Saturday, August 25, 2007

It's Official, We're a Family of Three!



It's funny how certain things have to happen in order to make things feel official. For me having a real family photo taken made it finally official that yes we do have a family of three now. So everyone I am proud to introduce the Official Nielsen family to you: Matt, Amber and Carter Nielsen!!

P.S. I have to thank my wonderful Father-in law, Jay, for taking these great pictures for us.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Wedding Bells were Ringing in DC


This last weekend Matt, Carter and I headed to DC for Todd's (Matt's little brother) wedding. We had a lot of fun. Thursday I toured the mall with Carter and Matt's family. We had fun but it was a lot of work at the same time. It was awesome to be able to spend time with family. Matt got into DC Thursday night. The "rehearsal dinner" happened Friday night. Todd and Sarah were sealed in the DC temple Saturday morning then after pictures we all rushed up to Philidelphia where Sarah is from for a luxorious reception. Overall it was great fun, even though we all were going off of as little sleep as possible. Below is the adorable newly wed couple right as they came out of the temple. Congratulations Todd and Sarah!!

Sunday, August 12, 2007

The Joys of Homeownership!

To put it lightly this has been one crazy week. Our basement flooded Three Times this week. The first was on Sunday night and we found it Monday morning. It was pretty awesome because Matt woke up around 5:30, went downstairs to get dressed and found we had flooded throughout the whole basement. Keep in mind our basement is finished with a fair amount of carpet. At that point Matt woke me up told me we had flooded and left to go to work while I cleaned up the mess. Thank goodness for good friends who helped me with Carter while I did the monotonous work of soaking up water out of carpets. I worked all day into the night Monday and Tuesday and by Tuesday night Matt and I were feeling pretty confident that we had cleaned it up as well as we could. I took a break on Wednesday and gave Carter some attention since he had been totally neglected the past couple of days. Then Thursday morning starting around seven a.m our house started shaking and continued to do so for an hour from an intense lightening and thunder storm. Just to put things into perspective, we live at the top of a pretty high hill and the lightening was striking right above our house, hence the shaking. So about 20 minutes into it I go check our basement and sure enough water is coming into our basement from all directions and way too fast for me to suck it up on my own. I called one of my girl friends who called two other of our friends and within 10 mintues I had tons of help and towels to get our house under control. I couldn't believe how efficient and helpful these women were. Thank goodness for friends! So for the second time we had our house under control. But the bad news was the news was saying we were just hours away from another horrible storm. I paged Matt and told him he had to get home now to help me prepare for the next hit. By the way, by this time our basement was completely torn up and our carpet pulled out. So Matt got home and we made a couple preparations hoping to keep some of the water out, but sure enough water came gushing in once again. Our whole county was declared to be under a state of emergency and some towns were even"washed away" in sludge and sewage.

But yesterday we worked like dogs all day long and finally finished around midnight and now our basement is put all back to order except we haven't gotten our carpet reinstalled we just laid it back down. My biggest concern now is mold, but we've taken some precautions and I will try to watch everything like a hawk. Mold and water damage is a big concern here in Pittsburgh because everything is so old, I just hope I can keep ours to a minimum. Also, I kept thinking I needed to take pictures, but of course at midnight last night after I had just finished scrubbing everything down I realized I hadn't. Bummer.

Beautiful PA

Matt's second week as a resident was one of the craziest weeks we've had yet. He left at 4:30 a.m. and didn't get home until 10:30 p.m. if he came home at all (two of the nights he was on call). Carter didn't get to see his daddy at all that week. When Saturday rolled around we were sure Matt would be too exhausted to do anything with us. But he was a real trooper and was anxious to spend time with his family so we went hiking about an hour north of Pittsburgh in the gorgeous PA countryside.

As a baby shower gift my parents give each of the kids a baby hiking backpack and Carter loved his. He loves the outdoors and we're hoping for a die hard camper and hiker and if he has any Herzog in him in the inside (because he doesn't have a lot of it showing on the outside) then he for sure will be an outdoorsman.


I love seeing Carter and Matt hanging out together. It is cool to see their bond developing so strong so soon.