Washington DC

We were excited to know that our friends Cliff and Betty (who live in Sitka Alaska) were going to be in Washington DC for a conference.  We decided to go up to DC to see them and to visit Mike and Lisa Pozsgay to see the house they just rented in Silver Spring, MD, and to see Jim's cousin Susan who lives in Virginia near the Pentagon.

Unfortunately, Cliff and Betty came down with H1N1 while in DC, and because Colleen is in the high-risk group for that flu we decided it would be better to not meet up with them while we were in DC.  We felt bad that they flew all the way across the country and then got sick...and we were sad we couldn't see them even though we were in the same city.

So we packed up with Kylie

and drove up Friday morning and went straight to the mall downtown.  Here are some photos of us on the mall with the dog

Then we made it out to Mike and Lisa's and saw their new place.  They have a nice set up, they live near a trail that feels like it is almost out in the country, yet live near the end of the red line so they can take the Metro right into the City.  Here is some more info on it from their blog:
http://pozsgayandromito.blogspot.com/2009/06/new-diggs.html

Friday night we went to Comet Ping Pong for some Pizza.  The tables are all old ping pong tables, and they have ping pong tables in the back to play on:
http://www.cometpingpong.com/

The next day we went to a local breakfast place called "The Original Pancake House" but then found out while we were there that there are over 100 of them nationwide.  Oh well, it seemed like a local to place to us!

After breakfast we went to the C&O canal trail along the Potomac River.

It was a canal from Washington DC to Cumberland, MD that closed down in the 1920s.  http://www.nps.gov/choh/index.htm

The National Park Service took it over and now it is a national park and a trail.  We got to see the Great Falls of the Potomac, a series of waterfalls that were very impressive!

That night we met up with Susan at The Palm for dinner

Because of "morning sickness", Colleen threw up her entire meal about 20 minutes after we ate, at the lobby bathroom of the show we were going to see.  Thanks to Susan for helping out!  After Colleen thought she felt better, we headed in to the Capitol Steps show.
http://www.capsteps.com/

Sunday we drove back--after eating Einstein Bagels for breakfast and Friendly's for dinner!

(Thanks to Mike and Lisa for letting us stay with them, and for letting us 'board' Kylie in their house, much to the detriment of their cute cat Julian)

We're Expecting!

Most of you already knew this, but for those of you who didn't, WE ARE EXPECTING!  Our little guy or girl is due to arrive on May 23, 2010.

This is a picture of our first ultrasound at 2 months where we saw our little bean moving around and also heard the heartbeat.  The doctor said that we could go ahead and tell anyone we wanted because after hearing a heartbeat the risks of a miscarriage are very low. 

We have been very excited and it was hard to keep it a secret for the month that we knew but didnt want to tell anyone yet.  We even had family visit our house and see the room that we left empty and they asked us if we had anything to tell them, aka, is this a nursery???

We are now finishing our third month and almost done with the first trimester...boy will Colleen be happy when that happens.  She has been very tired and has some bouts of morning sickness that actually hit her at night.  She even threw up while visiting her in-laws in Missouri! :-(  She has had a hard time eating healthy because when she doesnt feel good all she can stomach are things like Bagel Bites and Spaghettios!

We have another doctors appointment today and then another ultrasound a week from Friday where they are going to try and determine the sex (among other things!)  But by next Friday we could know if it is a Baby Boy Dahlem or Baby Girl Dahlem!  That will help us with narrowing down our list of names!

Canoeing with the dog

About a month ago we decided to take our canoe out for the first time (since getting it from Colleen's mom on Labor Day weekend.)

We took our dog Amber and left Kylie at home because the canoe could probably only hold one dog with two people!  (Amber is now back with Colleen's uncle up in DC)

We tied up the canoe to our car

Drove 8 miles over to Lake Johnston by Colleen's school, and put in at the loading beach

Amber was a little nervous at first with shaky legs, but she eventually warmed up to it:

and eventually just continuously leaned over the edge of the canoe and drank the lake water!

There are other places we want to canoe too.  The City of Raleigh has a canoeing park along the Neuse River with about 15 miles of canoeable river with multiple put in and take outs. 

We stopped by to check it out one time when we were driving by the most upstream launch

Above this you can put in with kayaks and go through the small falls/small rapids shown below.  Some kayakers were setting up a little upstream of us and we kept waiting to see them go through it, but they never got going the whole time we were there.  So we just hung out on the rocks (it was back in September and it was warm and pleasant back then) and enjoyed the sounds of the water.

 

Go Blues!

We went to the hockey game with Jim's cousin Johnny and his cousin's wife Meredith the other night to see the St Louis Blues play here against the Carolina Hurricanes.  We left for the stadium really early so we could eat at the game, and not knowing how traffic and parking was.   Well, we had plenty of time to spare, notice the scoreboard clock, it says 22 mintues, that was until the players came out to start warming up!

So needless to say we finished all our food and drink before the game even started.

The fans call themselves Caniacs, and what was actually neat was that they all tail-gate before the game in the parking lots.  It looked like a college football game tail gate, there so many people grilling, etc.

Anyway, the game started off with a few fights in the first 5 minutes.

And the blues pulled out to a quick 3-0 lead in the first period going on to win 5-2.

Go Blues!!!!

Halloween

This year for Halloween Jim dressed up as Sully

Not bad, pretty close to the real thing!

Colleen dressed up as a witch

We handed out candy to the kids in the neighborhood, and Colleen loved trying to scare the kids by standing in the windown and shining a flashlight up under her chin to illuminate her green face. We even decorated our front porch, as most houses in the neighborhood seemed to have a lot of Halloween decorations!

After handing out candy we went down to the cul de sac about 4 houses down, and joined some of the neighbors in their annual tradition of setting up chairs and a fire pit and having some beers.

Then we went downtown to a Halloween party of a co-worker of Colleen's cousin.

We bought candy back in late September but went through it all, then bought another batch in Mid-October and went through most of that, so when we bought more candy in late October we had to hide it from ourselves so we would save it for the kids on Halloween night! We're glad it's finally over so we aren't tempted to eat all that candy anymore!

Walk for Owen Michael Backer

Two months ago Jim's sister Julie lost her son Owen Michael Backer at birth.  The SHARE Foundation

http://www.nationalshare.org/ supports those who lose a child during pregnancy or the first few months of life.  They had a 5k walk to support their cause last weekend in St Louis.  Since we couldn't make it there this weekend for it, we registered for the walk, got the T-Shirt which included Owen's name on it, and planned on walking the 5k here at the same time as the walk in St Louis. 

We had orignally planned on walking a 5k trail around the lake next to our house, but due to the rain we walked the subdivision because the path would have been too muddy.

We walked the surrounding streets of our neighborhood and while we walked we noticed there was the start of beautiful foliage as the leaves are just beginning to change here in the Peidmont region of NC.

Here is the entrance to our subdivision:

Moved

What fun is a blog post without pictures right?  Well we don't have internet access set up at home yet, and we've been really busy.  But we wanted to let you know we are all moved in to our new house!  It took all day Saturday and Sunday to move everything over.  We rented a 16' Penske truck and it took two full loads.

Now we have to unpack and set everything up (half of our stuff was just quickly unloaded into the garage so we could keep moving along) and finish cleaning our old house.  We're sore and tired but we did it!

We've met some of the neighbors on our street and they seem really nice, and lots of people have kids too.

We're excited to be living in our new house now, after we get settled in the next week or two we'll post some pictures on here!

http://colleenandjimdahlem.blogspot.com/

Lazy Daze arts and craft festival in downtown Cary

Well...since we are buying a house in the town of Cary, we wanted to go check out the big summer festival there called Lazy Daze. It is a big arts and craft festival with music, food, and cool things for sale in downtown Cary. They estimate about 60,000 people now go to it each day.

Here we are arriving at the festival in downtown:

About 15 minutes after we got there, it started pouring down rain.  A lot of people took shelter under the tents but we just kept walking along in the rain, it felt great!

We passed a booth with a guy who was selling airplanes made from beer cans.  What a great combination, beer and airplanes, Jim loved it!

Once the rain stopped, everybody came right back out, it was amazing how many people were there:

There were so many crafts and art booths that reminded Colleen of things her mom makes.  We decided next year she has to come down from NH for the festival.  She can sell some of her crafts!

At another booth we saw some signs that were all Americana, they reminded us a lot of Jim's mom, with her Americana-themed house!

We did find a neat sign at that booth that will be great in our new house, for our beach themed room we plan on having.

Overall we had a great time, we at good food from some local restaurants, watched some bands play, and got to see one of the events that will take place every year in our new town!