Baby Shower Weekend

Last weekend, our friends threw us 2 different showers.  We were surrounded by so many friends, and they were both better than I could've imagined!  We have the most incredible friends, and everyone was so awesome to us.  God continues to show us how blessed we are!

First up was a couple's shower at the Bradt's on Friday night.  They are THE most generous and thoughtful couple.  We had an Italian feast.  She made her homemade spaghetti sauce and the most beautiful cheesecake!  I am terrible and forgot my camera, so I don't have any pictures of all of our friends...but check out this cheesecake!

My other shower was Sunday after church at the Hughes' house.  I had so many friends show up!  I felt like a very lucky and loved girl.  Again, I didn't take my camera.  I need to work on that.  Seriously.  But I did get some pictures from people smart enough to remember their cameras:

Here are all of my beautiful hostesses with me behind the yummy food!  From left: Staci, Heather, me, Erika, Christina, Mindy, Nicole, and Teryn.  I love these girls!  They were so great to me!

And another cake!  I'm pregnant, so I can get excited about cake.  This one was tres leches though, made by Yvette, who made our wedding cakes.  I LOVE tres leches cake!  I know that not everyone does.  But it's so moist and not too sweet...mmmm....

Pile of presents!  Told ya, I'm a lucky girl.

One of the games they played was having everyone make a baby with Play-Doh.  I was supposed to pick a winner...and had no idea how hard it would be!  Some of these babies were DETAILED!  I couldn't believe how cute some of them turned out:

The orange baby in this bottom picture was the winner.  She was super detailed.  Check out the bent legs.  Wow.  And you can't tell from this view, but she also had fingers, toes, and was realistic EVERYWHERE.  Nice job, Holly.

Becca (my sister), me, JFlem (or the other Jessica, whose last name is no longer Fleming), and Leah.  Aww, sweet SWOSU memories with these girls.

As you can see, it was a great day filled with great friends and family!  Like I said, Jimmy and I feel so blessed to have such wonderful people in our lives.  We are really so appreciative!

Now we get to find places to put all this great stuff.....

Lately...

So I'll start with what I ended my last post talking about.  It has now been so long ago, but Jimmy's mom, sister, and nephew came to visit us in August.  They came for Watonga Days, and we were so excited to get to spend some time with them.  We've only been around his nephew, Ramerio, once before, and that was last October, so we were very excited to spend some more time with him.  He is SUCH a cutie, but I may be biased because he looks identical to Jimmy's baby pictures.  I didn't get all of the good pictures uploaded, but here's one:

He only spent a few days with us, but I'm pretty sure we were both completely in love with this kid :) He was infatuated with his uncle and did not like being away from him at all.  He stayed with us every night while his mom got a little break in Watonga, and he only got upset and cried if Jimmy left the room.  It was crazy how completely attached he became to Jimmy in such a short amount of time.  I'm pretty sure Jimmy was just as attached too.  He turned 19 months during their visit.  He also became pretty good friends with Cassius.  By the time they left he and Cassius would just follow each other around as he yelled, no no Cassius!  So cute!  We miss him like crazy!

It is officially football season!  Thank goodness!!  I've missed it!  Now if the weather would just cool off...
With football season comes fantasy football.  Yes, I'm a total fanatic of fantasy football, although so far my teams are struggling, and it has been frustrating for me.  I have players that are good, solid performers and they just haven't put up big numbers in the first two weeks.  Of my 3 teams combined, over the last 2 weeks, I've only won one game.  Upsetting.  I'm going to have to ask some of them to step up and live up to their hype.

In addition to my fantasy teams struggling, I'm a little concerned about my OU Sooners.  We are 3-0, but struggled against Utah State and Air Force...huh?  I didn't see either game, but that doesn't seem like it should be happening.  I am encouraged by the way we throttled Florida State.  I just hope we play more like that in the future.  

Pregnancy update: I'm still pregnant, still getting bigger every day, still feeling my baby girl move around more and more frequently.  Still have acne, have developed heartburn, and my feet have started to swell if I overdo it.  But the good still by far outweighs the bad.  I am 31 weeks along and still not much more prepared than I was a month ago!  I called to join the birthing classes, and they informed me they could get me in during December...um, that probably won't help me much!  So I'm going to have to do some research myself I guess.  I'm sure I'll survive no matter what, but I just feel like I should prepare myself a little.  I'm sure I'll post pictures of my nursery someday, but it is so far from looking like a nursery right now that it's ridiculous. Eh, it'll happen eventually.

The Great State Fair of Oklahoma is in full swing!  We went on opening night to partake in the goodness that is called fair food!  I am slightly embarrassed at the amount that I ate, but I of course had to get the fried cheese on a stick.  Yummy.  I can't describe how much I love those things, and I really don't understand why you can't get them anywhere else at any other time of year.  The only crazy thing I tried this year was the chocolate covered bacon.  Not terrible actually.  It tasted like salty chocolate and there wasn't much bacon flavor.  I wouldn't go back and spend money on it though.  

This is season premiere week for all of the good TV shows, and I'm pretty excited.  Tonight was the premiere of The Event.  NBC has been promoting this like crazy and I had no clue what it was about.  I hadn't seen any real previews or read anything on it, so I thought I'd watch just to see.  Well, I still have no clue what it's about!  But it sucked me in.  I was thoroughly confused the first 30 minutes or so.  Things started coming together a little bit toward the end, but you end up with more questions than answers, and I'm fairly confident that is how the entire season will go.  The last thing I need is to watch another TV show, but I'm pretty intrigued.  I'm a little upset that it interferes with Monday Night Football though.  We'll see if I decide to keep watching.

We are having a couples baby shower and another baby shower this weekend.  I'm so excited to see all my friends!  Hopefully I'll be motivated to take some pictures and update my blog afterward :)

Catching Up

So...once again, I have failed to blog lately.  I  have missed some big stuff in the last few weeks, so I'm going to do a little catch-up post.

First, I'll be 28 weeks tomorrow!  Whew!  3rd trimester, which sounds so close to meeting my baby girl!  I am very ready, but not feeling at all prepared still.  I'm working on it though.  My nesting instincts have somewhat kicked in, and I'm busy cleaning out the nursery and trying to make room for all of the necessary baby stuff.  I've always felt like my house is lacking storage space, and that feeling has magnified now!  Babies require a lot of stuff, which is equivalent to a lot of space that I don't feel like I have.  Oh well, we'll make it work.  I also am going to register tomorrow!  Doing that will make me feel like I've accomplished a big task!  It may not seem like a lot, but looking at everything tends to overwhelm me!  Again, there is SO much stuff they need!

She is moving around like crazy now.  I love it!  I've just started feeling her more consistently.  And she still lets me sleep at night!  I really, really hope that continues.  I love my sleep, and I have accepted the fact that I won't get to enjoy it near as much in my future!  I feel really large, but I'm also aware that I'm not nearly as large as I'll be a few weeks from now.  And next week, my doctor's appointment is the dreaded glucose test.  I've been told all about it, so I hope I can down the drink quickly and without much nastiness.  After that, I'll start having bi-weekly appointments, which I know will make the time fly by even quicker.

A big event that I missed...and possibly I did this subconsciously :) was my big birthday.  Yep, I'm officially 30.  Weird stuff.  I don't feel it at all.  I'm not sure what it's supposed to feel like, but 30 has always seemed like it would be life-altering.  We didn't do much, which I was just fine with!  Jimmy took me out to eat at Castle Falls, a local German restaurant.  It was something different for us, and we both had a good time just talking about our future and how different this next year will be for us.  We are so excited to be at this point in our lives, and it was really fun spending my "big" day with my favorite person!

Well, the other topic I want to blog about involves pictures, so I will have to wait until I upload those onto my computer.  Maybe in the next few days?  Or maybe next month at the rate I've been going.  I have a lot of nesting to do in the near future, you know!

23 weeks

I will be 23 weeks along tomorrow!  Crazy.  Everyone has told me that the last half of pregnancy goes much faster than the first half, and so far that has absolutely been true.  I feel like these next few months will fly by too.  Not that I mind.  I cannot wait to hold my baby girl.  I cannot wait to see what she will look like.  I cannot wait to smell her.  I especially cannot wait to watch my husband holding her.  Aw, that will melt my heart :)

All that being said, I feel like I'm not prepared at all!  The nursery is not even close to being ready.  I have a lot of work to do on that.  Once that is ready for her arrival, I'm sure I'll feel much better!  Oh, and the whole labor thing...I have no clue about that.  Any part of it.  I should probably take some birthing classes or read a book or something.  I feel like that is something I will feel better about once I study a little.

I still feel great though, thank the Lord!  Other than my crazy left hip and looking like I'm a teenager again with my acne, I have had a wonderful pregnancy so far.  And I am starting to feel her moving!  I just LOVE it.  It's just the cute little flutters so far.  I have only had one or two swift kicks, so I may take that whole LOVE statement back when I'm trying to get some sleep in the near future!

So other than pregnancy and my whole life changing, everything else is going great too.  I joined my sister, parents, and grandparents today to take a trip to Eischen's.  Yummy.  It had been months since I'd been, and I just love it every time I go.  My mom and grandparents had never been, but I think it was a successful trip all around.  Gotta love their fried chicken and okra.  And the nachos.  Mmmm.....Anyway, it was an impromptu party for my mom as tomorrow is her birthday!  Glad I got to see her and spend some awesome family time.  I'm hoping to spend the rest of the weekend with some good friends, a little relaxing, and maybe even a little nursery cleaning.  Maybe.

What's It Gonna Bee?!

Tonight was a big night!  We had a gender reveal party to find out the sex of our baby.  We went to do the ultrasound yesterday and everything looked perfect :)  All the measurements were good, and we have an active little baby.  It was waving and moving all around.  But when it came time to find out the sex, Jimmy and I looked away.  I was disciplined, even though I didn't want to be.  She wrote the sex down, put it in a sealed envelope, and Jimmy took it to a bakery.  They made a cake that had pink or blue icing on the inside so we couldn't see until we cut into it.  It was a complete surprise to everyone there.

My friends and sister put on such a fun party with the cutest theme: "What's It Gonna Bee?"  I LOVED it!

I was so ready to tear into that cake!  They made me be patient for awhile.  Not easy for me.  Not at all!  They asked everyone to wear pink or blue, depending on what they thought the sex would be.  We did not want to be bad parents who guessed wrong.  So we made pink/blue tie-dye shirts :)  Not the best shirts ever, but at least we wouldn't be wrong!

Finally, they told me I could cut into the cake.  I was supposed to cut a piece, but I had to be the first to see! This picture is a little blurry, but it's my initial reaction...yes, SHOCK!

I thought Jimmy looked, but he didn't.  So I made him look too.

I think that face is a combo of shock and excitement!  

It's a......

GIRL!!!!!  

Yay!  I really am very surprised, but I am much more excited than I could've imagined I would be with a girl.  I have always thought that I was made to be a mother to boys, but God must have a different idea :)  He always knows best, and I know we will be so thrilled with her.  

Plus Jimmy get's his daddy's girl, and that makes me very happy! 

Hubby's Birthday

So yesterday was my hubby's birthday!  I am a terrible wife and didn't even blog about it on the actual day :( Not that I should be surprised.  I'm a terrible blogger.

Anyway, he's the big 2-9!  We are the same age for about 2 months of the year...and then I leave him behind.  I knew we had plans on his big day, so I cooked dinner for him Saturday night.  Fried pork chops, rice, and pasta salad.  I haven't made that meal for him in a long time!  That used to be what I cooked him about once/week when we first started dating.  His favorite thing I made then...won his heart over!  His step-mom made his favorite pound cake and mailed it to him, so I didn't even have to worry about making that!  It was a pretty low-key birthday overall.  He's not big on birthdays ever though.  I love that low-key quality!  It's a good balance for me as I used to be pretty high strung before we met.  He's really a good balance for me in so many ways.  I know God had him picked out for me, and I can totally see why.  I'm a lucky gal.  He understands me in ways that no one else can.  He's so patient with me and when I'm crazy.  He's so loving with me when I'm sad over something silly.  He is so protective of me and already protective of our baby.  I know he'll be the best father and I just can't wait to start this parenting journey with him!

Happy Birthday to the best husband a girl could ask for!  

Happy Father's Day

Ok, so I'm officially terrible at updating my blog.  I'm not sure why.  Maybe this week I'll do better because we actually have things going on in our lives :)

Happy Father's Day to all of the wonderful dads out there!  I am so lucky.  My dad is one of the best men I know, and I couldn't have asked for a better example while growing up.  He has always been my biggest support, my hero, and a Godly example of what a man should be for his family.  I realize more and more as I'm preparing to be a parent that my parents were so amazing.  I truly hope that I'm able to pass that on to my children.  My dad is spending Father's Day in one of his favorite places.  He's in Canada on a fishing trip which he has done for the past few summers, and I'm so glad that he's enjoying himself!

Happy first Father's Day to my husband too!  I am so ready to see what a wonderful father he will be!  I have always known that he will be incredible as a dad, and I just can't wait to see him in action.  He has been so excited during this pregnancy and so supportive of me and my complaining...although I don't think I've been bad at all!  He may disagree.  But I know he will be such a hands-on dad and everything my dad was to me.

So to update on our lives a little bit: I'm now 18 weeks along!  Crazy to think that I'm so close to halfway.  My little belly is starting to grow, but I haven't felt any movement yet.  I know it's still a little early, but I'm so anxious to feel my precious baby moving.

We also have a big week because we get to find out the sex of the baby!  I really thought as it came closer to time that I'd have a better idea...but I have no clue at all.  Like I said before, I started out thinking girl, then I was convinced it's a boy.  The last few weeks, I have just gone back and forth.  I know I'll be ecstatic about either, but I just don't have a clue.  Hopefully Baby J will cooperate and not decide to be shy this week!