Super Bowl Revisited

In 2008, we celebrated a Giant's win over the Patriots with Patrick, Carrie and the rest of my Loyola college gang of friends.  Yes, we made shirts -- one that read "Brady is a girl" -- a sentiment still holds true.  Since the Eagles cannot be in the Super Bowl this year, we are fully backing the Giants.  Go Big Blue!

Visiting Pat, Carrie and Baby Joey

While Joshua endured the lack of heat for an extra day, Alma and I had a great time visiting Pat, Carrie and their five month-old son, who easily holds the crown for the cutest baby!

We spent the week enjoying another trick-or-treat night, strolling through the Air and Space Museum, visiting a great farm/petting zoo, eating good foods and playing in the park.  We are so blessed to have such awesome friends and a great visit.

Space Shuttle Endure

At the farm

First swing ride

The impossibly handsome family

Happy Valentine's Day

As our camera's battery died right before our big Valentine's Celebration last weekend, I only have a few photos to hint at the awesomeness that included good friends, tons of cute babies (and one soon-to-be delivered-by-the-stork), sweet foods and a game which often ended with Joshua faceplanting onto our living room carpet.  Who could ask for more!?!

Patrick and Carrie

Quick visit with Patrick's family -- including his adorable neice Aggie!

Merry Christmas!

We had a great Christmas ... although we are in a bit of a sleep-deprived fog these days so it could have been an awful Christmas and we just didn't notice. Although, seriously, we had a nice holiday and were happy that we were able to celebrate with Nana and Padre Thompson, Brian and Bridgette and their kiddos.

The day after Christmas, Patrick and Carrie stopped by for a quick visit and dropped off some food for us, which was awesome. This week, Joshua does not have to work so we plan on sitting around house and going for long walks. Yeah holidays!

Adam and Jen's Wedding

Adam and Jen's Halloween wedding was such a great event. Quite possibly one of the most enjoyable weddings I have ever attended and easily one of the greatest Halloween parties I've attended.

Jen was beautiful and Adam was all smiles at the ceremony in the little Lutheran Church in Lutherville, Maryland. Once the ceremony started, we were told not to take photos, so I didn't get to capture all of the magic.
After the ceremony, we went back to the hotel where the reception was being held to change into our costumes. Patrick, Carrie, Megan, Adam, Joshua and I dressed as the running of the bulls. I decided to be the bull, since I figured that I was the slowest in the group -- you know, being eight months pregnant and all. We made a grand entrance into the cocktail hour by having a grand chase. Then, later in the evening, we had another chase in which Patrick threw Joshua into the path of the bull (me), I gored him and then (pretend) stomped on him while he was laying on the dance floor. The crowd seemed to like our antics.

I got lot of comments on my speed as the bull. I have to admit that it was nice to have an excuse to run. I've been feeling very fit these days. My pregnant belly feels more like awesomely tight ab muscles more than the burdensome bump that many pregnant women describe. And with this cooler weather, I often feel like going for a run more than I feel like pigging out on food. Thank goodness I have prenatal yoga class four days a week so I can expend some energy. Revelers at the party had great costumes; like this group who dressed as a bouquet of flowers. Cute!

Friends, family, parades, weddings and babies

July has been a busy month for us. Here are some highlights:

Tara, my Minnesota friend who I knew in Seattle who currently lives in Portland, OR (tracking her has become my hobby!), came to visit us in Philadelphia on the way to her brother's wedding in NYC. It was so great to see her -- she is such a great soul. We spent one evening touring Eastern State Penitentiary. It was fun and reminded me of when we toured Alcatraz together.

For the 4th of July, we joined Brian, his son and my parents at a parade. I love small town parades! Here's Brian, Joshua and Charlie the dog enjoying the parade. Last weekend, I was a pregnant groomsman in Patrick and Carrie's weddings. It was so fun to hang out with "the boys" from college while Joshua had a fun time hanging out with the wives. Highlights included Carrie's butt-wiggling excitement during the ceremony, Adam's best man toast (gosh knows he's done them enough!) and all the little touches that Patrick and Carrie did to make the wedding really special. What a great couple and a good group of friends and family.My cousin Tara and her fiance Brian had their wedding shower in Clinton, NJ at my aunt and uncle's house. It was fun to see some of my Thompson relatives and meet Brian. We are hoping to attend the wedding but are unsure of how I will be feeling about the long drive up to New England at the beginning of September.
In super exciting news, Brian and Bridgette welcomed a baby girl this past week. While she was born 11 weeks early, she is a fighter and seems to be doing well thus-far. I'm shy to say more since they are private about baby-related news when it comes to their own family, which I want to respect. Please keep them in your prayers as she continues to grow and develop.

In more baby news, Joshua and I had our 20-week ultrasound today. The baby was moving around so much they had a difficult time analyzing all the body parts. The baby was tucking its legs over its head along with its hands and then spinning around a bunch. I don't even know how that is possible!! But things look great and the baby is on track growth-wise. My parents came along to the ultrasound, too, which was fun. This past week I have started to feel the baby move around more often. It's beginning to feel more real these days.

Bachelor Party

Last weekend, Joshua and I went down to South Riding (a.k.a. Fairfax), Virginia for Patrick's bachelor party. Since I'm a groomsman, I got to tag along on the day's activities as well, which was awesome. We spent Saturday playing frolf, eight million innings of kickball and going out to dinner. That night, the boys reverted to the college days by tapping a keg, playing beer pong and taking off their pants ("Because it was hot in the kitchen!").

The next morning, the remaining revelers had a big breakfast. It was a fun weekend.
The one disappointment that happened was The Tragedy of the Boob Cake. On Saturday morning before leaving for the party, Joshua and I were looking at old photo albums and we came upon the scarily realistic boob cake that Joshua made for his friend Gerardo's bachelor party. We decided to make another one for Patrick's party. However, even though the cake was awesome, we used butter cream icing. The icing started to separate and melt immediately since it was so hot that day. We quickly realized that the cake wasn't going to make the four hour drive. Joshua was totally bummed.
However, not all is lost, because the cake is delicious and has made a great desert for us! Plus, since Joshua made me a great cake for Mother's Day, this became his Father's Day cake. We never claimed that we were conventional.

Photo update

Patrick and Carrie, who are getting married in just over a month, stopped by a few weekends ago for a visit. We were able to have an impromptu bbq with them, our former apartment neighbors Robin and Bobby and our current neighbors Erin and Randy, which was super fun. Patrick and Carrie gave us our first baby gift. It was wild how overwhelming this gift felt to both Joshua and me. It just seemed unreal that, in less than six months, we will have a little body to put inside that baby outfit. What a wonderfully mind blowing thought.

On Memorial Day, we were able to attend my cousin Peter's chili cook off and beer fest. Joshua made a big batch of chili and we had a fun time hanging out with Peter's family and neighbors, including the adorable and dinosaur-growling Sine, pictured below.

One recent evening, around 8 at night, we were suddenly plagued with the burning desire to build a trellis for the flowers and ivy that have been booming in the planters I built last summer. We are excited for the ivy to grow up (literally) and cover the wall with foliage.

Lastly, some folks have been excited to see my pregnancy bump. Even though I'm now 15 weeks along, I'm not showing much. Here's me showing Shanti my belly after I went on an enjoyable walk in the rain with Joshua and Simon. She was unimpressed.

At last!

At last, our computer is fixed! It took only 30 minutes but it was 30 minutes with the right person. That last part was key. Now I don't have to rush off to school to write all of my papers or send emails. I can go back to lounging around in my pjs and playing with the pets all day! (I wish.)

So on to the photos and stories!

Right before Halloween, I was able to carve a pumpkin with my neighbor who is in third grade and has never carved a pumpkin before. Can you believe that!?! Obviously the Philadelphia school system is failing our youth!

Each week we have been sharing a meal with our neighbors, Dottie, H, their young son Owen and their pup Sampson. Since they couldn't come to Joshua's birthday party, they had us over the day before for an awesome dinner and fun presents. They are great and we are so blessed to have them as neighbors.
Simon has begun having play dates with Sampson. They are such good dogs and both are part lab-pit bull. Sampson is older and just wants to play fetch. Simon acts like the younger sibling, wanting to get in the way and show Sampson all of his toys. Here they are playing with an invincible ball. They once played tug-a-war for four hours straight!

Patrick and his fiance Carrie threw a fun child-game inspired 30th birthday party to celebrate his entry into adulthood. Among many others, we played SPUD, freeze tag, red-light-green-light and with a parachut. Hooray for Patrick and Carrie's creativity! And hooray for Patrick always being older than me!

Joshua's best friend Scott came to Philadelphia to visit. Scott seems to always be chocked full of "interesting" -- he just moved back to Chicago from Australia, outbid Tim Meadows on an awesome condo and, when we saw him, he was on his way to NYC to celebrate Thanksgiving with the Rockettes and his family. It was really fun to hang out with him. We cannot wait to see him in Chicago and crash in his beautiful home.

We went to Carlisle to my folk's house for Thanksgiving. This was the grandbaby's first Thanksgiving. Mr. Grandbaby was as wonderful as always. He is so snugly and sweet. Joshua and I are continuing to falling more and more in love with him. Brian and Bridgette are such good parents; it is really fun to watch them with him.

It was also Simon's first Thanksgiving. Generally he was a good pup. He proved himself as a great hiking dog; we were able to take him off-leash on a few hikes. He also demonstrated his speed by stealing some meatloaf, turkey and even some Poviticia from us.

[It is nice to have the computer back and share all of these photos! I have to admit that I missed it. Blogging may be passe these days, but I like sharing photos with friends and family.]

More/our photos from the last month of excitement

Patrick and Carrie got engaged! Hooray! Patrick asked me to part of the wedding party, which is totally awesome. That is going to be such a rockin' good wedding because they are so totally in love and excited about everything.

Here they are opening their first official engagement gift when they came for Joshua's birthday party.


Joshua's birthday party was super fun. The house was a wreck from a crazy week and the dog was nutso (as usual) but we have wonderful and tolerant friends and family who helped us to celebrate Joshua's first 30 years.

Joshua really wanted to make his own birthday cake. In the tradition of funny birthday cakes, he made a beer bottle cake. Very impressive, right?! And super tasty thanks to Hershey's chocolate!



I know that we already reviewed this on the blog, but we have to touch on it again: the Phillies won the World Series! It not like other towns that win big games. This is Philly and their 25+ year streak of not winning ANYTHING major. And South Philly is where all the fanatical fans seem to be located. It has been great to be here for all of the excitement.

The night of the second half of the final game, everyone in the bar went crazy with every little thing that happened. Once the game was done, everyone went outside to celebrate. Tons of high-fiving and hugging as people seemed overwhelmed with emotion for their team and fellow Philadelphians. Even little kids were standing outside of their homes in their PJs and jumping up and down. It really was a cool thing to witness.

This Halloween proved to us how blessed we are to live on our street. Our neighbors came out in costumes with tons of candy and alcohol. One of the most beloved ladies on our street, Marie, who is over 80 years old, dressed up as a Native American so that she could go trick-or-treating around the neighborhood. Evidently her costumes are well-known and very anticipated each year. Our best friends on the block, Dottie and H, dressed their little boy up as a penguin, which was overwhelmingly cute. Randy and H put on wrestler masks and sipped wine through straws. Overall a very fun night although we cannot believe that we did not get dressed up this year. Next year ... next year ...



This past weekend, David and Jess got married! It was a beautiful ceremony followed by a kickin' party with (what felt like and might have been) 300+ of their closest family and friends. It is always so much fun to see the Whelihan side of the family and hang out with all of my cousins.

Weekend Trips: Carlisle and Ragnar

Last weekend included a trip to Carlisle for Flickr Francis' Meet the Thompsons Party. The party was scheduled because his extended family is just too large to all fit in one house. So we split the family up so that each "branch" could have their own party to celebrate.

What a freakin' cute kid! So active and loving. It is always so awesome to see how great Brian and Bridgette are with him. Being in Carlisle with the entire family was really fun. It doesn't happen as often as we would like, so when it works out for all of our schedules, it is a really happy time.

Simon came along and did well with the baby and all the children he encountered at the party. He was super tired because the morning before we drove out to Carlisle, we went to Freedom Park, which includes a 20-acre off-leash area for dogs, and visited my friend Amanda and her dog Jake. Here's a photo of tired-out Jake (an 8 year-old dog) and Simon (the one year-old) in Amanda's back yard.

(Unfortunately, we didn't snap many photos in Carlisle, so you will have to take our word for how fun it was!)

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This past weekend, we participated in Ragnar. It is a 183-mile relay. Twelve people, two vans, 183-miles from Columbia, Maryland to Washington, D.C. Fun stuff. Not much sleep, but it was super fun to hang out with friends and run through the county side. Our half of the team (as seen above -- l-r, Allison, Laura, Joshua, Mike, Carrie and Patrick) started running at 9am on Friday morning. We were finished with our legs around 2pm on Saturday afternoon. Joshua and I both ran 15 miles. Below is Joshua starting his last leg along the C&O canal. Too beautiful.
Lots of adventuring: getting lost rather often, seeing signs like the one below, Mike and Allison helping a gal who broke her ankle while running, all the rain we endured, sleeping in an extremely smelly van, .....

Our group, DON'T WAIT UP!, was creative with our van decorations. Can you tell the theme of the decorations? I'll give you a hint about what the pictures are showing: cave man in an ice flow, Heinz Ketchup, Tom Brady, an amoeba, The Pokey Little Puppy, snail.



Yeah, we are all slow things. Just jokin' about how fast we were expecting to run. Although, our team rocked each of our legs. Patrick is such a consistent well-paced runner, Carrie is the most determined, Allison looks the most chill for how fast and far she can run, Mike is just plain fast, Joshua is able to get through anything and I was told by another team that I run "elegantly but with a big smile, like a hostess at a party who is about to serve some lemonade."
Here we are during one of the night legs.

Heather was kind enough to watch Simon for the weekend. They both seemed happy and relaxed when we picked him up. It was really great that she was able to do that for us!

Next weekend: Beach weekend with my college girlfriends! Joshua is excited to enjoy another weekend at home with the pup and the kitty.