My Husband the Carpenter

Some of you may not know this, but Justin is quite good at wood working. He has been making things around the house for a long time, but some of his best work has been in the kids room. He began when Alina was born and recently has made more things to go in the room. He picked up a lot of his skills working in a "second-hand" store where he fixed all sorts of messed up furniture and also from his dad who is a very handy man as well. Here are some of his projects, sorry for some reason the pictures are blurry.


This is his most recent project, making the hutch for the dresser we bought for the room and staining it all to match the other furniture in there.
This is the toy box he made for Alina before she was born. He also made one for our niece, Lily, but its white.
This is the changing "table" he made. We didn't have room for an actual one or a dresser type so he made one that fits on the end of the twin bed in the room. Its perfect!
He also made the shelf (but not the anchor things)
He made several other book shelves, but you get the idea. He loves this kind of thing! I hope one day we can have a garage or shed of some sort so he can do more:)

Cookies & Milk

A couple of weekends ago, I was blessed by some of my friends from church with a shower for Nathanael. Pauline, Angie and Sara put their amazing creative juices to work and came up with this adorable milk and cookies themed shower. I loved the brown and pink stuff with Alina, so the brown and blue for a boy was so cute. Thank you for the work and all the sweet gifts! Check out how cute this stuff is!

We are excited about baby #2 coming anytime now, but I guess I better put the cute gifts away before he actually shows up:)

More zoo pics

Justin insisted that I include more pics to show what a great time they have at the zoo. Here is some of the fun:)

With the meerkats

Checking the "map" to see which animals to go to next

On the train

At the gardens, here they ran into the Baarendse kids!

This is what happens after a fun day with daddy at the zoo!

I am so happy that these two love to play together. Justin is so much better than me at really playing with Alina and getting her excited about things. I'm grateful for such a loving husband who adores his little "bug."

What happens at the zoo...

...should stay at the zoo? Well, let's just say going to the zoo with daddy is probably more fun than mommy. Justin decided he had some extra cash, so they did the train and then the pony ride. Apparently the horse lady is a pretty good salesperson as well, because she convinced Justin that by doubling the price of our year pass to the zoo, we could get unlimited pony rides and every other attraction in the zoo. If you add it up, its not a terrible deal, its just not what we had planned. But Alina does have some extra gift money in her savings so, pony rides here we come!
By the way, did I mention that I didn't even get to be there for the first pony ride? I kind of always thought it'd be with her Aunt Kim, oh well, she'll just have to teach her how to actually "ride" horses! Really, I'm not as bitter as I sound:)

Papa Ovi in Charlotte

I know this post is late as well, but at least your getting posts:) Last Wednesday we met my dad in Charlotte for dinner. He was there for work for the week so we drove up to have dinner with him. For some of you that may seem far, but trust me, its much closer than Texas! We met him at On the Border (since they have real Mexican restuarants up there in the big city and all), which is one of Justin's favorites. Alina was so excited to see her Papa Ovi, and eat her quesadilla! She talked about going to Papa's house and in Papa's car and seeing Nina for several days after.

Mountain Weekend

So I know that its been a week, and everyone else already has their pictures up from the weekend, but here I am finally posting mine:) Alina and I went with five couples from our small group at church to a mountain getaway in Pigeon Forge, TN. Justin had planned to go, but the dissertation was calling his name. We had 11 adults (Me, Waters, Michauds, Poles, Bells, and Clarks) and 8 children 4-years-old and under in a 3 story, 6 bedroom house. It was really nice! A bit hectic at times, but all in all we had a great time. It was fun to relax and enjoy some good fellowship, especially with Matt and Jess since we don't see them all the time!

Hanging out in the main room, which is what we mostly did.
Every family took their turn to cook a meal for the whole group.


We were able to have a small shower for Jessica, since we may not get to see her before the arrival of her daughter in June. Pauline and I made these adorable cake pops before the weekend. They were a hit!
Three expecting mothers...me, Jessica and Kelley.



Alina loved seeing the mountains!

Eating goldfish with her good friend Patrick, she was so excited that he was going to be at the mountains:)
Mine and Alina's room.
Playing with friends:)

The house. Ryan got us a great deal with his discount from work, we hope to do this again sometime!
Alina wanted to help take care of babies. Here she is with baby Reed. However, when it came time for the diaper change and she saw what was in it, she said "yucky" and walked away. She better get ready for that with her brother on the way!
Kim and Robbie made Chicken and dumplings, it was sooooo good! I am requesting this again for my new baby meal:)
There was even a hot tub on the deck. Only Graem and Mason took an opportunity to enjoy it, it was a bit too cold and rainy for the rest of us, or in the case of the pregnant ladies, it was off limits.
On Saturday night, Robbie and Matt took out the guitars again and this time did a sing along with the kids. It was a lot of fun, the kids really enjoyed the music.
Mason decided to take up mandolin:)

What does it take to write a dissertation?

Some of you may be wondering, just what does it take to write a dissertation anyway? Well, I decided to compile some facts and pictures to give you some insight (and probably discourage you from ever taking on such a monumental task)! My numbers are probably on the low side, because I didn't go through every single thing he's done for the past 8 months (or the years in preparation before that). Here's what it takes:

-5 Chapters, Intro and Conclusion
-199 pages typed (so far)
-at least 20 various word documents
-12 or more spreadsheets with data
-15 word documents with pages and pages of notes from primary sources
-several legal pads of notes
-4 3-inch binders with copies of primary sources
-more than 4000 scanned pictures of primary sources and other things
-11 documents open while writing one chapter
-111 books piled up around (there are many more than that he used, but that's what I counted last night)
-lots of music on itunes and good headphones
-a lamp
-aluminum foil over the arched window to keep the room from getting so hot
-tons of coffee, hot tea and chocolate
-hours and hours and hours of work!!!

See that red book in the middle of the table, that's some other guy's dissertation, good news: it only has typing on one side of each of those pages.

Sounds like fun, huh?

Valentine's

It was a fun Valentines for the Liles! Pauline and I started celebrating by making "cake pops" on Saturday night. They were supposed to looklike candy hearts with messages on them, but the message part didn't work out. Here are some pics:

These are the cake balls turned into hearts using a cookie cutter
The candy coating to cover them in
Our first batch drying, these really didn't look like the picture, but we got better as we went along
There were some fatalities in the making of the cake pops, I'm sad to say that 3 yellow pops did not survive:(
The completed cake pops, I took these to my homeroom to reward them for bringing in so much change for the Pennies for Patients campaign

On Valentine's Day, Alina enjoyed her first official Happy Meal. She loved the burger, Hi-C and toy pony, but only nibbled on a few french fries.
That is one hungry girl!

Alina got a cake pop for dessert as well. She's had a few in the last couple of days:)

After Alina went to bed, Justin and I enjoyed our "traditional" Valentine's meal. We've been doing this the last few years instead of going out. Ribeye steaks, lobster tails, and baked potatoes. It was so good!!!