Our Holiday!

Wow! I can't believe my last post was the end of November- I really need to do better! New Years resolution......right? Well- we had an awesome Thanksgiving, a fun Christmas and a great New Years.

Thanksgiving:

We spent Thanksgiving at Disney World and it was such a blast! Gracie loved seeing Cinderella's Castle and loved being with her cousins Ella and Ethan.

Gracie loved the rides and did really well waiting in line. She loved the Dumbo ride, but she especially loved the carousel.

I was a little worried that she was still too young for Disney World but she was so entertained by all the lights and shows. We say Cinderella's stepmother and stepsisters and Gracie didn't want to go near them and said "They're mean!" when we were passing by.

We were also able to go to Wild Animal Kingdom, which was fabulous! Wow! Wow! Wow! Jesse and I had been really excited to go on the Safari ride because we had recently watched a Travel Channel special on Wild Animal Kingdom. It was beyond cool! But then again Disney does everything perfectly! They make it feel like you are going on a real African Safari. You load up in this big safari bus and the road is really bouncy and then.....you see giraffes, lions, zebras, crocodiles, elephants IT WAS AWESOME! The animals are in different areas, but the amazing thing is you don't see any barriers or fences and the landscape looks very much like Africa.

the croc's- look close there are lots of 'em

After the safari ride, you can walk through a zoo type of area and see Gorillas and some other really interesting animals that I have never heard of! This is a must see if you are ever in the Orlando area. Check out this cool video of a Hippo swimming circles in the walking zoo area.

While we were at Disney World Gracie developed a great affection for sunglasses. She wore these glasses all afternoon and on into evening! She even wore them through her nap.

Car troubles and long drive aside- this was a great trip!

Christmas

We had a very quiet Christmas this year. It was our first Christmas with just our little family, but it was fun to be at our new house. Gracie loved the Tree, our toy Nativity Scene and the "scary monster movie" aka the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Gracie wasn't all that interested in presents, but by Christmas morning she was having fun with all the wrapping paper and bows. Here very favorite gift was from Aunt Sarah. A beautiful Cinderella porcelain doll, and Gracie hasn't put it down since Christmas! She also loved her purple dress from Great Grandma Hovey and she begged me to put it in her as soon as she realized what it was! ( She is definitely a girly-girl and I LOVE it!)

Merry Christmas to all our friends and loved ones!
And a Happy New Year, too!

New Year's was celebrated the way I learned to celebrate it six years ago: FOOTBALL! (Six years because that is how long we have been married)

OK- so I love to watch Georgia games and a few bowl games, but Jesse really rung in the New Year by following through with his New Years resolution to watch football all day long. It was not a surprise that Georgia won, and I swearer, that was the longest, most boring, most painful football game I have seen. I think I took three different naps during the game. It finally ended after four excruciating hours. Next year IS Georgia's year!

We wish everyone the best for 2008 and hope you are all well! We love you all and hope to see many of you this year!

Freerice.com

Go here or be square..........

This is a really cool website where you take a vocab challenge. For every word you get right you get ten grains of rice donated to someone in need through the United Nations World Food Program. The money to donate the rice comes from the advertisers who pay to advertise on the site. It is fun to play and you are helping someone at the same time. What a cool idea, huh?

I love vocabulary quizzes! Try it out- it rocks!

I'll be so mad if

Journeyman gets canned!

If you haven't watched this show you are missing out BIG TIME! Take Quantum Leap mix in some more drama and add a smothering heap of good looking people and you get Journeyman! It is awesome! Go to NBC.com and watch the episodes you have missed. It will be a crying shame if this show to get canceled. People need to stop watching the other trash that is on and start watching the good stuff!

Happy Birthday Gracie!

The Cake


Gracie's almost 2 birthday party with my Grandparents in October

Last Friday Gracie turned two! I can't believe how fast she is growing. In some ways it seems as if she just joined our family and in other ways I can't even remember life without her. I am grateful to be her mom. She has been a joy to have as a daughter.

The Birthday Princess

We had a party for her on Saturday, and I think everyone else had more fun than she did. She was over-tired and just wanted to be held. But she did perk up when she opened a Care Bear from her friend Ivory. And then one from Mom and Dad and another one from Mimi and Papa. She is a Care Bear fanatic!

Gracie and her pal Gracie

Her favorite gift, a Care Bear that sings the ABC's!

Gracie loves to play the harmonica!

I finally got a video to upload! I am so excited! Our Internet provider just came and hooked us up with fiber optics so we just plug straight into the wall, no more modem! Our Internet is finally fast enough to upload videos. As you can see Gracie is surely a musical genius, did I mention she plays the recorder too?!(Just kidding!) She loves to make sounds with the harmonica or recorder or just her mouth and then she says "Mommy, did you hear that?" over and over again. She is pretty silly!

We went to Atlanta for the weekend to go to "White Christmas" at the Fox Theater. This is probably the earliest I have gone to a Christmas show. Well, I am a huge fan of the movie, but the musical just didn't hit it for me. I guess you can't beat Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye or Rosemarry Clooney (George Clooney's aunt) and Vera Ellen. If you haven't seen this one it is a great one to watch for the holiday season.

The weather here has finally cooled off and we finally had to turn on our heat at night last week. The highs are still in the seventy's so I seems really weird that Thanksgiving is right around the corner. I am pretty sure that Statesboro has never had a white Christmas!

This is probably the closest we will ever get to a white Christmas. This is a cotton field next to our subdivision. It really looked beautiful! The sun hitting the cotton made it look bright white! The picture doesn't do it justice. A few days before they harvested the cotton, so now the field looks kind of sad. We also live near some pine tree farms. They cut down the trees and there was the most wonderful pine scent in the air. As you can see we live in a very rural area! The air is so fresh and you can see the stars at night and the sky is really blue on sunny days. We love our neighborhood!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Our Little Lady Bug!

Gracie had a fun time eating candy! She really loves suckers and calls them "Sucker balls" and asks for one just about every hour now.

On Tuesday Gracie got to dress up and go to a nursing home and sing Halloween and Primary songs! Then they handed out candy to the kids. She was very excited to eat the M&M's!

That night our good friends watched Gracie so Jesse and I could go celebrate his passing the Bar. We went to Savannah and went on a spooky ghost tour. Our tour guide was a paraormal investigator and had all sorts of crazy things to tell us. Supposedly Savannah is "America's Most Haunted Town" and I would believe it! I got the chills a few times....and we took some pictures so you'll have to tell me if you see any ghosts haunting the frames.......Oooooooooohhhhhhhhh!

BOO!

This is a mansion built during the Great Depression. THere is supposed to be the ghost of a little girl living here. The picture is a little blurry....but just maybe there is a ghost lurking in the top right corner..... (hee.....hee....)

This is a mansion built during the Civil War. There have been many different owners, but none of them have stayed very long. They all left under strange circumstances and it has been vacent for years and the owner won't rent or sell it.....

The tour was fun, but mostly it made me interrested in taking a tour about the arcitecture of Savannah. There are many beautiful historic homes and mansions that I would love to go in. Savannah is a beautiful city. The historic area near River Street reminds me of Europe mixed with the South. We love to have company and would be happy to show any of ya'll around Savannah!

P.S. Thanks for the super cute costume Carol!

It's Official.............

Congratulations Jesse!

Jesse passed the Bar!

Wooooohoooooo!

Three long years of Law School and Jesse is

officially an Attorney!

Congrats to Briant also!

A Very Fun October

This month has been a fantastic one! We started out October by going to the county Fair. It was small, but decent and the first night you get in free so the only money we spent was for Gracie to go on the purple Dinosaur ride. I don't know if she really liked it- but at least she was by her new best pal Ivory. Aren't they cute?!!

My Grandparents from Idaho Falls came to visit for ten days! Gracie had a blast getting to know them and she loved getting so much attention. It was fun to show them around Statesboro, but more fun to just visit! We visited Savannah and ate lots of good southern food! They are such great Grandparents and I am so lucky to have such a wonderful relationship with them. They are such great examples, and I would love to be like them someday. And- I would also love to have as much energy as they do! My grandma wouldn't rest until all of Jesse's dress shirts were washed and pressed, and my Gramps straightened our garage and put a shelving unit together. Now we can park a car in our garage! Thanks Gramps and Gram! We love you and miss you!

Also, this month one of my dreams came true! I finally got to participate in Habitat for Humanity. It was awesome! Jesse's firm put a team together to participate in Statesboro's first ever Habitat Buildathon. It was amazing to see all the volunteers, and watch how fast things were done. We helped prep the house for the siding and then helped put up the siding. And boy, I have a new appreciation for my house! It hard work!For a while I've had a fever, and the only prescription is more.......SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE! On Monday Sarah and I went to the 2007 So You Think You Can Dance Tour and it was AWESOME. We screamed our heads off like giddy twelve-year-olds and it was so much fun. We were a little disappointed that Lacy was not preforming due to a knee injury, but Shawna took her place in one of our favorite dances (the one that Mia choreographed with Cameron and Lacy to the song "Dancing"). They preformed many of our favorite dances - the Transformer, the Hummingbird, The Angel and Devil, The Matrix dance, Sabra and Dominic's Hip Hop.....It was so cool to see the dancers in person. They are even more amazing than you would think, and talented beyond belief. When it was over we were able to get Pasha, Lauren and Danny's autographs. I can't wait until next season- so good thing MTV has replayed the season two and we got it recorded with our DVR! Well- Happy Halloween to everyone! Our ward had it's Trunk-or-Treat on Wednesday. Gracie was a Lady Bug and I tried to be a dandelion, but as you can see my hair just wouldn't stand up! Jesse was dressed in head to toe Hawks gear. For those of you who don't know-Jesse is the BIGGEST Hawks fan, so hopefully this year they will do better. Pre-season has gone well for them so this might just be the year you guys have hoped for Jesse and Brian! My fingers are crossed!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Gracie's New Hobby

Gracie loves to make music and is suprised when sound comes out of the harmonica! It took her a while to get the hang of it, but she loves to play and then dance around the room. I can' believe she is almost two! It has been fun watching her grow and I am always amazed by the things she learns. She loves labeling things with adjectives (especially colors) and has started calling me "little mommy" and Jesse "big daddy". It cracks us up! If she dosn't know the name of an object she will just say the color like "I want blue" or "Read purple book" so it is pretty easy to figure out what she is asking for.

A few weeks ago Jesse's boss gave him some tickets to the Georgia game. It was a blast- and the first one I had been too! Georgia played Western Carolina, so it wasn't that exciting but we were close to the field. The stadium was awesome! It was fun to see everyone all dressed in red and black. Going to a football game in the south is a very big deal. People dress up for the game- and I don't mean a red t-shirt. Girls wear trendy red dresses and guys even dress up (red slacks are very popular). I don't think anyone there was wearing colors other than Red black and white (except for the small section of Western Carolina fans). Georgia won, of course!

I tried to post a video and some pic's but somehow my internet connection is not working right! :( I'll try later.

Our new Home! (and other updates)

HI everyone! This past Friday we bought our very first home! Moving day was crazy and it really was a blessing that everyting fit on the 24-foot truck (which I drove from Atlanta, through Athens, and down on to Statesboro). Man, I feel like a woman!

It's great to know that we will (hopefully) live here longer than anywhere else. So far the record is just about three years (Athens, GA), although we also lived in Tuscaloosa, AL, and Statesboro during that time. We love our house and it's been fun to think of all the great deccorrating things I can finally try out! It feels great to know that we are moving up the property ladder. This house is considerably nicer and roomier than any place we've lived. We now have a record-setting three bedroom, two bathroom home with a big living room and 10-foot ceilings.

It feels great to leave those renting days behind us! The windows let in so much natural light and we finally don't have to turn the volume way up on the tv when the A/C comes on! We are also the proud new owners of a sizable 1/2 acre yard which Jesse is excited to mow (just kiddin' Jesse)! We invite anyone to come visit and we can head for a day at the beach because we are only 2 hours from Hilton Head and St. Simon Island! (two very great beaches!) And we are only an hour from Savannah, which is an awesome place to visit.

Right now we are taking our time to move our stuff in because we have been too busy with other things like going to the beach...what a bummer huh?! It has also been hard to want to do anything other than read Harry Potter, which I wasn't able to start until we got to the beach. I thought I would be able to take over the book since Jesse was taking the Bar the following Tuesday and Wednesday after the book came out - but that didn't stop Jesse! He finished the book in two days! I think he didn't want to overhear any Potter gossip during the breaks while taking the Bar. It was great fun to go the the Book 7 release party at Barnes & Noble! We dressed Gracie up as our house Elf and apperated to the festivities...hee...hee! There were an unbelievable amount of people at the bookstore that night. It was awesome to see how one book can bring together so many different types of people. J.K. Rowling is a genius! Alas, I still haven't finished the book....

The Beach

The beach was a blast! We went to St. Simons Island off the coast of Georgia. Gracie came home talking all about sand and the ocean and water. She was afraid of the waves, but we finally got her to sit down in a tide pool. The first day we arrived at the beach a nest of sea turtle eggs had hatched. I could kick myself for not bringing the camera - it was amazing to see the tiny turtles, maybe 2 1/2 inches long, work their way to the ocean. It was unforgetable how hard these little turtles had to work just to move a foot, and the ocean was a good 30 yards from the nest. And to think that once they got to the water their fight for life had just begun. It was an amazing sight!

We hope that everyone who reads this is doing well! We miss you all and are hoping to get our house together so y'all can come visit!

Update! (Finally)

Wow! So much has happened since we last blogged....I guess I'll begin at the beginning, or should I say the end? After three years of law school the end actually came! Jesse graduated from the University of Georgia School of Law this past May. There couldn't have been a more perfect day for a graduation ceremony. The weather was beautiful...sunny with a light breeze- a perfect Georgia spring day! The ceremony was held out doors in the quad in front of the Law School under the shade of the old oak trees. All the grads looked regal in their robes and hoods and caps.

Most of Jesse's family was able to attend, even his Grand Dad (who is a die-hard Georgia Tech fan) set foot on Georgia's campus. The first speaker was the class of '07 president. His speech was full of quotes from Legally Blond and Anchor Man. And people who might not have seen the latter probably thought he was full of himself because he kept saying "I'm kind of a big deal". He ended his speech with "We did it!" with the high girlie voice and all. It was great to see all the people who accomplished this great task, and very special to see Jesse walk across the stage when they called his name...three years of hard work were finally over (almost).

So congratulations to my wonderful husband for working so hard! You are amazing to me. You rock and I love you!

Happy Easter

Gracie looked precious in her fancy dress!

But that didn't stop her from climbing and exploring!

The Easter Egg hunt was a blast too!

Gracie ate her first peep!

Spring is in the air!

The weather has been beautiful here the past few days! The trees outside our apartment have the prettiest white blossoms and the air is filled with the fresh sweet smell of spring. I love this time of year. I love seeing nature come back to life. Gracie has enjoyed playing in her playhouse (a trash-to-treasure find!) and loves to run all around our yard.

Jesse also loves this time of year....but more than the beauty of the earth he loves that it is MARCH MADNESS! It's bracket time, baby! Time to watch endless hours of basketball. I don't mind watching a few games. And the fact that I root for the teams on my brackets makes the games more enjoyable, especially the buzzer beaters! I love close games.

I'll leave with a funny story.....The other day I wasn't feeling well and didn't want to cook. Also I had a craving for Chick-fil-a. Jesse wanted Burger King but I begged him to get Chick-fil-a anyway. So he leaves to get the food and when he comes back he has a Burger King bag in his hands...I imediatly say "I knew it!" thinking he just went to Burger King and didn't care about my Chick-fil-a craving. So he tells me that the Chick-fil-a is gone (it was inside the Kroger grocery store). It takes me a while to believe him, but I finally do, and I eat my Whopper while I long for an 8 pack of chicken nuggetts. Well two weeks later, my craving still not quenched, we deciede to drive to the Chick-fil-a across town. Well, guess what? It's gone too...and I mean GONE - where it use to stand is just a pile of rubble....I still havn't had my Chick-fil-a.

We love you all!

Wow. It has been a couple months since we posted....in that time Gracie turned one year old! She had a fun party complete with a Hello Kitty cake. I was hoping she would dig into the cake, but she just picked at it daintly. I don't think she even got frosting on her face.

Lately we have been enjoying ourselves by playing outside (it was 70 today!) and going to the playground. If the weather is bad we head to the library or the nature center. We are really going to miss Athens. There are so many great things to do.

Jesse is in his last semester of Law school...and he can't wait to be done! He has really worked hard and the finish line is in sight. He is awesome. When he is not busy with law school he is playing pick up basketball or watching the Hawks or Georgia or Tech...

Lately I keep myself busy with house hunting on the internet. It is so fun to look for houses and imagine what not living in an apartment will feel like. I can't wait to have anything but white walls!

We hope to do better at keeping everyone updated. The future holds so much excitment.

Love,

The Van Sants

HAWKS RULE

This weekend was packed full of sports, sports, and more sports! We started our day off by going to the Atlanta Hawks open practice and team scrimidge. It was awsome to see the team in person. Josh Smith is truely the Human Highlight Reel! Gracie loved seeing Harry the Hawk (mascot) and laughed when he came where we were sitting. The pracitce was held in a small high school gym, so we were very close to the court. Jesse was in heaven!

After that Jesse was off to the Georgia Tech game...they won! And then home to catch the undefeated UGA football team play Tennessee. Well, the night ended on a sad note with the Dawgs loosing to Tennessee....bye bye to our #10 ranking.

Gracie is doing new tricks everyday! Just the other day she pushed up from the floor to standing without any help! I am sure she will be walking very soon!

We love you all!

Stephanie, Jesse and Gracie

Hi yall! This is our first family blog and we are excited to be able to share our news and pictures with everyone! This month has been an exciting one for our family....so where do I begin...

Jesse has been very busy with law school at the University of Georgia and recently recieved his first job offer! He worked very hard this past summer and it has really paid off.

Gracie is such a speedy crawler. She is zooming all arould our apartment and loves for us to chase her down the hall on our hands and knees. I know that soon she will be walking. She babbles non-stop and has added the word "ball" to her vocabulary of "mama" and "dada". She is also working on "tower" and "button." It is fun to see her growing up.

I am kept very busy with Gracie, but have found the time to develop my cooking skills thanks to Rachel Ray! I love her show! Jesse bought me one of her cookbooks, which really got the ball rolling. It has been fun to try new recipies.

Hope to keep yall updated!
Love,
Jesse, Stephanie & Gracie