An Overdue Update

Wow. Look at that. It's been exactly three years since we've had an update on the James & Jess Family. And boy have a ton of things happened in that time. I'm pretty sure most of the family already knows this, but heck, I'll write it down for posterity anyways. If you'd like more details, you can read my personal blog (that one is private so send me your email for an invite to read it).

During the past three years:
After living in Los Alamos we visited Alaska and my family for a month.
Then James, Katie and I moved to Springville while James did his Masters degree at BYU.
I started up a Videography business in June 2011 specializing in weddings, especially LDS weddings.
James graduated with a Masters in Physics in June 2012.
We have a son named Lynn Alexander; he was born on May 25, 2012.

We lived in La Spezia Italy with our children (Lynn was two weeks old when we got there) from June to August 2012. James was doing an internship with NATO there. It was awesome. Hard, but worthwhile. We saw many amazing cities, such as Rome, Florence, Pisa, Naples, Venice and many small cities around La Spezia. And we ate a ton of yummy food, like gelato, prosciutto, pancetta, pizza, pasta, cheeses, and pesto.

We moved across the country right after living in Italy and are living in Pennsylvania now while James is working on his PhD in Acoustics at Penn State University.
We visited Washington DC a week ago. James had a conference and we tagged along. We're looking forward to being able to visit many more places on the East Coast while we're living here for the next three to four years.
I am currently building a Photography business, Larkspur Photo. James is helping me build my new website here. But until it's all finished my portfolio is on my Videography blog here.
The kids are growing lots and lots. We love to go to the park and Katie loves Nursery.

State College is a nice area: it's very green, a little humid, and not too hot. The winter was mostly mild. I do miss the West Coast mountains though - there are only lots of rolling hills over here. But the valley we live in protects us from most of the rotten weather that has hit the East coast in the last year, such as Hurricane Sandy. It only rained and was a little windy when it hit our area.
Well, that's about it for the major points of our last three years. Hopefully it won't be another three years before I post about our little family again, but I guess we'll see.

What up with the Weeks

Hello y'all!
This is just a little update as to what has happened in our summer, not anything big but it still seems really busy.
I, Milinda, am working for Pickleville playhouse again this summer. Designing lights for their Melodrama and the sound tech for the Musical. I've found designing to be a little frustrating actually. It's hard to have a director come and rework everything that you jsut spent hours putting together. I guess this is something that I'll have to deal with in this profession.
So that is what occupies my evenings... all of my evenings. I'm also working in Pickleville's box office in the mornings and afternoons, and on those days off, Kelly and I have a job cleaning dorm rooms after the EFY kids leave... goodie! ;-)
Kelly went out to GA for his two week military training, and still didn't get to wrestle an alligator... yes its on his to do list. It was hot and humid, but the day spent at the beach was fun fo him once they had finished all the military stuff.
I was just called as the primary choruster in our little married student ward. The primary has about 5 kids total and they are all little bundles of energy. Today was my first time actually directing the children... and it feels more like herding them. I have yet to figure out how to get them to sing the words... its not that they are mute little children... they just don't have much interest in the actual music.
But that's us this summer!

Los Alamos Adventure

James, Katie and I are living in Los Alamos, New Mexico for most of this summer while James does his internship at Los Alamos National Labs. We've already been here for seven weeks and have five more to go. James mostly just works while I do errands or stay at home and play with our baby. We do a lot more of the fun stuff on the weekends, which have been a lot of fun so far. We've visited the nearby Bandelier National Monument twice (see my blog) to see the ancient Pueblo ruins and to hike the Upper Frijoles Falls trail. We went and saw the Tinsley Ellis blues rock band at Ashley Pond as part of the Summer Concert in the Park Series, and we hope we'll go to another one sometime while we're still here (they have them every Friday evening). We hiked (and got lost on) a trail that goes behind our house and around the nearby golf course. There are lots of hiking trails around here; people really enjoy the outdoors in this city. We have nice neighbors; our landlord lives on the North side of us with his wife (they're an older retired couple that have their grandkids over to play a lot) and a young couple lives on the south side of our apartment (they have a baby girl that is 8 months old). We've done some things with our ward, which is very friendly. They had an activity that was a 5K run/walk, breakfast and clothing swap (all at the same time). We didn't make it early enough to do the run, but we did the other two things and got Katie a few cute outfits. We've also went to a barbeque at a family in our ward's house for Memorial day. It's really nice how you can find friends in many areas of the world just by going to Church. James and I also gave a talk on this last Sunday and we're singing in the choir. Katie is growing a lot and is almost 3 months old. She laughs, coos, sucks on her fist and loves to look at everything. She's rolled over from her tummy to her back, but she only did it one day and hasn't tried since (she's a funny girl). We're having fun here and hope to do lots more fun stuff while we're still here.

P.S. I hope you enjoy the new blog layout!

The Newest Esplin

Baby Kathryn Renee Esplin was born on Saturday at 11:14AM.
I've written down the birth story on my blog for those who are interested.
We all love little Katie:

News!

So, many of you know our exciting news by now, but in case some of you don't or forgot a few details here it is again.
We (James and Jessica) are going to have a baby! I'm due at the end of March 2010. I've only had one ultrasound so far, at 12 weeks, but everything is looking good and healthy. The baby actually measured a week ahead of the original April 3rd due date and had a strong heartbeat at 170bpm. I go in for my next appointment on Monday and we're excited to get to see our little baby again. We told all of our immediate family this weekend and everybody was really excited. I'm happy to say I'm no longer in the morning sickness stage, that lasted all of August and most of September. I'm starting to show a little bit, I'm certainly not fitting well into regular jeans anymore. And sometimes I think I can feel the baby moving around, although it just feels like tiny bubbles popping in my abdomen so I'm not sure yet if it's the baby or just indigestion :).
We'll let you know more as we learn more about our little baby.