At 14 lbs, 24″ long little Z is growing up fast and getting excited to go meet the rest of her family! We have no clue where the next couple of weeks will lead us, but the one thing is for sure we are going West (to which state… still to be determined).

Zoie has had a great first 4 months of her life living on the beach, seeing dolphins and whales on our walks on the nice sunny days here in Florida. She has had lots of visits from family she loves and made friends for a life that she will some day get to come back and meet all over again.

Florida has been a great experience for our family - so many things that happened this past year and all positive things to our future in building our family and a solid foundation for our life. We have made some amazing friends that made us right at home and welcomed us as family and we will never forget how they made living here on the beach so special. It is hard to say good bye to them. I hope that all our talks about visiting both ways happens and we get to see everyone again before we know it. You will all be missed OBS Family - and THANK YOU for being you and making our life that much more fulfilled by having you in it! (….had to pause and wipe my tears). As excited as I am to go home, I am sad to leave a place we have called and made a home in the past year. We started our family here and our friends mean so much to us here and its not easy to leave them. One more last drive down the A1A (I hope I see dolphins today!).

Keeping up those honors….

and I got it on video… she started and I grabbed the camera cuz Grady wasn’t home and I didn’t want him to miss out. She did it! Sorry for the screaming on the video.. was a little excited and proud of my little girl. She tried so hard to do it and just did it! Wahooo!

12 weeks old… 11 1/4 pounds, 23 1/4 inches long!

Wow she has grown. She officially went from new born sizes with everything waay too big to everything is too small and fitting in 3-6 month clothes now - just skipped right over the 0-3 month sizes.

She is officially a thumb sucker… like mama was. She has just in the last week started laughing - full on laughing. She has been giggling for a while now but the laughing is so adorable.

She can hold her self up with her arms for a few seconds.

She loves to kick at bat at her animals….

Late 2008 Grady and i created a vision board. Living in Cedar City and newly married at the time and knowing that there was more out there for us and just not sure what direction we wanted to go in for our life’s together. We got out all the magazines and got creative. I look back now and see that in 2009 we completed about 1/3 of our vision. With so many more dreams to create still, it feels great to look back and know we are living our dreams and creating the best life for us and our family; every day seeing another vision become a reality.

Late in 2008, after visiting Schools in Florida we decided to follow Grady’s dream and start a financial and passionate foundation for our future. Struggling financially, we decided to stretch really big and take a leap of faith and pack up the house and move across the country for Grady to go to school full time. No family around to help, me supporting us (ouch!) and Grady starting at the basics going back to school. Its a stretch but it was a risk we were willing to take, an adventure around the corner that we knew the outcome would be fulfilling in creating a financial foundation for us and more than anything allowing Grady to have passion in what he does for a living.

We had a great time ringing in 2009 with our friends and family in Cedar - I cant imagine a better way to start it off. It wasn’t but a short week into the new year that we got the best news ever (well looking back I think it was the best ever!). I was pregnant. Our first baby, unexpected but was part of our vision board… so I guess i cant say unplanned So now not only was it a stretch to move by our self, but now we were doing it in a whole new perspective. I didn’t think I would make it through Grady in school and me supporting us (especially in the 9th month) but some how we always made it work. 2009 was a financial lesson over and over again and I think in 2010 we will start on a great foundation of lessons learned and only one way to go - and that is up! Not only was it a stretch financially, more so it was an emotional stretch and growth for us. Pregnancy hormones, wanting my mom more than ever, starting our family with no clue how and our support 2500 miles away… lets just say I think we spent most of the summer homesick.

We have been blessed with many visitors throughout our months in Florida, thus keeping us going till the next visit. More than anything during the summer of 2009 we met and made some great friends here in Ormond Beach. Some from Grady’s school, others from the Beach. Some will be bright stars in our memories, others will be friends for a life time no matter where the road takes us next. I cant express how much our friends here mean to us, even the ones that we dont get to see often enough with our schedules. Everyone has really reached out to welcome us, to make us family and support us through this big year in our life. Mogli came into our life mid-summer when we needed a roommate and he has been the best roommate, the best uncle to both Zoie and the dogs. We have been blessed in so many ways. Thank you everyone here in OB - we love you tons!

Some of my favorite times this past year was laying around feeling Zoie in my tummy, every week reading our book of what was going on with Z inside of me and growing closer to Graydon every day. Our relationship is stronger than ever and continuing to grow and we have the most precious, beautiful daughter to keep us on the right path. Of course I had some great times in Iowa with my girlfriends - another trip I will never forget. Graydon excelled in school - Graduating in October top of his class and continuing on in November with the Advanced program.

Though we have had some amazing experiences in 2009, Oct 13th tops them all! Holding our baby girl in our arms, the feeling of being a parent, the joy she brought to our life’s in an instant…. nothing tops that for 2009.

Professional Life: I finally got my licensing and new business in place that I have been dreaming and working on for 5 years: www.elocalevents.com. I launched my new website: www.702events.com that I have been working on for 1.5 years. Procrastination or just letting things unfold how they should?? Either way I was jumping for joy the last week of 2009 when my dreams became reality. Now I have years of work ahead of me in 2010 to continue to make those dreams come true. Grady has just another 1.5 months of school and he gets to make his career a reality in 2010 as well.

Ending 2009 with visits from Z’s Grandparents and family and going to bed at 10:30 on NYE with the Drake side of the family spread around the house was the perfect closing to 2009 opening up great new doors for 2010. We are excited and a bit nervous for what 2010 brings us as we know in a couple of months we will be packing up and moving somewhere… but who knows where! All I know is that no matter where we go, our little family is going to be in the perfect spot and all our friends and family will be with us in our hearts and in person at times. You all mean the world to us.

At 2 months and 1 1/2 weeks old, Zoie is celebrating her first Christmas and as fate as a way of making things happen without us planning, we are alone in Florida for Christmas. At first we were a little bummed, but as the time got closer I am more and more excited to have our first Christmas as a family together; where we get to start our own traditions and celebrate the beautiful gifts we have in our life.

Money is tight this year, as it is for many and my gift this year was a Christmas tree. Zoie has lots of presents under the tree from friends and family so we decided to not make a big deal of Christmas and we weren’t going to get us or Z anything. As the days got closer and the Christmas music is playing every day with a tree a lit up… mom got excited. Christmas Eve morning as the boys headed to the gym, I strapped little Z in and we went last minute shopping. I decided that though we dont have much money and our family is across the country, that doesn’t mean we can’t make this the perfect first Christmas for Zoie. So today, being Christmas Eve we officially start our new family traditions.

Tonight after dinner we will all gather around (Grady, Zoie, The Puppies, Me and of course our roommate Mogli) and open our Christmas Eve gift. This is the first tradition of many years to come. We will all go change and put on our new PJ’s and watch a Christmas Movie. This year I rented Four Christmas’s for us to watch. I also bought little Z a book full of Christmas stories so we will read a Christmas story every year as well.

A lady that wrapped our gifts today gave me a great additional tradition that I would like to pass onto my kids. Every year little Z will get a Christmas ornament - one that symbolizes the current year for her and what she likes. These will be kept together and when she moves out and has her own Christmas, she will have enough ornaments to decorate her tree with. This lady was an older lady who said they have ornaments on their tree from when they were kids and I really liked this tradition. Aunt Sheena got Zoie her first one to start off this tradition this year.

Tomorrow will be a fun day of opening Z’s gifts, making funeral potatoes (we are bringing a touch of Utah to Florida this Year) and heading off to the school Christmas pot luck, where many other students and their families that are not home for Christmas will be celebrating with us.

More to come after that….

Christmas:
This morning was a riot opening gifts with Zoie. I thought she wouldn’t’ be that into it, but for 2 months old she was awake and alert hanging out in her bumbo seat. She made it all the way through opening gifts and enjoying every minute of it. After we were done and Daisie was done trying to take her toys from her, she just crashed - just like any little kid that stayed up too late the night before. It was so adorable and fun! She got a great Christmas outfit from Aunt Gina, a Beautiful Blanket from Nana, toys from friends, a book and shawl from Grammy, ornament from Sheena - Daisie and Chicago got treats from friends and Grady and me got more PJ’s from Grammy. It was a perfect Christmas morning for our family shared with Mogli.

Christmas afternoon was fun as we went to Wyotech and ate dinner with some of the students, staff and their families. After we helped clean up Grady and I took left overs to the local mission - where the food was greatly appreciated.

Home now and in our new PJ’s. Merry Christmas to Everyone!

She wanted to tell all her friends and family what she was thinkin…. enjoy!

After many considerations and being back and forth on their visit, we got a phone call the day before they left that it was official and they had the doctors blessing - Grammy and Papa were coming to Florida to meet their first Great Grand Daughter! For the first few days we really were bums. I think this was good for Papa as well as all of us as we are still adjusting to parenthood and having a sick baby and mommy throws a curve on things and days fly by before we even seem to get out of the house! We did get out a few times to drive around the area, a few short walks and some eating out when Grammy and Papa spoiled us. Eating out is a bit of a challenge but after she eats in the car in the parking lot - with her tummy full and wrapped up in moms wrap she seems to make it through dinners/lunches without too much fuss. A few times while at Olive Garden Grady got up and took her outside to walk with her as she got fussy and the whole restaurant seemed to comment on how she was a daddys girl! Our last meal out with them before we dropped them off in Orlando was the most fussy but still I think everyone enjoyed their meal and I know Grammy enjoyed her last few minutes that she got of Zoie time when she was able to be alone with her outside as they talked to the birds and whatever else they were talking about together! Grammy and Papa both got a lot of Zoie time, although Grammy is the baby vulture as Papa puts it

Papa thought the trip was too boring, you know staying at home being bums so he decided to liven things up a bit. About mid-week he wasn’t feeling good so we took him to the ER to get his blood pressure checked. Of course they couldn’t stop at that and he was in there for about 6+ hours of having blood work done, cat scans, and all kinds of things checked. Turned out he was fine and just a bit dehydrated. However about that time he started getting these painful stomach pains every so often. They wouldn’t last long but they seemed to be very painful when they came. We wrote them off as ‘part of the healing process’. However after waking up at 2am with Papa shivering and with a fever - we rushed him to the ER again and they found he had abscesses in his stomach. Papa got to spend the remainder of his trip as well as a few extra days more than planned in the hospital on antibiotics, with more tests and lots of communicating and decision making between doctors at the hospital here and with his doctors back in California. The conclusion came down to they could give him oral antibiotics that will buy him a few weeks to get home, maybe have Thanksgiving before he has to go back to Stanford for possible surgery to get these removed. Though they didn’t like spending their vacation in the hospital it is a good thing that these little buggers acted up as they need to get them taken care of before he can start Chemo and they were planning on starting as soon as they got back home. Zoie had fun hanging out in the hospital a few times with Papa, visiting where she was born. When she wasn’t enjoying it as much I got a little nervous they were going to kick us out as a screaming baby is probably not what the other patients on the floor wanted to hear. But they were nice about it… they did hurry his discharge papers up when it was check out time and Zoie was unhappy!

Meanwhile, while Papa is in the hospital here, dad was in the hospital in Cedar. The night before we took Papa in mom took dad in at 2am when he was throwing up and in so much pain (same symptoms as last time he had to go in for open heart surgery); and what do we know it has been just about 1.5 years since then, which is how long it was before the previous surgery as well. After some tests they found out that dad has another aneurysm in his aorta. We go the phone call that we had to make the decision again as the family that he had to have another emergency open heart surgery and our bags where packed, plane tickets bought and we were on our way home with little Zoie for yet another surgery. As we were on our way we got the phone call the Dr Woodbury had decided that the surgery was too risky and that they were going to control the aneurysm with meds. Dad stayed for about a week in the hospital as they ran tests and got his BP under control then sent him home the same day Papa came home (that was a great day!). As for dad… who really knows. At this point he needs to strictly be on his meds; however the doctors dont really know what is causing the strong pains and his nausea so he gets to go back to life and just see what happens next.

Even with all the drama it was so great to spend time with Grammy and Papa. It is not too often that we get them to ourselves and we sure enjoyed having them around and I think they enjoyed their great grand daughter a bit too.

Grady was awarded a scholarship from the MRAA Educational Foundation. This was quiet the honor as he got the phone call when we were in the hospital having Zoie that they wanted to give him the scholarship; however he had not even put in an application! On our way home from the hospital we stopped by the school so he could fill out the paperwork. A few weeks later it was official! We are of course so proud of him as usual. This scholarship almost pays the full tuition of his advanced course so it is a huge help to us as well as an honor. Grady was invited to Orlando to a convention at Disney where he met maybe people from the foundation as well as many people in the industry. Grammy, Zoie and I got to tag along and that was fun!

Reverend Rick has surfaced again! He didn’t know that he would have an ongoing job as a spiritual leader and now that Zoie has been born I am afraid he is in it for the long haul. Reverend Rick’s first blessing has been completed and Zoie is officially blessed into this world. Thanks Buddy!