Franks Pizza

We made homemade pizza tonight.  Yum! I made the dough and sauce, Chris assembled the whole thing (he even throws the dough in the air!), and Cole tasted the cheese as I grated it.  A family affair!  We decided that tonight's pizza is the BEST version we've made so far.  Yes! 

And yes, today is my due date.  December 30 and still no baby Frank!  I have to admit that since Cole came a week early I expected this one to arrive early also. Just goes to show how little of a clue I really have.  I go to the doctor tomorrow, so stay tuned!  Maybe the first baby of 2008? 

Cole is fruity...

Crispy Schokochef

For those of you who have joined our blog readership recently, Chris is CRAZY about chocolate.  His mom and sister sent him a fabulous array of chocolate items for Christmas, including this book you see above called Hot Chocolate. Chris has been perusing this book for a few days, and tonight he attempted for the second time to create a brilliant drink to enjoy.   Tonight's creation included caramelized brown sugar, pure vanilla extract, and a touch of cinnamon.  And of course, a chopped chocolate bar carefully chosen from Chris's decadent collection.   

Another note for those of you who are interested...Chris and I went to Paris in March.  We

visited countless chocolate shops and one factory. Chris carried home at least 50 bars of chocolate ranging in cocoa percentage from 50% to 100%.   He's STILL plowing through this chocolate, because unlike Hershey's, one cannot eat a whole bar in one sitting, let alone a day. It MUST be savored!  The concentrated caffeine and sugar in these kinds of bars would take you down.  

So forget Swiss Miss, folks!  Come over and Crispy the Shokochef will serve you up a cup of the good stuff.   

Dec 25 2007 - VID00011

The Flip

Chris and I received a VERY cool Christmas gift...a Flip Video Camera.  Seriously, this thing is amazing. Check it out. 

Merry Christmas!

We've had a full few days, but it has been so much fun! We spent last weekend with the Luginbills in Indianapolis. They came all the way from Iowa, California, and North Carolina. We decorated cookies, exchanged gifts, hung out, and enjoyed great food. We spent Christmas Eve with the Messerlies, which was also fun. Cole played Santa and passed out presents to everyone. He's learning to be so generous! We came back to my parent's house and Cole and Chris spent a while deciding which cookies to give to Santa this year. Then, off to bed! This morning, we opened gifts and enjoyed some family time together with my parents and Mike, who is home for a week from California. We even had homemade cinnamon rolls..YUM. One of Cole's favorite gifts was a Hot Wheel! Unfortunately, his legs are still a little too short to pedal! He had fun riding up and down the street, though, and down my parent's driveway.
We don't have much baby news to report yet, either. I am dilated 2 centimeters and everything is just fine. My actual due date is this Sunday, December 30, so we're just enjoying our time together until we meet our new little boy. I have to admit, I'm thankful that I wasn't in the hospital for these last few days of Christmas celebrations! It's been a huge blessing to be around so much family after being in Vienna the last three years. We'll be sure to post as soon as our BEST Christmas present arrives!

Crispy's Job Stats

Since working in Vienna...

86 applications to IU jobs (82 were actually forwarded to the specific department)

13 applications to non-IU jobs

6 interviews for IU jobs

3 interviews for non-IU jobs

1 IU job offered to me

1 non-IU job offered to me

My feeling of the job "success" rate: 0.00000001%

IU job "success" rate: 1%

Total job "success" rate: 2%

Grown application skills: lots of time, a little money

Improved resume: help from family and friends, a little money

Improved interviewing skills: time, confusion, humility

Actually having a full time paying job: priceless

Buzz Cut

I'm tired of scrubbing peanut butter out of Cole's hair. It had to go.

Snowy Saturday!

We woke up to lots of snow today, so we seized the moment and trekked outside in all of our snow gear. It was so much fun! Cole ate some snow, we threw snowballs, and we built a short-lived snowman. I guess destroying it was part of the fun, too!

No more TO DOs

It's official.

Christmas shopping is done.
Gifts are wrapped, but NOT under the tree yet. We want them to STAY wrapped until Christmas Day!
Packages to California are sent.
Cookie baking is finished.
Cookies have been delivered.
Baby clothes are washed.
Hospital bag is packed.
Call list is made and posted.
Hospital preregistration is done.
Husband has a job.
Insurance is no longer a problem.

Baby Frank #2, come NOW!

I want to fly!!

Wow!!! This is so amazing, and I would love to do this someday. Heilige Fleischbaellchen!
Now, THIS, is flying.

I still need to tell you about my new job.  Coming soon...

3 weeks to go!

It's a rare day when I put myself on the blog, so today I used this nifty Photo Booth program that our computer has to show you my belly AND my face. Only a few more weeks until we get to meet Blank Frank #2! I bet you can't wait to hear his name...

HUGE Blessings

Chris is going to post more pretty soon, too, but I can't help but share about the awesome things happening to us right now. Some of you may know that Chris has struggled since August with a job search. He has had several interviews and a lot of positive feedback, but nothing came from any of it. It has been discouraging for us, especially because our health insurance expired at the end of November, and we were counting on a job by then that would cover us as a family. Our baby is due December 30...soon! So November 30 came and went and nothing was changing.

Until last Friday! Chris interviewed for 2 jobs last week on Wednesday and Thursday. BOTH opportunities offered him a job on Friday! He chose to accept a job with NWS Enterprises. It's a small accounting company downtown Bloomington. He will have to share more later about the details. All I know is that we are SO thankful! I even find myself excited to iron his shirts and make him lunch. I wonder how long THAT will last! So I've been Christmas shopping this week, too, now that we know we'll have some income coming soon. Yahoo!

The other piece is about insurance. Chris's new job doesn't cover us until April 1, 2008. No luck with this pregnancy, unfortunately. So, we applied for Hoosier Healthwise Medicaid. I found out yesterday that my doctor does not accept this form of insurance, so I was fretting about switching doctors 3 weeks before my due date. I called what seemed like a million people and offices, including my doctor's office, to get this to work somehow, and nothing came of it. So I went to my regularly scheduled appointment yesterday afternoon, and when I arrived, the nurse told me not to worry because my doctors would accept Medicaid just for me in this situation. NO PROBLEM after all! Another HUGE blessing. Our baby can be born without our stress of paying for it out of our empty pockets, and Chris has a job that is a better opportunity than he could have ever designed on his own.

Thanks for sharing in our joy!

Cookie Time!

A favorite family tradition! Chris and I decorated these the other night while we watched White Christmas. Cole and I delivered them to our neighbors today. Unfortunately not many were home, but we did manage to surprise a few!

Go Hoosiers!

beat Kentucky!

Oreo Truffle Day!

Cole and I made Oreo Truffles today. Mmmm mmm good! Someone should change that saying "They're going like hotcakes" to "They're going like Oreo Truffles at the Frank's house." Here's the easy recipe, just in case these pictures make your mouth water.

1 package OREO cookies
1 8oz. container cream cheese
2 8oz. boxes semi-sweet baking chocolate

Blend cookies and cream cheese together well. Chill for a little while until the mixture is easy to handle, maybe an hour or so. Form mixture into 1 inch balls. Melt chocolate in a double boiler. Once melted, remove from heat and dip each ball in the melted chocolate. Place each truffle on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper or foil and let dry in the refrigerator. It's easy to dip if you use 2 forks to handle each ball. That way your hands don't get all chocolatey. Enjoy! These don't last very long!

No Filter Cole-man

Cole definitely is the highlight of our activities, laughter, and lives. You can imagine, I'm sure.
So, over the past weekend, we had a couple friends visit (Lauren and Phil) who we know from Vienna. We were all eating dinner around the table and I think Cole was sitting on Anne's lap, right next to me. We were done eating, just talking and laughing at Cole.

Then, out of nowhere and silence, Cole announced, "Daddy farted!" Of course that was really funny, but in my defense I hadn't. Plus, there hadn't been any noise for Cole to even confuse it with a fart. That kid is going to embarrass me in public sometime - I can just see it. He's great, isn't he?

Video and more

OK, so the video finally posted correctly. I think Blogger has some video issues recently. Anyhow, I wanted to mention that the video of Cole in the bath tub that I wrote about... I mentioned that he was still in the tub as I posted it. Well, that was true, but I should have pointed out that Anne was still there. Sorry to stress you out (Omi and whoever else).

And the video...

Thanksgiving Weekend

We spent Thanksgiving weekend at my parent's house in Indianapolis. We ate lots of wonderful food and enjoyed a day full of lots of family we don't get to see too often. It was really relaxing and fun for us.
Cole learned how to dunk Oreo's in milk, and we visited Santa at the Indiana State Museum, too. Along with Santa, the museum has a Christmas Train for kids. Cole rode on the train all by himself!
And last but not least, we continued our new tradition of drumming at the dinner table. Well, tradition may be a strong word, but lately it has become a nightly occurrence whether we are home or not. Cole loves to drum, and the table is perfect. Lately he has been asking others to join in his fun, and he loves to be the one in control. He starts and stops and then everyone else follows his lead. This past Friday, he started adding a quiet shhhh after the drumming, too. It was too funny not to capture on camera! I have a video of it, but I need to get Chris to post it. Stay tuned.

One more thing...
I have been noticing lately that Cole has started to pretend. I'm not sure where he learned this, because it seems a very hard concept to teach. Being a teacher myself, this is fascinating to watch. It must be something that God created inside our hearts, the ability to imagine a reality that includes a mixture of the real and pretend. Here are a few examples:
1. The other day we had pear slices for lunch. Cole took a bite out of the middle of one slice, placed it on the table and said, "It's a boat!"
2. That same day we were painting with watercolors, and Cole painted a long magenta colored line across the paper and said, "It's a dragon!"
3. Tonight in the bathtub (some of our funniest moments happen in the tub) he picked up an empty cup, filled it up with soapy water, drank a sip, and said, "drinking coffee mommy." Then he began to give the rubber duck some coffee, too. He was so proud of himself. I asked him if the duck liked the coffee and he said, "Uh huh, sure!" and then I asked him if the duck liked hot chocolate, too, because Chris and I had some hot chocolate earlier in the day. Cole quickly said, "Of course!" Then he went back to swimming in the bath tub, which tonight he was calling a lake. Hmm.

I'm not kidding folks. This kid is hilarious. The last funny thing you need to know is that we've been teaching Cole about Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus recently, since Christmas is coming soon. Cole has his own nativity set that he's been playing with, and he has been learning about the Christmas story in his class at church. The funniest thing about this is that Cole says JEZUZ instead of JESUS. I guess you have to hear it to know it's hilarious.

Bath time

I just took this video of Cole - it's so cute I had to post it right now. He's still in the tub as I type. By the way, he's talking some of the time about a bear - a toy he has in the tub, which you can only see for a second.

Picture This

A pregnant mom, me, with an energetic on-the-move toddler, Cole, who LOVES tools, sitting on the front porch hammering nails into a random board from our basement. It's cold, leaves are blowing, and Cole is more focused than he has been on anything all day! I got this idea from our friends', the VanArendonks, blog (thanks!), and it was a huge hit! Cole has been super interested in tools since we moved into our house, so I'm not sure why it took me this long to get him practicing with real tools on his own. It's funny how kids know the difference between real and fake tools. Don't worry, no fingers were smashed, and thankfully, Chris showed up a couple minutes after we started so I was only the camera woman after that. Whew! I know so much more about dolls and playing house than I do about tools and cars. Raising boys is definitely going to be a continual adventure for me!
Chris has also been teaching Cole how to snuff candles. When Chris was growing up, his grandparents had a special candle holder on their dining room table. Chris and his sister used to fight over who could snuff the candles after a meal. Well, we now have that famous candle holder on our table, and since Cole has no one to fight with yet, he gets to learn to snuff. He's surprisingly good at it! It's fun to hear him shout, "snuff the candles, daddy!"

Jump in the Leaves!

We had such a fun time this weekend jumping in the leaves! I loved watching Cole run and plop down in the huge piles as we raked. He did it without a lesson, too! Piles must just call out to kids, "jump in me!" And of course, we couldn't just stand by, so we jumped in too! Chris's favorite was covering his entire body up with leaves and hiding from Cole. Cole is really into hiding and being quiet right now, so this was a perfect afternoon activity on a beautiful fall day in Bloomington. He loves to scream, "found you!" as soon as someone is discovered, even if it's himself!

32 Weeks! Time to get ready!

This Week in Pictures

In the pumpkin is fun, but ON the pumpkin is even better, right? Cole thought so! Hmm. He sat down and said, "poopy." We laughed a lot.
Cole has also been in to dental floss and popsicles lately. He calls them pah kiss uls. We're working on it :). When he really wants one he runs to the freezer and yells, "pah kiss ul puh leeeeeeeeeees!" Then we sit on the bench on our front porch and enjoy the sunshine while it still is around. Bloomington is beautiful in the fall!

Happy Halloween!

We celebrated our first real family Halloween this year! Cole dressed up as a tiger, and Chris dressed up as a disco dude from the 70's, and I went along to take pictures and corral the candy. It was a perfect night in Bloomington, and we visited just a few houses on our block. Cole was a little timid at first, but quickly got the hang of saying "trick or treat!" A couple of times he said thank you and a couple of times he even said "more candy!"

Playtime with Miles & Beckham

Well, Cole and I have been hiding out at my parent's house the last few days avoiding workmen at our house in Bloomington, and thankfully we've been able to see lots of family that we don't see so often. It's been fun! This morning my aunt Kim and her 2 boys, Miles and Beckham, came over to play. Miles and Cole are only 3 days apart, and Beckham is 3 weeks old. He's so tiny! I got to hold him a lot and it made me excited for our new baby boy coming in only 9 weeks or so. Cole and Miles had a great time together coloring, eating pretzels, drumming on a box, playing in the tent, and hiding behind window shutters. I hope Miles took as good of a nap as Cole did this afternoon. Whew!

Latest Events

Recently we've been doing some fun things! It's fall in Indiana, so it's a beautiful time of year and we have had a lot of fun celebrating the season. We went to Musgrave Orchard & Cider Mill when Chris's parents visited a couple weeks ago, and Cole picked out a pumpkin. It's resting on our front porch until we carve it a little closer to Halloween. We also spent Saturday morning last weekend baking pumpkin, moon, and star shaped sugar cookies. Sidenote: Cole is fascinated with the moon and the stars right now, so it seemed appropriate. We go outside almost every night to see the moon and stars and say goodnight. It seems silly, but Cole LOVES doing it! And oh yes, Cole insisted on helping Chris rake some leaves in our front yard, too. We didn't have a yard in Vienna, so this is a fun activity!

the work in progress

these are a few pictures of some of the house work we did. my mom stripped the yucky wallpaper from one of the bathrooms and to our surprise, the walls underneath were lime green! chris painted our front door, too, so now it's gray and not pink anymore. cole loves playing with the "bubbles" as he calls them. we kept all of the bubble wrap we used to move, so i think we have enough now to wrap around our entire house a few times!

unloading the truck

well, these pictures are from about a month ago, but nonetheless, you can see chris and a few friends and family getting ready to unload the truck full of our boxes from vienna. the day we moved in was a very long day, and we had a lot of work still ahead of us, but it was a great, great day! we've finally unpacked almost every box and are slowly putting things in new homes.

A Few Photos!

Well, Chris's mom, Judy, so kindly sent us some photos from their visit last week, so here you go! Cole loves his new room, and as you can see we're giving the big boy bed a whirl. Here's the short version of the story...
We had a babysitter about 2 weeks ago. Chris and I went out to dinner to celebrate our 5th anniversary. Yay! Anyway, when we got home, Jade, our babysitter who I've known since she was born, told us that she was nervous that the ground below where Cole was sleeping was really hard and that he may jump out. I was puzzled, because up until then Cole been sleeping in his crib. I dismissed the conversation and told her not to worry because he's never tried to jump out of his bed before. Later, we were laying in bed almost asleep when I knew I had to just check on Cole to see if Jade had in fact put him in the twin bed in his room. So I tiptoed to Cole's room, opened the creaky door, and sure enough, he was sound asleep in his twin bed that I hadn't planned on trying for another month or two. We decided to just leave him there until the morning and see what would happen. Just like normal, Cole woke up around 8 when we walked into his room. The first thing he said was "nice night." There you have it, folks. Our first foray into the big boy bed world. I immediately drove to Target that morning and bought a safety rail for Cole's bed because I can't tell you how many times I woke up that first night waiting for a huge THUD from Cole smacking the floor in the middle of a sound sleep. Scary!

Pregnant Too!

So tonight Chris and I were talking, and I was asking him to stop by the store (on his way home from the drugstore) to pick up something, ANYTHING, with Oreos in it. Ice cream was what I was hoping he could read across my forehead. Anyway, he said to me, "You're just pregnant. I'm pregnant, too. I'm giving birth to a new life. I think I'm about 8 months along."

Enough said. No family needs 2 pregnant people in the house at once! This transition back to life in America is crazy. Every possible thing in our lives is up in the air right now (okay, maybe not EVERY little thing, but still...) except that we do know where we will be sleeping each night. That's a relief. Home sweet pillow.

Updates...

Well, we have a new computer on the way to our house! Yahoo! That means you'll be seeing photos very soon of what our life has been like lately. We have managed in the midst of this transition to take a few pictures to remember it by later. Whew.

Now for a few updates...

1. I had another ultrasound last week of our little boy, and the cyst they had seen a couple months ago is GONE! We are so thankful! This little boy is quite the active one, too! I'll make sure to post a photo of my ever growing stomach soon.

2. Chris is still on the job search. He has had a couple promising interivews, and we are waiting to hear back. He has also had his fair share of ding letters, too. We are doing our best to be hopeful as Chris works hard making contacts, sending out resumes, and praying A LOT.

3. Cole is 18 months old now, almost 19. He's CRAZY! He sings Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star with me, and he is learning how to say words with me in books as we read. I am constantly SHOCKED. One of our favorite things to do is sit on the bench on our front porch after Cole's nap and have a snack while we wait for the mailman to deliver our mail. The mail delivery people walk in our neighborhood, so it makes their day when Cole spots them down the street and yells, "Mailman! HI!" Wow, we are so blessed with such an amazing kid. We're really starting to look forward to Blank Frank #2's arrival in a couple months.

4. Our house is shaping up SO nicely! We have new landscaping, and we finally have unpacked every box. We're waiting on new interior doors and windows that are coming this week, then we'll be free of workmen for a VERY LONG TIME! We don't have anything hung on the walls yet, and we don't have every cabinet Cole-proofed..uggg...but we're getting there. Stay tuned for photos!

5. Cole and I baked pumpkin, star, and moon shaped cookies last weekend. I LOVE to bake, so doing this made me feel like we're really home. We were able to share the cookies with our neighbors who have been so helpful to us, too, which was great.

I think that's it for updates right now. I promise to post pictures very soon. Thanks for hanging in there with us!

Yo.

it's been a while since we've blogged - well, maybe it's just me. My legit excuse is we moved back to the US. We're in our house now, but no computer yet. and no job yet. HOpefully both of those will come soon.

too much to talk about, so I won't even try :) yet

Movin' on in...

So yes, we have officially moved into our new house in Bloomington! Yahoo! We have been here about two weeks, and have still to accomplish a few major tasks...one being purchasing a computer. Hence, limited blog posting and email. We'll be online at home pretty soon.
We have spent the past two weeks doing various projects to make our house more like home including painting the entire inside, installing new kitchen and bathroom hardware, cleaning, and hiring plumbers and electricians (again!) to get our bathrooms in working order. We do have our furniture up and ready now, and Cole's room is the best looking room in the house. He's having a blast playing with all of his "new" toys, meaning the toys he had in Vienna that we packed in May that he hasn't seen in a while. It's really like Christmas to open each box! He often acts like he recognizes something and is very attentive to books he remembers. It's very fun to watch him play now with toys that he really didn't totally get a few months ago. A lot of development happened between 15 and 18 months...the time that our stuff was on a container.
So we're having a good time, and working hard, too. Chris had a great job interview last Friday that we're waiting and hoping to hear back about sometime this week or early next week. He would be running the finances for the Center for Curriculum Development of Central Asian Languages at Indiana University. It's a great fit for him, and the interview went really well. The best part about it is that the building he would be working in on campus is the CLOSEST possible building to our house. It's a 10 minute walk. Wow! What a blessing if they offer this job to Chris! We have noticed, though, how thankful we have been that he hasn't had a job until now. He's been making lots of house projects happen that I could not have done without him around, and he's been really helpful with Cole, too.
We have been to ECC, our home church, a few times now, too, which has been wonderful! We have loved seeing familiar faces and just being in a place where we understand everything and are familiar with most things. Cole has had a little bit of a rough time adjusting to being away from mom & dad for the whole service (last week I was called back to his room 3 times!), but thankfully the caregivers have been so gracious and loving to us and him. Just part of the adjustment. We can walk to church from our house, too. It's about a 15 minute walk. There are some restaurants, a Border's, and the pet store within walking distance, too. It's similar to Vienna as much as it can be anyway! Cole and I have already visited the pet store. His favorite were the bunnies! He laughed out loud when they jumped around their cages.
Okay, that's it for now. We won't be online at home for another week or two, so if you need us please call! We will be slow with email and blogging until then.

Colts Kickoff Day

Yesterday was a BIG day in Indianapolis! The Indianapolis Colts kicked off the 2007 season with a home win against the New Orleans Saints. The game was at home, and thousands of people spent the day downtown and enjoyed the festivities and free concerts by Kelly Clarkson, Faith Hill, and John Mellencamp (a native Hoosier!). Colts stories filled the newspapers and TV stations all day, too. After being in Vienna for three years, completely away from all aspects of sports hype, this was really fun for us to observe and be a part of. I never understood how the NFL goes to such great lengths to celebrate the Superbowl Champion team months after the Superbowl is over.
Well, we didn't go downtown, but we did celebrate here at my parents' house. Cole played in the dryer (while it was off, of course), he introduced Raggedy Andy (mine from when I was little) to the couch and TV, and played the drum on the coffee table with my dad, Chris, and our friend Don Summerlin. What a way to cheer on the Colts! We had a yummy spaghetti dinner before the game and wore Colts shirts, too. My mom made homemade meatballs!
It was such a good day. And, best of all, Chris made AMAZING progress on our hardwood floors, and he only has one more coat of polyurethane to put on and then the floors will be finished. Yahoo! Move in day is getting closer and closer. We'll post pictures very soon.

Cole's First Haircut

My mom and I took Cole to DLLowry Salon today to get his very first haircut! He did great! He sat up like a big boy in the chair, drank his juice, and he said "haircut!" over and over. I think he liked looking in the big mirrors and playing with Lincoln's (the haircut guy) brush, too. After the haircut we had lunch at Chick-Fil-A, and then home for an afternoon nap. We kept Cole's first lock of hair, too. Maybe he'll be thankful someday later?