Home Brew

I think this has to be more than just a baby blog, so here's a little update. Friday night (After many days of convincing Carrie it wouldn't smell too bad!) I started my first attempt at home brewing. I got the equipment from Sean's dad, and the ingredients from a local home brew shop.

The molasses looking stuff is grain malt extract. This eliminates me from having to cook any grain. I think need a few runs before I get that complex. The red packet is yeast, and the silver contains hops pellets.

We had to cook the malt in 3 gallons of water for 60 minutes to make the wort. Luckily the pot I have said not to use on a glass cook top, so we did this at Sean's. Now his house smells like a brewery, not mine! Thanks Sean and Tracey for the help and the house!


After 15 minutes of boiling the wort, we added 2/3 of these hops pellets to bitter the beer. The rest was added the last 15 min to provide the spicy/flowery flavor and aroma. After boiling we added the wort to 2 gallons of water in the fermentor, for a total of 5 gallons.

Now the fermentor (a 5 gallon bucked with an air lock on top) sits in our spare bedroom closet bubbling all day. This should bubble for a few days while the yeast breaks down the sugars in the wort, making alcohol. After a week, I will bottle and let the bottles condition for 3 weeks before I have 50 bottles of pale ale to share!

Ready for Parenthood?

This weekend was a wonderful practice run for us as we were able to watch our very good friends' little girl, Ava (8 months), on Friday night and then our cousin Noah (2 1/2) overnight on Saturday.

What we've learned:

1. Paul still can't change a diaper correctly (good thing I was there right Ava!).

2. It was easy to put both kids to bed (good job to their parents!).

3. We love having our friends over to play cards (Sean and Tracey were over and left about 12:45 A.M.) We can sleep in and go to late church....

4. Kids don't sleep in for late church. Noah turns the light on at 5:45 A.M. and starts playing tractors (oh, so that's why our friends with kids go home early now).

5. Paul and I are very cranky when we don't get the sleep we need.

Thanks Ava and Noah for a wonderful weekend. We can't wait until our little one can play with both of you. Oh, we still would love to babysit you any time since we obviously still have lots to learn!

Our Current Family

Well, I figured it would't be fair if Carrie and I started this blog without including our first "child". It should be pretty interesting to see how Cooper will adjust to not being the baby anymore.

This is Coop's favorite spot to nap (not including on anyone's lap). We are pretty confident that every day we come home from work, he will be sprawled out on top of the couch.

For those of you who haven't had the "pleasure" of meeting Cooper yet, licking is one of his favorite things. He will sit and lick for what seems like an eternity. He doesn't lick anything, just the air. He also enjoys licking as close to your face as possible without actually touching you. Weird.

Welcome to our Blog!

Hello Everyone!

Paul and I thought creating a blog would be the best way to share this pregnancy and first baby with all of our family and friends. I will try to update everyone weekly and we will be adding photos as well. Currently I am 11 1/2 weeks along and feeling great! We are so lucky that God blessed us with this miracle and cannot wait to be parents to this little one.

Enjoy!

Carrie and Paul