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!

At 27 weeks we passed the third trimester mark, at 30 weeks we were 3/4 of the way there, we’ve had baby shower 1 of 2, and we recently passed the 31 weeks mark which means we have only single digits weeks to wait… 9 weeks to go!

We have made a lot of progress getting ready for our little girl. Our furniture came in and Tim painted the nursery. Kate has started washing some of the baby clothes and the reorganization of the house has begun. And Samson is slowly being taught that not all toys on the floor are going to be his.

We have moved on to having Dr appointments every other week and everything is looking good. Kate is feeling well and she is definitely getting bigger. We’ve also started interviewing pediatricians in the area.

At the beginning of October we took a BabyMoon to Niagara Falls. The drive was beautiful and very scenic as the trees were just turning. We spent Friday afternoon driving up the coast of Lake Erie and got there just in time to see fireworks over the falls at night. Saturday we got up and went to the falls, rode the Maid of the Mist, and walked around on the American side’s park. Saturday evening we went to dinner at Niagara on the Lake, a little district on the Canadian side with restaurants and shops. Earlier that day we heard about an art show that night in Toronto and so we decided to drive up after dinner. Tim did a wonderful job planning a leisurely drive home Sunday through the Allegheny Forest and scenic towns with Fall festivals.

Below are some pictures from our trip as well as a few maternity shots Tim took recently so you can see how Kate and Emma are growing.  We hope that this post finds everyone well and we will post pictures of the nursery once we have it finished.

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We’ve been fortunate to get to take a couple trips that have kept us busy this summer. In July we spent a long weekend in Chicago and then in August we spent another long weekend on Lake Erie in Marblehead, OH. We’ve been so blessed that Kate’s morning sickness is gone and her second trimester has been extremely smooth. It has allowed us to spend time at local fairs and festivals with friends as well travel and spend time with family.

We hope everyone is having a wonderful summer and beginning of the school year. As the weather starts to turn to fall Tim will be officiating some high school football (an activity he took up last year) and Kate has quickly become an expert at garage saleing as she negotiates deals for baby items. We are looking forward to a fun fall and making the final arrangements for our little girl.

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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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We had a wonderful holiday season. Kate was very excited about decorating the house for Christmas and it made the house feel very homey. We did a lot of traveling to see family and really enjoyed getting to spend time with everyone. For New Years we had friends over and played games all night and followed that up by watching Ohio State win the Rose Bowl on New Years day!

After all the Christmas decorations went away the house felt a little empty so we have been hard at work at decorating. Our family room now has end tables, lamps, curtains, and decor. While we were at it, we got bedroom furniture! So we have been busy fixing up our bedroom and in the process helping the guest room look like a guest room.

We’ve finally gotten around to posting the majority of our wedding pictures online for your viewing pleasure. You can go check them out at our picasa site here or go to our wedding page here where we were also able to post a preview version of our wedding album. Sorry for the delay. Hopefully by our next post we’ll have pictures up from our summer trip to California.