12/31/2009

Recap of 2009


Here’s a little recap of 2009 for us:
  • Went to Kentucky for cousin’s New Year’s Eve wedding
  • Noah was ring bearer- 15 months
  • Visited friends in Cincinnati
  • Nick turned 22
  • Noah said, “I love you” for the first time-18 months
  • Took Noah camping and hiking in Pine Mountain, Georgia
  • Found out we were expecting baby #2
  • Visited Chicago
  • Celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary
  • Nick completed his interior architecture thesis program
  • Found out it’s a girl!
  • Visited Saint Louis
  • Nick began 5th and final year of architecture
  • Noah turned 2!
  • Went to Kentucky for Henninger family reunion
  • Brooke turned 23
  • Noah became Peter Pan
  • Nick finished his second-to-last semester
  • Spent Christmas at our home here in Auburn
It has been a busy year for us as I’m sure it has been for you. We are very excited for what’s coming in 2010. Here’s to a blessed new year!

12/20/2009

Fresh


The new shop is up!… well, it has been for about a week or so now. We started it because we needed something a little more flexible than “babydarling” for any non-baby items we may want to make. So far “HENNstudio” only offers two basic items: fabric bookmarks and pen pouches. You may be wondering what exactly a pen pouch is. It is something I developed about a year ago. Being an architecture student I am very particular about my drawing/sketching/writing utensils and these would fall out of my pocket and be lost, all the time. This pouch keeps my precious drawing utensils in order and together as one manageable unit, like a wallet… and like my wallet I never leave home without it! There are other things we’ve talked about making but we’ll see if we ever get around to it. And the shop is not doing too bad. We’ve had 5 sales – all pen pouches – and all possitive feedback. One person even wrote: “WOW….I couldn’t get my pens in this sweet pen pouch fast enough. You did a beautiful job making it. Great communication and fast delivery. I may have to have another one…it’s so darn cool. Many thanks!”… that was pretty exciting. Here’s a screenshot of my SOLD page.
We’re also in the process of adding some fresh items to babydarling. Just today we had a photo-shoot for a couple new crib sets.  We’ve decided that bumpers might be a little too intense for us to keep making (especially with the new baby on the way), so hopefully these new bumper-less sets will be well received.  Also, authorities on infant-safety now say that bumpers significantly increase the risk of SIDS, so these sets are a great option for those who feel uneasy about crib bumpers.
Anyways, the photo shoot went pretty well.  We rearranged our living room, assembled the crib, borrowed Noah’s mobile and mattress, and turned our little living room into a photography set.  We have more to do tomorrow, but here are the two sets we were able to add to the shop today.
This has been a nice break from schoolwork, but we have so much more to do before baby Olive gets here, including my portfolio and thesis book (that I should be working on right now).  A new baby is sure to slow things down…

12/18/2009

Movie Theater First-Timer


Cold, rainy, dreary day=perfect weather for the movie theater.
I had gone out to run some errands this morning in the freezing cold rain, and when I was on my way home I had a thought. We should go see a movie today…at the movie theater. But wait, we’ve never taken Noah to the movie theater. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time Nick and I went to see a movie. I pushed the idea aside as I remembered exactly how much work I needed to get done today. Pulled into the driveway. Went inside. I mentioned the idea to Nick not thinking he would actually go for it, but much to my surprise, the next thing I knew he was looking up movie times on the internet. He listed off a few that sounded great for us but not for Noah. The only thing that was rated G was The Princess and the Frog which we decided would be our best bet. And besides, it looked like it would be cute. So, we ate our lunch, got bundled up, I grabbed our camera (thought we should document Noah’s first time at the movie theater), and off we went.
We figured the theater would be basically empty since we were seeing a showing at 12:35, and we were right. We walked up to the box office to purchase our tickets when the ticket lady said it would be $20.50. I thought to myself, “Man, that’s really expensive, especially for a matinee.” I glanced at the sign and told her that Noah is only 2. She looked back at her manager like “what should I do?” and he mumbled something back to her. They seemed like they didn’t believe me or something. My mind began thinking of how I could prove to them that he’s only 2, and then I quickly told them that I would be happy to use the extra $6.50 at the concession stand, but she offered to just go ahead and give me the cash back. She gave us our tickets and we went inside.
We purposely got there early because Nick said he wanted Noah to have the full movie theater experience and have some time to play in the arcade. So, we ventured into the dark room and the boys tried out all the driving games.
I spotted the photo booth which immediately brought me back to my teenage years. I thought, “How fun would it be for us to have these pictures from Noah’s first time at the movie theater?!” We piled into the tiny booth, pulled the black curtain shut, and tried to figure out this modern version of the photo booth. I don’t remember these things being this complicated. It had like 5 different categories to choose from. Do you want the picture to be in color, sepia, or black and white? What kind of theme do you want? There were more that I can’t remember. Then, to top it off we could only choose the very first thing on the list because the buttons were broken! So we’re preparing to take our first picture out of 4 and we notice that our faces are not on the screen…because the camera is pointing way up high! We quickly half-way stand up all the while trying to get our faces in the frame while it shoots the pictures! Good times. We paid $3 for 2 strips of priceless pictures that say “Season’s Greetings” at the top. I’ll always remember our session in the photo booth.
We still had some time to kill, so I suggested we try the “try and position the claw just right so you can win a hideous stuffed animal” game or something like that. Nick put 50 cents in the machine and worked his magic! I don’t know about any of you, but I have never been able to win anything out of those. Well, wouldn’t you know! God was smiling on Noah’s first visit to the movie theater because we got a funny little panda bear with huge eyes!
Now it was time for us to get our popcorn and a drink and head into the theater. For awhile we were the only ones in there, but a couple of kids with their parents came in a little later. Nothing real exciting to report about the actual watching of a movie because Noah did great! He enjoyed the movie and sat through the whole thing. He was, of course, not excited when the movie was over and we told him it was time to leave. The Princess and the Frog was a cute movie, by the way. And, Noah is officially no longer a movie theater first-timer.

12/13/2009

Merry Christmas from the Henningers


Here it is…our 2009 Christmas picture!
It’s been awhile since our last post. Our camera has been in the shop. Thankfully, our good friends let us borrow their camera so we could go ahead and take our Christmas picture. I was 35 weeks in the picture and am now 36 weeks! We officially have less than a month until baby Olive joins our family! Here’s a couple more favorites from the photo session.

12/01/2009

Hello December


I welcome this month with open arms! I love that the first day of December is a nice crisp chilly one!  I have to admit that we’ve already had our Christmas decorations up for over a week now. I’m usually not a fan of putting up Christmas stuff before Thanksgiving, but for some reason, this year I was ready. Maybe it’s because I’m in my 8th month of pregnancy and know that with each passing day I’m getting bigger and it’s getting harder to do every day normal activities…
I’m really excited about this Christmas. This will be our first Christmas in our own home here in Auburn! On a side note, I just realized yesterday that it will also be our last Christmas here in Auburn. But, back to the excitement of having our very own Christmas all to ourselves! In the past, we’ve always had to do “our” Christmas early because we’ve split the holidays between our two families, but this year, because I will be only 2 weeks from my due date, we decided it would be best to stay at our own house for Christmas and let the family come to us. I am so excited for Noah to wake up Christmas morning in our own home and get to open his presents!
I’ve already gotten some Christmas cards from some obviously organized friends! Receiving them reminds me that I need to get on that- we’ve done a Christmas card every year since we’ve been married- this will be our 4th Christmas card! We might have to borrow a friend’s camera because our’s broke a couple of weeks ago and we are still awaiting the diagnosis. Getting that fixed might be mine and Nick’s Christmas presents to each other!
I love all of the activities of December too! There’s always so much going on. There are 2 Christmas parades this week…I’m not sure if we’ll make it to both, but we’ll at least get to go to one of them. Next week is our Ladies’ Holiday Tea at church which is always a lot of fun! Not to mention a few Christmas parties and other community holiday activities.
I just popped a couple of snowman marshmallows into my mouth after Noah said, “I want some marshmawows, Mommy” which reminds me that another thing I love about this season is hot chocolate! I’ve got to find me some hazelnut hot chocolate- a friend of mine had some last year and it was absolutely amazing!