Halloween

Noah helping Nathan carve the pumpkins

Nathan and Noah dressed up as cowboys. Noah wore my hat, and Nathan actually made his chaps out of a paper bag!

He's even cute from behind.

Noah and some of the kids on our street.

The bandana found a new home on its way over Noah's head.

Prayer Request

*Updates*
-As of Friday evening, they have found some debris outside Port Aransas and are focusing their search.
-On Saturday morning, they announced that they found the other pilot's body in the water, with his parachute unopened. Although it is sad, this is actually a good sign for Joe, since it means that they were able to open the canopy of the plane and get out. Some Christian friends felt led to search on their own for Joe on a particular island, and that is going on this morning, along with the Coast Guard's continued search & rescue mission. Jenn is praying ceaselessly and asking that we do, too.

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Hey peeps,

Please pray for Joe, a guy I went to school with from about fifth grade through high school. He's a Navy flight instructor, and his plane went missing in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday afternoon. The Coast Guard has found no sign of wreckage and has not found either pilot, though they are still hopeful and will continue to search for at least three more days.

Joe's fianceé, Jennifer, is a sweet friend and former college roommate of mine that I've known nearly as long as Joe. She is exhibiting amazing hope and faith in God through this trial. Joe also has a young son. So please join me in prayer that Joe comes home soon!

Fabulous Fall

Today, Noah and I took a little walk around the pond near our house. Because it was such a beautiful fall day, I had to get him outside. Not to mention that I wanted to get some pictures of the fantastic fall foliage before all the leaves drop off the trees. Nathan and I have really been remarking on how beautiful it is this year. Even just the short drive to Harvard every morning is pretty gorgeous.

Here is a shot from early in our walk. There are a lot of gold trees in our area right now. (Note: if you click on the pictures, they look a lot prettier.)

The part of the trail where we started out was on the shaded side of the pond. I find that although the colors are still beautiful in the shade, direct sunshine really brings out their brilliance, especially if you stand on the other side of the tree from the sun, looking at it with the sun filtering through the leaves. Compared to the picture above (on the shaded side), you can see how bright the other side of the pond was. I decided we needed to make it over there before we lost the sunlight, because the view from the other side of the trees, with the sun shining through, was sure to be magnificent.

And here we are. Quite lovely, don't you think? You can see how the sun really makes the gold tree light up, in particular.

But this is what I'm really talking about. There's no Photoshopping here or anything--it's just purely brilliant and magnificent. I love it.

Not Exactly a Bullseye

Hey peeps!

Long time no chat. I have something funny to tell you today.

Nathan and I have been talking about what to name our baby girl. We have a few names that we like, so I was just now hopping from baby name site to baby name site and looking at meanings, popularity, etc.

I ran across a site called Baby Names Country, which has a feature that I haven't seen before. On the right hand side, you can enter the father's name and the mother's name, and it will actually suggest a baby name for you. How funny! So I entered our names and clicked on "girl." It came up with "Olivia," which honestly is not that far off for us, since we named one of our cats Olivia (though we call her "Livvy").

I laughed and told Nathan what it came up with. We were actually a bit impressed that it suggested something that was even in the ballpark for us, so just for fun, I checked to see what it would suggest we name a boy.

Gunner.

It came up with "Gunner." What?! We laughed hysterically, because that is just not a name we would ever pick. I mean, it doesn't exactly fit in our family: Nathan, Lauren, Noah, and Gunner. No, thank you.

It just gave us a good laugh, and I thought I'd share. Tell you what--why don't you go to the website and see what it tells you to name your kids? Then leave a comment with the names and let us know if you liked their suggestions or not.

Apple Picking 2009

Update

Sorry for not posting for nearly a whole week, y'all. Since Nathan has been out of town, I've been extra busy with Noah, which means I'm also extra tired and don't have as much energy to think of something fun to blog about. Also, Nathan took our nice computer with him to Houston, so I'm left with our super-old, super-slow computer. We are talking s-l-o-w, y'all, as in I have to wait for the text to catch up when I type fast. I just don't have the motivation or the patience to deal with it much, which is also why I haven't done a lot online this week.

But I thought you might be interested in an interview update. Nathan was able to finish the research he needed to do before heading out of town last week, thank goodness. He then had a full day of interviews last Thursday with one company, and he thinks they went extremely well. Yay! He has another set of interviews today and tomorrow with another company, and so far, they are going well. Tomorrow (Tuesday) is the more formal day, when he actually has to give a talk and stuff, so it's kind of a bigger deal, but I think he is much more relaxed than he was when he left town last week after having such a hard time with getting his data and figures together. Also, since he had the weekend "off," he got to see both our families, which was nice.
And, lucky for him, the weather has actually been much nicer in Houston than it has been in Boston, and he is really enjoying Houston, so all in all, this trip has been a great experience for him.

Noah and I are really looking forward to Nathan getting back tomorrow evening, though! We are going to pick him up from the airport, and I know Noah will be pretty excited to see him. We're looking forward to having a family day together on Wednesday.

Stuff

• It's definitely fall, y'all! This whole week it's not going to get above 60 here. The leaves are peaking in their glorious fall garb, and it snowed in northern New England today. This means that it's soup weather. Which means that the ready-made broths are on sale at the grocery store, and there are lots coupons out in the Sunday paper, too. And that means that I have like six boxes of chicken broth in my pantry, and I'm sure there will be more before all is said and done. (I'm stocking up on stock . . . hee hee.) And I am sure I will use them all. I love making soup.
• Noah and I saw not one, but two trains today. Oh my goodness, it was a red-letter day.
• It was also a red-letter day because we went to Chick-fil-A. If you doubt our allegiance to this wonderful establishment, you might check out the Ode to Chick-fil-A I wrote a couple of years ago.
• Nathan is leaving soon to go on a couple of job interviews. Getting his research ready to do some talks (part of the interview process) has been a horrible, yucky mess, through no fault of his own. So we would definitely appreciate prayers 1.) for the research to be completed TODAY in a form that he will be proud to present; 2.) for the talks to go well and that Nathan has enough time to plan them to his satisfaction; 3.) for for everything to come together smoothly for him in the next day and a half; 4.) for Noah and I to do okay while Nathan is out of town; and 5.) that the interviews go well and we get some job offers on the table!