Early risers.

This weekend has been pretty uneventful for us, but for the sake of our devoted blog followers we will bore you with our lives :)

Friday night we were asleep by 8pm. Yay for early bedtimes. Saturday, we were up at 5:15am because Sam has started working the opening shift at Shaw's. That left me (and Ethel) with a very relaxful morning. I cleaned, organized closets, grocery shopped, began the ever growing laundry pile, and made lunch for the hubby and I when he got home around 12:30pm. Saturday afternoon, we took Ethel to get a "pedicure" (her hair grows under her feet and they have to use a special razor to buzz it off) and grabbed a pumpkin spice latte (a small taste of Heaven) on a beautiful fall day. 

Saturday afternoon we headed over to the Rogland's house for a beer brewing lesson (Sam was like a child on Christmas morning), and delicious, authentic, homemade Italian food. Mariah's meatballs are to die for! We also enjoyed a scrumptious rhubarb, strawberry and raspberry pie with homemade whipping cream. We were feasting like kings and queens!

This morning we endured another early wake up, as Sam played the drums at the church and I was the nursery coordinator this week. I missed the sermon this morning, but Sam said it was awesome and what I heard of the service from the nursery sounded great. After church we had our friends, Danielle and Justin over for tacos and have just been vegging since. We just put on a pot of french press and have a delicious looking caramel apple to devour.

We also want to send a special message to Grandpa Nelson today! It's his birthday! We wish we could be celebrating with everyone tonight, but we are looking forward to our trip home to Wheaton in October. Happy Birthday Gramps! Thanks for bringing so much joy, laughter and wisdom into our lives. We are so blessed. We love you!

We hope all of you had a great weekend and are enjoying the beautiful fall weather.

Lots of love.
Sam, Katelyn & Ethel

Happy Birthday Grandpa!

Friends & fondue.

On Saturday, we had some of our new friends, the Duncans and the Garretts over for chocolate fondue. These Southern friends (from Georgia) had never had chocolate fondue before! They had no idea what they were missing out on. We had strawberries, bananas, pretzels, marshmallows and pound cake as dunkers and let me tell you- it was delicious. Great conversation, great new friends, and great dessert. We are beginning to slowly fall in love with this city and the people God has blessed our time with here. Today we had a wonderful service at South City and Katelyn and the pup enjoyed a nice long nap this afternoon on this rainy day. We hope all of you had a restful, enjoyable weekend.

Love to you all.

Sam, Katelyn & the pup

Guitar lessons.

Sam and I had the privilege of watching beautiful Shyla on Friday night. Shyla loves Ethel, so her parents found it fitting to bring her to our place to babysit. Big surprise- Ethel is still very unsure of Shyla. Julie needed to drop Shyla off before I got home from work, so Sam was going to be with Shyla for a half hour all by himself. Sam's initial reaction? "What if she poops!" You change her? No worries, he did great and no poopy diapers for him to change. 

We enjoyed watching some Yo Gabba Gabba, playing with kitchen toys and the most enjoyable part of the night - Sam teaching Shyla how to "play" the guitar. So precious. Shyla was memorized and is now a huge fan of Wilco and Townes Van Zandt. I was thrilled (not).

As much as we loved watching little Shyla (she's an angel baby), it made us realize we really do selfishly enjoy the quiet Friday nights just the two of us. I'm very thankful for all my "baby fixes" here in St. Louis :)


Love, 
Sam, Katelyn & Ethel

look at the face!!!!