Introducing B'Wo

The cat is out of the bag. The beans have been spilled. I'm sure this is no surprise to anyone, as you had to know this was coming. But we're excited to officially announce that ... WE'RE HAVING A BABY! Check out these cute pics of our little one at 12 weeks. If you look close, you can see he/she is waving. What a happy fellow/gal :)

Baby Wortley
(a.k.a. B'Wo, which is pronounced "Bee Woah")
due
February 5, 2011

Dad-to-be is happy as can be!

Mom-to-be is sick, tired and constantly craving chips and bean dip. Oh, and is SUPER excited!

NOTE: Don't worry, B'Wo is NOT the baby's official name. While it is awesomely cool, we feel such a name would inflict future ridicule on the babe. We don't know its gender yet and needed something to refer to it as in the meantime, hence the name B'Wo. Thanks to the Mulcocks for helping us come up with a gender-neutral nickname.  

Maiden Voyage

This is what I got Don for our anniversary (nearly 2 months ago) and it FINALLY arrived!

This week he took it out on its maiden voyage around Lake Calhoun. Since I have NO coordination to give it a try, I took the Xootr, which I'm sure you'll remember from our Chicago days (click here if you don't remember). Good times!

The Whole Famn Damily

It has been more than two years since the Jessop family has been all together. With my sister (Jennifer) moving to Malaysia and my brother (Aaron) moving to Houston, we decided to all meet together in Sun Valley for a quick family reunion before their big moves.

Everyone was there for a quick photo (Russ and Ali; Aaron, Leticia, Ben (orange shirt), Nathan (blue shirt), James (red shirt) and Joshua (white shirt); Liz and Don; Jennifer, Brent and Craig (yellow shirt); Mom and Dad Jessop)

Look at my adorable nephews! I'm glad I got to spend some quality time with all of them. They are growing up too fast and I don't see them often enough.

Bill, Janet, Rachel and Ian came too!

While we were there, Don saw a bear that needed attacking.
(Jeff, this picture is for you!)

After Don beat up the bear, Ben and Nathan weren't afraid anymore. What a good uncle!

We took MANY trips to the candy store. As a result, Nathan's teeth were a constant shade of blue for the entire weekend.

We also took a trip up the gondola for a delicious lunch on top of the mountain. Baby Joshua liked the ride.

On the 4th of July, Sun Valley held a small festival for the kids with free train rides. They were loving their lives! James wasn't too thrilled that I put him in the pink boxcar, but Craigy got over it pretty quickly. Look at his cute wave :)

We had a fantastic time and were sad that it ended so quickly. Who knows when we'll all be together again, but it was fun while it lasted. Thanks Mom and Dad for such a great weekend!

Good Times with the Wortley Family

Sorry it's been so long since our last post. This last month has been a whirlwind, with two family trips. The first trip was with the entire Wortley family on a Baltic cruise. We had an incredible time and took tons of pictures. Here is a recap of our adventure in pictures:

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

This windmill is a house!

Cheesy ... literally! We were in front of a cheese factory.

There's always time for fun when Don is around.

Berlin, Germany

The whole gang in front of The Brandenburg Gate

A memorial

What remains of the Berlin Wall

Stockholm, Sweden

The Vasa

Helsinki, Finland

A cool church built into the rocks

St. Petersburg, Russia

The Hermitage Museum ... it was massive!

Talin, Estonia

All the ladies, up and at em' for shopping.

If you've traveled in Europe, you know that when you find a good bathroom, you better use it! These were my favorite bathroom signs.

Pictures on the Ship

Family

Rachel and Ian on "The Newly Wed" game.

We went under the 2nd largest bridge in the world

Copenhagen, Denmark

This is the original Christus statue. We were excited to find it because the LDS church has a replica of it at Temple Square in Salt Lake City.

The End!

Now you can see why it's taken me so long to blog! I'm exhausted! Thanks Grandma Wortley for such a fantastic trip!!!

Five days after getting back from this great trip, I took off for Utah to spend some time with my family. Don met me there later that week for the 4th of July weekend. I'll blog about our trip to Utah with the Jessop family soon.

Time Flys When You're Having Fun

Can't believe this was us 5 years ago!

58 Hours to Chicago and Back

Over the Memorial Day weekend, we decided to take a last minute trip to Chicago to stay with Jeff and Caitlin. The weather was beautiful and it was fun to be back in our old stomping grounds. Here's a picture of us walking around Northwestern:


Although we were there for only 1.5 days, we probably ate enough calories for a year. Here are just a few pictures of the awesome food that Chicago always provides:





Enough about food ... we all know the true reason for the trip was to see baby Max. Don and Jeff took him on his first ride in a retro baby buggie that the pair had repaired and updated. Jeff rigged the buggie with some bling-bling tires, as well as a light. Max was loving his sweet ride and all the ladies were smitten.



We also got to see a few friends on our way out of town. I didn't get as many pictures as I thought, but you know who you are. Here are just a few pictures. We wish we could have seen all of our friends in Chicago, but 1.5 days wasn't quite long enough:

(Yes, this is the only picture I got of Jeff and Caitlin together! Sorry!)

(We got a picture with Ella, but somehow I missed her mommy Heather. Sorry!)

(Of course we had to see Chunqing. She told me that if I ever went to Evanston and didn't see her that "we could be friends no more." That was a serious threat!)

Then, we departed on our 7-hour car ride home and I realized we didn't have the keys to our house. If any of you know me at all, you know I am SUPER paranoid to the point of OCD about locking our house ... and boy did I lock it well :) I locked the front entry and the back door in the kitchen. But this was not enough. For some reason I thought I should also lock the old door the leads from the kitchen down the stairs to the basement ... you know, in case anyone broke into our basement.


Well it was an old skeleton key, dead-bolt lock that there is no way of breaking into ... which is what we learned when we got home at 1 a.m.


We tried using a credit card on the front and back doors, with no luck. Then we remembered that we had a garage door opener (the garage is a rear-entry garage that is in our basement). So we went in through the garage/basement, up the stairs and then we were blocked by the door to the kitchen that I had conveniently locked.

Long story short, we tried everything possible for an hour and gave up. We ended up cutting a screen window and crawling through.


Moral of the story ... don't lock doors INSIDE your house. It would be smarter to lock the window that I was able to break into :). This wasn't very funny last night, but today the story is hilarious! Good thing Don loves me, even with my OCD ways :)

New Bikes -- don't ask me for creative titles

I just asked Don for a title for this post. He suggested "Free Wheel-Me" (a play on the movie "Free Willy"). I told him no, and he said "Fine, don't ask me for creative titles." As I'm sure you guessed, this post is about our new bikes.

When we saw this map...

Of course, we had to buy these (No, not just helmets. There are new bikes there too, you just can't see them):


Our first bike ride was about 22-miles long through and around the city, led by our Minneapolis trail experts, the Brodegards and Collins. It was a beautiful day!


I think we're going to like it here :)