February 23, 2009

It's already almost March 2009, and I have to apologize for not updating our blog for a few months!!!

We hope you, your families and friends and lives are going well and you're blessed! We are definitely feeling blessed these days with so much new stuff going on.

Our year is going well so far, with much excitement about the upcoming new addition to the household! Baby Brown (sex still unknown) is doing wonderfully and is moving around a lot these days and can even occasionally be felt throwing those vigorous kicks and punches by others. :) Noah is especially excited about that. I think it seems more real to him these days.

We wanted to thank everyone for their continued prayers for us and baby, and for all of the wonderful gifts and loans of equipment and bedding and books!!! We feel so blessed and thankful!

Baby Brown is just under a pound now, and around 10-11" long from head to toe, and recently I experienced hiccups from the inside for the first time! haha So a bunch of neat things happening lately. It's been fun! Prenatal yoga is helping with the usual pregnancy aches and pains and helping me relax (which is always a plus!).

Here are some ultrasound pictures from our 20-week appointment (yes, we are already 5 months!!!). If the picture won't work, click on the link.

Photobucket Album

http://s187.photobucket.com/albums/x219/nkbrown81/Baby%20Brown%2020%20Weeks/

Noah is an excited daddy-to-be. When my parents came down to visit, he spent some time with my mom painting the nursery and we were really excited when they surprised us with the crib! So that was our Sunday afternoon project - setting up the beautiful new crib and enjoying the moment.

Noah is actually in New York right now - on Long Island. He has been there since last Monday, and we just learned that he will be out there for a total of 3 weeks for work. I am trying to see if I can fly out to visit him this weekend, but due to a bunch of church stuff, he may just be flying home for the weekend. Either way, it will be nice to see him again!

Noah's classes are going pretty well. He is taking a Collaborative Engineering class (which is basically a goofy pointless psych class) and another design class which isn't too bad. He is aiming to take another class this summer, and one more in fall. If that happens, he will have his Master's Degree in Aerospace by the end of the year!!!

Other than all that, we are doing well, just waiting for Spring. The weather here is iffy - always up and down. It is supposed to be cold for the next few days (30's) and then get warm Wednesday and Thursday into the mid- to upper-50's, then plunge back into winter again. We haven't had too much snow this winter - just rain once a week or so.

We are looking forward to seeing family soon and again, hope you're all doing well!

Love,
Noah & Krista

January 13, 2009

Hi Everyone!

This is just an update from the Browns again. A lot of people have been asking how our doctor appointment went yesterday.

The appointment didn't consist of an ultrasound like we'd hoped, but we did get to hear the baby's heartbeat, which was really amazing. It was over 140 beats per minute and going strong! The baby is definitely active in there, because the doctor kept having to move the doppler around to find the heartbeat!

FYI... this is a doppler. It's sort of like an ultrasound wand, but it has a speaker attached to it. Kind of reminded me of those little karaoke tape recorders we used to carry around as kids with the microphone! haha

Anyway, so the appointment went well. They did some quick blood work and sent us on our way.

Our next appointment is on February 12th, and will include a very thorough ultrasound, which will take about 30 minutes. We're very excited to see our little one again, and to send more pictures to all of you!

And, for those of you who are wondering "will they find out if it's a boy or girl???", the answer is leaning towards "no" :) We are thinking we'd like it to be a surprise. But you never know... things could change in the next month before our ultrasound. We'll see.

We hope all of you are doing well, and would like to send out a warm and excited CONGRATULATIONS!!!! to Noah's cousin Marissa and her hubby Kevin who have just announced that they are also pregnant! We're waiting for updates from them and pray they have a wonderful healthy baby too!

There must be something in the water, because I now know 8 other pregnant ladies who are all due within about a month of each other (including my OB/GYN and my boss)! Amazing, but very neat to be able to share this incredible time with other women going through the same thing.

Blessings to all of you, and stay tuned for more pictures of Baby Brown!!!

Love,
Noah & Krista.

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