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.....