It's Franck-tastic

We spent the weekend visiting with Matt's entire family! Everyone flew down to meet our little man. Levi slept 99% of the time, but he still loved meeting everyone.

Gramma Kim with Levi. He loved all of cuddle time with Gramma- they spent a few hours just hanging out together.

Grandpa Jim with his second grandchild, who is also his second grandson. Levi was the 7th Franck boy born in a row- he was also the smallest!

Levi with Uncle John and Aunt Julie... possibly contemplating another?? Their son, Jackson, now has a boy cousin on each side of his family... lucky him!

Matt and I also got to meet James' girlfriend, Amanda, this weekend- I think she may have held Levi the most :)

Levi with James- he's a little excited. Since the day Levi was born, he's had this line above his nose... he'll furrow his brow, look all concerned, and get this deep line between his eyes (you can see it in his picture with grandpa). I had no idea where he got it, but it turns out it's a Franck gene- James has the same line!

Levi with Uncle Richard... it's always fun to see young guys hold newborns- you'd think they were holding a bomb. Right after Matt took this picture, Richard passed Levi right back and said, "here you go".

Jackson!! Our nephew was such a trooper this weekend! Gerdy ADORED him and he kindly put up with all of her chasing and jumping. It was great to see him; we learned that he currently loves swimming, balls, berries, and rocks. Oh to be a toddler again...

Thanks for visiting!!

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Ain't It Grand

We've been busy around here... busy with diapers, laundry, and meeting lots of family and friends!! Levi has now met all of his grandparents, the Franck boys, his aunt Julie (who is married to a Franck boy), and Amanda (who is dating a Franck boy). We're currently enjoying the Franck family for the weekend so we'll have lots of pictures up from their visit soon. But here are my parents with their first grandchild, Levi:

Levi with my mom. She's still not sure on her "grandma name"... she was thinking of "Mamo" since that's what she called her grandma, but can't really settle on it. If she doesn't pick one soon, she'll be subject to whatever Levi comes up with and will have to live the rest of her life as something horrible like "Grandma BooBoo". Levi loves his Grandma, and I'm pretty sure that Grandma loves Levi, too... she requests pictures of him daily, sometimes several times a day. But I can't blame her; Levi is pretty amazing. See how clean our floors are in this photo? That's all thanks to Grandma who worked hard cleaning them- thanks!!

Levi with Papa!! My dad was smart and settled on his "Grandpa Name" a long time ago. For those of you who don't know (or haven't put it together, yet), we chose Levi's middle name after my dad, Thomas (he goes by Tom - and my brother is named after my dad but goes by Tommy - Levi goes by Levi). I love my dad and am excited that Levi carries his name; I think my dad's pretty excited, too. Levi doesn't look that excited yet, but I'm sure he will be when he's older.

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It's Francktastic

We just spent a wonderful weekend with the Francks!! We had gorgeous weather and spent lots of time watching sports on the Stanford campus and then coming home to compete on the Wii (I think Jim won...). And we also ate a lot of great food (or maybe that's just me getting really excited for every meal- the baby's gotta eat!!).

Thanks for visiting us- it was great to see you!!

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Holly and Jolly in Retrospect

Well, I guess I failed my own blog-everyday-for-30-days challenge. But it was Christmas and we were spending time with family and friends so I'm giving myself some grace :)

We had a great time going back to Seattle for Christmas this year. One of the big highlights was celebrating Christmas with our (almost) 11-month nephew, Jackson. He received at least half of the presents under the tree, but all he really wanted was wrapping paper and Grandma and Grandpa's remote control. The poor guy was working through a horrible cold, but he was still as sweet as ever. Here are some pics:

The paper was the main event for him.

Jackson with Santa's big gift... who doesn't want a dino rocker??

After he opened his gazillion presents...

And to think... next year he'll have a little cousin to play with!

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Nero

Tommy came in town on Monday to visit for a few days. It was his first time on Long Island and he said he expected it to be a lot more dense. We love how suburban our area it!! We got in some good walks and pizza... much of his day was spent watching the market. Hula loved watching him work and Gerdy just love biting on him. Thanks for visiting!

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Yankee Doodle Dandy

Happy July 4th! A day late... I know :)

Yesterday we spent the day with James at the Port Jefferson beach swimming, playing, sleeping, and just enjoying the water and sand. After a quick BBQ dinner at home, Matt and I went back down to the beach to enjoy the fireworks.

Matt flying a kite

James waking up from a nap

Waiting for the fireworks... lots of boats in the water

Matt and James also went to the Port Jefferson parade yesterday morning:

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Local Color

Last night, Matt and I met up with James to see Local Color. Their cousin, Alex Kirkwood co-produced the independent film and it has received some great reviews and awards (http://www.localcolormovie.com/). We really enjoyed the movie; it was funny, meaningful, and extremely entertaining at the same time. And, seeing Alex's name in the credits wasn't bad, either! Congrats on your success, Alex- we're all very proud of you!

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Baby Jackson!

Matt and I are officially an aunt and uncle, and we couldn't be more excited about it! Jackson William Franck arrived after 22 hours of labor at 2:09am on February 2nd, weighing a whopping 10.4 pounds. The craziest part is that they thought he was only 8 pounds so Mom Julie did not have c-section; naturally, she is the talk of the hospital! We hear he is super cute and has a head full of dark hair. This is the only pic so far, but we're hoping for a full baby shot soon :)

We are so excited for John and Julie and can't wait to meet him in a few weeks!

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Happy (late) Thanksgiving

Since we were in the middle of our spur-of-the-moment move (and without the internet), we didn't have a chance to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! We enjoyed 4 days with my (Amy's) family in Boston. We had a yummy turkey dinner, learned how to play Bananagrams, spent good time with the cousins, and signed Claire's new purple cast. We hope you heal fast, Claire!!! Here are a few photos from our trip:

It's only appropriate for my family that the BC game pic gets the first post :)

Brian Jr, Connor, and Matt went to the game.

Sweet Lucy.

Eddie- he cuddling his football.

Emily and Matt at Toys-R-Us.

Thank you, Strachan family, for hosting us in your home!! It was wonderful to see you all :)

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London

I (Amy) just got back from a wonderful, 8-day trip to London!! I met my mom, Ellen, Aunt Aleece, and cousin Emily for a 5-day Girl's Trip. I love it when we all do something together... we live so far apart and it's great to laugh and play for a few days. We visited the London Eye, Shakespeare's Globe, many parks, St. Paul's, St. Bart's, Westminster Abbey, Sting's house, Madonna's house, Roman amphitheatre remains, and lots and lots of great shopping.All of my photos can be accessed here:
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Emily and I on the London Eye. We went on a beautiful day so we had great views of the entire city.


Ellen, Aunt Aleece, and Emily in Sally's (our tour guide) purple mini-van. She served us tea and cake in china as she drove us from site-to-site :)

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Amy's Parent Visit

My parents (Tom and Ellen) came to Long Island last weekend and spend 5 days with us in our new home! It was SO GREAT to see them. Matt and I have been so occupied with different things since the move, and it was great to see some familiar faces. We all drove around the island and visited some neighborhoods Matt and I would like to live in and even visited the Hamptons. They were incredibly helpful too! My dad changed our light-bulbs and my mom helped me with the laundry. One morning, they even brought pumpkins for our front door. Thanks, Mom and Dad!


We are having difficulties loading photos, so I'll add pics of my parent's trip tomorrow. And, so many people have asked about pictures of our cottage. I PROMISE that they are coming this week!


On a creative note, I have been inspired by other, more-advanced blogs so I'm trying to make ours more cute and user-friendly. Feel free to look around, as I'll be adding things often.

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Day 3 and 1/2

Amy and brother Tommy in Chicago

Hey All,

It's 5Am and we just got into Milesburg, and we are very tired so this will be short. We had a late start in Green Lake, WI, and then stopped by to see Amy's brother, Tommy, in Chicago.

After lunch with Tommy, we got stuck in some rough rush hour traffic in Chicago. 12 hours and four states later, we have finally arrived here in Milesburg and are 5 hours from our final destination. We will get a brief three hour rest here in Milesburg before we head out for a busy day tomorrow and then sleep until Sunday evening.

We will blog more later, but are really tired right now.

Good Night (or should I say Morning)

Check out Matt's parallel parking job with the big rig!

Hula was feeling the heat in Chicago

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Day Three: Fargo to Green Lake, WI

Chris, Julie, Andre, Matt, Amy and Hula in Green Lake, WI.

Today was the shortest of driving days- only 9 hours in the Penske truck. We got a late start out of Fargo (we were tired) and Hula was sad to see that we were, yet again, spending the entire day seated in the cab. It was Matt's turn to pick the audio book, so we suffered through "Real Estate for Dummies"- I kid you not. Amy managed to sleep through most of it.

We quickly passed into Minnesota. Matt loves Minnesota, so he made us stop at the St. Paul Cathedral (see pic with Hula). Amy had just woken up from a nap at this point and was too grumpy to take a picture.

Since Minnesota is pretty small width wise, we passed into Wisconsin shortly after and made our way to Matt's Aunt Julie's home in Green Lake. It is absolutely gorgeous out here! They have two wonderful Golden Retrievers, Emily and Willy, two horses, and a guinea pig. We ate a delicious dinner with Julie, Chris, and Andre before getting the grand tour of idyllic Green Lake and stopping for ice-cream. We are so lucky to get a home-cooked meal and time visiting with family tonight- thank you Julie, Chris, and Andre!

Tomorrow is a long day for us (we're driving through Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and finishing up halfway across Pennsylvania) and we're hoping to make it in by mid-night!

Matt and Hula in front of St. Paul's Cathedral in St. Paul, MN.

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