What fun to have our dear friends, Davises, over for dinner last night. Their kids Asher, Micah, and Audrey are PRECIOUS and it was just a joy to interact with all of them. And for Noa to see what it looks like to have a family with more than one kid (as we hope our family will have). Enjoy the pics!
Eric and I have really enjoyed playing Settlers of Catan quite often in recent weeks. Who knew it could be so much fun one-on-one? Anyway, this was our special Valentine’s day board. (E:5/Sb:10)
Since we’ve had Noa, we have learned to take advantage of free baby-sitting whenever it comes our way. Since we were at the Grandparents’ for the first part of the day, we snuck off on a little romantic walk while Noa slept and they listened for her. The world was just covered in ice and it was beautiful.
The water in the pond was half frozen, half rippling from the wind – So beautiful!
Our walk was probably less than 30 minutes long but it was a treasure of a time together to walk, talk, and enjoy God’s beautiful creation.
What a blessing to have bank “snow days”. I love being married to a teacher…
Like I said earlier, we went down to Grandma and Grandpa’s Monday evening and had 2 wonderful days with them: relaxing, playing, eating yummy food, and just being together. If you know my grandparentes, then you know that every visit is accompanied by at least one game of cards. And since this was an extended visit, we played A LOT of cards. Here is Noa getting a crash course on cards from Grandpa:
And here she is helping Daddy decide the best way to win at spades:
Liks I mentioned, a trip to Grandma’s includes lots of good food. It is only appropriate that Noa would get a cookie baking lesson from Grandma…
“mix mix, stir stir…”
Eric and I escaped to Grandma and Grandpa Chase’s house to get snowed in. Well, it turns out that we are “iced in”. We’ve now had a day of retreat and its been great.
One thing that Grandma and I have had fun with is looking through boxes of old pictures. What fun! I really liked some of the pictures that she found of me when I was little because its fun to see the ways that Noa looks like me (its especially nice when almost everyone says she looks like her daddy 
Anyway, I will try to scan a few and put those up.
For now, I wanted to share pictures of our immediate families that I have been meaning to put up for a while. More and more I am amazed at the blessing that each of the members of our famlies are. Sometimes I think that God took the 50 greatest people in the world and made them either my family or friends. What a treasure…
Here is a photo of my family (the Iversons) with Grandma and Grandpa Chase three and a half weeks before Noa was born (it’s already outdated but we haven’t all been together since):
Here is the Noll family over Christmas (It’s a little bit easier to get everyone together with this family these days than with the Iversons
Last Tuesday, we got to spend the day with cousins and it was a blast. Carly (my best friend and cousin-in-law), Noa, and I drove up to NoVa and spent the day with my cousin Christine. We spent a little bit of time with Christine and her boys: Blake and Mason.
Then we girls (Carly, Christine, Noa, and I) went out to lunch and then shopping. The biggest purpose of the trip was to be together and celebrate Carly’s birthday; another extra perk was that we went to some fun maternity stores and started stocking Carly up for her pregnancy… YAY!! What a fun girls’ day out!
We stopped by Christine’s to drop her off and to see the sweet boys one more time. Here is a picture of Blake being sweet to his little second cousin… I think they are going to be good friends.
What a fun day together! I am so thankful for such a special time!
