"Billy the Bat" ~ Pumpkin Carving with the Grays!!

Carving pumpkins has always been a "tradition" for me in my family! And the first Halloween Micah and I were married we carved a pumpkin and then last year we did not, because he was still in Alaska. So, this year I thought it would be fun to bring in the pumpkin carving tradition!

So, we went to Kroger Monday night before coming home and got a really nice pumpkin (that had already been marked down to 50% off ~ so of course, we were excited about that deal!). We had a nice Family Home Evening and then for our activity we carved our cute little pumpkin!

We had jobs, so that we could get through the whole process. Micah marked and cut the top off, I cleaned out the pumpkin! My parents let us use a great pumpkin pattern book, so we looked through it and decided to go for a bat design! Then we situated the pattern on the pumpkin and began to make our marks! Then Micah took over for the intricate detail of carving! And of course what pumpkin really feels like a pumpkin without a name....so we thought about it and thought about it and decided to have "Billy the Bat" join our family for the week!

Here are a few pictures and we hope you are all having a very Happy Halloween today!! Be safe if you are trick-or-treating tonight and have fun if you are the people handing out the candy tonight, like us:)

Who knew it required SO MANY TOOLS to carve a pumpkin?

(Next year with our little Emily at our heals I am sure we will simplify!!)

Here I am starting to get covered in the Pumpkin Goop!

Micah, being the detail-oriented man that he is, LOVED this part of the project!!

Introducing "Billy the Bat" in all of his Halloween Glory!

Family Photo with our newest addition, Billy the Bat!!

Our October Beach Week!

We just got back from a week long vacation at Virginia Beach! We have been looking forward to this trip for quite a while and it is hard to believe, as I am sitting here writing about our adventures, that it has come and gone! But we had a really amazing week! It was so fun to be able to get away from "real life" for a week and just be together!! We definitely did all that we could to make the best of everything as this is our last vacation before our little Emily arrives!! From now on it will either be family vacations or getaways with the 2 of us that are filled with conversations about our children! I guess that is another one of the joys of parenthood that we have to look forward to. But for now we are going to record just a little about each of the days we spent at the beach along with LOTS of fun pictures!

We arrived at the beach on SATURDAY (October 18th). We checked in to our hotel after making a pit stop for a late lunch/early dinner at Chili's, got all of our stuff inside, and settled into our hotel room. Then we realized since our room was equipped with a mini kitchen that we should go shopping for some food so we could cook a little while we were there. Super Wal-Mart definitely was our "one-stop-shop" that day. Micah forgot to grab his jacket when we were leaving and since I don't have any jackets that fit me right now we thought it would a perfect time to look for others. We ended up finding the cutest AND warmest jackets at Wal-Mart for a really good deal, and believe us they REALLY came in handy throughout the week. Having those jackets made many evening strolls down the boardwalk possible!!

When we got back to our hotel again (holding all of our Wal-Mart bags) the concierge I guess thought it was the perfect time to stop us and talk to us about taking a timeshare tour! I was hungry and tired and not really interested in what he was saying (although he was super nice), but Micah being the polite man that he is continued to listen. At one point he turned to me and asked if I wanted to take the tour and I plainly said, "No", but the next thing I knew we were signed up for a tour Monday at 10am! Great! But we did get 2 mini vacations out of it (for a cheaper rate) and a $50 visa gift card to spend at the beach, so I guess that was worth it:)

On SUNDAY we woke up and located a church meetinghouse and found out that one ward met at 9 and another met at 11:30 ~ we decided since it was vacation to sleep in a little and head to sacrament meeting at 11:30 at the Sandbridge Ward. After church we came back to our hotel, ate some lunch, and had some down time. We spent time sitting on the couch reading our scriptures, an article in the Ensign together, and we actually got to write in our journals(something we haven't done in months)!!
We decided to go out for a walk on the boardwalk Sunday evening and took a few pictures too! (You know how we LOVE to take pictures!) We went out just as the sun was about to go down so everything was really beautiful! Here are a few pictures we took..........

There were 3 colorful fish out on the side of the hotel and so we each got to pose with our favorite one!! Isn't Micah so cute?

And of course, I picked the pink one!!!


We thought the sunset was so beautiful, and since I like for people to be in pictures, Micah thought it would be best if I posed for this one!!!

We originally thought MONDAY would be our beach day, but we learned when talking to the concierge that in fact Tuesday was going to be the prettiest day of the week ~ so we quickly changed our plans for Monday. We still had our timeshare presentation to attend at 10am, and then we ate lunch at Rockefeller's (my favorite restaurant at VA beach). I LOVE Crab Cakes, and Micah is a good sport and goes along with me!

After lunch we decided to spend the afternoon at the Virginia Aquarium. It was such a neat place. We got to see an IMAX film on Dolphins and Sharks, and the lady's voice was so soothing that I dozed off a few times, but seriously, if you would have heard it you would have too! We got to see lots of really neat fish and take a nice walk on a nature trail in between the two museum buildings.
Since the museum was a little dark in a lot of places we only have a couple of pictures of our time there.....

Here we are in this cool little underwater submarine room ~ we could see the fish in the aquariums through the glass, and actually there was a big shark that was resting on the top glass just above our heads for the longest time!

Probably one of my favorite pictures of the trip! I love how you can really see the fish swimming behind us~Micah is the master of setting up our camera for self-portraits!

TUESDAY was our beach day! But first we decided to take a bike ride. We rented a tandem bicycle and rode up and down the boardwalk for over an hour and then we switched it out for a two-seater tricylce which wasn't nearly as fun to ride as we had imagined because of its bulk and weight.

When our time was up we returned our bikes and dressed in our swim suits. It was still a little chilly so we wore shorts and t-shirts too, then we went for some play-time on the beach! We walked up and down the oceanfront and allowed the waves to run over our feet. The weather was nice, but I think the funnest part was that we saw these cute little birds that would run together in a pack - they ran to the edge of the water and quickly pecked for things left by the last wave (we are really not sure what they were eating), and they would stay until the next wave was almost on top of them then they would run with their tiny legs as fast as they could to not get caught in the wave!! They were so fun to watch! Another really neat thing that we got to see while we were by the ocean were dolphins ~ we saw about 4 or 5 of them out playing, and then we even got to see 4 of them catching a wave in together! It was really neat to see!! Sorry we don't have a picture, but they were too far away to see well.

Here we are by the ocean! It was such a beautiful day!!

Here we are posing for just ONE of the silly photos that we took on our bike ride! You gotta live it up, right?

Here we are posing with our Bike in front of this HUGE smiley face ball, which I thought was AWESOME!!

WEDNESDAY we knew it was going to be a little bit chillier. We decided to head for the Virginia Zoo. We really enjoyed ourselves! This was the first time I had ever been to a real zoo! It was so much fun ~ we got see giraffes, a rhinoceros, a zebra, lions, and tons more! Micah was in charge of the camera and he took TONS of pictures, but we picked out just a few of those to share here:)
That evening on our way back to our hotel we decided to eat dinner at Il Giardino, an Italian restaurant. We had the best waiter of our entire week there! He was so friendly and just good at his job. He told us all about the menu, kept our water glasses filled (I know Dooders would have loved him for that!), he answered all of our questions! Really just an A-1 waiter!!! We were really stuffed when we left ~ so of course we went on a very cold and windy walk on the boardwalk ~ another night where our new jackets came in handy!!

And for those who know us, you know we are not huge TV people.....this was the first night we actually turned our tv on. We did get to watch the tale-end of a really cute movie though, so it was nice to get to cuddle on the couch for a few minutes in front of the tv!!

Here are a few photos from our adventures of Wednesday.....

Here we are in front of the ground-hog exhibit at the zoo! Don't see any groundhogs? That's because they are all snuggled up in their burrows!

Since this was my 1st time at the Zoo, I was amazed to get to be this close to a rhino!! Isn't he big?


These are couple of cute little foxes that we saw! (If you enlarge this photo you can see their adorable little faces!!)

Check out the Giraffes! They were fascinating to me! They actually all came together really nicely so that Micah could get a good shot of them!

Here I am, with only a small piece of plexi-glass separating me from that beautiful sleeping Lion!

Is it just us or does it seem like every time you are at the Zoo it is always nap time for the animals?

THURSDAY was another great day! The weather was really nice, a little chilly, but nice. We went for another bike ride in the morning and got a tandem bike again. Riding on the back of that bike sometimes made me feel like I was in a 50's movie!! It was really fun and really romantic - by far my favorite bike, hands down!

Micah thought it would be cool to set up the camera on a bench and use the timer to get an action shot of us riding! This is the result of our third attempt!

For lunch on Thursday we went to Ammos Greek Cuisine. It was Micah's choice, and it was a Great one! We had some gyro sandwiches, and then we shared some baklava for dessert! So yummy! If you are ever down in that area we highly recommend this place!

One of the things that had been on our "Things to Do" list was playing Putt Putt, so after lunch we decided to go to this one place called Jungle Golf. It was a fun game, although Micah was the champion!! We both got hole-in-ones though, so that was fun! It was really breezy, and the place was mostly shaded, (like a jungle) so it was chilly, but it was still a good time. We even got to take some fun pictures!!

Here we are having fun at Jungle Golf!!!

That evening when we got back we decided to run out on the beach again to enjoy the sand and water a little more! We got to walk on the beach (this time with our shoes on...it was a little too chilly to go barefoot today), watch our cute little birds some more and take even more pictures!

Thursday night was our first night of the week that we also got to read some more of our Harry Potter book. We are on the 4th one now (our goal is to finish this one before Emily comes, but we shall see how that goes). I love it when Micah reads to me, he does such a great job with the voices even when he is not feeling good (he has had a cough for about a week now, but he went to the doctor for the 2nd time yesterday and he got some antibiotics and is definitely on the road to recovery now)!

Us with the Beach in the Background!


I love this picture of Micah! He is so handsome. I am so blessed to be married to him!! We are both wearing our wonderful coats that we bought at Wal-Mart the day we arrived at the Beach! Those coats were lifesavers!!

Here I am 29 weeks pregnant with the Sun shining on the clouds behind me and the ocean at my feet!

On FRIDAY we were pondering about something else to do, and when we were looking through all of the coupon books they have at the beach (and there are A LOT!) we saw the Nauticus Museum http://www.nauticus.org/ and it looked like it would be interesting, so we got up and got dressed, ate breakfast and headed out the door once again for Norfolk! I'll let Micah tell the rest of the story.

Micah here. When we arrived, we found out that most of the museum was free to the public, so we toured those parts first, starting with the Battleship Wisconsin. It was a huge battleship built in 1947! The most impressive thing, besides the shear mass of the ship, was the size of the big guns! Each gun barrel was 16 inches in diameter and could fire a projectile with accuracy up to 24 miles away!

Here we are in the picnic area in front of the battleship Wisconsin!

After the Wisconsin, we ate a snack outside and then decided to pay $8 a piece to see the Nauticus museum. We were not disapointed. There were lots of things to touch and learn about, including sharks!

Here is Holly petting a nurse shark. The attendant was helping her so she wouldn't get her hand bit off. Actually, nurse sharks are not aggressive, so the risk was very low. We were asked not to use a flash, hence the blur.

We also got to play in a deep sea explorer and manipulate the mechanical arm. We managed to pick up a chain that was lying in the sand, whoopee!

Perhaps the highlight of our visit was getting to see a high definition film about the living sea. The ocean is so huge and so full of life!

At last it was time for us to go eat some dinner. We went to Mahi Mah's, a sushi and seafood restaurant and bar. It was the priciest of all places we ate, but it was pretty good too. We tried some polenta fries dipped in a parmesean lemon sauce for an appetizer, then Holly had a crab cake sandwich, and I had a duck compote salad. I wont say that it was tasty, but it was flavorful.

After a final walk on the boardwalk it was time to head back to our hotel room to reminisce about our vacation. Seven days and over 100 photos later, we definitely had a lot of memories to share. Hopefully we have been able to give an idea of how fun our vacation was this year!

The Grays are Going Private!!

Hi Everyone!
Micah and I have been contemplating making our blog private for some time. And one of the main reasons that we didn't in the beginning was because of our adoption profile and that we had our blog linked to that. But now with the upcoming arrival of our little Emily and with the wisdom of some of our dear blogging friends and experiences they have had recently we have decided to go ahead and make ours private now.
So, if you are reading this and would like to keep up with the comings and goings of the Gray Family we would love for you to as well. Just leave us a comment (if we already have your email address) or send us an email or give us a call if we don't and we will be more than happy to add you to our Private Party! We are looking to make the switch over on Wednesday- so contact us before then:)

Love,
Holly and Micah

Our Finished Rocking Chair!!!

As most of you know, we have been searching for THE Rocking Chair for the baby room for months! And we finally found it at Lam Brothers in Madison, VA, (thanks to a tip from a friend)! We got a great deal on it too! The only catch was that it needed to be stained and polyurethaned! However, when we got home we decided that it matched the furniture pretty well already so the only thing we needed to do was do a coat of polyurethane! Easy, right? Nope!

As Micah was reading the directions for the polyurethane he found out that it was going to need between 2-3 coats and that each coat would need to dry for approximately 4 hours before being sanded for the next coat! So our hopes of finishing it all in one morning were dashed!

However, with Micah's diligence and detail-orientation he was able to finish it in about 3 or 4 actual days of working on it! He just put the last coat of polyurethane on last night and the chair looks amazing now! It is currently sitting in Emily's room drying/airing out! We have the fan going almost all the time with the window open to keep the air circulating and hopefully to get the chair "scent free" by the time of Emily's arrival!

Speaking of Emily's arrival, we just had another doctor's appointment today. we also decided to go ahead and have my glucose test done (which consisted of not eating anything after midnight last night....talk about hard for a pregnant woman to get up and not have breakfast....not even a middle of the night snack, just a sip or two of water). For all who might be wondering the Glucose Test wasn't really that bad, the drink tasted like orange soda and they served it to me really cold! I think the nurse said I downed the drink in like 45 seconds! I was hungry and I knew the faster I drank the drink the quicker my hour would start and the sooner I could get some FOOD!

After that we went to our doctor's appointment. It had been 6 weeks since my last one because he wanted to allow me to be able to do the blood work and the appointment at the same time. He measured my belly for the first time today and says that everything measures normally. Emily seems to be healthy and we got to hear her heartbeat again. That is my favorite part of the appointments ~ it even makes up for having to hop on the scales in the beginning! Her little heartbeat sounds so perfect, it definitely is enough to warm her mommy and daddy's heart!

We are just waiting to hear back from the doctor's office anytime for the "official date" of our C-section! Exciting times!

Here is the chair with just the top half having a coat of polyurethane.
My handsome husband putting the finishing coat on the rocking chair last night!!!

Here he is with the chair in Emily's Room after it was completed! Doesn't it look so shiny??

Storing Food

I know you are probably thinking didn't they just post an entry yesterday afternoon?? And the answer is, "Yes, we did." But I felt impressed to record another entry today for a specific reason ~ the importance of having Food Storage.

Last night Micah and I were privileged to be able to go with Mommers and Dooders down to our dear friends, Bob and Vonda's home, to see their food storage warehouse that they have set up. We were so impressed ~ they have a ton of food storage items ~ everything from flour to dehydrated peanut butter to baking powder to beans and much much more! We were so amazed!! If you want you can take a look at their website, East Coast Food Storage.


Food Storage is always something that Micah and I have known that we need to plan and prepare to have, but it wasn't until just after this last General Conference that he started to think more about it. With the current situation of our economy and with it being a big presidential election year, it can be a little scary to contemplate at times. With these thoughts on the forefront of his mind (and preparing to welcome our first child into this world) he suggested that we start getting a little more serious about our food storage. And we thought yesterday would be the perfect opportunity ~ so we called up mom and Keith and shared our thoughts with them and they were willing and ready to make the trip down with us for a Family Home Evening Activity!! And we are so grateful that they did! We were talking about it on the way home and we both agreed that we probably have 6-12 months of food storage in our crawl space now, so that is a very reassuring reality. We may never need it for emergency purposes, but then again we just might!

There is one more website that is a great resource for any part of the food storage process that you may be on: providentliving.org. There are talks and quotes about food and financial storage that are very beneficial and helpful for everyone, no matter what step of the process we may be at in our own families.

I have a testimony of the importance of food storage. I know that allowing for it in our monthly budget is a principle that if we heed will bless us in more ways than we can count.

Comment from Micah: If you live in Charlottesville, I highly recommend East Coast Food Storage. Getting food storage has never been so easy.

A Beautiful Day for a Festival!!

Saturday Micah and I decided to take a short drive North to the little town of Syria, VA to attend the Graves Mountain Apple Harvest Festival! I have been several times, but I have never gotten to go with my Micah! (Last year he was in Alaska on his work trip).

The weather was absolutely perfect and we definitely got a lot of walking in. There were tons of vendors there selling all kinds of neat crafts. We ended up buying some soap, and some natural skin cream! And of course we couldn't get away with out a jar of fresh Apple Butter!! Man I love that stuff!!

We also were surprised to meet up with Jessie, Avery, Jeannie and Nanny! It was definitely a fun surprise, we ended up in the same vendor's area at the same time ~ what are the chances of that....with hundreds of people around? It was nice to get to visit with them a little bit, we decided to all head over to the Pavilion together and eat lunch! That was nice. Little Avery is getting so big! She is a beautiful girl....looks just like her mommy!

To finish off our day at the festival, Micah and I walked to the Orchard, which at that point in the afternoon seemed to be a million miles away (our legs were so tired), and picked some apples! It turned out to be a fun walk, and as all walks usually go ~ it seemed shorter walking back!!

We picked a bag of an assortment of apples, which we used yesterday to make an apple pie. It was really yummy ~ not too many things better than an apple pie made with fresh picked apples! I haven't made a homemade apple pie in quite some time, I am glad that we got to pick apples on Saturday to give me a reason to do it!!

After we left the festival on Saturday we headed back home, and after having some water and a snack we headed outside to do some work and enjoy the rest of the day in the beautiful sunshine! Micah is continuing the process of applying polyurethane to our rocking chair, and I decided to rake leaves while he was doing that so that I could keep myself busy! I raked up 7 bags!! But since we have a half an acre with a good amount of trees, I am sure that is barely the the "tip of the leaf pile!" But it was still good exercise, and at least we were able enjoy a practically leaf free front yard for a few good moments on Saturday!!


Here are a few pictures from the Graves Mountain Festival.....If you have any free time to go, they are there for one more weekend!!!

Us by the Apple Harvest Hay Bale Scarecrow at the entrance of the Festival!
Cheesin' for a photo with my beautiful Sister, Jessie, and sweet niece, Avery!
Love these Cute Pumpkin Hay Bales!!
Micah reaching way high for the Perfect Apple ~ Check out those beautiful red leaves that were going right up the center of the tree trunk!
In the Shade with our "Bag o' Apples"
Here I am in front of one of the shortest apple trees that we saw in the Orchard ~ We were both so surprised at how loaded down it was with apples!!
Our last photo of the day ~ my idea, I thought it would be cute to take a picture in the middle of another cute and small tree!! (Do you see how Micah's head is almost to the top branch?)

27 Weeks and Counting!

I can't believe how quickly time is flying. It seems like just yesterday that we were starting the adoption process. Then, even though we were in the midst of all that, it seemed like an eternity between January and May (when we found out we were expecting our first baby, I was pregnant!!). Now here we are less than 3 months away from the birth of our first daughter! My, how time changes things. I remember when I was younger I was so excited about being a mom, and I would put a ball under my shirt sometimes (of course, when I was in my room with the door closed) to see how I would look pregnant. And let me just say the only problem with those balls (which is the same problem that the baby bellies have in Motherhood Maternity for you to try on under your clothes) is that they don't take into account your all-around growth, just belly growth!

So even though I don't look as small or as cute as I had percieved as I was playing around in my earlier days, I am still so happy to be pregnant with our little Emily!! She has already been such an amazing blessing to Micah and I, and she's not even here yet! We have waited and prayed so long for this miracle and she is almost here! We are excited for the next couple of months to unfold and to be able to join the world of parenthood! We know it is going to be really tough at times, but we also know that it is going to be really worth it! And we are so grateful to have such wonderful family and friends to support us along the way!

Here I am, 27 weeks and growing!

Gotta have the crib shot in there!! (Don't know what was going on with my hair this morning!)
Here we are together, I figure Micah was working so hard behind the camera to take the pictures that he needed to be in one with me too! He's so handsome!

Oh, and one more thing I forgot to mention, as it is notable; this morning was the first time that Micah actually felt Emily move without me telling him first! I was laying there after the alarm went off and she was really moving, but I thought I would just keep it quiet. Micah had his hand on my belly already and then a few minutes later, she kicked pretty hard, and then Micah said, "Wow! I just felt her move!". I said, "you sure did honey!". So even though that was a small moment, it was still a very exciting one for us!!