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

September 15, 2008

Wow, I can't believe it's the middle of September already! The summer flew by and it's almost Fall. Time to break out the soup and sip some hot beverages!

The big news of the moment is that Noah passed his GRE exam! YAY!!!

He needed to take the GRE to officially get into the Master's Program at USC. He's been taking some classes the last couple of years, but he was at the point where he couldn't take any more general ed classes. They require the GRE, like the ACT/SAT exams, to be accepted into master's programs.

Other than that, we are just running here and there, always busy with something. We are working with a team to plan several more men's conferences this year and into 2009. If you recall, we had one back in March. Our goal was to do 4 conferences this year, and we will meet our goal! I am still doing the marketing for this ministry. Please keep the conferences and marketing in your prayers. We are growing, and are excited to see what God has in store for the next set of conferences!

In addition, we are both still involved in the Celebrate Recovery program at our church. Celebrate Recovery is basically a 12-step recovery program, sort of on the lines of AA, but Christ-centered. It's not just for individuals who have addictions to drugs or alcohol - it is for people with depression, compulsive behaviors, workaholism... you name it! We are here for everyone. It's a wonderful way to get to know yourself, and also to learn from others. It's been such a huge blessing in our church and so many lives. We are both involved in the leadership team, I do the music with another guy and Noah helps out with the sound and powerpoint presentations.

Both sets of our parents are going out of the country in the next few weeks. I don't think we've ever experienced "no parents" before! haha Noah's parents are going to Ireland, and mine are going to Italy - both at the end of September! We wish them both wonderful safe and fun trips!

Work is still going well. Noah's busy with his stuff (whatever he works on, I will never understand!) and I'm busy planning our holiday party again this year, and another district meeting coming up for next week. It's a little crazy and my desk is no longer visible under the paperwork, but we still have our heads above water, so to speak! :)

So... we think the fence situation is resolved - finally! We have had kids cutting through our back yard since we moved in. We figured out that they cut through our yard because it's the only one without a fence in the back. That wouldn't be so bad in itself, except that they ride their bikes through, which rips up the entire lawn - especially when it's wet. So our grass would never grow and our yard would be completely brown, and there would be muddy ruts all over the place. To remedy the situation, we tried putting up a wire fence - the same kind of fence both of our neighbors have, and that we used to have (the first owners took it down). They didn't like that too much, but continued to ride their bikes through the yard, climb over the fence and bend it all the way to the ground, and hand their bikes over to the other kid. It was ridiculous. Our next step was to "go ghetto". We got some "special wire" from Noah's grandpa and put that up. It did the trick. The "special wire" was barbed wire, which they could not longer get over or under without getting cut up. So they decided to stop. THANK GOODNESS!!! You wouldn't think that would be such a battle. And the weird thing is, their shortcut isn't any shorter than if they'd just ride their bikes up the main street and go around! *sigh* Gotta wonder about kids...

The holidays are coming up and here is the scoop! We will be in Springfield for Thanksgiving, and in Wisconsin for Christmas this year. Looking forward to seeing everyone!!!

Well... that's about it from the "south". We hope everyone up there is doing great! And we did hear about the new pooches in the family. Congrats Schuberts!!! I can't wait to see pictures of them. I'm sure they are incredibly cute!

I did have another weird story, but it's too gross to share on our blog. I will just leave you with a photo! haha

Yes, that is a caterpillar, and it's about 3 1/2" long and as fat as my thumb. EEW! There were about 4 of them (that I could see) on our tomato plant, which basically annihilated it. As you can see, there are plenty of dead leaves and branches, and they will eat the entire leaves and leave the stems to die. The little white things... well they are separate from the caterpillar as we found out. If you'd like to read more about these disgusting little critters, here ya go...

http://www.coopext.colostate.edu/4dmg/Pests/tomato.htm

On that lovely note... ta ta for now!

Sending lots of love,
Noah & Krista

Anniversary Trip - Aug. 8-10, 2008

Well hey there...It's been a while so I thought I'd update all of you on what's going on down here in the so-called "south". (It's NOT the "south" - I just like to humor all of you with an occasional "ya'll" and referring to our home as "southern". haha!)

By the way, I've figured out that no one has been receiving updates from our blog for some reason. I apologize for that! I thought everyone was getting an email with the updates. I am still trying to figure out why it's not working. In the mean time I will send out a link every time I update the blog to let everyone know to take a look. Feel free to click on any past postings for updates too!

What's new?
Well we just enjoyed our 5th Anniversary together this past Saturday (8/9) and had a wonderful time down in Sainte Genevieve/Farmington, MO! We visited several wineries, the Tiger Sanctuary and also went hiking at a local state park a few times. The weather was a beautiful 80-85 degrees and sunny - just perfect! Here is a link to some pictures from our weekend retreat! (If you're on Facebook, I have a bunch more pics posted on there too.)

Other than our weekend, we're doing well. We have been doing some minor yardwork, and Noah's brother Paul is coming to visit us this coming weekend.

Another Test
Noah's getting ready to take the GRE, which is an engineering version of the "ACT" or "SAT" that is needed to enter into a formal engineering master's program. Noah's been taking some engineering masters classes, but to enter the core of the program he will need to pass the GRE. He is taking it next month in September.

Upcoming Trips
We will be traveling up to Wisconsin for Labor Day weekend to visit with family up there and are looking forward to that. We'll be driving up that Friday after work, and leaving the following Monday (Labor Day) afternoon. A little bird told me that my mom is trying to organize a family BBQ - hope all of our WI family can make it! :)

Work
Work for both of us is still going well. Not much new with either of our jobs. Noah might go somewhere in September, but we aren't sure when or where yet. You know Boeing... always last minute! That's okay though. I am going to continue taking courses through American Family to learn more about our products and how they work, so maybe someday I can temporarily help some of our agents in their offices if they are short staffed.

Our summer has been very nice weather-wise. We have only had a few days in the 90's, with most of the days in the 80's - unheard of for August in St. Louis!!! It's also been pretty busy as usual. We hope your summertime has been great too, and hope to see all of you very soon!

Love,
Noah & Krista.

July 18, 2008

PUPPY!!!!

Ok, so my brother Eric and his wife Melissa got a puppy a little while ago, and I am really excited and had to post pictures!!! Heeeeeeere's Mable!!! :)

http://s187.photobucket.com/albums/x219/nkbrown81/Mable/