Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful Christmas and we hope you all did too! We have included a few not-quite Christmas pictures too. Enjoy!

 It didn't take Sabrina long to figure out the right way to empty her stocking.

 Clark looking dapper and smiling at his mommy. He was having a good day until...

He found out that his Young Republicans' Christmas Party was cancelled!

 Yes, Sabrina is wearing a blue skirt underneath her tunic.

Just some cuteness

Unfortunately, we haven't had any big events happening here to take pictures of, with Manburger busy with finals and all.  We did, however, remember to take some photos of our cute kids.  I love the one with Clark "sitting" on the couch and enjoying storytime.  Hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas season so far.  We love you all!

Thanksgiving and Christmas Prep

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving and we are so excited to be in the Christmas mode now. Unfortunately I'm also in finals mode. At least I have a nearly 5 week break after they are done. Those are really hard to come by in the real world. We have put up our tree though we haven't decorated it yet (it is prelit so we didn't even do that part). Clark is doing great and already a month old. As you can see, Sabrina really loves being a big sister.

This is us in front of the big tree downtown just after the lighting ceremony. Thank you unseasonably warm weather!

Sabrina posing in front of a giant squirrel statue in front of somebody's yard. She had seen a picture of it and was begging us for days to go see it.

Me and Clark. My head must be a lot closer to the camera because it looks huge!

This was at a Christmas parade downtown (on a colder day). Sabrina got thrown a hamster beanie baby that matched her fairly well. The boy next to her who is our neighbor got thrown Snow White's head. I'd say he got the short end of the stick on that one, poor guy. Those are my gloves by the way, though they fit Sabrina fairly well. Chuckle chuckle.

Good looking Clark.

Beautiful family and tree.

The first video below is Sabrina at a different parade we went to at the Barracks Road Shopping Center. She just calls it "barracks" and apparently decided it was time for it to go.

The other video is pretty self explanatory.

Hooray for families!

Two Weeks Already!

We can hardly believe we've had our little man for over two weeks now.  He is an adorable and happy baby.  Sabrina loves him so much and can't give him enough kisses.  This first picture is me on my due date; so glad our little guy didn't make me wait that long.  And yes, that is Sabrina standing next to me in the photo under a hamper; she was being a robot. We have truly been blessed this year and are so in love with both of our beautiful children.

New Baby

 Just a quick post about our son's birth. Little Clark was born at 4:36 pm, November 3. We got to the hospital around 3:50 pm, and there was only about 35 minutes of pushing. Talk about a fast delivery! Everyone is doing great, and Sabrina is adjusting well to being a big sister.

Better than Trick-or-Treating

We discovered yesterday, after taking Sabrina to a huge UVA community trick-or-treating event, that piles of leaves are way better than asking for candy from strange people.  On the way back to the car from the event, we passed some huge piles of leaves that our little cutie was so excited to play in.  Watching her enjoy herself so much was way better than trick-or-treating for us too!

Halloween Party and Snow at 38 Weeks

This picture is from Yogurl at 37 weeks, but tomorrow she'll be 38.  We got snow yesterday! Sabrina had been talking about building a snowman and helping me "build a snowball" for weeks, so this was perfect. Not enough to mess up the roads, but just enough to cover roofs and cars with a layer of white. We got to put on some of Sabrina's cute new cold weather clothes, which we had just bought the day before.

Holding her very first snowball, I think. Maybe she had one last year, but I don't think so. Also, we made three little snowmen. Sabrina called them daddy, mommy and baby snowmen. She kept scraping snow off mommy snowman's head and eating it. Later she started kicking daddy snowman a lot which made me wonder if she was trying to tell me something.

Sabrina was little red riding hood for the Halloween pary, and will be again tomorrow for real Halloween. We were going to dress up with her, but we got caught up with other stuff and never made our costumes. I know, we are lame. We'll do better next year. Maybe.

DC Temple

 We went up to the DC temple recently. The area around the temple and the temple itself are absolutely beautiful. Great time of year to go too. We were also able to visit our buddies, the Johnsons, up there. They kindly watched Sabrina who had tons of fun playing with Mark. When I asked her about Mark yesterday, she replied, "Mark is incredible." We'll see if this infatuation can survive the distance between Houston and DC and the 19 years until Mark returns from his mission. I say there's a good chance.

Sabrina has also gotten into reading books in tents with me recently, which has been lots of fun. This is a very minor tent, we'll have to take a picture of the downstairs fort we build sometime.









She also sometimes likes to take of my socks and shoes when I come home, which can be really nice, when she manages to actually get them off. What else are daughters for right?

Fall Break

 We had fall break recently, which turned mostly into a staycation. We decided that with a very pregnant lady, travelling far wasn't the best idea. Plus, we had stuff to get done around the house still. On one day we drove down to Richmond, which is only about an hour. We were planning on seeing a whole bunch of things and having lots of fun but we got tired after lunch so we just went home. We did see the capitol building and the old city hall building, which is the bottom photo. Beautiful building inside and out. You can see it on the left side of the capitol in the next to last picture. Otherwise, enjoy the cute pictures of Sabrina, plus one picture of her troll daddy behind her.

Fall Fun

We've been trying to get our fill of fun fall happenings in our neck of the woods before our little boy makes his arrival and we've been doing pretty good so far.   Last weekend we went out to a local orchard and bought a bunch of apples for me to cook and can into applesauce.  On our way back from the orchard, a local church was cooking and selling apple butter.  We of course had to stop and watch.   Then this weekend, we went up to Staunton for a Craigslist pickup and then spent an hour or so looking around their historic downtown.  While we were up there, we ate lunch at an old greasy spoon and discovered that Sabrina digs lemons.  No sour face for this girl.  We were fascinated at her lack of reaction to the tartness of the lemon slices.  I feel like we've seen more of the surrounding areas to Charlottesville in the past two months that we've been back than all last year.  We hope to keep it up until we hunker down with the new baby.   And here I am at almost 35 weeks.