Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!  Life was busy and the blog didn't get much attention in 2015.  We started the year in our new (and first) house in Gainesville.  Spent Easter in Virginia.  Found out we were expecting a baby boy (who is due in 3 days).  Enjoyed a week at Edisto followed by a week in Breckinridge, CO.  Spent another busy week in VA in September where we got to go to the Virginia Tech vs. Ohio Stare game with friends and celebrate Maggie and JD's wedding.   We enjoyed a couple of weekends at Disney and have completed a lot of house projects!  Jacob played his first season of T-Ball(with Mark as coach) and we had a wonderful holiday season!  Oh . . . And we some how found time for lot of time at work and school.  :-)  2016 is going to be an exciting year beginning with the arrival of Baby Boy Siburt #2 in the coming days (we hope he comes out with a name tag).  Jacob will finish VPK at Baby Gator in June and then turn 5 in August and start Kindergarten!  We're looking forward to seeing what else this new year will bring.   (Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with the blog a bit more too).

Jacob is 4!

Wow, how is our little baby 4 already?! Jacob turned 4 on Saturday and we had a wonderful weekend of birthday celebrating.  Friday, Mark and Jacob made the cake and cupcakes for his party.  Saturday we had gymnastics in the morning and then went to lunch at Satchels with the Pitkins and got to sit in the van.   Jacob's party was at a place called Bouncin' Big Junior on Saturday afternoon and his whole class as well as some other good friends came to the party.  The location was perfect; the kids could be kids, the parents could sit back and watch, we had the whole place to ourselves, and it was a great indoor location since it's has been raining for the past 2+ weeks here!  They have cars for the kids to drive, dress ups, a play restaurant, bounce house and slide, and ball pit.  Jacob had a blast and for the first time we sang Happy Birthday to him and he ate his cake!  Sunday we played at home with his new toys (lots of big kid Lego building, train playing and fire fighting).  Jacob had his 4 year check up today and he is a growing growing boy!  He is 41.5 inches tall and 41.5lbs.  Still between the 75th and 90th percentiles for height and weight and growing right in the middle of his curves.  He also was quite the trooper and was very brave for a finger prick and 3 shots.  Fortunately he doesn't have to get anymore for a few years.  

Happy New Year!

WOW,  2014 was quite a year!  It was a year of learning, a year of growth, a year of struggles and a year of fun.  Moving to Tampa proved a much greater challenge than either of us anticipated.   When we decided to move to Tampa after I accepted a job at USF Mark began looking for jobs in the area.  It was a struggle for many reasons, and in the end, although neither of us had any intention of moving back to Gainesville, it seems as though higher powers must have.   We met some new wonderful people along the way,  and had great adventures exploring the Tampa/St. Pete area, but we realized after many months of really long commutes that we weren't in the right place for this time of our lives.  After searching for opportunities to move (even to some great distance) what was right under our noses the entire time presented some more obvious opportunities and we decided moving back to Gainesville was the right decision for us now.  We've now been back in Gainesville for 2 months and life is a 2015 is already quite different than 2014.  We brought our 1st house (more on that later), Jacob is back in Baby Gator with one of the same teachers and may of the same classmates he was with before leaving, and life here seems . . . . well, it just seems right.  Jacob and Bailey love having a yard to play in, we all are enjoying living together full time again (Mark was commuting to Gainesville to work for the past year), and I enjoy (amongst many other things) that my longest commute to work is 15 minutes. 

Let me try to re-cap all of the adventures we've had since being back in Gainesville.  We moved right before Thanksgiving and for the first time in many years didn't cook anything for Thanksgiving dinner.  We did instead enjoy a wonderful dinner with the Gaters and it was such a nice welcome back to town.  The second week in December the Siburts came to visit.   It was originally just a trip for Grandma and Grandad, but since it was Grandma's 60th birthday we decided to surprise her with almost the whole gang.  Michael, Claire and Scott all flew down and surprised Grandma with a weekend visit.  We enjoyed spending time with everyone in our new house and celebrating Grandma's birthday.  The guys did lots of house projects, the girls got pedicures, and we all went out for an awesome birthday dinner.  It was a really fun weekend!

Jacob's new ride

Happy Birthday Grandma!

Christmas lights

The next week we moved everything that we'd moved into the house (the bare minimum) back out so that our hardwood floors could be refinished.  It was a long week but we were fortunate to have a friend's empty house to stay in for the week and after 7 days out of the house we were able to officially move in.  After A LOT of cleaning we put furniture in all of the rooms and began unpacking boxes to stay :-).    That was the week before Christmas. 

"New" floors

Christmas was quiet this year, and wonderful.  We had Christmas Eve dinner with the Gaters and the Pitkins came over for Christmas dinner.  Jacob was very excited about Christmas this year, constantly singing Christmas songs (he still is!) and very concerned about every detail related to Santa.  Mark and I currently have a bet about how long he'll be singing Christmas songs.  I guessed Easter, he guessed the 4th of July . . . we both may be wrong!

Christmas Eve play time with Mr. Gater

Leaving cookies by the front door for Santa

Ready for Christmas morning

Okapis!

Veggies for Christmas dinner

 The weekend after Christmas Beep, Pops, Piper & JJ arrived . . . and Uncle Henry surprised us by riding down in the back of the truck without Mom knowing he was there for the entire 12 hour drive!  They brought a trailer of furniture for the house and we had a great time while they were here.  Mark and Pops did a of projects around the house and Jacob loved the constant activity and attention.  He went on lots of bike rides with Uncle Henry and we all went to visit the Retirement Horse Farm in Alachua.

Ready for another bike ride with Uncle Henry

Park play time

Feeding the horses

Happy New Year from Uncle Henry and Jacob Henry!

After the new year and the departure of all of our visitors it's been back to reality.  Work has been good but really busy for me.  Mark just has his big annual arbor day celebration, and we're always doing some "exciting" new projects around the house on the weekends.  We've spent time playing with lots of friends, enjoyed being able to once again walk to stores from our house (which I forgot to mention is on the same street that we used to live on about 5 blocks west).   Life is never perfect (is there such a thing?), but life is very good right now and we feel very blessed!

Gainesville Bound

After a year of adventures in Tampa we are moving back to Gainesville.  This year has definitely been one of learning for us. We decided to move to Tampa a year ago to pursue my career with the full anticipation of Mark finding a job within the first few months.   A year later, after spending weeks apart because Mark still has his great job in Gainesville, we are moving back.  Neither of us would have predicted that a year later we'd be packing boxes once again and buying a house 5 blocks from where we used to live.  There are a lot of factors that resulted in this decision but ultimately we want to live together(7 days a week), in a place we like to live(and don't have to fight terrible traffic twice a day), and where we can both get good jobs.  Gainesville fits that picture perfectly.  We're going back with a fresh perspective in many ways, and are excited to begin to feel settled in a place we know and have grown to love.  We are buying our first house, I am working at UF in a research, teaching and clinical role, and Mark is still the City Arborist.  Since making the decision to move back to Gainesville things have fallen into place.  Jacob(miraculously) got back into the same class at his old school, we found a great house within walking distance to a number of our favorite shops, and we're excited to be moving into a familiar but new stage in our life.  It is bittersweet leaving my current job but I could not have more supportive co-workers.  So, Monday morning the moving truck arrives and we're Gainesville bound!  More to come including pictures of our new house :-)

Halloween 2014

Happy Halloween!  We had a wonderful time this year . . . after convincing a very 3 year old Jacob it was a good day to wear his costume.  Jacob decided he wanted to be a sarafri train conductor this year and we bought the costume a couple of weeks ago so he had plenty of time to get comfortable wearing it.  Jacob picked out costumes for Mark and I (safari animals), and we had the tiger costume from last year that Bailey so fortunately was able to wear for a few pictures.

Jacob's school had a Fall Festival yesterday that we all went to.  He doesn't usually go to school on Fridays so he wasn't to sure about going and refused to wear his costume.  By the time I got home from work he was convinced dressing up on Halloween day was ok and was in full conductor attire.  We took Bailey trick or treating to a few neighbors houses and then went to the Children's Museum for their Halloween party.  We all had fun and it was a comfortable place for Jacob to enjoy the Halloween festivities.  Enjoy the pictures!