It's been a long time

I'm not sure if anyone reads this anymore, but hopefully I have a few faithful readers who will discover this post. The lack of posting has not been due to a lack of adventure in our lives, it's been one of those things I have continued to put off and put off and put off. However, I am back, and hopefully will be more consistent in the future.

We had a very exciting fall! In October, we found out that we were expecting a baby! We are thrilled and excited, and it was so much fun to tell all of our family and friends. I will be 24 weeks on Friday and am feeling pretty good. We have decided not to find out the gender of our baby, and the suspense is not killing me yet, but I am definitely pretty curious. Over the last 2 weeks, I have really started to feel him/her move a lot, and Matt has been able to feel it to! It is very fun and definitely makes it more and more real. It amazes me that there is a little tiny baby in there! As of last week, the baby was about the size of a large mango. The baby is due June 17th and we can't wait for June to get here! I'm so excited about holding my baby and seeing what he/she will look like!

Our other exciting news happened the first week of January. Matt got a promotion at work! He is now a Mutual Fund Wholesaler which is what he has always wanted to do, and the reason we moved to Boston in the first place. He has worked really hard and I'm so proud of him! Becoming a wholesaler also meant a big move for us! We moved at the beginning of February to Indianapolis, IN. We loved our time in Boston and miss all of our friends there, but are so happy to be in Indy! Boston was always a temporary home for us, an adventure for a few years, and especially after finding out about the baby, we were just itching for a more permanent home to settle down in. We feel that we were really able to experience everything New England had to offer and we are so thankful for the time we spent there. But now, we are thrilled to be in Indy, we love our new apartment and have felt really welcomed by our new church. It is definitely still the beginning of our journey here, but we are so excited to see it all unfold.

I hope to be settled enough soon to get some pictures of the apartment and as the weather warms up, I'll take some pictures of our new adventures here! I hope to update the blog a bit more often, so check back for pictures and more!

St. Augustine

In August, Matt and I headed down to St. Augustine, FL with my family. My mom grew up in St. Augustine, and that is where we always vacationed when I was a kid. It is fun to be able to continue that tradition and see my nieces enjoy the beach like I did. All of my cousins and 3 aunts and 1 uncle live there too, so it's always a blast to be able to spend time with them! We also went down to Disney World for a day, so that was also a blast! It was Matt's first time as well as my nieces first time in the Magic Kingdom. It was so fun to watch my sweet nieces stare with awe and wonder at everything there!

Fun feeding popcorn to the birds with Grandaddy!

Molly Ryan took some good naps on the beach!

Caroline and Abby were doing awesome on the boogie board!! This is Caroline riding a wave in.

My three nieces by the bay in downtown.

Matt and my dad inside Space Mountain at Disney

Matt and I on a ride.

Caroline and Abby watching the parade, you can see Cinderella's Castle in the background.

Mom and Dad Branen came to visit

Sorry for the delay in posting. The following pictures all from my parent's visit back in June. We had such a great time with them and got to experience even more of New England!!

This is my dad at the Sam Adam's Brewery tour. Matt and I have been on this tour many times, and each time you get one of these 7 oz glasses to keep! It is a very fun thing to do while in Boston!

These are my parents on a sailing cruise we went on in Newport, RI. It was so much fun, and so beautiful!!! It was our first time in a true sailboat.

This is the four of us in back of the mansion from the movie The Great Gatsby. It's hard to see in this picture, but the awning behind us is red and white striped, and I immediately recognized it from watching that movie in school. This was also in Newport.

We took a little day trip to see Lexington and Concord Mass. It was neat to see so much history! Lots of battles were fought here, as were books written. This picture is from a small boathouse behind a historic home. Not pictured, but another place we saw was Walden Pond, where Ralph Waldo Emerson did much of his writing.

Louisa May Alcott wrote her books in the house (also not pictured). I love the book Little Women and was so excited to see the home that inspired her!

Molly Ryan

On March 30th, my precious niece Molly Ryan Goforth was born! I had to wait a couple of weeks to see her, but was so glad to head down south to meet my precious niece and see everyone else. My sister lives in Asheville, NC, so I flew down to Atlanta and spent the night with my parents, and then my mom and I drove up to Asheville. It was so great to spend time with family, play with my 4 year old nieces, and hold precious Molly Ryan. I loved every minute of being there and miss her so much already! One of my favorite moments of the trip was when I took Abby and Caroline to Sam's Club. We got into the car and a Taylor Swift song was on the radio and those sweet girls belted out every word!!! It was cute and fun to hear them sing! They are getting so smart and growing up so much! What a joy they are to be around! Enjoy the pictures!

My beautiful mama holding sweet Molly Ryan.

My three beautiful nieces and me!

Abby and Caroline showing me how they swing by themselves!

Lion King and more visitors

At the end of February, Matt took me to see the Lion King broadway play at the Boston Opera House. We saw Dirty Dancing there last February! He got me the tickets for my birthday and the show was absolutely amazing!!! The most incredible part (a surprise to both of us) was that our seats were on the front row!!! If anyone has a chance to see this play, you will not regret going!!! Then in March, we had a last minute visit from my good friend Anna. We went to college together, but I moved to Boston and she moved to Denver so we hadn't seen eachother since my wedding day almost 2 years ago! It was so great to catch up with her. We had a wonderful time. We toured the city, went on a Sam Adams Brewery Tour and ate some delicious food! Unfortunately I only took picture from her visit. Then Easter weekend, Matt's good friend John and his wife Ali came to visit! We last saw them at their wedding in October in San Diego. And on top of that, they are expecting their first daughter! It was so fun to spend time with them! We of course toured them around the city, and then we took a trip north up to Portland, ME. We made a few stops on the way. The funniest thing that happened from that trip is that there was a topless march in Portland! Apparently it is not illegal for women to go topless in Maine and every now and again some really unattractive women like to flaunt this fact. I read that they call it "equal opportunity toplessness" and say that it should draw no more attention than a man with his shirt off. I'll tell you what, everyone that I saw was trying their best NOT to notice. We only had the misfortune of accidentally eyeing one of these "marchers". Gross and don't worry there are no pictures of that!!! As you can see from the last picture, spring was in full bloom for Easter!

Colorado

In February, we took a big trip to the west! It was my first time ever going to Colorado! We went with our friends, Josh and Jenny to ski at Copper Mountain. We had a really good time. The first day, the snow was pretty icy, but then we got dumped on for the next few days so I really got to experience my first real powdery skiing! It was great, and the best part was that it didn't hurt when you fell! We always have so much fun with Josh and Jenny and were so thankful that they wanted to come on this trip with us! One day my friends from college, Curt and Jerica, came to ski with us for a few hours It was fun to see them. Curt helped me down a black diamond that he took me on accidentally. I still can't believe I survived that! One day, Matt and I drove over to Aspen for lunch. It was neat to see another little ski village. It was very picturesque with all the mountains. The last pictures are from the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Denver. Matt and I had some time to kill after dropping Josh and Jenny off at the airport, so we went to check it out. We would love to see a concert there some day!

Skiing, Simpsons, and Skiing

We had a busy January! At the beginning of the month, Matt's brother Jonathan came for a weekend. We took him skiing up in New Hampshire. As you can see from the first pictures that the mountains were beautiful! It hadn't snowed a whole lot, so it was still a little icy, but we had a great time! Then MLK Jr. weekend, Matt's good friend Brian and his lovely wife Lauren came to town! It was so fun as usual showing them around the city! We actually had a semi warm weekend for the month of January so that was nice and unexpected! And then at the end of the month, we went up to our landlord's mountain house again and went skiing at Mount Washington. It was absolutely beautiful, but really freezing out!