Merry Christmas!

Wishing you all a fabulous Christmas and happy holiday season! May it bring you many fun times with family and friends, extra time away from work, yummy food and treats, excitement watching loved ones open special gifts you picked out just for them, and maybe a few fabulous gifts of your own (if you were on Santa's nice list this year).

Love,
The Morans (Corey, Jenny, Roxy and Piglet)

Holiday Party Time

We've had a great time with my work team at the past two annual holiday parties, so we were really looking forward to this year's festivities, which definitely didn't disappoint.

On Friday, we headed down to Tony (my boss) and Linda's house in Puyallup for food, a White Elephant gift exchange, and quality time with my fabulous co-workers and their significant others.

The company was amazing, the food delicious, the white elephant gifts hilarious, the laughs plentiful and all-in-all, a fabulous time was had by all. It was a great way to kick off the upcoming holidays.

A few of the evening highlights:

• Classier Jello shots than last year (no more Dixie cups; think condiment take-out containers, with lids).
• Co-worker Dara cuddling with all three of Tony and Linda's pets.
• Little Liam meeting the crew.
• Quality White Elephant gifts (Big Mouth Billy Bass, ice shot glasses, hammer that doubles as a bottle opener, a GIANT wall clock).
• Eastern Washington winning their playoffs, to Tony's delight.
• Introducing new co-worker Jacob and his wife to our holiday party tradition.
• Realizing that though Tony may be an inch taller than me, he definitely has carnie hands.

Here are a few of my favorite photos; the rest can be found here.

Some tender, loving moments between Dara and the Stout pets.

Big Mouth Billy Bass was a huge hit, that ultimately ended up in Tony's carnie hands.

Honorary bartender and boss man Tony and his adorable wife Linda.

Channel Management team --- Jacob, Doyin, Jenny, Tony, Siiri, Stephanie, and Dara. (Not pictured - Stacy (son got sick right before the party, so unfortunately her and her hubby weren't able to partake in the festivities.)

We heart Linda, not only for hosting, but making all sorts of yummy food and for putting up with all of us crazies!

Babymoon Booked!

We're over halfway through our pregnancy and recently started talking about where to go on our babymoon - our last big hoorah (i.e. child-less vacation) before Piglet's arrival.

We originally thought it would be fun to get out of the rain and cold but prices for flights to sunny destinations - Phoenix, Austin, San Diego - for the weekend we were looking at were out of control. And in order to save as many of my vacation days as possible for maternity leave, we wanted to go over a long weekend, so that ruled out further destinations like Hawaii, Florida and Mexico. We ultimately decided to go somewhere over New Year's since 1) we have never been out of town together on New Year's and 2) we both have a 3-day weekend anyway, meaning less vacation days to take. Given that flights weren't working out for that weekend, we narrowed our choices down to drive-able locations like Victoria, Vancouver or Portland.

Ultimately we decided on Portland based on ease of getting there, the fact that we hadn't been there together and I hadn't ever really stayed downtown before (back in the day, Kels, her mom, my mom and I would go on annual back-to-school shopping trips but always stayed in Clackamus), and figured there'd be more going on over New Year's there than the other locations.

We booked our trip today and are counting down the days until our getaway! We'll be staying at The Nines, a luxury boutique hotel downtown for three nights and are looking forward to its proximity to restaurants, shopping and other fun activities. And on New Year's Eve, we have reservations at Departure, an Asian fusion restaurant near our hotel which has an amazing-sounding prix fixe menu that night. We don't really have any other plans for the weekend, which is exactly what we wanted. We simply want to relax, sleep in, shop (and with no sales tax, we hope to do a lot!), try out yummy restaurants, and enjoy all that Portland has to offer. Good, quality time with each other.

Watch for a full report after we return on January 2!

Pics of Piglet

As promised, here are a few photos the doc snapped of Piglet while we were in for our ultrasound last week. She got some in 2D and some in 3D, but he was being stubborn (like his parents) and chose not to face the camera much, so we didn't get any full face photos. He gave the doc a very hard time with the final heart measurement too --- he stayed folded in half, with his legs up by his head (and hands playing with his cute little feet!) almost the entire 45-,minutes we were looking at him, which made it difficult for them to snag the seventh measurement.

We get to go in for another ultrasound in about 6 weeks and we hope he's more cooperative so we can get some more photos of our little man!

All folded up.

3D profile shot.

Cute little feet!

Newest (and best!) Nurse in Town

In front of her family and friends, Gina graduated from Shoreline's Nursing School yesterday! We are so proud of her for all her hard work over the last two years. And not only that, but she already has a job lined up on the Oncology floor of Swedish, where she's been working for the past six months.

We were so excited to be able to celebrate this exciting time with her and her family, and are looking forward to seeing her a whole lot more of her now that won't be spending her free time studying.

It's a...

Both of us were starting to feel that Piglet would be a girl, so we were surprised (but thrilled!) to learn today that Baby Moran will be a little boy! Yes, this likely means there will be LOTS more football in my future, but I can't wait to meet our little man.

The doc said everything looked great and that he weighs in at 12 oz., which is just above average for 20-21 weeks. Looks like we may have a beefy little guy on our hands in a few months!

Photos from the ultrasound to follow, but we wanted to spread the word as soon as possible since we know many of you are anxiously awaiting the news.

Turkey Day 2010

We're finally recovered from the food coma that occurred after Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday and I decided it was time to document our lovely day.

We put the 18-pound turkey into the oven around 11 a.m., expecting it to take 4-4-/12 hours. In the early afternoon, my parents, brother, grandma and Joan arrived to enjoy appetizers (courtesy of our moms) while the bird continued to roast. To our surprise, it finished cooking in less than four hours, so Corey and I quickly got to work on the gravy, potatoes (mashed red with boursin --- YUM!) and Brussel sprouts. Shortly thereafter, dinner was served, which included Joan's delicious take on green bean casserole, stuffing, rolls, and cranberry sauce. Even though we were all completely stuffed, we couldn't pass up the homemade pumpkin pie my grandma brought, which we topped with homemade whipped cream.

All in all, it was a great day with our wonderful family and we are so thankful for our entire family, for our friends, and for the mini Moran on the way.

Boy or Girl?

In just four days, we find out if Piglet will be a boy or a girl. We're so excited to find out - I just don't know how we'll get through the next few days!

We were originally hoping that we'd be able to find out before Thanksgiving so we could at least announce the big news to our family over the holiday weekend; however, the doctor's office wanted to wait until week 21 as they can more easily check things like the heart, to ensure that everything looks good.

That said, since we won't find out until Monday, we've been trying to figure out a fun way to announce the gender to our family and friends and we think we've come up with a decent plan. Here's the deal. We just posted a poll on our blog (look to the right of this post) --- vote for the gender you think Piglet will be and then Monday night, around 8:00 p.m., we'll make the big announcement on our blog. You'll need to check back on Monday to find out if you were right or not!

Cast your vote now. Good luck!

First Snow

Even though winter is still officially a month away, Seattle got its first taste yesterday with our first snowfall of the year. When we left the house for work, it was starting to snow but, at least in our area, it wasn't actually sticking.

The snow continued throughout the day and temperatures started to drop so many people at work left early. Even though I left at 4, my commute took double the time but that is nothing compared to poor Corey's commute, which clocked in at just under 4 hours! He ended up sitting on 520 before even reaching the water for over 2 hours. It wasn't so much the snow accumulation (most parts in Seattle / Ballard only saw up to an inch), but moreso the hills, traffic, ice, lack of 4WD / AWD vehicles and lack of experience many Seattle drivers have in the snow that caused the traffic mess. Ugh!

All that said, we both decided we'd be more productive and safer by working from home today, so we bundled up, got comfy on the couch and worked away. It worked out perfectly --- we both had multiple conference calls, but they were always at opposite times. And we were even able to sneak away in the middle of the day to pick up our 18-lb bird (we're hosting Thanksgiving at our place tomorrow). Even though we worked all day, Roxy seemed to love having us around, and by the evening it kind of felt like a Sunday since we were all together the whole day.

Bundle up and stay warm out there if you're headed out tomorrow!

My office for the day - dog, cozy blanket, laptop...I am ready to roll!

Baby Bump Photos Posted

Several of you have requested to see the photos Corey has been taking each week to track progress of my growing belly. This blog post if for those of you who have been asking (you know who you are) --- the wait is over.

A friendly warning --- most of the photos are not pretty. We usually don't remember to take the picture until late at night right before bed, when I'm in my sweats, my hair is up and my makeup has been washed off. But nonetheless, you can definitely see progress of Piglet's growth.

Most noticeable progress over the last 4 weeks.

And for those of you interested, I'll also try to keep the belly bump status photos updated on the right side of the blog so you can track progress each week moving forward.

In other Piglet news, we've started to feel little kicks occasionally, which has been very fun.

And this weekend, I dragged Corey around the U Village looking for new work pants since he told me I couldn't wear one of my few remaining pairs last week. (I haven't been able to button most pairs of pants, and when you don't button your pants, the zipper doesn't like to stay up, so my stomach was showing through the zipper area. To my credit, I was wearing a long tank top so you couldn't really tell.) We had success shopping and I did some major damage at the Gap (but with 40% off everything, how could I not??), but now I have a few pairs of maternity pants and cute tops to wear.

We only have 7 days left until we get to see Piglet again and we find out if it's a boy or girl...and we can't wait!

More later. Have a great short work week and a fabulous Thanksgiving!