slowing down for fall

Sorry I've been such a blogging slacker lately! Life in our house is finally starting to slow down a bit, just in time to enjoy fall, my favorite season :) These 60-70 degree temps are my dream come true. This past weekend was our first whole weekend home in a LONG time, and it was great. It was full of small home projects, cooking, time with friends, football, and just enjoying time as a family.

Jonas is becoming such a fun little baby! He makes us laugh so much. His enormous smile seems to take up his whole face, and he's right on the edge of giggling. He's talking ALL the time now, and has become obsessed with his hands. He's bored with sucking his thumb...he goes for the whole fist instead. We've uploaded a new video of him if you're interested! Scan down to the bottom of the page on the left, under Recent Videos (should be the top video). Whenever you put a camera in front of his face, he becomes hypnotized, so we have to be tricky. We still have our rough my-baby-won't-stop-crying-and-I'm-exhausted moments, but we three seriously have so much fun together. He's becoming a much better sleeper, too...he sleeps through the night a few times a week and is taking 1-3 hours naps. I'm SO thankful for that.

Drew and I celebrated our 4-year anniversary last week! We could hardly believe it. Our friends, Mark and Amy (and Carson!) watched Jonas for us while Drew and I went to a fantastic little Italian place called Figlio. The food was great, and we had a wonderful time just talking and reflecting. It was a really good time for the two of us. We have grown so much over the past year, both through struggles and good times, and we're looking forward to the year ahead!

Jonas and his favorite friend

Anniversary dinner!
(Drew would like to clarify that he was much happier than he appears to be in this picture...and that he is not giving a thumbs up)

busy, busy, busy

Whew...September has been incredibly busy for us! Drew has been working a lot to finish up some major projects for Apex, we've had visits with the (grand)parents, hangouts with friends and house church, and we're getting ready to head to New Castle for Drew's 10-year high school reunion. And that's only half-way through the month! All good things, just a lot of them. Jonas has been handling it all very well. He's becoming a champion traveler and getting used to mom & dad hauling him all over the Midwest :)

We arrived home late Sunday night after spending the weekend in Crawfordsville, and noticed that our electricity had gone off at some point since our clocks were blinking. We reset our clocks, and headed to bed. We woke up yesterday morning to messages and phone calls from people checking to make sure we were okay...we soon realized that we had missed a massive storm here on Sunday afternoon and most of Dayton was without power! We ventured outside to discover siding missing from our house and trees and branches down everywhere in the neighborhood. So, I cleaned out the fridge and freezer to make room for friends to use some space, and Drew spent the day helping friends, Rich and Sue, clean up the extensive damage at their place. It was a strange, but good day...Rich and Sue ended up hosting our house church for dinner last night since most still don't have power. It's amazing how much HC really does feel like family! So thankful for them.

Here are a few pictures from our family outing to Cox Arboretum last week, on a BEAUtiful day:

Jonas was less than thrilled about the hat I tried to get him to wear

He loved the beautiful scenery

Loving the fall weather

And later in the day, Jonas' first music lesson

labor-less day

Our Labor Day getaway was precisely what we needed. We spent four fabulous days at Lake James in Indiana, where my aunt has a house. Drew has been working long hours lately in preparation for some upcoming things at Apex, so he was able to take Friday completely off! We headed to Indiana around noon, and Jonas did very well on the trip...I'm so thankful for a baby who travels well! My family met us there eventually, and we spent the weekend boating, tubing, swimming, sun bathing, eating, talking, sleeping, fishing, walking, and of course, playing with Jonas. It was great...we successfully fit our "summer" into four days! It was so refreshing to spend that time with Drew, Jonas, and my family. Drew and Jonas got to have lots of daddy-son time, which both of them loved. I've posted some pics from the weekend on our Picasa site (link is on the right), but here are a couple of my faves:

Enjoying the boat ride

Four generations

Heading to a bonfire

a fresh face

Hello, Blogger! For those of you who don't know, my life revolves around Google. Drew and I would be completely lost without our shared Google calendars. I'm not ashamed to admit that I actually have a calendar specifically devoted to meal planning. I know...weird. So, hence the move to Blogger (the Google blog). I'm still trying to figure out a way to move all of our previous Wordpress blog entries over, but if that's not possible, there's a link in the bottom right-hand corner if you're interested.

On a fun note, we had a fabulous Labor Day weekend. Pictures and details coming soon!