New York, New York

One of the things Trey and I love to do is travel together. Now that the little one is on the way, we foresee this hobby being in serious jeopardy for many years to come. We decided that Christmas break would be a perfect time for one last, nice getaway before the craziness ensues.

We threw around going to a beach for some fun in the sun...

... and while that's beautiful and all, we figured we could do this type of thing more easily with a kid or two in tow.

But this....

... would not happen in the next few years, especially at Christmas time.

The holidays will be busy and we'll want to be with family, so we figured New York, here we come!

We walked 5th Ave and took in all the beautiful window scenes and Christmas decorations.

Went to the Met and enjoyed a full day of culture.

Took a walk through Central Park.

Watched the ice skaters.

Went to the Statue of Liberty.

Toured the building immigrants came to on Ellis Island.

And had a great time overall just the two of us!!

It's Beginning to Feel A Lot Like Christmas

I Love Christmas!

Our tree doesn't look as bright as it is because of our camera and the lighting, but I accidentally put indoor/ outdoor lights on the tree. We had used those once to put lights on our house, but then we figured out that was a lot of trouble, so that doesn't happen anymore. It also doesn't help that we have no outdoor outlets and running extension cords just feels ridiculous. But, all in all, I think our tree looks pretty good. It's a hodge podge of ornaments we've bought over the past few years and others that our parents have given us.

Here's a picture of the whole dining room with my favorite table runner!

My newest Christmas decor addition is the BELIEVE sign. I bought it at a craft show thing up at Pearce High School. Cute, huh? Next year, I think we'll get different stockings because then we'll need three!

Baby boy has gotten some gifts for this year! It's really just little things Trey and I have started to buy, but that's ok.

When we found out he was a boy, we went and bought him his first outfit.

It may look like it's huge, but it's only 3-6 months. I think he'll look very cute in it :) We may have to wait a bit, but it'll be worth it!

We also bought the bedding for the nursery!
The quilt came in the mail on Tuesday, and I'm very happy with it. I love how it has a primary color base, but it really has all different colors on it. I like not having to be pinned down by something.

Excuse our unmade bed in the picture and focus on the quilt cuteness!

Here's a pic of the bottom part.

We ordered the bumper, sheet, and dust ruffle, but it's on back order until January.
You can find a picture of it at Pottery Barn Kids It's super cute, too.
We'll paint the room in January, probably, and choose a paint color over break. We'll probably go for something neutral since there's a lot of color in the bedding. I'm thinking something dark tan or a light mocha at this point.

The to-do list is getting longer, and I'm trying not to freak out, so let's hope it all gets done in the next 17 weeks. The bedding is progress, but it's not much! Hopefully, next time I blog I will have more to report!

It's a Boy!

Look at how much our little boy has grown!

He was about 6 weeks along at this time.

Now, he's 20 weeks along and he actually looks like a little human!

The doctor estimated he's about 6 inches long and 15 ounces. During the sonogram, we watched him kick his legs and move his hands around. He's already so cute!

He spent most of the sonogram like this. He has his hands up on his head, and he seems upside down but, in reality, he was facing my backbone. His back was out towards the world, and he didn't really want to move from that position. The sonogram tech tried to get him to change, but he stubbornly wouldn't move. I think he already takes after his dad!

His foot!

My favorite picture-his hand. I feel like I can just reach out and touch it! It's very strange that he's inside me, and I can feel him, but the only way I can see him is through these pictures. I wish I could just look into myself, but that'd be a little weird...

I love looking at the pictures of him! I've seen sonograms before, but it's so different when they're of your own baby! It's such a fun feeling to know that baby is yours!

It was a wonderful day! We're so excited to have a son!
I'm definitely happy we found out the sex because it all seems so much more real now. I know what to start picturing for the future :) Now, the fun can begin! I'm ready to go shopping!

18 Weeks!

A quick baby update!

I'm about 18 weeks along, it'll be 19 at the end of this week. I'm still feeling pretty good. I've been trying to go for at least a 30 minute walk 3-4 times a week. Sometimes I'm really good about that, and other times I'm not, but I try! The other big things is that I can feel the baby moving around now. It started really small- in fact, I wasn't sure that it was really anything happening. Now, I can definitely feel movement. I guess it mostly feels like having butterflies in your stomach or bubbles moving around. The movements are definitely getting stronger as the weeks go on which is good! The only other thing is that we scheduled a sonogram for November 10th. It'll be our first sonogram since the confirmation of pregnancy one which basically showed a sack of cells. This time we should be able to see a real baby! They'll look at a bunch of things at this sonogram to make sure things are progressing as they should, but most importantly, we'll get to know the gender! Pretty soon, we'll actually get to start making real plans and getting serious about this baby business!

Here's some updates pictures. Be warned, I didn't dry my hair, have no make up on, and I'm in my 'around the house' clothes. So no judging!

Eek! Horrible picture of me, but you get the idea!

A little better. And look who didn't want to get left out again?

Halloween Tradition

Halloween marks a fun day in our house. It's the 4th annual "KC and the pumpkin costume" event!

Start with the pumpkin hat.

Add the cuffs on to her legs.

Set her down dressed and see what she does.

It may involve a little black humor like getting a small child dizzy to watch them stumble around, but KC's a good sport about it! Plus, it only happens once a year.

A little history about the event: When I lived with Amy, I bought this costume for KC. We put it on her and she looked so pitiful, it ended up being hilarious. We were rolling on the floor laughing. Now, every year after that we've put the costume on to relive the hilarity of that evening.
We take it off pretty much right after the picture is taken, and she immediately transforms into her normal self.

Oh, the things we do for a good laugh :)

World Series Game 3

Let's Go Rangers!

The Rangers may have always been horrible up to this point, but my dad always had tickets for their seasons. First, he had tickets through his company at the old ballpark. I remember he went to the last game there and took the little plates that were on the seats which indicated "Allied Finance" had those seats. I remember going to the opening day ceremonies at the new stadium, and then enjoying many games after that. Those games mostly consisted of evenings out with my dad where we got some good one-on-one time together. The Ranger games were truly a part of my childhood and a big part of what I'll always remember about my dad. It was an awesome thing to get to go to the World Series game at The Ballpark in Arlington!


We went out there early, about 12:45, to get a tailgating spot in the parking lot we always park in. We took a little gas grill out there and cooked hot dogs, had chips and dip, and sat and talked until we went into the stadium around 4:30.



I was especially happy for my dad to get to go since he's been such a faithful fan for so many years. My mom and dad sat in the seats they have season tickets for, and Trey and I got to sit in some other seats with my dad's boss and his son.

Pre-Game Festivities

It was an awesome sight to see the ballpark have so many people in it! The game was awesome, and we loved every minute of it. Lucky for us, the Rangers won!

Fireworks to signal the Rangers first World Series win ever!!!

We're happy fans!

We had a fabulous time, and it's something I'll always remember!

Feeling Fallish

Finally the temperatures are in the high 60's/ low 70's and it's starting to feel more and more like fall! Good thing because this week we started to get into the season!

Saturday evening we went to a Halloween Pumpkin Carving party. Our friends, Josh and Shawna, are the party planners extraordinaire, and we had a great time getting to see old friends and hang out! Trey and I carved our jack 'o lantern and this was the final result.

Boo!

A man and his cat with his handiwork.


Too bad it's already started molding, and will probably have to be thrown out before Sunday :( We still enjoyed making it and have put the candle back in a couple of times to see it lit up. We're kind of dorkish, but we're trying to get enjoyment out of it for the small amount of time it'll be around!

Tuesday night I had my book/ dinner club over. We began as book club that quit reading, and now we just get together for dinner and spend time catching up on each others' lives. We hadn't met for a while, so I was really excited to see them all.

I wanted my menu to be fallish, so I made a chicken noodle bake and a spiced pumpkin cake. The chicken turned out sort of bland. I hadn't made it before, and I'm not sure I will again. It definitely needed some spices, but I'm not sure what. The spiced pumpkin cake, on the other hand, was awesome!! It was basically a pumpkin bread with a lemon/powdered sugar icing.


I forgot to take a picture of it beforehand (trust me- it was pretty ), but this is what's left. It came from the November issue of Real Simple, and I would highly recommend it! For a cake baked from scratch, it was pretty easy to make. Now, I'm very ready for Thanksgiving and pumpkin pie! I can barely wait! I even tried to convince Trey we should stock up on canned pumpkin just in case the store ran out, but since we're going to Alice and I'm flying, that became a ridiculous idea. So, Jackson's, I hope pumpkin pie is on the menu!

America's Funniest Home Videos

There are a few things I want my children to love as much as I do.

And America's Funniest Home Videos is one of them.

We'll watch it every Sunday evening while eating breakfast for dinner. That's what the Wessel's did when I was a kid, and I thought that was an excellent idea even then.

Pancakes, bacon, OJ, and someone falling in an unfortunate way into water with my whole family around me. That's what I call happiness.

Adventures...

This past weekend was full of adventures, but no pictures. I've got to start remembering to take my camera places. Do forgive me, it's long with no pictures. I won't be offended if you don't read it all....

FYI: The small, blank boxes you will see are where I did try to insert a photo from the web, but it was unsuccessful. Blogger won the battle this evening.

Well, Friday and Saturday were actually unadventurous. Just catching up on sleep, getting out for a walk, and then watching the Aggies lose, but we did have friends over which made it better.

Sunday we decided to go to the Texas State Fair. My mom came with us to enjoy the day. As teachers, we get a free ticket, and since Trey and I never made it last year we decided this was the year! Plus, I really wanted to go to the car show since we're now definitely going to have to purchase a new car in the next few months.

We decided to take DART down there. DART has a nice rail line that has a stop just a few minutes drive from our house, where you take a train downtown, change trains and it drops you off right at the main entrance of the fair. It's $4 for a day pass while parking at the fair is usually around $20, so we thought it would be a great deal and much easier than fighting traffic. So we thought....
Two and a half hours after arriving at the station, we finally arrived at the fair. It turns out that everyone else and their mother had this fine idea to ride the train. While I'm so happy people in Dallas are open to trying mass transit because I'm a huge fan of railways, this experience didn't exactly make me a fan of trying it ever again. The problem really seemed to be that so many people were taking the trains, they were completely overloaded. I had one small breakdown while waiting for the second train after the third train had passed us by. I blame my hormones. Usually, I can talk myself down from getting mad, but sometimes that does not happen right now.
Once we finally arrived, we were so worn out from our 'adventure', we just ate a corny dog, went to the car show, ate a funnel cake, and called it a day.

Adventure #2 involved car seats, strollers, cribs, and other baby paraphernalia! Trey and I both had Monday off work, so we decided to start hitting up the baby stores to do our preliminary research on just how much the upstart on this bambino is going to cost.
Turns out it could cost us a lot.....
Plus, there are so many options out there, it's borderline ridiculous. Do we want the baby bouncer that vibrates and plays music or the one that also includes a mosquito net that zips around the whole contraption so that you can use it outside?!? I told Trey the neighbors were going to chide us because our kid won't be wrapped in mosquito netting when we take it outside. We're so mean!
We realized quickly our homework needed to be scheduling interviews with friends who are already parents to find out what they liked best and why so we can start weeding out the unnecessary items from the store.
The other huge conundrum is strollers and car seats. These things come as a 'travel set' or are sold on their own. The travel set includes a car seat that matches the stroller and they come with a car base. It's a deal since you basically get a package deal, but all of these things are HUGE! This kid may be the smallest member of our family, but its stuff will not be! The car seats were all really long and the strollers included in the travel sets are like mini-tanks. We have the option to buy just the car seat with a simple, non-descript frame stroller that it sits in. There are positives and negatives to this, as well. The positive is that it's smaller and not so tankish, but the negative is you can only use it as long as the kid fits in an infant carrier which is maybe a year if we're lucky. We'd definitely have another stroller purchase in our future if we went that route.

Trey and I joked about how we now understand why moms drive huge cars. It's not because of the kids but all the stuff they need! So.. we are currently on a stroller/ car seat fact finding mission that will be compatible with our lifestyle and the size of vehicle we would like to have.

Trey and I have resigned ourselves to the fact that we'll figure it out, but it may not be cheap.

But, all in all it was fun to actually go look at things! I saw bedding I liked, and so much of the stuff is so cute! It made me even more excited for this change in our lives.

If you made it this far, I'm proud of you! Thanks for sticking with me :)

You Just Never Know...

I had this conversation with our executive secretary at school the other day. I think it could be the beginning of a bad joke.

Me: Karen, what are you doing?
Karen: Oh... just looking for two girls and a baby on a leash.
Me: (laughing) Baby on a leash?!?
Karen: Yea, supposedly they're running rampant around the building with a baby on a leash. Who knows. I haven't seen them.
Me: (still laughing) Baby on a leash?!?

Disclaimer: I think the baby on a leash was a child on a harness thing, or I'm assuming so, and no, we never found either the girls or the baby.

You just never know.....

First Trimester Down!

Yea! I passed the thirteen week mark this weekend which means I've made it through the 1st trimester. I'm finally feeling like me again- not like a sick, tired person whose had something take over my body. I still get tired if I overdo it, but it's not the same tired as before.

I didn't want to be that person who posted all of the belly pictures all of the time, but as I noticed changes, I kind of wanted to at least see what I looked like. I'd say I still look more 'too many donuts' than pregnant, but oh well, not much I can do at this point. Here's thirteen weeks-

Notice KC running to take part in the picture
This one is just because I thought it was funny. KC made it into the picture! I was laughing at her, and her desire not to be left out. Wonder what she'll do when the baby's actually here.

Not much else is happening at our house except for the fact that we've tried as much as possible to enjoy the cooler temperatures. I went for a nice, long walk today while Trey went for a run. We kept my parent's dog, Charlie, last night and today while they went out of town. Charlie went with me on my walk which was kind of fun. I enjoyed having a dog to walk, but since Charlie peed on our carpet first thing after being dropped off, I don't think we'll be getting our own dog any time soon.

This pretty much sums up Charlie's visit to our house:

Notice the following:

• Charlie had to be on the blanket to be on the couch per Trey's orders.
  
• He wouldn't stop licking things. His tongue has got to be tired.
• KC staring passively at him like he was freakin' crazy. She had the paw cocked and ready just in case he got out of line.
  

Good times, good times.

Disclaimer

An annoying part of pregnancy is literally losing your mind. There are many times I can't even remember simple words.
For example, "Trey would you please bring me the ......." Long pause.
He looks at me funny. I look at him funny, and then I point.
He brings me that pesky wooden spoon I couldn't seem to find the words to say.

I know I'm an intelligent person, but that's ridiculous. I really think the baby is stealing my brain cells.

So...
I apologize if something in any of my posts doesn't make sense, is grammatically incorrect (I am an English teacher. I promise usually can use a comma correctly.), or just plain sounds odd.

I posted my last post, then reread it in its posted form, and it was awful! I had missing words, words used incorrectly, misspelled words, etc. I had even read back over it! I reposted a revised and edited edition, but I have a feeling another one in the future will sneak past my not so discerning eye.

I promise I can write in complete sentences when the circumstances are normal. For now, I ask for forgiveness! I just can't get it together!

Making Changes

Hall Bath. It had to go. This bath looked fine when we moved in. It never bothered me until we actually started living with it. Over time, more and more started to bother us about it, and we finally decided to make some changes.

A few irksome things:

The tile. It's not nice ceramic tile like in most homes. Instead, it's sheet metal, fake tile glued to drywall. There were holes drilled into it by people of this home's past, and it was dingy, dirty and just plain gross.
The paint. I think it's the 'sponge painting' technique that was big in the early 1990's. The only somewhat redeeming part are the neutral colors, but even that didn't keep me from hating it.

Shell sink. Need I say more?

Five weeks with one weekend off, numerous trips to Home Depot and Lowe's later, hours of sanding, cutting, and painting,
we have a new bathroom...

There's bead board up in place of the awful fake tile. We painted it an almost white, but it looks basically white in the picture. The walls have been re-textured and then painted. I really like how the colors turned out. I wasn't totally sold on painting the cabinets brown, that was Trey's big idea, but I think it turned out really nice.
We bought the vanity from Sears. It's granite, and it came pre-cut and finished with the sink bowl already attached. All we had to do was place it on top and then do the plumbing. Trey has become an expert at installing sink faucets at this point.

Here's a view with the shower curtain, and our coordinating towels. I feel so in style because it all has gray in it which is supposed to be the color of the season. (or at least that's what I heard on the radio)

This is the final view of the other cabinets we have that are across from the toilet.

I really like how it all turned out! It's amazing how much bigger the bathroom feels now with the new design and colors. For the first couple of days after it was complete, we didn't even use it because we didn't want to get it dirty or messed up. It was too pretty! I wish we'd done this years ago, but oh well, I'm just glad it's finished and we're not still painting :)

April 1st!

Last week I went for my second doctor's appointment. It was a great appointment. It made my day that the wait was 5 minutes! It always seems the doctor is running extremely late- I've waited 30 minutes before. Grrr... So, needless to say, I was in a great mood walking back knowing that I'd be back to work before my lunch was over.

The main point of the appointment, it turns out, was to try and find the baby's heartbeat. She warned me it could not happen because it was earlier than she liked, but we'd try anyway. It took about 5 seconds, and there it was! It was just a little thumping sound. It sounded beautiful. She estimated the heart rate to be at 160 which I'm assuming is fine because she didn't say otherwise. The other great piece of news is that we got our official due date. April 1st! I doubt the baby will actually come on this date, let's be realistic, but it's an easy one to remember. It was also the day Trey proposed, so it's kind of fun that it already has significance in our little family.

Just for those who want to know- as of last Friday I'm 10 weeks along. I've made it a quarter of the way there! It seems like an accomplishment, but then I think about how I have 30 weeks left. And then I remember how much farther I really have to go....

All in all, things are progressing smoothly. I'm lucky I haven't been puking like others I know, but I have definitely not been feeling well. I'm extremely tired like tired as in I'm going to die if I don't get in bed. I've noticed I'm moody at time which stinks because I hate being that girl, but I literally seem not be able to control what comes out of my mouth. I've said some things lately a little more harshly than I would otherwise have said it, so sorry new teacher I accidentally made cry the other day. It's not you, it's me.

Some days being pregnant feels great, and I'm super excited. Others, I just wish I could get back to my old self. I'm excited to move on from this stage and really feel pregnant and not just sick.

Here's a parting shot of Trey on his trip to Reno/ Tahoe. It's from a hike he did one day. That's why he has the hot/ sweaty look going on.

A Few of My Favorite Things

My husband of 3 1/2 years! We love each other :)

KC!! She's got personality galore.

Displays of animal cruelty. Not really. It was hard to watch, but interesting none the less. I do like to at least observe other cultures-good or bad.

Working on my Spanish skills. I try, but I'm still not very good.

Learning about new cultures, old and new. I enjoy traveling to understand different people and places.

Scuba Diving!