Happy Fourth of July!

This year we visited Craig's family in North Carolina for the fourth. The six hour drive was much nicer than the 17 hours we use to have from Texas! Although sitting for even that long as a big pregnant lady is not the easiest thing--we survived the drive and enjoyed the weekend. We spent a lot of time just hanging out and enjoying family and the yard.

The fourth was spent at Uncle Barney's with the annual fish fry. It was a great party! The torrential down pour made things a little more interesting but we all had a fun time. Also, important to note: the food was amazing! (A wonderful part about this stage of pregnancy is food is soooo good and you just can't get enough!!!)

Here is Ethan and Grammy at Nanny's for Sunday dinner. Nanny gave him a big stuffed frog that he is "riding". He LOVES it.
















Ethan climbed on top of the car all by himself! I was just getting to him when we took this picture! He couldn't ride in it, he had to ride on top. Wild little man!

A fun Saturday morning

On Saturday we went to Great Falls National Park. We enjoyed hiking and seeing the falls early in the morning before it got too hot. It was great to be outside.

And here is a picture of Ethan just being his usual cute self trying on Dad's shoes.

Happy Father's Day!

We sure love our Dad's and are grateful for their wonderful examples to us. Craig and I are very blessed to both have Fathers who raised us well and taught us what is truly important.

I am also grateful for the great Dad Craig is to Ethan and will be to our new baby. Since Craig has been working from home so much more Ethan has been in heaven. At least 100 times a day Ethan runs to Daddy to give him a big sloppy (usually very drooly) kiss. We had a fun Father's day enjoying pork chops, mashed potatoes and cinnamon apples for dinner. I think every-bodies favorite part though was the cookies at the end. We caught Ethan eating Craig's "cookie bouquet" while we were skyping with our dads--so I think he enjoyed himself!

Ethan and his garden

Ethan has LOVED our garden this year. He spends at least an hour on the patio every day watering (or pretending to water) the plants. We got him a little camp chair his size so he can sit out there. You can't see it in this picture but he even has his own little squash plant. We gave him his own since he insisted on pulling the plants up by the roots. His squash has endured many a baby assault but is surprisingly still blooming regularly! It is is however less than half the size of all our other plants but the beauty of it is that it is his plant and he loves it. If you ask him how his squash is doing he will run over and check for you every time. Here is a picture of us about to enjoy our first garden fresh pea--it was amazing!

National Air and Space Museum

This memorial day we had a chance to go to the National Air and Space Museum with Wendy (Craig's sister) and her kids. It was great. Ethan loved it to say the least. He slept for the drive over and woke to see his favorite cousin Callan smiling over his stroller. That was enough to make his afternoon but when he realized we were going to see hundreds of airplanes he couldn't contain himself. He laughed and pointed up at all the airplanes the entire visit.  We thought he would enjoy the museum but we had no idea how much!

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!