4 years

This month Steve and I celebrated our 4 year anniversary. With each year we continue to face new challenges in marriage, but with God's grace, we are able to work through them and our love for one another strengthens. This past year specifically has had the biggest change yet (even more so than living in Tanzania) - having our son Caleb.

Having 3 years without children was such a blessing and honestly, was needed. Those years we were able to learn how to communicate, how to resolve conflict, how to love the other one, and do things that aren't as easy with kids such as travel the world. But now that we have Caleb in our lives, we can't imagine life without him. Becoming parents definitely adds another depth to your marriage. It seems as though we are more of a team than ever before. Steve is more to me than a husband. Now he is a dad. And I'm a mom. And somehow we, together, are responsible for raising our children in a home where our kids see the grace and love of Christ in us. Talk about a challenge. But it's a challenge that we will work through together for the rest of our lives and I am so glad to have him by my side the entire way.

To celebrate, we went to Charlottesville where we visited Monticello, walked around the downtown mall, stayed in a bed and breakfast, and watched a free polo match at our favorite vineyard.

we took notes on monticello's veggie garden

enjoying breakfast on the porch.

the highlight of my weekend. polo is so fun to watch.

10 months

Caleb,

You've seemed so much more grown up to me this past month. I can see a few small changes in you that make me realize that you're beginning to transition to toddler-hood. For instance, if I take something away from you that you wanted, you immediately protest. You're a lot more vocal and are sounding out syllables instead of just babble. Your favorite is saying da-da even though you actually said ma-ma first :)

You're crawling now too, so goodbye to the good ol' days where I could just sit you down in a room and not have to worry about you getting into anything you shouldn't. Now I have to keep my eye on you every second, which honestly gets quite tiring. You've already gotten into everything that you shouldn't - all the house plants, dad's dirty shoes, the surge protector, etc. Needless to say, I have a lot more baby-proofing to do around the house.

Besides you learning how to crawl this month, you're working on pulling yourself up on things and how to get down from the standing position. You also have gotten 2 more teeth this month and are an eating machine. On your nine month birthday we finally got you down to just 2 naps a day, which has been great for me - a lot more freedom to go places and get things done.

You love being read to - your favorite book is any book that has a picture of animals. You are such an animal lover! You also love your ball and think it's so funny whenever I throw it up in the air and catch it.

This month your first cousin, David Andrew Krieger, was born and we look forward to you and him becoming best buds. You also experienced your first ever earthquake and will possibly experience your first hurricane in just a couple of days too! It's been quite a month!

We love you Caleb!

**As you can see, it's getting harder and harder to get him to stay still to take a picture

a place to work.

There are small projects going on in our house right now. The storage bench I posted about is still in the plan, but we are working on a sewing area for me to help organize all my stuff and mainly to have a place in the house where I can go to 'work'.

Browsing the internet has helped tremendously with finding some really great ideas on what I want my sewing area to look like and how to organize and store different things. Here are just a few pictures that have inspired me and I hope to use:

garden update

It's been a while since I posted anything about our garden. It's been a lot of fun keeping up this summer and we've enjoyed being able to walk outside and pick fresh vegetables for supper. If you have the littlest backyard (or even porch) I would totally recommend trying to plant a few things - it's worth the time and money and you learn so much!

We're still getting a ton of tomatoes (if the squirrels, birds or rats don't get them first), green and red peppers, cucumbers, toxic jalapeno peppers, and a few more squash and zucchini. We'll be harvesting the butter beans any day now too.

Just from this year I've learned so much and know what to do better for next year. I didn't plan out the placement of the vegetables too well. A couple of our cucumber and pepper plants got blocked from the sun because of some tomato plants. I also should have thinned out our zucchini and squash a lot more too.

In order to have a more continuous harvest, I now know to not plant all the seeds at the same time. For instance, our green beans and lettuce all came in at once and we just had way too much of both in a short amount of time. So next year I'll plant a few seeds in a 2-week interval, which should prevent an overabundance of veggies and we can enjoy eating fresh lettuce and green beans over a longer period of time.

9 months

Caleb,

This month has been so fun with you and you seriously are the best baby ever. We see more and more how content you are in any situation, how laid back and easy going you are, and how you have such a sweet temperament.

My favorite thing about you recently is your love for Blue (your stuffed dog) and for blankets. If you're sitting on the blanket on the floor sometimes you'll scrunch the blanket up in your lap, lay your head on the blanket and suck your thumb. It is one of the most precious things I've ever seen.

You are getting more mobile - you love to roll around the floor and scoot around on your belly. You can get up on your knees and rock back and forth, but still haven't figured out how to move forward. We're working on getting you into the sitting position from the floor as well. You're so close to crawling and sitting up on your own though that I'm not worried.

This past month we've been traveling like crazy. We've been to Pittsburgh, Gwynn's Island, and the Smokey Mountains. You've outgrown your infant car seat and so you're now in what I call your 'big boy car seat'. In the mountains you said 'momma' for the first time and my heart melted. I cannot wait until we can talk to one another!

At your check-up this month they weighed you in at 23 pounds 15 ounces, which means you're still in the 95 percentile for weight. You're overall healthy though and so that's all that matters.

Caleb, you are the apple of my eye. Your dad and I cannot imagine life without you - you bring so much joy to our lives. Our hearts overflow with love for you and we frequently comment how we never knew we could love someone as much as we love you.

next project

One downside of our current house is that we do not have enough storage space. We only have 2 closets in the entire house, which are located in each bedroom. There is no linen closet or place to put our vacuum, stroller, bike, etc. My sewing stuff is laid out in our living room and stuffed under both couches. It stresses me out seeing all of our stuff just out and not in a proper place. And so I've been thinking of creative ways to store some of these things in our house to make it look a bit more tidy.

Another issue is that we need more seats in our living room. We have people over quite frequently and always have to pull in chairs from the dining room, which aren't always that comfortable. So my latest idea is to make a storage bench! That way I have a place to put all my sewing stuff AND have more comfortable seating for guests!

Here are a few pictures that incorporate some things that I like. Instead of buying something though, Steve and I are going to tackle making our own. It definitely comes in handy when your dad is a woodworker and your mom is a sewer. They don't know this yet, but we're volunteering them to help us with this next project of ours!

I like the slats on the front, but looks too outdoorsy for a family room

I don't know how I feel about the baskets, but like the idea of having pillows on top

My fav so far - simple, with slats and a combo of baskets and cabinets

Or I really like this one and this one, but would have to put a cushion on the top.

Pic sources are from Pottery Barn, styleathome, and furniturecreations

the smokies

We just got back from a super fun vacation with the Berry family in Bryson City, NC in the beautiful Smokey Mountains. There were 23 of us altogether so there was never a dull moment (especially with the 2 grandkids there). Besides taking in God's beautiful creation whenever we woke up and saw the view from our cabin, we did LOTS of activities and ate LOTS of food.

Activities throughout our time there included hiking, eating, white water rafting, cornhole tournament, eating, horseback riding, tubing down the river, eating, golfing, watching movies, playing card/board games, eating, putting together puzzles, and eating some more. It's a good thing we had so many physical activities with all the food that was consumed during our time there.

It was amazing to have boiled peanuts every day, fresh veggies from our gardens or farmer's markets, hand-picked blueberries, fresh peaches from GA, and then of course the neverending amount of sweets and blowpops (a Berry favorite).

Even though all the cousins are getting older, whenever we get together we just pick up right where we left off before. I am truly thankful for a family that even though are far away geographically continue to visit one another and can continue to have really fun family vacations together!

Family hike to some waterfalls

The highest mountain in TN - Clingmans Dome - but it was too foggy to see anything

Another viewpoint from Clingmans Dome

Caleb loved hiking!

Taking Caleb to look at the waterfall

The start of a crazy hike...Chimney Tops

This picture doesn't do the craziness of this rock climbing adventure justice.

On top of the chimney. You can't tell from this picture, but we had a magnificent view once the clouds cleared away.