Cheesecake lovers?

Here's a fun link that Kristie sent to me . . . if you come up with a good recipe, let me know!

Birthdays!

In the Baumgartner Family (my original family . . . ) January is the birthday month. The rest of our birthdays are pretty spread out, but Dad and Allie's are only a couple weeks apart in January. We a had a great time celebrating both of them; and as a huge plus Allie has come home every weekend since Christmas because of birthdays or holidays!

Allie brought her good friend Becka home with her from Montreat












19 candles . . . next year there will be no more teenagers in the B's house












Anyone who knows Allie knows that she is pretty much addicted to ice cream . . . Mom made the 7 layer ice cream cake for her

























Mom and Dad got her tickets to see Celtic Women in March . . . she started crying












This year Dad turned 50! Mom had to put his candles on 2 cakes . . . he still blew them all out with one breath. That can happen when you have 50 years to practice =)

To celebrate, Mom hosted a dinner for 15 at their house, but I forgot to take a group picture.







Right after Dad blew out the candles, Allie threw one of the cakes into our friend Gisele's back . . . ok, she tripped and it fell, but it sounds better the other way . . .
























Loss of Control Kit . . . one of the many very practical gifts Dad received!

When geeks say I do

What happens when 2 math majors get married? Well, I could make a pretty good sized list by this point (gas mileage is calculated "just for fun", items are hung on the wall in very symmetrical patterns, we create formulas in excel for pretty much anything, and it goes on). Our latest addition to the list is the Rubik's Cube. Greg got one for Christmas and his record so far is 2 minutes, 50 seconds. It's really too bad that we're not going to Rekindle this year, because it could so be his talent. Sunday night, in true geek fashion, we got all cozy on the couch and Greg talked me through solving it. I'm still awfully slow . . . but I'm a geek . . . I'll get faster!

2007 in Review

Greg and I took some time to think of all that's gone on this past year . . . it really is amazing when we sit down and think about it all at once . . .

• We moved into our beautiful duplex in January. It's our first house! We have loved working on house projects (mostly painting and constructing bookshelves). Our neighborhood is only about 20 min from Greg's office uptown and about 10-15 min from our other family living in Charlotte; top that off with 3 other families from our church who are great friends of ours living on the same block and the location couldn't be more perfect!

• Greg's been playing bass in the band for our church's college ministry AND for the children's ministry band 2 times a month on Sundays. He's also been brushing up on the guitar and leading worship for our Care Group (our church's twice a month small group meetings). Between official practices, practicing at home, and then actually playing on the bands, he's had a lot of time to play music this past year. (I personally love it, it's great to hear him play!). In the fall I got the chance to start singing on the Children's Ministry band, so that's been fun to do together.
  
• In May we went camping with our best friends, Evan and Leah, went to a conference, NewAttitude, with them as well, and hit up Hilton Head with Greg's parents for a weekend trip. We didn't see home much that month!
  
• In June we went to Charleston to celebrate our first anniversary! We had a wonderful time touring the city and eating fantastic seafood . . mmmmm . . .
  
• For the 4th of July week, we flew out to California with Allie to visit Grandma and Grandpa and the rest of our family out there. We had a fun filled week and can't wait to see everyone again!
• We went on our first backpacking trip together over Labor Day weekend. Greg's been several times before, but this was my first trip. We hiked about 15 or 16 miles over the 3 days, most of the time carrying a good 25+ pounds on our backs. It was a lot of fun and we're working on planning another trip for April '08.
• Beginning in September, we've been assistant Care Group Leaders for the college group. It's been so much fun to get to know our leaders (our neighbors Nick and Rebecca) as well as the rest of the group. We're looking forward to those meetings starting up again in January.

The year ahead of us is looking to be full and exciting as well . . . we're eager to see all that God has for us in 2008!

2 Years Ago Today . . .

This boy took this girl to Charleston . . . it was cold and rainy . . . their noses turned pink and her hair got frizzy . . .

They sat under this tree . . . he got angry at the small children playing near by . . . she quoted Napoleon Dynamite like a lame-o . . .

But then he gave her this ring . . . and made her the happiest girl ever!

Results . . .

Last night was the actual competition for our gingerbread houses . . . the competition was fierce. We were up against 5 other houses that were very well made and decorated. A lighthouse, a castle, a house complete with swing set and garage, a skyscraper and a Who-ville house.

For before pictures, check out Greg's post below.

The movie of our blow up is kind of fuzzy, I was filming on my little digital camera. But Kiernan was filming on his much nicer video camera, so hopefully we'll get some of that footage eventually.


And here's what it looked like afterwards . . .














Thanks to everyone on our team that put in so many hours (during finals no less!) to build the pagoda and assure that the blow up would be dramatic!! (Kiernan, Rachel, Jonathan, Rannon and Jessica especially . . . thanks!)

Gingerbread House

Yes, this is actually Greg posting...maybe this will be an annual event that everyone can look forward to.

In Mission 28, we're doing a Gingerbread house construction and demolition competition. In another week or two we'll post the video of it blowing up.

With Kiernan and I leading the way with our nerdiness, we designed a very mathematically beautiful...thing. I called it a Ziggarmydagoda. To the response of many rolling eyes, Kiernan brought in his scroll saw to make precision cuts on our graham crackers.



Thankfully God made girls with some creativity, because there was no way this thing was going to win any kind of cosmetic competition. They decided to turn it into just a pagoda (Buddha included) and it turned out very nice!






Oh...and Greg <3 Spartacus!