We also got to celebrate Grandma Anderson’s birthday this weekend by going out to The Columbus Fish Market, so Happy Birthday Mom!

I’ll leave you with my new favorite picture of Kate and Emma.

Here are a couple of updates on how much Emma has grown over the past few months:

- She started walking in November and is now all over the house getting into everything. She can even navigate up and down the stairs under supervision.
- She still takes 2 naps a day which mom is very thankful for.
- There aren’t too many foods that she doesn’t like, but she loves pastas and rice.
- She has just finished getting her 4th tooth. 2 front bottom and 2 front top.
- Her vocabulary consists mainly of Dada, Mama, Tsntsn (Samson) and a random collection of grunts for other requests.

Since I’m making this post on January 8th I’ve already missed a week, but we’ll start today with a short update. Emma turned 1 this week and here is a video I put together recapping her first year of life. Enjoy!

Emma’s First Year from Tim Anderson on Vimeo.

But for now, we have a video Tim put together that accounts all the excitement of Emma’s birthday.

For now here are some pictures of our beautiful baby girl. A few are video clips if you click through.

On December 1st we had our scheduled normal Dr visit, but received some non-normal news. Emma had not flipped and was in a breech position. The doctor said there was still time for her to turn on her own, but since she had been in the position since 20 weeks, it was not likely. We went home and did all sorts of things to try to get her to turn over. The following Wednesday we had another appointment with the doctor, and Emma had still not flipped. We scheduled an appointment for Monday the 13th to perform what is called a version. Basically they push on the outside of Kate’s belly to get the baby to turn. If this did not work, we would have to have a scheduled c-section. We were kind of bummed to hear this, but knew there were many worse things that could have happened and both Kate and Emma were 100% healthy.

There were some risks, and to proceed cautiously they had Kate prepped in case an emergency c-section was needed. We went in Monday afternoon and went through the whole prepping including many needles (Kate’s favorite thing) only to find out as soon as the Dr arrived that Emma had flipped over on her own during the weekend! We asked the doctor to check and see if Emma was sticking her tongue out at us. This was a huge answer to prayer and we are so thankful to God and all those who were praying for us.  Our little stinker is already playing by her own rules and not listening to Mom and Dad.

So now Emma is in the proper position ready to be born, in her own time. We’re ready for her to come any day, but it could be a few more weeks still.  We’re looking forward to the Holiday Season but even more we’re looking forward to meeting our daughter.  The next update should be news of her birth!

We have a ton to update on this post since it has been a while from our last post.

Things have been well in the Anderson household. Samson is a year and a half old and has been part of our family for a year now! He continues to be well behaved and no longer chews on any furniture. He doesn’t even need a leash when we let him out into our unfenced yard (most of the time). He tries to make as many friends as possible with the neighbor kids, but sometimes he can be intimidating because of his size.  Over 80 lbs!

The house is really coming together. It has been over a year since we moved in and time has really flown by. We got a dining room table for our front room and all of our rooms are furnished and functional… all except 1 that we have been using as storage. With summer approaching we’ve even done a little bit of flower planting and mulching. Ah the joys of home ownership.

We’ve been very blessed to have found a church that we very much enjoy. It is less than 5 minutes away from where we live and fits our personalities and worship style very well. We’ve been checking out a few different Sunday school groups and bible study classes, and in general just enjoying getting to meet new people.

Speaking of new people, we’ve enjoyed getting to build new friendships with some of our neighbors. Tim’s softball team has started back up and we’ve found a new board game that we enjoy playing whenever we get together with friends or family. It’s called ‘Ticket to Ride’ and if you are ever looking for a new game to purchase, we highly recommend it. It’s our new favorite.

We have some fun trips planned this year and had a couple of them already. We went to Washington DC to visit Tim’s sister and our brother-in-law, Kim and Luke. It was great because we were able to plan the trip when Tim’s brother, Ryan could come out too. The five of us explored the capitol city. We went on walking tours of  the national mall and Arlington National Cemetary.  We went to the Newseum and went to the Earth Day celebration on the National Lawn. One day we spent a day going around to different places and did a photo shoot with our brother-in-law, Luke, who is a wedding photographer and did some of the pictures from our wedding. (check out his stuff here )

We also took a brief trip down to Daytona and Cape Canaveral Florida with our Anderson parents to see the final launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. It was a very cool experience and the weather couldn’t have been nicer. We spent 3 days and had a BLAST :)

When we got back from DC we discovered a wonderful surprise…. WE’RE PREGNANT! We are 13 weeks, just out of the first trimester, and due December 30th. We have had two doctors appointments and everything is looking good.  We could not be more excited. Our room we have been using for storage is getting emptied and will soon be the baby’s room.

We hope this post finds everyone well and enjoying the summer. We are looking forward to spending the summer with family and friends and preparing for the arrival of the new member to our family.  Hopefully we will be better at posting this summer as we update on how things are going with the baby.
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Also exciting news is that after much tedious searching in a very rough economy, Kate has received a job offer for a position that promises some very exciting career opportunities and flexibility.  More info on that at later once things are a little more solidified, but God has been good to us and continues to bless us as we grow.

As we spent weekends in Ohio looking at different homes, a few times we changed or adjusted our priorities in what we were looking for, but never saw anything that really grabbed us and made is think “this is home”.  We were starting to get a little worried and wondered if it doesn’t happen for some people and if we would eventually settle on something that just worked.  That changed when we walked through the last house after a long day of searching.  We are truly happy with the home we found and when we went back through a list we had drawn up at the beginning of our search process of all the desires for our “dream home” it had nearly all of them.

We’ll provide more pictures and even video once we get closer to moving in, but for now here is some brief info to give you an idea:

4 bedroom, 2.5 bath.  2200 sqft.  Built in 2008 (We’re the first owners!) Great up and coming “americana” neighborhood that is close to our friends and less than 10 minutes to Tim’s work.  All the bedrooms are upstairs, crawl-space no basement, and the main floor has a sitting-office-living room and an open great room that flows right into the dining area and kitchen .  Not a super huge backyard, but big enough for a dog and room to throw a football around.

We close on April 28th and will move in the weekend of May 10th (right after Kate’s graduation)!  We are very excited and very much looking forward to our move.

Our first stop into the city was the Atlanta History Museum.  They had a lot of info on Atlanta’s past and growth as well as significant events that were important to Atlanta including the Civil War, Martin Luther King Jr, and the 1996 Olympics.  After checking into our hotel, we got a nice Valentine’s Day dinner at a great Thai restaurant.  For the evening’s activies we had heard about a fun event going on at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art.  We decided to check it out and were glad we did.  Not only was the Art Museum impressive itself, they also had a special exhibit on the Terracotta Army that was very cool to see.  There was also had some fun music, dancing and desserts to keep us entertained.

The following morning we laid out our path to see three of the more popular tourist attractions that were all centrally located to our hotel and Centennial Olympic Park.  Our first stop was the CNN World Headquarters studio tour.  After our tour we moved on to visit the World of Coke and the Georgia Aquarium.  By the end of the day we realized we had seen quite a lot for such a short period and were ready to head home.  We had a great time and Atlanta is a really neat city.