KerryAndGabe.com

I’ve been using some of this vacation time to organize photos and post them to the website. Click on the following links to see the albums.

September 2009
October 2009
Keira’s Birthday Party
Our 3rd Anniversary
Weekend at the Leslie Lodge

Photos from November coming soon!

Something that made me happy this week: Celebrating my 3rd anniversary with Gabe!

Something I’m thinking: I came to the realization this week that my daughter no longer sleeps through the night. We had a few months of her sleeping through the night before the regression. We’re in big trouble when the new baby arrives!

Something I’m hoping: I’m hoping to see the rest of our photos from Catherine Keene Photography soon! We had a photo session with her yesterday, and I’ll be posting a few sneak peeks tomorrow.

Something happening around the house: Gabe stained the deck! We have been a bit stressed over how it was going to weather the winter without protection. The rails still aren’t finished, but we’re far less concerned about that part. Maybe we will have a few more nice days so he can finish those rails. I also made a little more progress on Maddie’s mural.

Something I’m reading: I finished reading The Graveyard Book for book club. I started reading The Help which is our next book club selection.

Something tasty I ate this week: Gabe and I had a tasty, fancy dinner at Second Empire to celebrate our 3rd anniversary.

Something Maddie did this week: Maddie continues to amaze us every day. This week, she said one of the most complete sentences that we have heard her say. While Gabe was getting her dressed for school in the morning, she said, “Dada, I need my pants on.” She’s a little chatterbox these days for sure. This week, we acquired a potty for her as she’s been showing some interest in wanting to sit on the potty. The first night we had it, we sat her on it before bathtime. She was so excited to sit on her very own Maddie-sized potty. She even peed in it! I think it just surprised her a little, but it’s a small step in a series of steps towards potty training. I don’t think we’ll focus on the potty training for several more months, but she’s at least getting used to the idea and starting to get some of the necessary concepts. She also appears to have (or will very, very soon) her 7th tooth.

Something happening with the pregnancy: This week, I felt very pregnant. I’m getting bigger, the trips to the bathroom at night have increased to at least two or three times, I’m no longer wearing my wedding ring, and I’m starting to see the swelling that I was oh-so-familiar-with last time. Waddle, waddle. Appropriately, I’ll enter my third trimester by the end of this week. Time flies.

Something I struggled with this week: I struggled with the thoughts that Gabe was leaving us next week for a business trip for about 3 days. Fortunately, his business trip has been postponed to November (and may only be a day or so). I know I can handle it, but it’s still scary for me. Soon, we won’t have a choice but to have a one-to-one ratio between parents and kids. I know I’ll look back on these days when it was just Maddie and think about how easy it was with just one kid!

Something I’m doing towards my goals: Hrm, nothing much in particular. We celebrated our 3rd anniversary, so I suppose we’re on our way to the goal of celebrating our 10th in style!

Something I learned this week: I attended a Mothers & More meeting where we had two members present about cultural differences between Europe and the US. One of the members is from France and the other is from Germany. It was very entertaining and informative! I learned many little cultural tidbits in this discussion!

Something I’m looking forward to next week: Book club, Halloween, and the Spooooooooky Sleepover.

Something random: Not everything happens for a reason.

Something I captured: Bengals are looking good at the half, so I thought it might be a good time to post this photo taken last week.

Others writing The Sunday Somethings: Audrey

This was originally part of the anniversary post, but I thought it could stand alone. While reflecting on the last several years, I thought it would be fun to look at a few photos from our relationship through the years.

I believe that this is the first photo that exists of the two of us together (just the two of us, not including photos with other people). This was on a trip to Atlantic City in late 2005.

This one is from mid-2006, during my first visit to visit his family in Kentucky.

Of course, we had some awesome photos from our wedding. I’ve posted and reposted some of the best over and over, so this time I thought I’d pick one from our honeymoon in NYC:

From our first cruise in September 2007:

Just before Maddie was born in early 2008:

One of our favorite family photos in May 2008 (Maddie is 3-months old):

And one of our family portraits in the Fall of 2008:

On our cruise to Bermuda in May of this year:

And on our cruise last month to New England and Canada:

Last night at our anniversary dinner:

Today, Gabe and I are celebrating our 3rd anniversary! Last year, I wrote up a little summary of the major events that have happened since we have been married. Whew, we have covered a lot of ground! In the past year, we have added a few more milestones and major events.

1. We are expecting our second child, a son, in a few short months.
2. We went on TWO cruises in the past year, experiencing cruising with a toddler for the first (and second) time. It’s very different from our cruise to Alaska in 2007. We were excited to do some traveling again (but wonder if it will be possible with two small kiddos).
3. Since our last anniversary, we have added a few more places to our list of destinations that we have experienced together. We added a new country (Bermuda), a new state (Maine), and two new Canadian provinces (New Brunswick and Nova Scotia).
4. We continued to take a massive number of photos, adding probably another 9,000 to our archives.

Life just keeps getting better and better, and I’m so happy to spend it with Gabe and my sweet little girl. We are looking forward to what this next year will bring with the birth of our son and the transition to a family of four.

Last year, I asked for restaurant recommendations for our anniversary dinner. We received some great replies, and we’ll be looking at those again. I thought I’d send out another request for ideas. We LOVED Mo’s Diner. It’s tempting to go there again this year, but we would rather try something different, preferably a place neither of us have visited. We went to 18 Seaboard for our first anniversary which was another good recommendation from friends. Where should we go this year?

Shortly before our second anniversary, I asked for restaurant recommendations. Thank you to everyone for the wonderful suggestions! I plan to refer to the post in the future for our next special occasion. We wanted to pick some place nice, not necessarily kid friendly, and new to both of us. Neither of us had been to Mo’s Diner, and friends in the past had recommended it in addition to Ann and Cindy’s comments on the blog. Great, great suggestion!

Mo’s Diner, despite the name, is not a diner at all but a quaint little restaurant in a historic 1886 home in downtown Raleigh. We were seated in one of the front rooms where we shared the room with only one other party at any given point during our meal. We even had the room to ourselves for a little while. Very nice, intimate setting.

So what about the food? Both of us agreed that this was the best meal that we had had in a long time, and definitely the best meal that either of us have had since we have been together. We were quite impressed, and I highly recommend Mo’s Diner for special occasions. We started with the grilled spicy shrimp and remoulade followed by the pear salad with gorgonzola, pecans, greens & balsamic. We wanted to sample each course, so we decided to share both the appetizer and salad courses. Gabe had the Sauteed NC Black Grouper with Lump Crabmeat. I had the Grilled Filet Mignon Dry Rubbed with Roasted Mushrooms, Onions, and Port Jus. Gabe enjoyed his fish more than any other since our salmon experiences in Alaska. My entree was quite possibly the best steak that I have ever had. I usually find myself disappointed with myself for ordering steak at fine dining establishments. I am glad that I didn’t deny myself the filet mignon this time. It was very tasty!

Overall, we had a very nice evening together while Aunt Kristin babysat for us. I look forward to having another excuse to dine at Mo’s Diner!

Gabe and I are celebrating our 2nd anniversary today! I feel like we’ve been married much longer than that…in a good way! Sometimes I can’t believe that it’s only been two years with all the things that we have experienced in the time that we’ve been married.

In the past two years:

1. Most importantly, we have changed our lives completely with the birth of our beautiful daughter, Madeline. Aside from being a wonderful husband, I have learned that Gabe is pretty much the best father that I could have hoped for for our children. Maddie and I are two lucky girls!
2. We have sold our old house and bought a new one. We love our house and both feel that this is a place that we could live for a long time (hopefully until Maddie is in college). This is our dream home, and I think it will be a great place to raise our kids.
3. We have both experienced cruising for the first time. We loved our cruise to Alaska and are eager to take another cruise. I think we may have to wait a little while before Maddie is ready for that experience, but once she’s a bit older, cruises should be great family trips!
4. Including Alaska, we have visited 11 different states and 2 Canadian provinces during vacations in the past two years, not including our state of residence or states that we had to pass through when driving from one point to another. Not too shabby! We hope to share our love for traveling with Maddie throughout her childhood.
5. We have taken somewhere around 20,000 photos in the past two years together (this is not an exaggeration). Maddie has really ramped up our photo taking as we have successfully taken multiple photos of her every single day of her life so far. Of course, not all of these photos are stellar, but when you get enough quantity then you’re bound to have some quality, right?
6. Gabe has worked at three different companies! He changed jobs about a year ago and again just a few weeks ago. He was presented with opportunities that he had to take, including the opportunity to work from home fulltime.

Whew, we’ve had a very eventful two years in our relationship! I’m looking forward to our future. I love Gabe more today than ever, and I feel so lucky that I can spend every day with him and our beautiful baby girl. I feel like I couldn’t be happier.

Gabe and I will be celebrating our 2nd anniversary next Thursday, and Aunt Kristin has agreed to babysit Madeline for the evening. We are looking for some place interesting and new (to us). Most importantly, it does NOT have to be kid friendly. Hopefully, I do not have to worry about strict dairy free restrictions, just avoiding heavy dairy at the moment. Please leave comments with suggestions in the Triangle area! What are your favorite special occasion restaurants?

Anniversary photos have been posted. We celebrated our anniversary with a nice dinner at 18 Seaboard and a movie. This was the first time that either of us had been to the restaurant, and we were both pretty happy with our dinners! After dinner, we went to see Gone Baby Gone. It wasn’t the most uplifting “anniversary” type movie, but we knew it had good reviews (and most movies lately have gotten terrible reviews!). We figured it was a better choice than Why Did I Get Married? (which was also in the theatres that night). Ha! We had a wonderful date!