Christmas in our New Home

We had a fantastic celebration of Christmas this year in our new home! We recently bought a house in Greenfield just blocks away from Mommy's family. Katherine, Mommy and Daddy were all spoiled by friends and family this Christmas. Katherine got an abundance of clothes, toys, and books. We're sure to be busy over the next weeks getting everything in place for her arrival.

We were especially blessed that Oma, Opa and Aunt Mary Beth drove all the way up from Texas to visit!  Time has flown by quickly and we've treasured every minute shared with family this season.

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!

We are sorry that we are not very on top of this blog-o-sphere as our loved ones are, but we are new to this, as we are new to many things in our life right now. All very exciting things of course, but new none the less. As many of you know we went to San Antonio for Thanksgiving this year. We enjoyed many relaxing days with family and even indulged in some truly delicious southern style foods.

One of the places that we ventured to was the Riverwalk. After Thanksgiving, San Antonio puts lights all down the Riverwalk and is really just a very pretty sight. Unfortunately throughout the trip we did not take many photos except a few from this night and most of them came out pretty blurry. 

While we were down in Texas, Mary Beth ( Ted's sister) had put together an amazing party for Katherine. She has been doing so many somersaults of joy ever since! We are so blessed to have such loving families who care and support us and even are willing to do disgusting things for us. To be more specific, one of the games that we played included identifying melted chocolate in diapers (some participants were ambitious enough to even do taste-tests). However, not everything was so absurd, well... at least not in an icky way, because everything was absurdly cute. The Baby Blocks cake and the cake made of diapers were up there on the cutest things of all. Of course the best part of the party was the company and love that came with them.

In conclusion we just want to say how much we appreciated everything. We know that the time, money, and effort put into this must have been extravagant and all we can do is say how much we love you guys.  

Pants, Onesies and Dresses-- Oh My!!

Today Pappa and Mamma Block practiced for Katherine's arrival by waking up at the crack of dawn and went to Beaver, Pa, to get free clothes from a neat ministry that is called Garments of Love located at The Life Center Church. The church collects children's clothing from around the community and once a month on Saturday morning, they distribute the clothing to anybody who needs or wants them completely free of charge (we got the extra bonus of getting Kolaches while we were out there from the only place around Pittsburgh that sells them).

We really had a blast picking out clothes from varying ages. We were both surprised at how many nice outfits they had and how many other things they had. Katherine was excited too and did many somersaults throughout the day! After we got home and settled we decided to see how many outfits we could make, so we comprised a little chart...

Clearly, we are suffering a bit from New Parent's Syndrome, but we just can't wait to dress Katherine up! Mommy was a little bit sad, yet amused after playing with Katherine's clothes for an hour to look over at our own huge pile of untouched laundry. :-) We didn't include it on the graph, but we also received 4 pairs of shoes, 4 pairs of socks, 1 hat, and 1 snowsuit, as well as 4 books (including one of Mommy's childhood favorites: The Tub People).

We don't expect to keep such a perfect inventory of Katherine's clothes as she grows, and as we count our clothes we're reminded to count all of our blessings - most importantly the gift of love for each other.

Katherine Elisabeth Block's First Picture!

Well we tried to go to a photobooth, but 20 dollars and 16 photos of Julie's bellybutton later we thought we would ask for the doctors help. When we went to the doctor on the 18th of October, we had our first Ultrasound and the technician helping us said that all was in order and to expect a beautiful baby girl on March 18th!

We are both very excited and can't wait to meet Katherine face to face. For now we will have to do with having her picture as our phone's background.

Mommy's started to feel little flutters, and before long we're sure her little feet (exactly 1 inch long right now) will be kicking!