Leavenworth

We decided to go to Leavenworth last Saturday for the Christmas Light festival. It was a lot of fun but it was REALLY crowded.


We went to the Australian store, the Christmas Store, the Gingerbread house for hot chocolate and frosted cookies, and then we went to Gustav's for dinner....YUMMY!!!


It was so pretty to see Leavenworth all lit up with Christmas lights. I loved it!

I love Leavenworth with snow. It's gorgeous! I'm excited to go back next year and bring Landon with us...but we'll be going after Christmas, when it's a lot less crowded ;)

Lookin' A Lot Like Christmas!!!

Even though I've been listening to Christmas music since November 1st, it's really starting to feel like Christmas. It really helped on the 1st of December when it snowed. Man, was that beautiful! Of course Ben and I started putting up all the Christmas decorations on Saturday right after Thanksgiving. Ben did such a good job putting the lights on the house. His height really does come in handy ;)

I've taken pictures of all our decorations, just like I did for Halloween. But they're not final yet because we still have a little more to do.


Our little Christmas Tree in the TV room. Themed with white and red Christmas balls and little icicles.

This is our larger tree in the Australia themed room. It is themed with white, silver, and red Christmas balls. Ben also decided to wrap the Didjeree-doo (Aboriginal instrument) in Christmas lights, which I thought was a great idea!

And here we are working on our gingerbread house. Ben was going crazy with all the candy. But it was fun building it together. That's one of the things that we did together when we first started dating...

The finished product!

It Snowed!

It snowed on the first day of December this year. It was so exciting. I love the snow so much and had been wishing that it would snow for the past month, I think. We hung out in Kirkland (where is snowed the most, according to the news) at Ben's parent's house. I was up in Bothell earlier for my friend Amanda's baby shower. Gosh I look HUGE!
So after that I went over to Ben's parent's house to wait for Ben and his dad to come back up from our house cause they were doing our Christmas lights. Then when they got back up to Kirkland Ben helped the neighbor shovel the driveway and I got some pretty pictures!


SO PRETTY!!! I love the whole month of December!

Halloween Party

This last Saturday we went to Aaron and Sharla's Halloween Party. It was awesome. Lots of food and spooky decorations. Everyone's costumes were so cute. We had a punch bowl with dry ice and Green River Soda, so it was witches brew. Pretty cool.

Ben and I went as the Milkman and the knocked up house wife. David and Victoria Beckham also attended the party (Melanie and Troy). Sharla was a 50's girl and Aaron was a Greaser. Blake was a pirate and Tahni was also a pirate. And then Aaron's sister was Mrs. Clause and her husband Mike was Santa. SO CUTE!
On Monday night Ben and I carved our pumpkins and we carved a little one for little Landon. Ben carved a little ghost on his pumpkin. I thought it turned out pretty cute. Ben also carved a hanging bat on his pumpkin and I carved two flying bats in front of the moon on my pumpkin. Scraping the outside of the pumpkin to do the moon was pretty tough cause we didn't have any good tools to scrape with, but I got it done. It took forever though. I thought they turned out pretty cool.I'm kinda sad that Halloween will be over tonight. But I'll be looking forward to next Halloween because then we'll be able to take Landon Trick or Treating...which will be a lot of fun :)

29 weeks

Tomorrow I will be 29 weeks...only 11 more to go! Landon has been kicking up a storm in my stomach and Ben finally felt him kick last night. Well, he's felt him before...but not as powerful as he did last night. I was so excited that Ben finally got to feel what I feel all the time. Being pregnant is such an amazing experience. I love being pregnant. The only thing I don't like about it is feeling tired ALL THE TIME and the acid reflux isn't very fun either, but it's not as bad anymore. It's just crazy to think that I haven't even met Landon yet but I love him so much and I would do anything for him. I think it's the most incredible bond anyone can have with another human. I can't wait to meet him and I know Ben is extremely excited to meet little Landon. We've got all of his furniture put together and he's set with all his toys and blankets and many outfits. Time has gone by quickly but I know this last trimester will go by even faster because the Holidays are here : )

Here are our treasured first pictures of Landon:

This is our first ultrasound of Landon at 9 weeks. He's so tiny!!!


Here he is at 13 weeks and he's already sucking his thumb...just like his dad did when he was a baby.

And here he is at 21 weeks when we found out that he was a boy. He's looking right at us :)

I would love to get one of those 3D ultrasounds done because I would love to see what he looks like now.

Decoration Update ;)

Alright, so last night for FHE we put up the final touches of our Halloween decorations. Two big spiderwebs and two skeletons. Headless Harry (down by the tombstone) and spiders!!! We also put our pumpkins out...Including Landon's little pumpkin :) I hope we get a lot of kids coming by our house. I'm really excited for Halloween....Can you tell? ;)

Halloween Decorations

I love Halloween. Though, I think I like any holiday where I can decorate and make our house look cute though ;) Ben and I spent last week putting up decorations on our house. There's a witch on our front door and a cat in the window. We got these light up trees that are kind of spooky looking and then have black lights wrapped around the railing. And there are gargoyles sitting up on the railing. There's also a tombstone in there by the door. We still have skeletons to hang up and spider webs, so I'll try to take an updated picture soon.

We have put some Fall decorations inside and some other halloween decorations inside

Pumpkin Patch!!!

Last weekend we decided to start a new family tradition of going to a pumpkin patch to pick out our pumpkins for Halloween. We went to Maris Farms which is in the Buckley area and it was great. So many pumpkins to choose from and they had many other activities for kids to do there. Ben and I had a lot of fun picking out our pumpkins.


I think it's pretty funny that I don't even look 6 months pregnant in this picture.

But here is Ben trying to impersonate me, I guess ;) He's such a goofball!

I love the Fall so much. I love pumpkins and all the changing colors of the leaves and I especially love Halloween. Ben and I also went to a corn maze that night with two of our really good friends Aaron and Sharla. It was a blast. I had never been to a corn maze before. Ben and Aaron kept trying to scare us by hiding in the corn and jumping out behind us. It was so much fun! I love this time of year.

Starting Our Blog

So I guess this is my first attempt at "blogging." I have a MySpace, but everyone keeps telling me I need to start a Blog. So here it is. Its just so weird for me to write about myself...well, hopefully I'll be writing more about our little family than just myself ;)

Anyway, here is a quick update of our lives right now. I currently work for PricewaterhouseCoopers as an auditor and have been doing that for the past two years. Ben is still working for Expeditors International of Washington (an import/export company). We just bought our first house! YAY! It is in south Auburn, but the neighborhood looks a lot like Klahanee did when it started. Here's a picture of our house below.


We are also expecting our first baby! IT'S A BOY! He is due January 11, 2008 and his name will be Landon Troy Shepherd. Troy is Ben's middle name :) We are so excited for his arrival. It's been an interesting experience. I am currently 28 weeks along, so I'm into my 3rd trimester.

I had it pretty easy in the beginning. Not much throwing up, although I was nauseous almost all of the time. The second trimester was pretty easy too. Towards the end I started suffering from acid reflux, which apparently is really common at this stage. That has brought along vomiting (which I'm sure you all love to hear about, hehe) and just a really uncomfortable feeling after I eat. He's really been kicking a lot, but he still has yet to wake me up in the middle of the night by his powerful punches. This morning I did feel him kick me in the ribs, which was a really odd feeling, since I've never been kicked in the ribs before. I've had a couple contractions already which has been really scary considering how early it is for me to be having contractions. But everything is good right now.

So that's the current update :)