Someone Wants to Say...

...Hiiiiiiiiiiiii!

It has been tooooooooooo stinkin' long since I've posted on Snapshot Chronicles...my deepest apologies. Jacki, I'm sure you recognize the hat Clara's wearing. We LOVE it. So perfect for these cold winter days. Lauren, I've been reading from the Bible storybook to Clara every morning. Sometimes we get through just one page, and others times we complete a whole story. She seems fascinated by it, and I pray that she'll truly fall in love with God's Word.

As I began typing this post, it dawned on me how much I want Clara to have the same kind of friends with which I've been blessed. I'm not sure you gals fully fathom how much I appreciate each of you in my life. Having recently been together again, I was reminded how different we all are and yet how united in Christ. Each of you has a unique gift that's enriched my life...and I'm forever grateful.

Relaxing Sunday

Life has been so busy lately. A "good" busy, but sometimes it can be a bad thing...if that makes sense. Today was so refreshing. It's been pouring rain all day here (Darla, I think you got all the snow in MN) so after aa fantastic message at church, we came home and Jimmy built a fire while I finished up decorating the tree. We have been HOME all day. PURE BLISS. Have a wonderful week.

House for Sale!

Hi girls! Just wanted to give you an update on the Duncan family situation.  Our house is officially for sale.  We still don't know where we're going because Kirk is still job searching.  We are praying for God's perfect will to be done in both the work and home situation.  Please pray with us! 

Check out the link for the virtual tour of our home. I can honestly say it's never been this clean and organized since we moved in!

www.tourfactory.com/681970

PERFECT Timing!

We woke up to this view in Eden Prairie...

Needless to say, SO glad you gals decided to visit LAST weekend. Thanks again for coming. It meant so much to me.

Our Little Mouse

Are we having fun yet?

Funny video of the girls

We kept R and S last night while their rents were away. They are SO FUN right now (as I'm sure all you moms and aunties know of little kiddos)! They love to sing and one of their favorite songs is B-I-N-G-O. Since they love Wyatt, we changed the letters and they wanted to sing it all night long. Just thought I would share it. I think it's pretty funny! (excuse my voice- yikes)

See you all in just a FEW DAYS!!

Barbie Box Halloween

Brad and I didn't have a Halloween party to go to this weekend, but I had one at work on Friday for the residents and staff. Let me just say it was incredible to see our youngest resident, 62, to our oldest resident, 98, dress up. We had so much fun laughing and becoming our characters. Last year I was George Washington and the residents loved it, so I felt like I needed to do something even crazier this year. After weeks of research and debating over Rosie the Riveter, Ameilia Earhart, and Scarlett from Gone with the Wind, I settled with my best childhood friend, Barbie.


I bought a wardrobe box at U-haul, spray painted it pink, cut the front out and replaced it with a clear shower curtain, put wrapping paper on the inside, and Brad made the logo and mattel logo.(Brad was a lifesaver here he did so much to help me - despite all of the school work he needed to do) We put handles on the side so I could walk with it and attached a piece of pink yarn to the front, through the handle and inside so I could hold the front door closed as I walked. Or course I decked out in as much pink as possible and put on blue eye shadow and hoop earrings. The residents loved it just as much as me! Unfortunately, I couldn't talk Brad into being Ken. He had too much going on.

The top 3 winning residents at work were: 3. The Devil Wears Prada costume. One resident carried a Prada handbag and wore a long red silk coat over black. 2. A Bag Lady with a robe, shower cap, and slippers. and the #1 was a sweet sweet sweet lady in her late 80's who dressed up like a Waffle House cook. It was out of this world!

See you all in a week!

happy halloween from the duncan kids!

4 days and counting....

Just sayin'

:)

GIRL!

Hi girls,

I put pictures and a couple videos on the Yordy blog :) Thanks for your prayers today! All went well, and she's healthy, which is the best part :)

Love, Kelly

Ultrasound tomorrow!

So let me begin by saying, again, sorry for taking so long to post! Still can't find the right cords to get our home computer up and running (I'm sure they're in a box somewhere), but finally figured out a way to get pictures from our camera onto my laptop. ANYWAY, I will post more later :) In the meantime, wanted to let you all know that we have our ultrasound tomorrow! I'm 20 weeks today. We're so pumped to see this baby for the first time, hopefully he/she is healthy, and can't wait to find out if it's a girl or a boy!!! Please pray for our time tomorrow...I think I've realized this time that the biggest part of this ultrasound is to check on a healthy baby...last time I think I was so focused on finding out the gender, it didn't really occur to me that something could be wrong with the baby. So I've been thinking and praying a lot more about that this time, and have probably been carrying around some additional anxiety because of it. Anyway...

Here's me at 20 weeks now:

And here was me at 20 weeks with Max:

So interesting to me to see the difference! I definitely started showing earlier with this one, and I'm carrying it much higher - basically I feel pretty much normal below the belly button, and totally big above the belly button. Weird, especially since the uterus is actually low. Ha. Anyway, thought you would like to see :) Although I get to see you all in person NEXT WEEK!!! So stinking excited.

Anyway, I'll text you all tomorrow after we find out, and probably tomorrow night I'll get the ultrasound pictures up on the blogs.

LOVE you all.

~Kelly

Family Mad Gab

Have you guys played this game? Basically, the way it works is there are a bunch of words on a card that sound like a popular phrase. For instance, "Ace Tray Taste Who Dent" would be "A Straight A Student". It's been a Spier family favorite in the past and on family vacation back in September, Rachel and Shane really wanted to play it our first night there. We were a couple of rounds in when Rachel was holding up the cards for Kirk, who was reading. The card that Rachel was holding looked a little different but Kirk read it anyway. The words were:

REAR LAUGHING A PAY PEE.

Say them out loud a few times. Do you get it? WE'RE HAVING A BABY! This was the way Rach and Shane let us know that they are expecting a baby in May!!! Needless to say, we were all thrilled! Finally it is public knowledge and I can share with you all!   It will be so fun to have 3 cousins all born within a year of each other and 5 cousins born within 3 years! 

Blast from the Past

Okay, so every time we're at the Mall of America I wonder if we'll happen to run into any famous person. Before yesterday, the closest we came to any star spotting was seeing a convention of Elvis impersonaters. But yesterday we saw CONSTANTINE from American Idol! Remember how creepy he was when he sang...attempting to seduce the audience with his squinted eyes. Well, we did make eye contact...I was kind of staring at him trying to figure out where I knew him from. He was actually pretty pleasant, even saying hi to us as we walked by.

Saturday morning FUN

Tomorrow afternoon is my "soon to-be sister" Ali's shower. She and Tyler are going to get married on December 27th (our same anniversary) so the wedding is right around the corner!

The theme of the shower is a vintage tea. My sister assigned myself to make the scones...hmmm...wonder why. Who really LOVES scones? Not me. But anyways, this morning I made two kinds of scones

1. Butterscotch-pecan scones

2. Orange-cranberry scones

They tasted pretty yummy out of the oven, so hopefully with a little cream tomorrow, they will taste ok. This was a picture of my kitchen. What a disaster!

A glimpse of the finished product!

And since Jimmy is golfing on this GORGEOUS Saturday, I'm left with the pup! I think he is annoyed that I'm home because he is used to quiet days....that or he wants a scone. :-)

And lastly, this is what is parked outside of our house. Since Jimmy started working for Herr's, he brings it home each night and leaves SUPER early in the mornings from our house. Ha ha. It's HUGE. Sometimes we have competitions (of course we do) inside. Jimmy will tell me the number of a kind of chip (each type of chip, flavor and bag size has a number) and he will time me on how long it takes for me to find it. I know...we're kind of lame. But I love to win.....and hate to lose.

Have a happy weekend!!! SO SO SO close to MN time! I am SUPER excited!

Love you!

Omaha Steaks!

My parents sent Brad and me the best package! Omaha Steaks... (thanks Sean Hannity- he does commercials for them all the time). steaks, pork chops, chicken breasts, gourmet hot dogs, twice baked potatoes, stuffed sole with scallops and crabmeat, hamburgers... sheesh! Our freezer is stocked. I wish some of you lived close so I could have you over for dinner. I was going to go to the grocery tonight, but yay! I don't have to.

Strawberry Pillow

I had to work this past weekend so I got to take today off and I get tomorrow as well!

Well... I have decided that I am going to try and make enough cutie pie baby goodies so that I can sell them on Etsy (a fun website of handmade things - if you have never been on it you should right now!) I am knitting more and more and today I worked on two strawberry pillows for a little girl's room. I probably won't start selling stuff for awhile. But once I have enough products and practice I am going to share them with all.

This is one strawberry pillow I made (I got the instructions from www.purlbee.com. It is an awesome website for knitting and sewing) I made a pink one too but I have to put some finishing touches on it tomorrow.

I am also in the process of knitting all the little ones in our circles a little surprise. I am hoping Darla got her's last week for Clara. And I will give the rest out at the reunion.



Anyway I had a fun day off.

Ooops!

Sorry about that! My student by accident posted on OUR BLOG!!!!! SORRY!!!


CONGRATS Darla and Brian!!!!

Cant wait to see more pics of precious Clara and hold her in 4 weeks!!

Love you!

Justin's Post!

Mrs.Herr was very, very, very nice on Wednesday.She let us write what ever we wanted in our chit chat jounal. I wrote about the future. The Phillies won the World Series!

-justin

Art Show

Brad had an art show tonight with the printmaking MFA majors. He had 4 pieces in the show tonight. It was called "Suite...(and something else I can't remember) but they decided to do a play on words and have a sweets buffet for visitors. I volunteered to bake, because I am enjoying it so much lately. I was able to take a day off of work which I needed and baked baked baked. I made mini pumpkin cheesecakes with homemade whipped cream, fig and ginger dark chocolate truffles, pecan chocolate chip mini pies, fried nutella ravioli, and red velvet whoopie pies with homemade cream cheese filling. I started last night and worked all day today and enjoyed myself. Here are some pictures of the goodies.






These are pictures of the gallery and some of Brad's work. I am proud of him for following his dream. He has a lot of opportunities coming up to showcase his stuff.






P.S. Atlanta has 4 out of the 25 most dangerous neighborhoods in America. Really nice, ya'll want to come down here for the reunion next year... hahahaha not!!!

Shameless Plug

Hey Girls, I've entered Elijah in the Gap Casting Call contest for a chance to win a lot of really cool stuff. I'm obsessed with BabyGap clothes and I would much rather win the clothes than buy them! Plus, Elijah would be a perfect BabyGap model in my humble, unbiased opinion. So anyway, vote for E if you have a minute :).

http://www.gapcastingcall.com/GapCastingCall/EntryDetail.html?id=169725

ps. if this seems like I am heavily favoring Elijah to Leah, I'm not. Babies have to be six months old to be entered :). She is just as cute!

Walk for Water

A few of my friends started a non-profit organization called 4more. It was started because they have a heart for Rwandan orphans. One of my friends, Laurel, recently adopted a sweet, sweet boy named Myles. Anyway, this Saturday they are holding an event called Walk for Water. Here is the clip. The promo video is only a minute long so take a look, but I will be working there as well as walking!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2qJUVx_Cm4

Every morning, Rwandan children (and so many other children) wake up and walk to get water....that isn't even clean. Each participant will walk one mile holding a gallon jug filled with water. They are raising money to try and bring freshwater to some of the communities they work with.

Love you guys!

FUN FINDS!

 The upstairs of our house still has major work to be done. The one room- currently our office- has one desk it in. Being that Jimmy and I both need a work space, I have been on the look out for something that I can use as a desk, as well as a sewing machine table. The other evening on our daily "Wyatt walk", we found this sitting in our neighbor's yard with a FREE sign on it! I jumped at the chance and we drove back and picked it up. I'm thinking I may repaint it sometime when I have a few extra days on my hands, but I was pumped that this was FREE!!

Andy and Cara's Wedding

I had to post this picture I just took outside from our apt.'s "Juliette balcony". It has finally rained here. It hasn't in a long time, but the sunset is coming through the dark clouds. It is stinking gorgeous!

Brad and I got back yesterday from Indiana. We were there for a short weekend again to celebrate my brother, Andy's, wedding. The ceremony and reception was outside in Bloomington, Indiana. It was beautiful. The weather was fantastic. And we all had a lot of fun. I am so happy for them and I keep checking Ben and Laura's blog for their pictures. They are in the Dominican right now on their honeymoon.

Here are some pics from the weekend. I didn't get many since I was in it, but enough.

On Friday at the rehearsal dinner, I planned a Minute to Win it competition based on the NBC gameshow between the bridal party. I used my Mac and youtube to download the instructional videos they show on the TV show from the Internet. Before each game I played the British accented woman who rule clips then the Minute to Win it timer. People laughed, got competitive, and had so much fun! Eric Bland, one of my brother's Taylor roomies won. Here are some of the games we played.

"Penny Hose" - had to retrieve pennies at the bottom of each leg of the panty hose without giving help to one hand from the other

"Movin on Up" had to get a blue cup back to the bottom by bringing each red cup to the bottom alternating hands.

"On the Nose" had to get 5 cotton balls from one bowl to the other using petroleum jelly on the nose only
"Junk in the trunk" had to get 8 ping pong balls out of an empty kleenex box tied above the butt by shaking the butt and hips.


"Bobblehead" had to get as many bobbles as possible on a pedometer attached to a sweatband.


We did 8 games with people getting eliminated each round until Eric won! It was a ton fun.
-------------------------------------------------

Saturday was perfect. Andy and Cara seemed very excited and in love. I am happy for them! Here are some pics.

Brian's First Day!

Today is Brian's official *first day* as the Senior IT Business Analyst for Hennepin County. I thought he looked especially snazzy, so I had to capture the moment. Okay, maybe a couple moments.

I'm so blessed by Brian. He's a hard worker and faithful provider. Our little girl has no idea how much his Daddy loves her and the ways he's already sacrificed in order for her to have a happy life. One day she'll know.

Things are just peachy down in the Peach State

Here are some pics from last week.

First off, Bonnie loves baths. She tries to jump into the tub when I turn the water on. Once she is in, she puts her head under the faucet and moves it back and forth like Stevie Wonder when he plays the piano. I always blow dry her afterward so she doesn't smell like a wet doggie. She gets very spunky during this time. (She likes blow dryers too. Every morning when I turn mine on she runs into the bathroom to sit by me) So here is our little blondie cutie pie puppy! She is spoiled, very spoiled.



Brad started class last week. Yay for 1 year left! He is impressing me more than ever. He has a show in a couple weeks at a gallery and volunteered to be the president of his print department. As I type this, he is co-teaching a 4 hour demonstration class for teaching professionals. Go Brad! We have already started the search for art professor openings. Taylor had 2, but unfortunately were not of Brad's concentration and are already filled. Here is a goofy picture of him before he went to catch the bus to school. He said his mom always did a picture of him and his brother leaning against the tree with their one leg bent behind. I love it!


I am trying to become more domesticated and crafty, as you can tell in my baking and cooking efforts. (I get inspired from several blogs and websites. Two of my favorites are "A Beautiful Mess" and "The View from Africa"- by Erica Anderson {she lived in english and was an el. ed major with Lauren and me}. Speaking of Erica, she just did a cute silhouette project I have been wanting to do for years so I plan on starting that soon too.) I am also learning how to knit from one of my 89 year old friends. But lately I have also had a desire to sew and make things. Enter the Singer Machine... My brother gave me it to me for my bday. I did sewing in 4-H and home ec, but haven't in a long time. I decided this week to give it a whirl. I went to the fabric store and bought a "very very easy vogue" dress pattern. Well, it wasn't very very easy. I packed it up until I have practiced more. Here is a picture of the pattern. I laid it out, pinned it, cut it, and then realized I laid it the wrong direction of the fabric. Go figure! I am going to start with an easier project, like an apron or a pillow. Until then...

38 Weeks

Yes, still pregnant. And getting more anxious to meet this little gal by the second! Am I ready for labor and delivery though? Ummm...I don't exactly have a choice once it all starts:) But I trust God will supply all my needs--His grace is sufficient for me!

Brian's NEW Job!!!

Hi, gals! So...I figured it was time to update you with what's going on here in Eden Prairie. The BIGGEST news is that Brian will officially no longer be the Executive Assistant to the Sr. Pastor at Grace starting next Monday (September 13). Especially since our awareness of the upcoming baby, Brian has been casually searching for jobs. In more recent weeks and months, he became more aggressive with his explorations for a couple reasons:

1) Realizing more-than-ever that he just doesn't feel fulfilled in his current position.
2) Thinking more long-term provision for the family.

As with any job search it became slightly disheartening when companies weren't getting back with Brian, but we kept trusting that God was closing the right doors...and that He would still be fully capable of providing for us if Brian did end up staying with the church. Well, just recently, this job with Hennepin County opened up...and they snatched Brian up (smart move!). His new title is Sr. IT Business Analyst. So he's going from working for a church a couple miles away to catching a bus which will take him downtown Minneapolis to the government center. We're very excited, and of course would appreciate your prayers as Brian transitions. God is so good!

Weekend in PA

This weekend we made our first roadtrip as a family of 4 out to Pennsylvania for Chad's wedding. I will have pictures of the wedding on the Duncan blog soon, but I wanted to share these cute pictures of the babies. This was the 1st time my sisters got to meet Leah and it was great to have our whole growing family together!

Campbell (2 yrs old) holding Charlie (8 weeks) and Elijah holding Leah.

Also, Leah has been smiling recently. Isn't she so pretty??

36 Weeks

So this is what it means to be 9 months pregnant.

George Banks put it well (in Father of the Bride Part II):

“We had everything you'd expect when you're expecting: Leg cramps, backaches and cravings…And the women were worse!”

Ha ha. That line cracks me up every time.

This was our first appointment where the doctor checked for dilation. Yikes! It's really happening. While I'm not dilated yet (I guess the cervix is "posterior" right now...behind the baby's head), her head is "very low" in my pelvis. Hmm...it will be interesting to see how this effects the rest of pregnancy.