Christmas at the Gehringer's

Andrew and I were able to go to California to visit with Grandmama and Grandpa. The flight was long, but Andrew slept most of the way. My side of the family did Christmas early so they could all meet Andrew. We had a lot of fun and are glad we went.

Here are some of the many photos that we took. (more to come...check back soon)

My new favoritie photo.
Shelby doing the bull dog.

Shelby wanted to pet Andrew's head.

I'm still taller.

Santa's job is hard.

Close up on that action.

Andrew pooped loudly while Stephanie was holding him. Took this pic fast so I could change him before he exploded over innocent bystanders.

My greatest Christmas gift.

Hope you all had a very merry Christmas. More photos to come. Check back soon!

Blog Giveaways

My friend told me about these cool blogs that has giveways. Click here for one, and here for another. This is a new concept for me and sounds pretty cool. Check out the blogs when you have time and good luck!

Let it snow...

Yup, so the other day I was talking with my friend and mentioning that I actually did miss the snow. Although I do hate driving in the snow, I don't mind the cold so much. I think the snow is really pretty and fun to play in. I was listening to Christmas music (as I do most of the day), and I heard Let It Snow and missed Utah a little. Yesterday I ran some errands with Andrew and really had to bundle him up because it was so cold outside. That afternoon, Ryan called me and told me it was snowing! I dashed to the window and threw open the sash to notice that he was right. I was talking to my friend online who also lives in Houston and I told her it was snowing. Her response was, "In Utah". No silly, here. Sure enough, little flakes were coming down, but not sticking. Then Andrew left to pick up Ryan at work and it was snowing more, sticking on the windshield for a few seconds before melting. By that night, it started sticking on cars and bushes.

This newspaper mentions that the last time it snowed in Houston was on Christmas Eve, 2004. The last time it snowed on December 10 was in 1944.


So little Andrew got to see snow for his first Christmas. It was a Christmas miracle.

This is a bush outside our front door.

This is our backyard. Here you can see the snow is still there at 9am, the day after it snowed.

Andrew's Baby Blessing

On Sunday, November 30, Ryan blessed Andrew during our church meeting. It was a very special and spiritual time. He is the first in our family to receive a (LDS) blessing. We had a lot of friends come to be apart of his blessing. Our friends, Matt and Rose Dyer, let us borrow their son's outfit for the occasion. Thanks! Here are some photos. Enjoy!

New Holiday Tradition

So I forgot to mention the best part of Thanksgiving....the DESERTS! So for 4 adults, we had 4 desserts planned. We were going to make an apple cobbler, and 3 pies. We decided that may be a bit much so we canceled a pie and the cobbler. That left us with 2 pies. Rose made the traditional pumpkin pie, which turned out fantastic. I made a pie I've never made before. I've never even heard of or eaten such pie until a week ago at my friends birthday party. We made ice cream pie. Oh, but we didn't just use any old ice cream. We got Coldstone Gingerbread ice cream. Oh My Gosh! We put it in a graham cracker crust, and then put cool whip on top and put it back in the freezer. I can't tell you how yummy it is! I think this will be the kind of pies I make from now on! I'm going to make it for our Christmas party so family - watch out!

We did end up making the cobbler - which I mainly ate for breakfast (what? it had oatmeal in it). And we made another ice cream pie. Oh, so yummy. This one was Bryers Eggnog ice cream (no whip cram). It tasted just like eggnog but with a graham cracker cookie attached to it. I highly recommend these pies. Oh so delicious! I can't wait to make them in a few weeks!

Oh so yummy!

Rose put chocolate syrup over her piece.

Thanksgiving!

So this year was my first year to cook Thanksgiving dinner. Phew! Let me tell you! I don't like cooking birds. There's too many bones to carve around and too easy to dry out one part while not fully cooking other parts. Next year I'm trying a ham. Other than that, everything else came out great!

Our friends Matt, Rose and Dima (and future wife of Andrew, Lilly) came out to spend the holiday with us. They just moved to Seattle and we are so glad they came out for a whole week!

We all worked together to cook the dinner. We had turkey, stuffing, green bean supreme, candied yams, cranberries, mashed potatoes, and gravy. The stuffing was Stove Top. I really like it and it's super easy so why not? All the other foods were made from scratch. Rose and I made cranberries. They were sooooo good. I ate it on everything! (and I mean everything...it weirded people out). We just cooked the cranberries with orange juice and sugar. They popped and wal-la! Yummy Cranberries! (This coming from a girl who bought 3 cans of the jelled cranberries because she doesn't like the whole berry caned stuff). I even made the gravy from the juice from the turkey. It turned out much better than I though. Matt and Ryan made the potatoes, Rose made the candied yams and I made the green bean supreme. (I forgot to put the rolls out to rise so that was the only thing we were missing) It was so nice to all work towards a good dinner.

We have been so blessed and have so much to be thankful for. Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Bath Time

Andrew really enjoys bath time. He was having so much fun I had to take some video. Enjoy!

One week down, 40 more years to go...

Hello everybody, I usually leave this blogging thing up to Sarah, but she wanted to me to tell all of you about my job because I think she still doesn't really understand what my company does.

Well, about 2 days before I got my Bar results back, I accepted a job at a company called Excelerate Energy. As Associate Legal Counsel of Excelerate, my job is to get myself acquanted with the company and the industry. At this early point in my career, they do not expect much from me yet, but that will change. I am actually the only attorney at the company because they have primarily used outside law firms to most of their work. The CEO wants to develop a staff attorney from inside rather than hiring a expensive outside attorney. Thats where I fit in.

About Excelerate - Excelerate deals primarily in the transportation of LNG (liquidified natural gas). The thing that makes us different from most companies is the technology that we employ. Most companies bring LNG to a port with a regasification plant. The plant turns the liquid back into its gas form, after which it is piped to consumers. These plants are big, expensive, and create a lot of pollution. Our technology allows us to regasify the LNG on board our ships and then pump the gas into an underwater pipe line (as seen in the picture below). This allows us to reach more markets, because we do not have to build an expensive regasification plant, and this process is extremely clean in comparison.


Even though its only been one week, I can tell that this job is going to be ideal for me. The people are all very nice and the company seems to have great potential in the future. I enjoy the corporate atmosphere over that of a law firm. One week down, 2080 more to go.

Andrew Smiling

Here is a video of Andrew with his first real smiles and coo's. It's pretty darn cute.

(Please ignore my high pitched voice - aka: turn down your volume)

We moved...

For those who don't know, we moved out of our friends, the Larson's, house about a moth ago. there was a family in the ward that was moving back to Utah. They asked if we could stay at their house until it sold. They wanted us to make sure nothing happened to it and to mow the lawn etc. It's been nice to have our own space, and we really do have a lot of it. It's over 3000 sq feet. The master bedroom is down stairs so we never go upstairs, but just the downstairs is big enough for us. Andrew was sleeping in our room, but he's a noisy sleeper so we moved him just outside our door into the living room. During the day he sleeps in the craft room which has doors so we don't wake him up. It's neat because the craft room doors are glass so we can still check on him.

The down side is we pretty much have to be ready for a showing at any time. The owners may call us and need us out in 20 minutes because a realtor is coming by to show the house and it needs to be in (what I learned today) model condition. There is usually a 2 hour window that we have to be gone for the showing. Last time we had 2o minutes for the showing and we frantically tried to get everything in order and get Andrew ready. It was sad because he was having a bad day and finally had gotten to sleep and we had to wake him up and leave. When our two hours were up, we came back only to find the realtor just driving up to the driveway! It was 10 minutes past the window of time for the showing so we just drove around until we finally parked on our street and waited for them to leave. Oh well.

Here's the front of the house. I'll post more pics of the house soon.

Horray!

We just found out today that Ryan passed the Texas Bar Exam! We are so proud of you!

Our Little Pumpkin

This was Andrew's first Halloween so we got him some Halloween clothes.

His onesie says Baby's 1st Halloween.

When my mom came to visit she brought Andrew a costume of his own. It's size 3-6 months and Andrew still fits in newborn clothes so it was a little big. (But I think that made it even more cute!)

Happy Halloween!

The Giagantic Post of Photos

Here are the photos that you've all been asking for. Enjoy!

I thought I'd throw one of us in there.


This is my new favorite picture of Andrew. Awww.

Smiling

He started to notice the camera.

Look at his little tootsies sticking out!

Sleepy Boy.

Andrew was lifting up his head as Ryan was reading to him.

Getting ready for a bath.

Rub a dub.

Andrew yawns a lot - even after taking a bath and coming out of the cold water. He's very good about bath time. He usually just closes his eyes and relaxes. I'm glad he likes the water - like his mama.

All clean.

Mighty big yawn for such a little guy.

Andrew has started to look at us instead of just staring in our general direction. I feel like he recgonoizes us now.

Humph.

hehe, I just love how big he yawns.

Sleepy boy. Still has a lot of dark hair.

Smiling for Dad.

Who's on First?

Hum...

Chillin'

West-Side!

Andrew and Mommy. He still looks to tiny.

I love his little hands. Pretty soon these hands will be getting into trouble. I should enjoy them while they have limited use to him.

What's this big black thing in my face all the time?

We have family cuddle time - which is usually us staring at how cute Andrew is while we lay down.

He likes to sleep like this.

"Hey, someone is holding me." Some of his expressioms crack me up.

Hair styled by dad.

Adorable.

My boys!

What's that over there?

That's it for now. Halloween photos to come so check back later!