Starting to look like a baby is coming!

My grandparents wanted to give us something we would use a lot for the baby. When I was little, they gave me a wooden toy chest with my name carved in it. Since we couldn't find one like mine, they gave us a highchair we wanted and needed. They brought it to us on Christmas day!
I love how it is designed. It has two trays you can hook on, one for when they are small and then another with a big tray. It has been strange to have it sitting in the kitchen and walk by it during the day. It is such a fun reminder of the little man coming soon.

29 Weeks

I am so happy to be getting close to meeting my little boy! I have to say the last couple of weeks have been the most difficult of the pregnancy. My feet are swollen every day, and if I work they are extremely swollen. My whole body has been aching as well. I feel so big right now, I don't know how I will make it 11 more weeks! Over the last couple of weeks I think he has moved a lot lower as well. Josh noticed that my belly looked different, and I have too. The little boy is still extremely active all the time. I am now seeing the Dr. every two weeks, so that makes me feel better. Now that Christmas is over, I can concentrate on getting prepared to be a mommy :)

Christmas Cooking

I have not been very good the last few weeks about posting. We have been really busy at the pharmacy, and it seems every spare moment has been crazy! The fun things I have been enjoying doing this month are wrapping gifts and cooking! Some of my favorite things I have been cooking are peppermint bark, peanut clusters, butterscotch haystacks, and pumpkin bread. Each of these is very easy to make! I have been make the candy, and then putting them in cute little bags for gifts. Here are the simple recipes:

Peppermint Bark
Melt bark (I used vanilla flavored) in the microwave, then add crushed peppermint candy. Spread thinly on a cookie sheet and freeze or refrigerate until hard. Then break into pieces.

Peanut Clusters
Melt one bag of chocolate chips and one bag of butterscotch chips together. Add a can of redskin peanuts, stir gently. Drop onto a cookie sheet in spoonfuls, put in fridge until hard.


Butterscotch Haystacks
Melt a bag of butterscotch chips and peanut butter (I used maybe 1/4 cup). Then add chow mein noodles and peanuts. Drop onto a cookie sheet in spoonfuls, put in fridge until hard.

I am going to try to take lots of pictures this weekend! I think my little boy has dropped because my belly looks very different now. My feet have been swelling a lot too, so I am trying to rest with my feet up as much as I can. I am excited to be in my third trimester and closer to meeting my little boy :)

27 Weeks

We got to see our little boy today!! It was so fun to see his face which I think looks like his daddy. And it is so fun that he smiles on this video. He measured a few weeks ahead at 2 lbs 9 oz.

Week 25 and Decorating for Christmas!

While my parents were at our house for Thanksgiving, we decorated our house for Christmas. I had bought new ornaments for the tree this year, so it was fun to put them all on the tree. It turned out even better than I expected! It is hard to believe this is our first Christmas married!One of my favorite things about the tree is the ribbon. I have seen ribbon on lots of trees, and we decided to try it this year.
We got our first stockings this year which was fun!
My mom and I

Week 25!! I am a week behind but I wanted to go ahead and put this picture up.


My belly continues to grow! I am feeling my little boy more and more. I have been feeling very good. I am more and more ready to meet the little man!

Thanksgiving- Part 2

After I did the last post, I found this picture, so here is everyone who was at our house for Thanksgiving minus me (taking the picture)

Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving! It was very fun to be able to have it at our new house. I had a lot of fun planning the food and decorating the table. Josh helped me a lot, and here is what it looked like:

And here is a picture with all the food!


Josh did a really good job cooking the turkey:


I was not very good about taking pictures this year, but my parents, grandparents, and sister and brother-in-law plus 4 more dogs all enjoyed time at our house!

Nursery!!

We finally picked up our baby furniture and were able to start putting the nursery together. The dresser came assembled which was great.

The crib had to be assembled but was not difficult. (Luckily we saved money by picking it up) Samson decided to help and got caught in jail ;)

We don't have a mattress yet, but we put some of the baby bedding in the crib so our family could see it when they are here for Thanksgiving.



We still need to put things on the walls, and but we are happy with the furniture and can't wait to meet our little man.

I am now 24 weeks along. My little boy has moving around like crazy the last few days. His kicks have been stronger, and I can sometimes see movement on the outside when he kicks. It is fun for Josh since he can feel him a lot more now.

Redecorating the bedroom

Josh and I have been looking at bedding ever since we registered for our wedding. We are both very picky and weren't sure when we would find something we both liked. This weekend at TJ Maxx we found a bedspread we really liked. After we got it home and put it on the bed, we really loved it! We started trying to get the rest of the room put together as well. I think we have been watching too much HGTV :). We went through all our house looking for things to decorate and put up on the walls. We found a couple of frames to put up that matched the new bedding. I had two purple lamps from before we got married. They had purple beads hanging off of the shades which Josh didn't like, so we just cut off all the beads so they weren't so "girly". Now we just need a couple more things the complete the room. We are just so happy to have a start on decorating our bedroom. Here are some pictures:



My friend Randi is also having a little boy soon. She is 7 weeks ahead of me. We took a picture of our bellies when we got together this weekend. It has been fun to be pregnant at the same time.

New Table

This is our new kitchen table! We needed more seating for family at Thanksgiving, and since there is not enough space for a big table we got another small table that we put next to our old one for plenty of seating. I really love the wood with white look. Our living/dining/kitchen large room is now pretty much complete, except for anything on the walls in the kitchen.

Today I went to Hobby Lobby to get some Christmas stuff!! I had been watching for the ornaments to be on sale, and this week they are. I also got a few decorative things. I love Christmas and getting ready for the holidays! Yesterday I worked on planning for Thanksgiving since all of my family will be coming here. I'm working most days between now and Thanksgiving. And we are going out of town every weekend until then as well! It'll be a little crazy but that is ok.

I will take a new belly picture soon! I'm enjoying feeling him move more and more, just waiting to see him actually kick.

Week 20.5

The baby bump is continuing to grow!! I am halfway through week 20 and am feeling very good! I started feeling my little boy moving a little last week. I haven't really felt him kick or been able to feel him from the outside. I cannot wait until Josh will be able to feel him.

We have starting working on decorating Gus's room. We still haven't picked out his bedding yet, but we have been looking at things for the walls, etc. We found some prints of illustrations from the classic Winnie the Pooh books to frame for the walls. We are still waiting for those to come in the mail. We also found a lightswitch cover that matched that already came. I was so happy because it matched the walls perfectly!!!

Things are about to get really busy over the next month! I'm going to be working almost full time, and we will be gone most weekends until Thanksgiving. I'm excited about everything going on right now :) I know that Gus is going to be here before I know it!

Sweet Baby!

Yesterday we had our second sonogram! I am just amazed by the technology and by how big our baby was! Within 30 seconds of starting the sonogram, we had found out something very important about the baby----- IT IS A BOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I think even if we had decided not to find out we might have because of the different ways we saw him. Josh and I both thought it was a boy, so it was just amazing to find out. Everything looked perfect on the sonogram. It was fun to see all the parts of his body working just the way it should. I think my favorite, besides of course see his profile, was seeing his heart beating. Here is our precious gift!!!
I love his little hand in this picture. He weighs 8 oz (1/2 pound) and was where he needed to be on his growth. It was just so reassuring to know everything is going so well. I am more excited to meet this little man.

To tell my grandparents what he was, we went and bought an outfit for him. We let them pull the outfit out of a bag to discover the sex. Here is his first outfit:

It is so strange to know it is a boy! Now I can start decorating the baby room which I'm very excited about. I think I am even more excited now, I get more excited everyday about my sweet baby :)

18 Weeks

The belly is growing!! The biggest pair of normal jeans I could wear I now can no longer button. Looks like maternity pants from now on! As the belly has been growing, I have been having some back and abdominal pain. I think it is just because the baby is growing so much right now. My next sonogram is Wednesday, and I cannot wait.

This weekend my grandparents came to visit on Saturday. They had not been for several months and got to see the different things we had done with the house including the paint in the baby room. Josh cooked prime rib for lunch.

Josh took some pictures last night and they turned out really good. This is my favorite.
This is Josh's favorite:

Favorite things

This is going to be a mix of several things- I could not come up with a theme so this is just a few items I am enjoying.

First, I love flowers!! Josh is so good to buy me flowers, but the United in town doesn't sell them, so we usually buy them when we are out of town running errands. I especially love the color of these:
They smelled wonderful too!

Today I got my diaper bag in the mail. I saw it a couple of months ago and really liked it. But I kept looking to make sure this was the one I wanted. It is so cute, I can't wait to use it with the baby!
It also has straps with hooks so it can be attached to the stroller:
The bag is very light weight even though it is big. The inside is lined in red.

Today I tried two new things for dinner. Josh found a recipe in my Southern Living Christmas cookbook for the main dish, and we modified it. The main dish was a pork tenderloin biscuit. I had cooked a pork tenderloin last week and froze the leftovers, so I just had to heat it up in the oven. Then I made homemade biscuit. Josh made apricot preserves a few months ago, and I heated some up in the microwave. These three things were made into a "sandwich". I also made mashed potatoes. I was watching a cooking show a few weeks ago, and they put a clove of garlic in the water with the potatoes to boil. I tried it and then mashed it up with the potatoes, it tasted delicious! I also added butter, cream, salt, pepper, and sharp cheddar cheese to the potatoes. It wasn't too difficult of a meal, but tasted very good.

I always love posting pictures of my babies :) Here is one of their favorite activities:


It cooled off here and feels so wonderful!! We built a fire on Sunday afternoon, and I took a nap in my chair. The leaves are starting to turn in our neighborhood. Yay for Fall and getting closer to Christmas!!

Week 16

Here are my first baby bump pictures. Please excuse the outfit- I had been painting the baby room :)


We started painting the baby room today after we decided on a color after 6 samples. Here is us in the process:

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I will put up pics when we are completely finished!

The french bread from my last post ended up tasting great, and the pasta was good as well :)

French Bread

Today I made French Bread for the first time. Here is a link to the recipe I used:
http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/french-bread/Detail.aspx

Here is how it turned out:

I just pulled it out of the oven so we haven't tasted it yet, but I will let you know how it was. I am always just glad with bread when it rises! I made the bread to go along with a dinner casserole that I have created in my head for dinner :) I try to cook with what I have so I can limit my trips to the grocery store. So I am attempting what I am going to call Pizza Spagetti Casserole. I'm going to mix pasta (I'm using angel hair), sausage and pepperoni, store bought pasta sauce (me being lazy), and mozzarella and Parmesan cheese, and then I am going to bake it in the oven. Hopefully it is good!

I have been feeling pretty good, just still tired. I have still been having some nausea which I didn't expect. I know that anytime I may start feeling the baby so I'm very excited about that! I thought I felt the baby move yesterday, but I am not sure. I know that once I start feeling the baby more then I will know for sure it is the baby!

Since I had Bear in the last post, Samson wanted to show you one of his favorite activites:

He loves the sun! I know he will be sad when Winter comes because he gets cold easily. But, I cannot wait for Fall weather!!! It is in the 70's right now and is wonderful.

Today I saw this verse, and I thought it was so special. 1 Samuel 1:27- "For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition that I made to Him." I did pray for this sweet child inside me and believe everyday it is a precious gift from my Savior.

Baby Stuff

This weekend we went shopping for a few baby things. I had looked at these items a few weeks ago, and so I took Josh to see them. They are going to be discontinued in a couple of months, so we decided to go ahead and get them! I really like all of it!!

First, here is the carseat:


The stroller:


And the pack-n-play:


Bear wants to be a good helper with the baby :)

Another project we have been working on is painting the baby's room. We decided first that we wanted to paint the room green which would work for a girl or boy. After 6 trial colors, we have found one we like. It is the color on the right of these three colors.

It is so fun getting ready for the baby. The only hard part right now is not knowing if it is a boy or a girl!