We'd like to introduce you to...

Our BABY BEAR!That's right! We are having a BABY! And we call it our "Baby Bear". And we couldn't be more excited and thrilled! The day we found out, I pee'd on like 7 prego test (ha!), just to really make sure it was true, I mean we were pretty certain after 7 "+" signs we were good to go. We cried because we were so happy, we hugged for a really long time, jumped for joy and hurried and got in the car and went to Target to get the book "what to expect while your expecting" - Tyson was especially SUPER excited to get that book! We haven't stopped smiling since we found out! I am already in week 19. My expected due date is May 26Th. I've been sick pretty much the entire time so far. Being sick consists of constant nausea 24/7, never wanting to eat but forcing myself, to help try and stop the nausea - however I must say I have not thrown up so I do feel lucky about that. We are super giddy and so happy! We feel so blessed and so ready! We are so excited to be PARENTS!!! SO FUN!!! And the best part is...we are finding out what we are having this coming TUESDAY January 6Th! So stayed tuned for more...

1st Birthday and Buddies

We got to celebrate our nephew Hayden's 1st Birthday on December 12Th. We had a fun family party and ate yummy cake. The best part was getting to see Hayden after being apart for over 3 months. We had the greatest time!

Daytona Beach and Daytona Raceway

A little over two weeks ago - we flew to Orlando Florida for a week, where my parents came and picked us up and we drove down to Daytona Beach, to stay at one of my brother's timeshares. It was so much fun! We played on the beach went to Disneyworld (that has it's own post below), Tyson and my brother had a little bit too much fun in the water and the resorts swimming pools and we hit up the Daytona NASCAR Raceway.

Disneyworld

FINALS

Mag*nif*i*cent\: 1. doing grand things, admirable in action.

Finals have come and gone and Tyson's first quarter of graduate school is over. It went by so fast and he can honestly say that he loved every minute of it. He says graduate school is "fun" and "exciting". His first quarter went so great and he did really good! It was kind of an easy quarter for him, so he is really excited to start back up in January and hope for some challenges.

I am pretty sure you can click on the picture I've posted and see an up close look at some of the homework he was studying. It looks like a foreign language to me. He's so SMART!

I love it and I am so proud of him!

Good Job Bubs on such an amazing quarter! I am sure the next quarter will be just as great!

Ohhh Christmas Tree...

Hooray for Christmas time! This is our pretty tree! I don't think the pictures do it justice. Tyson did such a great job. I wasn't feeling too good the night we were putting it up, so I sat and watched and helped direct. Tyson even let me navigate where all the Christmas ornaments would go. It turned out perfect. And it was a lot of fun. We love Christmas - so it was really exciting to get our tree up to kick off the Christmas season.

Thanksgving

For Thanksgiving this year - we went to Philadelphia to visit our friends Meredith, Berkley, and little Tanner Hall. We had an awesome time. And it was mine and Meredith's first time cooking Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings. I believe it all turned out very yummy! We spent the weekend watching movies, hanging out and talking a lot, and the boys played a lot of Halo. It was fun to relax and be with our friends! Thanksgiving was wonderful. We love that we have such great friends that live all around the U.S. and we feel very blessed to be able to travel to visit our friends. We have so much to be grateful for and we were so glad to be able to share this time with the Halls. Thanks guys!

CHICAGO

During the last week of October I was talking with my friend Valerie and we started talking about Chicago and talking about how fun it would be to take a trip there. So I said lets do it this weekend. And that's what we did. We got on Orbitz and found a great deal on a hotel room right in the heart of the city. And we decided that we would meet up at the Midway airport and ride the subway into the city. And that was that. Saturday morning we hopped in the car - and drove 6 hours to Chicago's Midway airport - parked and met up with Valerie and her hubby David. We were all so excited. None of us had ever been to Chicago before - so it was bound to be a great adventure. We did so much in a 24 hour period. We ate awesome pizza, went to the top of the Sears Tower, walked the Magnificent Mile, went to Millennium park and went to Navy Pier to ride the Ferris wheel.
Chicago!!

Eating Famous Deep Dish Pizza! We heart pizza -MMMMM...it was really good!

Giordano's is known to be one of Chicago's Best Pizza!

After eating we walked to the Sears Tower and road the elevator all the way to the top!

Our view from the top - it was a beautiful night view!

Tyson posing with the Sears Tower.

After the Sears Tower - we headed over to walk the Magnificent Mile. And Magnificent it was. We headed down to the Hershey store where we were in Chocolate Heaven!

Aren't these Hershey bottles great! We have a picture posing with these bottles at the Hershey store in NYC. I always get comments on it. Truth is - these aren't REAL bottles of chocolate - they are piggy banks!

I love Tyson Kisses! I do. I do!

After the Hershey store we headed over to Ghirardelli Chocolate for some yummy ice cream sundae's - by the time we were sitting down we were all so tired from walking, we weren't motivated to take pictures. But I can promise the ice cream was the bomb! After ice cream we headed back to our hotel and crashed for the night.

The next morning we got up early - ate breakfast and we were off for more adventure. This is Tyson showing off his goods (oh baby!) on our walk to Navy Pier.

Navy Pier was cool. We hopped on the Ferris Wheel and enjoyed the ride around enjoying the view.

Our view from the top of the Ferris Wheel.

The BEAN.

We also hit up Millennium Park - which was so COOL! We got to see the BEAN, which was seriously so neat! We had a good time taking a ton of pictures!

All four of us holding up the bean. Some ladies thought it would be really fun for us to pose like this. Whatev. It was fun.

In front of the BEAN. I love how the city reflects off the BEAN.

Our trip was so fun! We will definitely take a trip or two back there before we leave Ohio. Hopefully next time we can, ya know, go hangout with Oprah! haha.We are so happy we have such wonderful friends who will be adventurous with us. Thanks Val and David for such a quick, but fun weekend! Let the good times roll.

The Month of October...

The month of October was good. We didn't do a whole lot, but what we did do was fun. This post might be a tab bit boring, but I better get this stuff posted before I forget what we did. ha!

One Saturday afternoon we went with some of Tyson's classmates out to a "Pumpkin Patch". At least that's what it was called. I don't know about you - but the last time I went to a "pumpkin patch" there were actually PUMPKINS there.

The following was our "Pumpkin Patch" experience...

We got to take a little hayride out to the pumpkin patch - and this is what we saw... Please note I think you can see TWO pumpkins there, they are green. Where are all the other pumpkins? We were totally laughing thinking that it was a joke. haha. Nope that was it. haha.

This is what we found - now this is quality pumpkin picking. (that's sarcasm).

Oh wait - we did find a little orange one. We bought this one for a whole dollar! Yup, big spenders!

Not too sure about about the look on my face - I think I was thinking that "this has got to be a joke - take us to real pumpkin patch."

So the pumpkin patch might not have been the most amazing thing ever - but no worries - the Foliage definitely made up for it. Before moving to Ohio, I was a true believer that Oregon was the most beautiful place for the Fall. But I'll admit - Ohio is just as beautiful. This picture doesn't even do it justice! Tyson has never been to Oregon during the fall, and so I am always telling him how pretty it is. Idaho never has the bursting fall colors, so the poor guy has missed out - till now. Tyson got to experience a truly wonderful fall. The colors in Columbus were so vibrant and beautiful!

And of course one of our FHE Monday nights was dedicated to carving a pumpkin. I'll admit, it was our "first time" carving a pumpkin in our almost 4.5 years of marriage! And we had a good time. We both dug out the guts, and I drew the face on the pumpkin and Tyson did the carving. Then we cooked the pumpkin seeds and they were yummy.

My manly pumpkin man!

Our first carved pumpkin!

I think I look as scary as the pumpkin. And I can say that because I am the blogger.

Our glowing pumpkin on our porch. It gave a nice spooking Halloween glow.

Have you seen enough pumpkin pictures? I know I have. So last but not least, I must show off how our front porch was decorated - this is our "Frankie Baby" - he was our pimp security guard.

Well that was our month. October was good - kinda uneventful but nonetheless it's always the best month to kick off the fall and all the great holidays that follow.

OSU Football

Our first OSU Football Season was AMAZING! Back in the summer we were put on a student ticket waiting list. When we first got to OSU we went to the ticket office and asked them if they were going to open up anymore student season tickets, they told us no. So, we looked online all the time for season tickets but they ranged from $1,000-$4,000 for TICKETS! Crazy, huh? Well we got really lucky - during the first week of school, Tyson got an email from the ticket office saying they opened up more student tickets. So Tyson hurried and called and got us two tickets - and he went and picked them up. We were stoked! Little did we know we really got LUCKY! We just happened to get FRONT ROW SEATS on the south end zone! Our seats could not have been any better and we could not have gotten any closer to the field. It was great! We got tickets for all four of our home games: Minnesota, Purdue, PENN State, and Our #1 Rival Michigan. I took a gazillion pictures every game, but I will spare you all with a few of our favorites!
Tyson in front of the Famous Horseshoe Stadium. The Buckeye Stadium is one of the most recognizable stadium in college sports. It seats 105,000 and has 700, YES 700 Concession stands within the stadium itself.

This is the view from the top of stairs of our seating section - we however got to walk all the way down to sit in our front row seats. The stadium really is amazing!

Our mascot Brutus the Buckeye.

Our game against PENN State was at night - because it was on ESPN for all to see. That was great. It was super hyped and we have never seen so many people in our lives go to a football game. We sadly lost - but it was close.

Our football team. We are happy to say that we were BIG 10 2008 Championship.

One of the best part of the games was the "before" the game started and "half-time" shows, because that's when our band would preform and they were so good. Our seats were so fun for this as well - because when the band did come out they started out on the North side of the stadium so they would march towards up - they were so entertaining and REALLY good. Perhaps that's why they are called the "TBDBITL".

Also when we played PENN State - ESPN Game Day came! Lee Corso even predicted that we would win the game by of course putting on our mascot head (too bad we lost)! All you ESPN'ers know what we are taking about - and for those of you who don't get it - shame on you! You should be watching more ESPN! Game Day was cool. We stopped by the ESPN Game Day traveling bus on our way to the stadium. This was our favorite game by far.

Need I say more?

The only game we did not go to was our RIVAL game against MICHIGAN. We never knew the hatred these two teams had for one another until we obviously moved here. There is even a song about how much we hate MICHIGAN, it's quite humorous! We sold our tickets for that game and we were happy about that, because we knew we'd beat them and because it was only like 5 degrees outside, so we watched the game from our cozy warm home and we won. We loved the football season! All the games were a blast. We are excited for next season - we can only hope that we get as good of tickets as we did this season! Until next season...GO BUCKEYES!