12 weeks, 4 days

Pictures from our latest ultrasound.  I am 12 weeks, 4 days along but baby is measuring a full week ahead of schedule.  Hopefully this is an early indication that baby got his/her daddy's height because we know his/her mama was shorted in that department.

Our New Adventure

Mark and I have enjoyed many exciting adventures in the past 4 years of marriage, but now for the biggest of all.  We are having a baby!

Here is the first picture of our little one at 8 weeks gestation.  At this point he/she only had little arm and leg "buds" but still looked more baby than I thought.  Of course it could be because it is our own child, but I could actually tell what we were looking at on the screen.

All is going well with the pregnancy and baby is growing and developing on target for this stage in the game.  Stay tuned for more updates on our new adventure!

From Old to New or Big to Little

Yes, we miss it.

From Big...

to

Little...

And yes, that is a corn field in the background. There are lots and lots of corn fields and cows.

Reviving the Blog

It has been over 2 years since my last post and boy did we live it up. Too much has happened since Mark went skiing in January 2009 but to recap we...cruised to Alaska, drank wine in Eastern Washington, camped at Lake Chelan, got an awesome job (Angela), made great friends, toured the Oregon coast, hiked, kayaked, and generally enjoyed Seattle.

I have to say moving to Seattle was a shock - a big, gray, damp, liberal, enviro conscious shock but we LOVED it. Mark would like to point out that I loved it after a year, but I loved it nonetheless. In February 2011 we found out that Mark's career was taking us away from the city we had grown to love. Appleton, WI was to be our new home (Mark's hometown so you know he was excited). We looked at each other, shed a few tears for Seattle, and off we went.

I didn't think about reviving the blog for the move to Appleton because I had Facebook. I have realized rather quickly that not everyone is addicted to FB like I am so to share our stories I am breathing new life into the blog. I did have to re-title the VanGroll's Head West to The VanGroll Adventure Continues.

Please follow along as we make our home in the land of cheese! Pictures to come soon.

Stevens Pass Ski Trip

Mark and his friends, Brian, Al, and Chris, went skiing up at Stevens Pass. This ski area is about 2 hours from our home in Seattle. The guys had a full day of skiing and Mark is a little sore today.

I knew I could sleep through a tornado, but...

Apparently this morning I slept through an earthquake. It happened around 5:45 AM this morning and I never felt a thing. I didn't even know it happened until I logged on to our local news website and saw the article.

Mark is skiing today for the first time this season. He and 3 of his friends went to Stevens Pass to hit the slopes. I've been left at home to paint. Actually, I didn't really want to go hang out in the cold all day. Hopefully Mark will have stories of skiing we can post.

Showshoeing at Gold Creek

Mark and I capitalized on the nice weekend (remember, "nice" means no rain) and went showshoeing this weekend. A short drive from Seattle into the Cascade mountains led us to Gold Creek near Snoqualmie pass. Mark researched this showshoe opportunity and figured I could do it as it was named "#1 easy snowshoe". I didn't have a problem and actually enjoyed it. We stopped halfway through the hike and had hot chocolate with a little mint Bailey's. Hey, it kept us warm! Enjoy the pictures of our adventure!


We look like we're skiing





Angela's action shot

Mark's action shot

Snow covered the bridge

Scenery shots

Gold creek