Uschi Day!

(For details, see mum's post below.)



Whatta team!



That's Dr. Stephen Walker. He apparently has a beard.



Warm...



...and cold.

More pics to follow. See 'em here first.

Welcome Baby Uschi

Meridth delivered a beautiful baby girl this morning around 6:45 California time. Ursa Adriana Gimbel was 20 - 1/2 inches long and 7 pounds - 13 ounces. No pictures yet, as Edward is still at the hospital with her and Meridth. They'll be coming home around noon tomorrow. It sounds like the birth went well, and baby and mother are doing just fine. If you want to call and congratulate the new parents, Rusty has his cell phone, and they are in a room where they actually have pretty good reception.

Ursa was born two days after her second cousin, Jack Marquardt. With all the excitement of school starting, we forgot his birthday, and will have to make amends. We hope to see the Illinois cousins when we go up to Wisconsin for Alyssia Youngquist's wedding on September 5th.

She will also have a birthday only five days away from her cousin, Ryan Chloe! Families are such a great blessing!

Love you all,

Claudia

Party Girl

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHLOE!

We are happy to report that Ms. Ryan Chloe Gimbel is an offical SEVEN year old. Three cheers for Chloe! HIP HIP HOORAY!!!!

Christmas Swap

Hi Family! I know that I'm getting a bit of a jump start on the Christmas gift exchange, but I was hoping to make a few things this year and wanted to get a head start.

I decided that it might be easier to give couple gifts this year. What do you people think? Would you rather do it like we did last year (see below) or couples assigned to couples?

LAST YEARS SWAP ASSIGNMENT

Ryan gives to Richard
Casey gives to Betsey
Margie gives to Emily
Brandon gives to Meridth
Betsey gives to Margie
Richard gives to Karl
Edward gives to Casey
Meridth gives to Ryan
Karl gives to Edward
Emily gives to Brandon

IDEA FOR THIS YEAR SWAP

Ryan/Casey give to Margie/Brandon

Margie/Brandon give to Betsey/Richard

Betsey/Richard give to Edward/Meridth

Edward/Meridth give to Karl/Emily

Karl/Emily give to Ryan/Casey

Any thoughts? Thanks family!

First home

Here are some photos of Karl and Emily's first home. If you would like to get a closer look, you should come and visit us!

Our bedroom
The ONLY bathroom
Another bedroom (where you would stay if you visited... hopefully we will have painted by then).
Living room (from front door).
Living room (from corner you just saw)
Kitchen
Screened in porch
First mail received at the new home... it will be framed.

Nora's Week with Grandma and Grandpa

Sorry it took so long to post pictures from Nora's stay at our home.  We enjoyed having her visit with us so much!  This first picture just captured the beautiful natural highlights in her hair.  Doesn't she look like an angel?
Nora just loved carrying around this pail as she worked outside with Ed.  She watered the flowers and carried around all her little Fisher-Price people.
It was very simple for Nora to push the door open and escape to the outside, but then she'd stand and the door and yell for us to let her back in.  Ed remembered having another handle down in the basement, and attached it to the back door so she could get back in ALL BY HERSELF!
Nora loved her bubble baths, and here she intelligently spells out her name with her bathtub letters.
We had the best weather the week she was with us, and she would like sitting on the back deck while Ed read the newspaper.  Of course, she would rather "conor"  ("color" to Nora).
It was so fun to hear Nora yell out, "I swimming!  I swimming!".  See her outstretched arms and legs?
Grandpa made Nora a tunnel from the couch cushions, so she could crawl through.  We put her through her paces, and she went to bed exhausted every night.

We sure had fun.  Grandchildren and grandnephews and grandnieces are ALWAYS welcome.  We are becoming very practiced, professional "spoilers".

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

So when my parents were packing up to move to Australia they found some old slides that I'd never seen before. I've spent a delightfully absurd amount of time scanning and doctoring these photos (to get rid of the dust and make sure our skin tone isn't green). For those interested here's the link to those slides. I'm still looking for my baby pictures where I look like the Michelin Man.

Anyway, I was thinking that I wanted to do the same for the Gimbel family. Being that it's a good possibility that Edward and I are moving to Kentucky, I think some of the weekends that Uschi's visiting Grandma and Grandpa, I can go through your old photos, scan them, and put them online somewhere so everyone can have a copy of them.

...just a thought.

love you all,

Meridth

Real Simple Survey

I was looking through the newest issue of the magazine entitled REAL SIMPLE and at the very beginning of the magazine there were reader responses to the question, "What is your guiltiest pleasure?"  There were the usual responses... things like designer shoes, coach purses, eating plain Nutella with a soup spoon, and it made me wonder what are the guilty pleasures of my favorite bloggers.  I'll dish if you will.

But most of you know my guiltiest pleasures, having lived with me for eighteen years.  It's obvious, just by looking at me that I will eat ice cream, anytime, anywhere, but my favorite ice cream is dutch chocolate almond.  It is just so delicious!  Other guilty pleasures are rewatching the videos Sense and Sensibilities or Notting Hill (sorry Beaches, but I finally got tired of you and had memorized your entire dialog), reading (anything--usually juvenile literature) or poring over clothing catalogs, imagining that I might look nice in that $600 Nieman Marcus dress.

So confess!  What are your guilty pleasures?  I want to hear from everybody!

Claudia

Liquid Luck

So as luck would have it I have a certain anonymous friend who has a certain anonymous brother who is a film projectionist. Which is why it is 3:43 AM and I just got back from seeing Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I have been impatient to see this movie ever since I thought it was going to be released 8 months ago. So I just about wet myself when I found out that I was going to see the movie 3 days early.

I guess what I would have to say that I was impressed against my will, as this is my favorite of the Harry Potter books and I was expecting to be thoroughly disappointed. Anyway, brace yourself for my half delusional review (mild spoilers included). The overall tone of the film was perfectly creepy. There was a point where I felt like I might have nightmares. (Hopefully that doesn't come to fruition). The acting was superb and the cast has always been a perfect fit, except for the fact that Richard Harris from the first two movies understood how to play Dumbledore much better than Michael Gambon ever did. But I have to say that he (Dumbledore #2) didn't bother me at all in this movie. Quidditch was kept to a minimum that didn't affect the pacing of the film and was a nice break from all the heavy stuff. The special effects were wonderful and the look of the film was delightfully dark. Draco Malfoy haunted the screen and gave great pacing to the film and brought an appropriate sense of uneasiness. The altered death scene with Harry perfectly capable of physically responding whilst Draco confronted Dumbledore was an excellent change of pace. The audience could visually see his trust in Snape being destroyed and I thought this added to the emotional climax of Dumbledore's death. Really, as of now in the wee hours of the morning, my only complaints are Harry's heavy make-up job when McGonagall addresses the three after the cursing of Katie Bell (Harry has on some pretty luscious lipstick and darkened eyebrows), and the scene with Ginny and Harry in the Room of Requirement was unnecessarily awkward with Ginny. (Blech).

Anyway, overall a success. I can't wait to see it again. (I hope it holds up in the re-watching.)

Good night all... or should I say good morning ;)

FYI

I got an email today saying that I'm getting a coupon in the mail for free chocolate in 6 weeks!  The website worked!  I'm pretty pumped!

Cause Mom says I don't post enough...

...and because I marched in the same parade today as Code Pink.

Free Chocolate!

A friend of mine sent me this link to a website from Mars Company.  They are giving away 250,000 chocolate bars every Friday for the entire summer. You need to register on a Friday and wait 6 weeks and see if you got the chocolate!  I thought it was kind of fun 

New View from Sears (soon to be Willis) Tower.

My answer, Emily...