Christmas Came Early

I love the Christmas season. I love buying gifts for others and (I must be honest), I love opening gifts too. I have a good friend in Dallas named Jill who welcome her third child to their family this past May. She has no plans for more children, so I asked if I could have her maternity clothes. She was thrilled to send them to me and yesterday, I was thrilled to receive them! My closet has just grown exponentially. Thanks, Jill!

But, there was just one problem with getting all these wonderful clothes: laundry. I did eight loads of laundry yesterday and have one more to go today plus the sheets. Friday is my usual laundry day, so I had all the new stuff and our week's worth of laundry. I guess it was a good problem to have. Now, I can see my glaring pile of ironing. I know many of my friends don't iron, but I do! I hang-dry all my clothes or else the legs of pants get too short or the arms of shirts get too short. The pain of being slightly taller than the average woman.


This weekend we tried a little Wichita culture by going to the Wichita State University Volleyball game. I love volleyball and we have heard that the Lady Wheat Shockers (you don't hear that name in Texas) are very good. The tickets were cheap and the parking was free - even better. We knew the team color was a very bright yellow because we have seen it in every store at the check-out counter, but that day we just both happened to wear red, not really thinking about going to the game. And, neither of us have any yellow. We got to the game and realized that we were two of maybe ten people NOT in Shocker Yellow. Oops. If we go again, we might invest in a Wal-Mart $4 Shocker t-shirt. We took the picture to hopefully remind us of just how wrong our Cougar Red (University of Houston) looked among the Shocker Yellow. The picture is mostly our faces, so you don't really get a good view of just how much yellow was in the stadium, but you can imagine.


Pregnancy Update: Morning sickness ended just after 12 weeks, so that was a great change. My struggle now is that there is no real evidence that I am pregnant. I can't tell that my belly is getting bigger each day and I don't visit the toilet anymore, so what 'proves' that I am pregnant? I am just anxiously waiting for my next appointment (Oct 8) to hear the heartbeat again. I do feel pretty normal though - almost normal amount of energy and not starving all the time. I still forget everything, so I try to write it down. Even yesterday at the grocery store, with a list in hand of only five items, I would look at this list, take a couple of steps and then have to stop and look at the list again. Crazy!

First Baby Gift and Losing My DVR

FUN! Baby Carter received his/her first gift today. My grandma sent this gorgeous blanket for the baby in which he/she can come home from the hospital. The pictures don't do it justice because it is so soft. I love it! I have been telling everyone that I want pink if it's a girl and blue if it's a boy, no green and yellow. So, my grandma bought white! I think that is hilarious. This will be her first great grandchild! I hope she continues to feel the need to shower my baby with gifts (I know you read my blog Grandma!).
In other pregnant news, I have lost my internal DVR. We don't own a DVR for the TV, I am talking about my memory. I have always been known as the person that can remember anything - just ask Ryan how that works when we disagree on what one of us said :) I can rewind any instance and play it back for you as if you were right there when it happened. But, not anymore. At work, I have been forgetting to do things or confusing what people said to me. It is driving me crazy. I have not forgotten that I usually don't forget things! But, I was so relieved when I opened my daily email from WhatToExpect.com entitled Forgetfulness:

Forget about it: Pregnancy forgetfulness isn't in your imagination. Like so many other pesky pregnancy symptoms, it's in your hormones (and there are studies to back that up — just in case your partner doesn't buy that there is a legitimate physical cause you neglected to pick up his prescription on the way home). Even the most organized type A personality can take a disconcerting turn for the scatterbrained during pregnancy.

(I can't seem to turn off the italics) I felt better about myself after reading that. I have many friends that were recently pregnant and I heard them talk about this. I must admit, I thought they were just making excuses. But, I sincerely apologize to all of them now, because I am a believer - pregnancy makes me forget everything.

Other than that, my belly keep growing and we are getting more and more excited. Ryan finally said to me this week, "You are really starting to look pregnant!" I tired to suck in my tummy and it didn't go very far! I have embraced the joys of pregnancy and love shopping for maternity clothes - even though I usually don't buy. I don't want Ryan thinking I spend all his hard-earned money at once.

Brief Fright

Ah, in all my preparation and trying to plan for everything, I was not quite ready for this doctor's appointment. Ryan and I just got home from my 12 week appointment with my doctor. At first, the nurse thought my blood pressure was too high. She took it again and it was fine. Whew. Then, she was listening for the heart beat and she kept listening and listening and listening and nothing! I was getting scared! It seemed like forever. She changed machines and tried again. Nothing. A tear slid down my cheek as I realized I hadn't thought about the "what if's" of this situation.

So, they moved me into the sonogram room and my doctor came in to try to listen. She and Ryan thought they both heard the heartbeat, but I couldn't hear it. She did an actual sonogram to let me hear it and it was loud and clear! And a bit fast because mom's heart rate was through the roof by this time! I'm even getting a little emotional as I sit and type this. It was scary. But, all is well with Baby Carter. We got to see him/her moving all over the place which was fun. His/Her little arms and legs were pretty spastic. Oh, another thing, my hemoglobin level was just barely in the safe zone, so she told me to start taking iron pills just to be careful of getting anemic. I don't care how many pills I have to take as long as it keeps that little heart beating strong!

By the way, I really like my doctor. She is very kind and seems to really care (even though she probably doesn't even remember me yet) and they are very fast. I have always been accustomed to waiting about 30 minutes to even get back to a room and then another half hour sitting there in those lovely paper clothes while my toes are freezing. At this doctor (I have been twice now) and we were in and out of the office in 30 minutes total! And, they are cloth clothes, not paper. Life is good!So, I thought I couldn't blog this long without a picture to keep you interested. We just took this picture of ourselves standing in our backyard. We are wearing jackets! Yes, today is September 8 and we have had yet another cold front come through and it is currently 64 degrees outside. We love it! It has been very cool for a couple of weeks now. We even made a soup and some chili over the weekend while we watched the US Open.

My next doctor's appointment is in 4 weeks. It will just be a regular appointment and then I will probably have another sonogram at 18 weeks and then we will be able to find out the gender!
Keep praying for Baby Carter!

Gettin' Bigger

8 Week Belly & 12 Week Belly (and a haircut)

I am not very good at blogging yet. I will practice and try to get better!

I am PREGNANT!

We are happy to tell the world...we are expecting Baby Carter in March! We are so excited!

So far, I am feeling better each week. The first few weeks I was really, really tired and starving all the time. Now, I am still pretty hungry all the time, but not quite as tired. I have definitely had some morning sickness. That is starting to lessen which makes me happy!

Ryan has been fabulous through all of it so far. He helps me with all my daily tasks that I get too tired to do. I have appreciated that more than I can type here.

Keep checking back to see Baby Carter grow!

This was taken at 8 weeks. I am 12 weeks now.

Not much showing yet at 8 weeks.

It's Official...

We are Kansans.

I never thought of myself as a gal with a lot of Texas pride, but I must say I was a bit sad as they handed me my Kansas license plate today (singular, you only need one in the back here). The line was much shorter than I ever experienced in Dallas or Houston, so that was a nice bonus. We went to the DMV last week and got our temporary Kansas driver's licenses. The temporary, paper license has your picture on it - how cool is that?! We like Kansas just fine, but Texas is the only state I have ever known and I guess I was a little more attached than I thought. I took this commemorative picture to always remember my Texas roots. Go Astros! (That is for Ryan - we will always cheer for our Houston teams no matter where we live.)

Goodbye Texas plates.

I must admit, that is a pretty cool temporary driver's license.

But look what they did to my Texas license.

It's Been a While

I know I haven't blogged in a few weeks, so let me catch you up on life in Kansas. Our director asked us to go to Morning Star Ranch for two weeks. The ranch is a part of World Impact that is an hour north of Wichita. They host summer camps for World Impact kids in our region - Dallas, St. Louis and Wichita. For the first week we were cooks. We cooked a hot breakfast, lunch and supper for 85 people (including second helpings). There were two other ladies from South Texas cooking with us. We had a good time, but it was so exhausting. We were in the kitchen from 7am - 7pm with an hour break in the afternoon. Who knew! During the second week I was back in the kitchen with one other lady and Ryan was the camp speaker for junior high camp. Dirty dishes didn't allow me to go to all the sessions, but I must say that he did a fantastic job from what I saw. Around the campfire at the end of camp, the kids mentioned some things that Ryan said that meant something to them! I was a proud wife to hear such kind things from junior high students. We are back home now and trying to recover from being away from home for two weeks.

This picture is pretty dark, but this is Ryan teaching at evening chapel.
He had to preach twice a day!

My mom and sister Candice came to visit for the weekend as soon as we got back from the ranch. We told them they could help with some projects around the house, but I had no idea just how much they would do. They painted and painted and helped move furniture. It was terrific. I don't know that they got much of a mini-vacation, but they sure did help us. I am so grateful for all their hard work. Below are the pictures of all the work, but the pictures don't really do the work justice. This old house was needing a lot of love and it already looks so much better.

Bathroom Before - That blue was terrible and the walls were very dirty.

Bathroom After - The walls are now "Toast" colored and the vanity is chocolate brown. Guest room before. It was actually just holding all the stuff that didn't have a place yet.

Guest room after. We were given a queen bed and now this is a complete room. They painted the walls and even scrubbed the paint off the hardwoods from the previous owners.

Other guest room before - I wish you could see the walls. We pulled out about 100 nails that covered the walls. We think a teenager hung posters with nails. The walls were horrible.

Other guest room after. Now, the walls are nice and clean.

This room still needs some TLC, but it is so much better.