "lately" post.  Here's some things we've been up to lately.  Also, I use the word lately loosely because some of these things date back to summer.  Oops!

- We had an awesome time with the kids from our church during our week of VBS (back in August).  I had never even volunteered for a VBS before and somehow found myself with the responsibility of planning the whole thing (whaa??).  God was very gracious to me and everything was so fun!  Here are some of our sweet kiddos.  I love them so much!

And a few of our fearless volunteers...  Thanks guys!  We couldn't have done it without you!

- Our friend, Ryan, from JMU stopped by for a visit.  We took him up to Rockport for a little New England sightseeing and some lobster.  We loved seeing you, Ryan!

- School started and I was blessed with the sweetest class to ever come through Pre-Kindergarten.  No, seriously.  Look at these sweet tiny people:

Could they be any cuter??  Nope, not possible.

- We moved!  We left our sweet little one bedroom and moved into a 2-bedroom apartment across campus.  It was a little sad to leave our first apartment as a married couple, but we are moving on to bigger and better things, literally.  And now our baby doesn't have to sleep in a closet...she will have her very own bedroom!

I'm not even sure who took this picture...it's not very exciting, but is evidence that moving occurred.

- We finally went to the Topsfield Fair!  This fair is a pretty big deal around here and we've had plans to go for the past 2 years, but have somehow never actually made it there.  Since this is potentially our last year here, I told Curt that we haaaad to go (yes, I whined).  We went with a couple friends from church and had a really fun time.

- Lastly, our baby girl continues to grow each day.  I feel very blessed and thankful to say that the pregnancy is still going very smoothly and I am enjoying feeling her move around all the time.  We have made very minimal progress on the nursery, but I'm hoping that will change in the coming weeks.  I have some fun plans for it though!  These belly pics are a little old...I'll try to update soon.  Right now I'm actually already in my 3rd trimester at 28 weeks.  Crazy!

21 weeks

 25 weeks

Ha..the 21 week pic actually looks bigger...aahh the power of a bad camera angle :)

Well, hello there! (Celebrating Our Two Year Anniversary)

Long time, no blog :(  I was looking back at some of my old blog posts and I sort of miss keeping up with this guy on a regular basis.  Here's hoping I can get back to a schedule of some sorts...

Welp, because of my lack of blogging we are gonna go wayyyy back to the end of July.  I realized I never posted about our two year anniversary.  We celebrated in a very low-key way this year because it was right before VBS for our church and frankly, we're poor :)

We stayed in and made ourselves a fancy-ish dinner.  It was nice to do a little cooking together, enjoy a relaxing meal at home, and talk about the ups and downs of the past year...what we've learned, how we've grown, what God has taught us.

Yummy appetizer: crostini with goat cheese, strawberries, and basil...topped with a balsamic glaze (thanks for the inspiration, Molly!)

 Dinner:  Chicken piccata with garlic mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus

My sweet guy...and yes, we did have sparkling juice (yay pregnancy!)

Teeny tiny belly at just 16 weeks

 Here's to many more years of love and laughter!!  We are looking forward to an exciting year three!