A funny quark

Ethan has a collection of funny quarks, but here is one that just makes me laugh. To start, he loves his blankie. He doesn't love to to just cuddle with it though, he loves to rip holes in it and tear the batting out. Then he loves to rub the fuzz all over his face while he sucks his thumb. I have recently noticed he has a hard time doing all the little boy things he loves to do with one hand holding a ball of fuzz and the other thumb in his mouth so his solution has been to store a ball of fuzz in his ear. This way he has at least one hand free but has his "blankie" of sorts ready just an ears shot away.

Here is a little bit of Ethan being Ethan. Diapers come off faster than they go on around here and poor blankie is always being torn to shreds. 

It's a........well, it's not a duck!

We are having a baby! 

I am due October 6th...of course always give or take:) Today was our big ultrasound to find out the gender but our little one was shy and didn't want to give out the surprise. We are kind of assuming it's a girl because we never saw any evidence of a boy, but the baby also never opened it's legs at all! I walked the halls a couple times to get this child to move around but we have a stubborn little baby apparently! So I guess we are going the old fashion route because the technician said she simply couldn't tell us! The important news is everything looked healthy and we are very excited.

Here is a shot of our beautiful/handsome baby:)

Apartment style gardening

We were excited to discover we had plenty of sun on our large balcony to grow a little garden this year. Ethan of course loves playing in the dirt, adding worms he finds to each pot, and pulling leaves off. He also really enjoys smelling the tomatoes--he loves tomatoes so I think he will be very excited to learn one of his favorite foods will start growing soon from his already lovely plant.

Frying Pan Farm Park

One of our first adventures here in Virginia has been to Frying Pan Farm Park. We went on our anniversary actually with Wendy and her kids (how romantic huh?) actually it couldn't have been better. The weather was perfect and the cows were super friendly. It is an old farm that was functional 80 years ago. The county bought it up and turned it into a park. I kept thinking of my Grandpa's farm and how his must have been similar. There are still lots of animals, a garden, a functioning smoke house, and even the cute farm house can be toured. It goes without saying: Ethan loved it...though I am not sure who enjoyed themselves more, Ethan or Craig. It's only about a 15 minute drive from us through the woods and it was pretty cool.

Here at last

What an adventure. The Marshall family has arrived in D.C. (well, Oakton to be specific) and what a blessing it is. I want to give a bit of a travel log to point out the blessings along our path.

A while ago Craig's parents came out to visit us while in Houston. We enjoyed the wonderful early spring Texas is usually graced with. We also went to what has been rated "the countries best children's museum" (some parenting magazine I get) while they visited which was great. Ethan loved it and we loved having them visit.

The next week we flew to Idaho to visit Grandma and Grandpa Rose. My younger brother Eric was also home on military leave from Iraq. By some crazy twist of fate our flight was delayed by two days in Salt Lake City. Who has ever heard of a two day delay for a domestic flight? My brother wasn't even delayed that much coming out of a war zone!!! Anyway it actually worked out great and we visited our dear friends the Luthy's. We counted it as an act of God because it was the only weekend that month they were in town and they are really our family we are just not related to. I wish I had taken pictures but when you are having so much fun the camera just doesn't seem to make it out of the bag. Well, we finally made it to Idaho. We were there for two weeks and loved it. We even got to go to Idaho Falls to see my Grandma. It was a wonderful trip and we were sad to leave...but we had big plans:)

Here we are celebrating Dad's 50th. Eric and Ben insisted on doing "heavy heavy hang over" with his new 100lb garden cart.

We got home from Idaho and started to get ready for our trek across the country. Yes. We drove with a teething 17 month old, over Easter, across the country. To our surprise our movers were able to pack our things two days early. The unexpected punctuality inspired us to leave a little early. Thank heavens we did. We were able to pass through Alabama just two days before the tornadoes struck. Had we left on schedule we would have been there in the middle of the disaster. We prayed each day for protection as we drove and we somehow made it across the country with nothing more than a cracked windshield. We spent Easter morning in Layafette Louisiana. Ethan enjoyed an Easter egg hung in our hotel suite and we even made an hour of church before hitting the road again.

We were able to stop in North Carolina for a couple days with Craig's family before our final journey to D.C. which was a nice break from the car. We made it here on a sunny Thursday afternoon, checked into our apartment and here we have sat since--enjoying our dinners around a diaper box waiting for our things to arrive. We have also visited Craig's sister in Arlington a few times which has been a nice distraction from our empty apartment.

In case you actually read the exciting travel log, you will notice things just worked out all along the way. We have been blessed a great amount. It sure didn't feel like it was working out when Ethan screamed for hours in the car or we sat in an airport at 5 a.m. being told we would sit there for two more days....but everything has worked out. We are here. We all lived. And I am so grateful for this opportunity. Moving is always kind of a chance to start over, meet new people, and resolve to never gather that much junk again. We have family who we love and are blessed enough to have them love us back. We have a Father in Heaven who listens to our prayers and guides us even when we don't realize it. We have amazing opportunities and potential here that I hope we live up to.

Here is a snapshot of our apt. (we are on the upper floor) We would love for friends and family to come visit us--and since DC is just a train ride away we could have lots of fun!