A Year of Change

This week has been another fun week for us.  We took short work weeks (Mon-Wed) then played with family for the rest of the time.  Thursday we spent with John's family wine tasting in Amador County.  The weather was absolutely beautiful.  After all the rain we have been getting (which we love) it was nice to have clear blue skies.  We went to a late breakfast then headed up to do some "winering" as John's sister put it.  Shani compared her neologism to John's "birding," instead of "wine tasting" or "bird watching" it was "winering."  We went to a couple good wineries and one not so great, but had a great time hanging out together.  We came home with a case of wine (half from our wine club) just for ourselves!  We ended the day eating yummy sushi at Mikuni's to celebrate John's dad's birthday.  

This week also marked our 32nd week of pregnancy.  Shani continues to feel great.  Our son is already starting to take after his dad--he must be tall and needing some room because he stretches his legs and pushes Shani's right side so you can see and feel him.  Once he moved in a really weird motion while John had his hand on the belly and it freaked both of us out.

Shani has noticed a trend. In case you are curious, here are the three answers for the most common questions she's asked: We are due on Feb 24th; No, we don't have a name picked out; and she will work until she physically can't (which her Dad hopes is the day she delivers because he has to take over her patients while she is out).  However, the room did get painted, the crib set up, and the closet organizer built--all before Christmas too!  We have a couple things that still need purchasing, then the room will officially be completed.  It's crazy to think we have about 8 more weeks to go.  Very fun!

32 weeks

New Year's Eve we played with John's parents.  We went on a nice walk around Maidu so John could show off his digi-scoping stuff that Shani's family got him for graduation and his parents got for him his Birthday and Christmas.  We then visited some friends and their new baby and took the long way back to do some more birding.  Another beautiful day!  After that we headed to downtown Sac for dinner with Shani's parents and friends and 9pm fireworks.  The fireworks stirred up the Columba livia (aka Rock Dove or "pigeons") that roost on the Tower Bridge. The silly people standing around us started crying "Wow! Look at the bats!" For those who are wondering, pigeons have a wingspan of 24 to 26 inches. The largest bat that might be seen on a cold Sacramento night (Eptesicus fuscus or Big Brown Bat) has a wingspan of of just 13 to 16 inches. If you are still awake, John wants to take you birding. If you zoned out for a minute, Shani apologizes for letting John "edit."  :-P  Although Shani didn't make it to midnight this year, we reflected on the great year we had and what 2011 will bring before going to bed .  Yes, we freaked out a bit.  

White-tailed Kite taken through John's scope

For New Year's day we went over to Shani's parents to hang out.  Shani's family's tradition for New Year's is to cook a whole bunch of finger foods and snack on all day. Therefore, her mom was hard at work making food all morning.  We then went to the snow with her family (another New Year's day tradition in the making).  With the snow level being so low we didn't think we had to go very far, but it was raining as we drove up the hill and we had to go to a higher elevation than expected.  We finally got good snow around 5000 ft and had a blast, it was amazing!  

This year brings a lot of change to our lives.  We have the obvious change with the new addition to our family, John will be ending his post-doc and starting a "real" job this year, and for the first time since high school,  John will be living in the same location for two years in a row!  We are so excited for what is to come for our family and we look forward to sharing all that is going on with you.  We hope you have a wonderful New Year and hope that this year is even better than the last!