Happy New Year!

Hi Everyone! Happy New Year!

We hope all of you had a wonderful holiday season with family and friends.

This year we traveled up to Wisconsin for Christmas with my family and then back down to Springfield the Monday after Christmas to celebrate with Noah's family. We had a great time with everyone and wanted to say thank you again for all of the gifts and hugs and effort you made to come see us while we were around! We really enjoyed spending time with everyone.

We want to apologize for not sending out a Christmas letter this year. We just simply ran out of time!

We had a great year in 2008. Lots of wonderful things happened. But had the pleasure of sharing one of the best yet with family and friends.... that we are having a baby! We were so blessed to find out we got pregnant in mid-September and are due with a little baby ______ (boy/girl? taking bets! haha) in early July 2009. Our first appointment was on December 15th (we did not realize we had been pregnant that long!) and here are our first glimpses of the little one:

I will be 15 weeks along on Wednesday. I've had a bunch of energy and have been feeling pretty good! I thought I felt the baby move the other day but I am not sure what that was just yet. We'll see! I've decided to take a prenatal yoga class which will be great for my low back aches, and we're starting to make a list of everything we'll need for "Baby Brown" and it's a little overwhelming, I have to say! But we are getting plenty of input and tips and suggestions from friends and family, which has been great. So if anyone has any suggestions just let us know!

Noah will be starting to take Masters classes again this Spring semester, and the way he's planning, he could be done by December this year with his Masters degree. Hooray! His work has been going pretty well too - not to much new to talk about there. They are doing some re-org, but it looks like he'll be working on the same type of stuff (whatever that is!). :)

Noah's brother Nick and his wife Cristol are in Hawaii now. Nick was transferred there c/o the Army and he's doing pretty well. We hope to go see them while they're down there but not sure when we'll make it, with the baby coming and all. They are doing pretty well and enjoying the sunshine. They got a kitten, who is the most adorable thing, and loves little kitty clothes and enjoyed playing with the Christmas tree this year.

Noah's other brother Paul got a job with Boeing down in Alabama. We wish him a safe trip and hope to see him soon! He will be leaving in the next few weeks to make the move.

My brother Eric is doing well too. He and Melissa moved to Madison this year and got an adorable little puppy, Mable! Eric is still doing tech support and training classes for his company, and Melissa got a new job in the Bio-med field there. They have an awesome little apartment that is near a lot of great stuff. We hope to visit them sometime and hit the Madison farmer's market this summer. We hear it's amazing!

Well, that is about all from St. Louis! We hope all of you had a wonderful, safe holiday season once again, and look forward to talking or hearing from you soon!

Love,
Noah & Krista