Holy costume party, Batman!

We ended up babysitting for our friends Arian and Daniel's two little guys (Hudson and Jude) yesterday. I hope the boys enjoyed it as much as we did :)
Besides dressing up in bat-gear, we made milk tea, and played a winnie-the-pooh "memory-esque" game... which we totally lost. Hudson was A LOT better at that game than we were. We knew we'd have to change Jude's diaper at least once during the afternoon, so i decided that Ben should do it, just to make sure he knows how... before we bring home our own little diaper-dirtier. (which could literally be ANY time now) Success. He did it, and Jude (or Thunder Thighs as we like to call him) was a very patient test-subject :)

polka dots a-plenty

We've been working on Peanut's room for months now, and it's finally come together. We love it, and we're excited that it actually feels sort of like the vision we set out with :) always fun when that happens. Anyway, here are pictures of Peanut's room:



This is Ben's creation for Peanut, it was his idea when we saw these vintage Alphabet cards with animals on them one day. He did an AWESOME job figuring out how to display them all, and hang them up. though, a few of the animal choices are a little... odd.


so for the most part, Peanut's room is done. Now all we need is Peanut, ... and some diapers.

We also FINALLY took some pictures of the new flooring we had installed just before Christmas. long overdue (the pictures AND the flooring).


It totally changes the feel of the space, we're really happy with it.
in other news, Emigre has warmed up to "the belly". we think she and Peanut will be best buds.

survival mode

this week was all about the survival. luckily we did, ...survive. I got some kind of stomach virus or food poisoning on tuesday night in the wee hours, which was horrible. putting me out of commission for a full day of production week at work, which upped the craziness factor. but, in the end i lived, the baby is fine, and the magazine went out. And we'll all live happily ever after.
We also had our last (most likely) ultrasound of Peanut yesterday, lookin' good. currently 4.5 lbs, and about 17.5 inches "tall". The doctor's exact words were "Well, it certainly won't be the BIGGEST baby in the nursery". we didn't get to see nearly as much as we would have liked, mostly just kidneys, heart, and other organs, and the heart is the only one we could recognize. But it was really workin', and it was really cool to be able to see it so much more developed, before it looked like a blip on the screen, but now you can see the two separate chambers and everything. But we did get a cute "profile" picture of Peanut's face. Ben's convinced we only saw organs so that our gender surprise didn't get ruined. But we did also get to watch Peanut trying really hard to suck its thumb, except the aim's a little off... no thumb in the mouth yet. but sucking motion = check.

enjoying a post-holiday coma-like state.

We've had a whirlwind couple of weeks... literally. two weeks ago we finally made the decision to rip out the flooring in our home and replace it. We're SO glad we did, though it ended up meaning that (due to previously scheduled committments) we had to move all the furniture out of our office-on-its-way-to-being-Peanut's-room, and our great room/living room/dining room on Sunday December 21st. That way the construction (or rather the initial "destruction") could start on that Monday at 7am, and be done the following day at 9pm. This had to happen because we had Christmas at our house this year. SO, we had to move all the furniture BACK in on Tuesday night late (THANKS to Amy and Ben's help) and clean up an inch or so of thick dust from cutting all the flooring, not to mention putting up our tree and other christmas decor, and then grocery shopping for Christmas day festivities, and wrapping our gifts. We were exhasusted by the time Christmas was over.
However, Christmas day was GREAT. Mae and the Klinglers came over, and we made a big Christmas brunch, as is our tradition. then we hung out, opened gifts, cooked, talked. We LOVED having the family over for the holiday. We'll definitely want to do that again.
Then, we had a few days of "Rest" to set up baby's room more, and put together some more furniture. It's definitely starting to look the way we envisioned it now, but we still have some more decorating to do in there before we're ready to show it off to the cyber-world.
Ben's parents came to town on Tuesday, and i had a baby shower with all our friends in town, which was SO much fun. Several of my friends live out of town now (and some out of North America), but it was a HUGE blessing that everyone was able to come and celebrate. It was SUPER cute, and i had the BEST time. Mae took our nursery "theme" (we're not theme people, but we get asked what our theme for the room is all the time-i guess circles/polka dots is as close to a theme as we'd want to get) literally, and here is the cake she made. As stylish as it was tasty.
All the guests chipped in to buy us our stroller, which we are SO excited about, so here it is:

It is pretty much the cadillac of strollers, this thing really does turn on a dime. We tested it briefly with Emigre the dog in it, and it is one... smooth... ride. Though, she looked kind of freaked out.
ANyway, it was a great time. We also thoroughly enjoyed having Ben's parents in town for as long as we could get them. They bee-bopped around town with us while we:
- visited Arian and Daniels new digs (which are only FIVE minutes from us-yipeee!!!)
- checked out the long-awaited skyline chili fountain which debuted at Amy and Ben's on New Year's Day. that was... well, something you HAVE to see. (and smell) hah!
- they gave us our car seat and crib bedding for Christmas, so we all got those things set up
- did a little shopping
- and we took them to dinner at one of our favorite chinese spots. Yum!
- there was also a rousing game of Cranium, a tight race. But we found that I (Grace) and Robb had an eery connection, and pulled out a win.

It's been an incredibly busy couple of weeks, but we have had a blast. Just a few more finishing touches to Peanut's room now, and then we'll post photos, and show everyone our new floors soon.

Who's ready to party?

A typical night for Emigre.

Annie Liebowitz we might not be...

But we did get a little inspired tonite, and took some updated family pics with the belly. Peanut is quite a little kicker these days. Grace can feel the baby moving all around like crazy. The other night she woke up in the middle of the night and yelled at Ben "STOP poking me!!". Then we thought about it for a minute and Ben reminded her... why would he do that? and we realized that the poke came from Peanut. Anyway, enjoy the new pics :)

cleveland rocks

we went up to cleveland with friends several weekends ago, it was just like a college road trip. We had a great time. So, we're finally getting around to posting a couple of pics from the trip.


this is Ben G. climbing the FREE stamp statue downtown. we were amazed at how fast he scaled that stamp.. it really was a big stamp.

this was the kind of italian family restaurant that you dream about finding in a hole in the wall... it was a TOTALLY cool place. We could tell that almost all of the tables around us were "regulars".



I just liked this picture, and wanted to include it because, how often do you see something like this? by the way, Greg has vowed never to squeeze back into that tiny little space again.
anyways, it was a great weekend.

post halloween

We tried playing some more tunes for Peanut, this time we went with an assortment of U2, the Fray, Cold Play, and some Derek Webb. We got the best response to U2 and Cold Play. We pretty much decided that anything upbeat and happy sounding is the most popular. It was so fun, Peanut was having a regular dance party and kicking like crazy!

We had a great Halloween. We passed out (some) candy at our friends' place in Pleasant Ridge, we also ate some... :) It was a great night outside though, perfect for trick-or-treating. Our pumpkins were a hit. Then we headed to Chipotle for free burritos...

We found out that if you "dress like a burrito" (AKA: put some miniscule amount of tin foil somewhere on yourself) you get a free burrito on Halloween. All of us share a deep appreciation for burritos, so we were all over that. As you can see, we went a little further than maybe we HAD to with the foil...
Ben chose a more traditional ensemble: a canadian mountie's hat and a very fahionable neck tie. Foil is the new black.
AND we got some practice in for the big day while we were at it...


You'd never know that Biz hasn't delivered squillions of babies from her professional performance :)
this week: back to reality. Grace is on deadline, and Ben's busy as usual at work. But we DID get started on the paint job in the baby's room. So, even though home is a bit of a construction zone in the midst of painting and working on baby furniture, it feels great to be making progress.

the weekend that EVERYTHING happened

This was pretty much the weekend that everything happened. At least that's been our name for it. Thursday night was a bachelorette party for my friend Steph, then Friday night was the long awaited live tour of So You Think You Can Dance (which was A-MAZ-ING). Saturday was errands, then a wedding at 1pm, then a bonfire at our friends' house. Today we had church, then we tried to do stuff around the house for a couple hours, and then a pumpkin carving contest at our friends' house... you can see the fruits of our labor.  Grace's is the "POW!" pumpkin, and you can see Ben hard at work on his. 

The belly continues to grow... and grow :) and Peanut is kicking more and more. Apparently the baby has a taste for root beer. We had another doctor's appointment this week, and everything is going just as it should be. Here is Ben's latest obsession: artsy belly photos.

We continue to make slow progress on the baby's room... Moving our whole office/studio out of there and condensing it into a corner of the living room has been more of a project than either of us has much energy for after 10-hour work days, but it's on it's way. It's hard to believe that it's only about 2 weeks until our hospital classes start... Peanut will be here before we know it!!!

Here's one more photo for you to enjoy, complements of Ben.

peanut

We have been totally lame about updating our blog lately... Probably because we've been getting ready to welcome another little saunders into our house!!! yahoo!! Yep, we've got a bun in the oven! and, the baby belly has ARRIVED. check out this photo. Emigre seems to have noticed something is different :)
We are BESIDE OURSELVES excited about little "Peanut's" arrival. We're busy working on rearranging home to get Peanut's room ready. (that's our name for baby saunders, since we've decided to be surprised by the baby's gender once he or she is born. We get so few huge surprises in life, we're going to milk it for all it's worth) The due date is February 6th. We thought the doctor was joking when he said that was the due date, since that also happens to be Grace's 30th birthday. We'll see when the little one decides to ACTUALLY grace us with his or her presence :)

Right now we're right at the 6 month mark. Peanut is kicking lots, and wiggling around, some times it's enough for Ben to feel too, which he is PUMPED about. Below, Ben has decided that it is VERY important for PEanut to have exposure to Led Zeppelin as early as possible.


We got a new camera to be ready to snap all kinds of photos of every move the PEanut makes, and we've been taking turns playing the role of Annie Liebowitz around the house. So naturally the belly and the dog are favorite subjects :)

burritos and bowling

I've accomplished something i wasn't sure would ever work. I pulled off a mini surprise party for Ben, and he actually enjoyed it!! this is a serious coup for me, an admitted "teller". I am HORRIBLE at keeping secrets, not to mention i hate having to do it anyways. And Ben, being your sneakier than average hubby, is usually incredibly good at foiling my schemes. Here are a couple of photos. I decided to pair up his two favorite things: burritos and bowling. Above are some of our buddies who joined us for the festivities, and the custom t-shirt i designed for the occasion :) (check out the exclamation mark made out of a burrito and a bowling ball, sorry for the sub-par photo of it) it sure was a great time!

life has been and continues to be ultra-crazy for both of as at work. Ben is working on setting up all the new equipment and systems at work, as well as all of his video projects, and learning all that new equipment to boot this week. I am still in the process of redesigning the magazine, though i can finally say that we are nearing the end of the process, which is a great feeling since this has been a huge project and i've been working on it now for almost 5 months, along with the regular issues of the magazine. Someone share a great analogy that fits perfectly "it's kind of like changing a tire on a car that's still moving".
well, that's our update for now!

A Sign From Above

This is a picture of the double rainbow that appeared in Chicago on the 22nd as the Cubs completed a sweep of the White Sox. I don't want to jinx anything, but it looks like the Cubbies might have a fan upstairs this year.

And another thing

I also just realized that the dog can handle hotter salsa than I can. Sad.

The case of the disappearing burrito...

So earlier this evening we enjoyed Chipotle for dinner and, as usual, Grace had about two and a half inches of burrito left over. The leftovers were on the coffee table when we went into the office for a matter of minutes. We returned to find a solitary piece of foil and a very content puppy. What is most disturbing (aside from how upset Emi's stomach is going to be) is the fact that there was no evidence of a struggle. Not even a stray grain of rice remains. She managed to completely devour about a third of a burrito on the coffee table and make less of a mess than I usually do.

Craziest wedding album ever.

This is a picture from a wedding in China. Apparently they were taking the post ceremony pictures when the earthquake hit and the photographer kept shooting. Some of the images are pretty crazy, you can see them on the photographer's site HERE. Amazingly everyone survived.

This is why its on ESPN

The best part is that he went on to win the whole thing.

hockey husband

i discovered a new side to the love of my life a few nights ago. we've dubbed him "hockey husband" (referred to as "HH" from this point on). HH is kind of like Ben's loud opposite twin. We went to a CYCLONES game on Sunday night, since they are having a GREAT season, and are in the finals for the tournaments, game 2. We decided to to go with some friends since we could stay up late. We bought our tickets and sat down, all jumbled up in the row, so Ben ended up a few seats down from me. once the game started i heard an unusual amount of SCREAMING, and wondered which of our friends that was. I looked down only to be shocked that it was my own husband. I have never seen anything at all, not even remotely close, to this come out of Ben's mouth. My friend leaned over and said, winking, "that's your husband", and i had to ask myself... "is it???". i was so surprised at HH's behavior that i couldn't help but stare and giggle almost the whole time, in disbelief ofcourse. Now, you may wonder, has she never been to a sports event with him?? YES. i have. But, this has never happened before. 

Unfortunately the cyclones (though they won game 1) lost game 2. Despite HH's incredibly loud (we're talking screaming at the VERY top of his lungs) heckling of the opposing team's goaley... the Las Vegas team scored one goal in the last 3-4 minutes of the game.

but still, we all had a good time, and i learned a little more about my special man.

back from costa rica...

finally.
we'll post about it as soon as we can get our life a little bit caught up. with 2 extra days we didn't expect to be gone, it might take us a couple more days than we had hoped. but, we're FINALLY back in cincy. wa-Hooo!

The official pictures from wedding weekend

Grace posted our pictures from the Baker wedding in D.C. on shutterfly. In the event you weren't included in the email, just follow these links:
Wedding Photos Part 1
Wedding Photos Part 2

snapped this on the way home from Maryland

I spotted this in the airport on the way home from Maryland. I made Ben pretend to pose for a photo in front of our snoozing friend, so that i could get this shot. how peaceful...