Birthdays Galore

This week was a busy one for celebrating birthdays. Our friend, Rob Deininger, and Amy's mother Bobbi both had birthdays this week. Another year wiser and more experienced....if you think of it this way instead of "one year older" it makes you feel better about the whole thing!:)

Anyway, we had a lovely lunch at the Deiningers today to celebrate Rob's birthday. Then, we came home and had our in-town family over to celebrate Amy's mom's birthday. Unfortunately Kelsey Gusso (Amy's cousin's daughter) was not able to attend as she was at Southwestern Adventist University competing in a basketball tournament (hope your team wins Kelsey!). Afterwards, we played the domino game "Spinners" and laughed ourselves silly!

On a final note - another event to celebrate is that we've now had two weeks in a consecutive row in which Zachary has sat through the entire church service without making a single scene. (The things that I find myself happy about now as a parent are the small things! :)) This feat takes much forethought and planning on Amy's part to be sure that we have enough things to distract him with, but we're happy to be able to sit through a church service without cringing as people give us dirty glares for not having a silent child (even though I will note that WE are the ones sitting in the pews that are reserved for parents with small children and I noted NO CHILDREN sitting with them! :)....but I digress).

Karis is making the trek tomorrow to Costco (his favorite place - why do I need 900 Q-tips you ask? Because they're such a good deal at Costco!!!) to purchase a playground set for Zachary. So hopefully next week we'll have some pictures to share of Zachary's new playtoy.

Picture below is of our Orlando family - starting from left to right - Rick Gusso (cousin), daughter Lauron, wife Millie, Aunt Louise, Amy's mom, Zachary, Karis, and Amy

It's a Boy!

I'm hoping by now that all of you have received the Zbaraschuk Christmas letter and descrambled the game at the end - if you have, you know that this Zbaraschuk family will be growing by one in 2008! Our due date is May 8, so we have approximately 16 more weeks to go - and we're counting each one!

We had a sonogram a few weeks go, and discovered that it will another boy. So, it will be Amy and the boys from now on! We are intending for this to be our last one, but Karis mentioned when we found out it was another boy that "we could always try for a third..." to which Amy's response was "Yes, under two conditions - Option 1: You bear it yourself (wouldn't that be a modern marvel!) or Option 2: You convert to Mormonism and take a second wife!". As it appears that neither option will be occuring, the Zbaraschuk's will likely remain a 2 child household. :)

We are excited about our new arrival, and began to look for new bedroom furniture this weekend (we're moving Zach out of the nursery, so need to purchase furniture for his new bedroom). We'll keep everyone posted with our progress - we have a finite amount of time, so we have to keep focused! :)

13.1 Miles and Counting

We've had the pleasure of a short visit with our friends Rhonda and Kevin Hicks who came down this weekend to participate in the Disney Half Marathon (or at least Rhonda did, and Kevin came to cheer her on!). This was the first time that Amy has ever been to watch a marathon of any length, and have to say that it was quite fun. The folks who run these things are inspiring (or daft....perhaps both!) - it makes a person think about getting back into running shape! We saw lots of people in costumes ranging from "the incredibles" to pirates, and even one scantily clad gladiator (the speedo was a bit much, but I digress...)

Rhonda persevered and finished the race, so now the rest of the weekend will be a hopefully rejuvenating, relaxing, fun time, with perhaps a bit of shopping (what woman won't make a gigantic effort to feel good enough to go shopping!)

Here are a few snapshots of Rhonda (she is wearing the white t-shirt, black shorts in the foreground of the picture) during the actual race as well as the celebratory shots afterwards.

Congratulations Rhonda!

Happy 2008!

This last week has been a whirlwind of fun - we started off the week by jumping on a plane last Saturday to fly up to Boston to attend an college friend's wedding in Stowe, MA. The wedding was lovely, but over too quickly and we boarded another plane the next morning to return home. Amy was very thankful that we managed to miss the huge snowstorm that arrived shortly after our departure as she really didn't want to be stranded up there! We travelled on Southwest, so didn't get to sit together on the way home, but Amy sat by the most interesting lady who was from Vermont, but had owned a silk-screening business down in the West Indies islands for 20 years. Folks have the most interesting life stories to share once you get them chatting!

Picture of Korey, Tony, Jenny & Karis

Arriving that same day from Boston (they had attended the same wedding) were Korey and Rachel (Karis' brother and wife). As many of you know, Rachel is also the sister of our close friend, Rob Deininger. So we had great fun this week visiting with them, and the nephews were delighted to have personal "play" representatives all the way from California! We did lots of fun things this week - ranging from going to see "ICE!" (Brr, it was 9 degrees in that exhibit of ice sculptures - very brisk!), Cirque du Soleil's La Nouba (sans children for that one!), and to SeaWorld. Karis had the week off, and Amy had half of the week off, so it will be a shock to our systems to be back at work full-time - if only we'd win the lottery....(I guess that would mean we'd need to play the lottery, but don't confuse us with details! :)

Picture of Rachel, Korey and Zachary

For the Canadians out there - a tribute to the Saskatchewan RoughRiders - who won the Canadian Grey Cup in 2007 (equivalent to the SuperBowl!)