August 2015 Recap: Part 1

August has been a full month and now that it's almost over, it's time to recap the awesomeness that occurred this month before I forget it all! Warning: This is a long one!  In fact, I'm going to split it into two parts.

Awesome Adventure #1: Des Moines/Cascade
We were originally headed up to Des Moines to go to the Hinterland Music Festival, but the location moved to outside of the city and we were offered a refund if we didn't want to go.  We really wanted to have time to see Nick and Emily too, so we decided to skip the concert and just hang out in the city.  

We spent some time catching up with the Reeds and then Ryan and I had a date at Exile Brewery, which was really delicious food!  We also checked out Confluence Brewery which had a really fun atmosphere.  We sat and played cribbage while Ryan sampled a few beers.

When we got back to Nick and Emily's, we got in our cozy clothes and settled in for some Fibbage before bed.  In the morning, we headed over to Laura and Jason's new place in Ankeny for some delicious brunch.  Unfortunately, the only picture that I got for the whole Des Moines experience is this cute one of me and Laura, showing off our bumps!

After brunch, we drove to Cascade for a family camping day with my mom's side of the family.  This day was full of great food, awesome weather, lots of family time, paper lantern fun, and bags!

Awesome Adventure #2: Flaters Visit/Stolt's Wedding
On Friday, August 7th, Andy and Ashley got here just in time for us to head straight out to Le Claire for some fun.  We first went to the distillery to pick up some more of their awesome bourbon barrel-aged Boetje's mustard.  We stuck around for some samples as well...obviously, I only enjoyed the food samples, not the yummy drinks.  Then we went and put our name in for dinner and had a 45-minute wait, so we checked out the brewery in town: Green Tree Brewery.

We continued our fun, double-date night at Blue Iguana for some Mexican food and then headed to the village in Davenport to Brew for a final drink before heading home.

In the morning, we headed up to Chicago.  We met up with Nick and Emily for lunch in Libertyville before checking in to the hotel to get ready for the wedding.
After a little rest, it was time for the big party.  We got all prettied up and headed out to beautiful location for the wedding and reception!

This wedding was so much fun, I'm certain a recap can't possible describe it.  Let's just say we were spoiled with the most amazing appetizers, drink choices, dinner, and dessert spread.  We were overly satisfied and I'm not complaining!  At the end of the night, a hot dog cart even rolled out!  We had such a good time catching up with friends and dancing the night away.  Ryan and I left a pinch before everyone else, because this pregnant lady was tired at 12:30...but it was an awesome night!

On Sunday, Ryan and I stopped at IKEA to get the last thing we needed for the nursery and then made the boring drive home.

August Extras
The beginning of the month was also when I had my new teacher orientation for Bettendorf Schools.  It was so exciting to get started down my new career path.  I also spent a night babysitting little Kamelia, and loved every minute of it!

To be continued...

Pregnancy Update: It's A Girl!

Ok, a lot has happened since my last post.  Pregnancy is crazy...a lot of changes happen; it feels like it's dragging one day and then it's going SO fast the next.  Over the last few weeks, I had my 18-week check-up and heard baby's heart beat again!  The doctor found the heartbeat pretty much immediately, so no panic like last time.  :)

I started taking bumpies to document my growing belly.  I'm always taking them myself, so my face isn't in most of them...I should probably have Ryan take a few going forward.  Here are just a couple.

19 Weeks 

21 Weeks

I am wondering how I am going to double (or more) in size as this belly seems pretty ridiculous already!!

My most favorite physical development over the last couple weeks is feeling baby move.  It's still very subtle, but getting stronger every day.  Yesterday, for the first time ever, I actually felt a kick from the outside! Insane!!!

My favorite pregnancy moment BY FAR has been our anatomy scan.  We went in on Monday, July 6th.  I was 20 weeks and some change.  We did want to know the gender, but we didn't want the focus of our attention to be on finding out.  Plus, we wanted to share that special moment just the two of us.  So we told our tech right away that we DO want to know, but we want her to write it down and seal it so we could open it later.  The ultrasound itself was so amazing!  It was so detailed and the tech scanned and measured baby from head to toe.  We could see the kidneys, the umbilical cord, the four chambers of the heart, the little toes and fingers...ah, so awesome!

Later that night, Ryan and I were home together and opened our envelope so we could stop calling baby "it" and start calling baby a "he" or "she."

A girl!  What was great about opening it later was that, no matter what our "preference" would have been, we just got to spend 30 minutes looking at a healthy baby during our ultrasound and regardless of the gender, we were so SO thrilled everything looked good and now we're just so excited to meet her!

We kept the secret to ourselves for 48 hours and then had our families, plus Brooke and Jack, over on Wednesday night for the big reveal.  It was a ton of fun and everyone seemed so excited to be welcoming a girl into the world in November.  It was super fun, the pictures say it all! :)

We're really just sooooo excited.  We can't wait to meet our little princess in November.  According to the ultrasound, little girl weighs 15 ounces, almost one pound already!  She was measuring a little ahead of schedule, so she'll probably be tall like her mommy and daddy.

I should probably wrap up this crazy long post, baby girl is kicking me in the bladder anyway! ;-)

June 2015 Recap

June was a fun month and it flew by soooo quickly!  We went to Omaha, I started teaching Summer School, I interviewed for a job and accepted it, we had family visiting and I took my sister to an OB appointment on her birthday to hear little babe's heartbeat!

Omaha

Breakfast after accepting a teaching job!

Lots of Work on the Nursery!

Fathers Day Fun

Family Time

May 2015 Recap

May has been an exciting month for us!  The most exciting thing has been sharing the secret we had been keeping since March with our family and friends!  It was a joy to share the news in person at my parent's Mother's Day party since both my mom and dad's families were there.  We were also able to tell Ryan's grandma that morning at brunch. :)

The next weekend, we went to Chicago for Shae's wedding.  We enjoyed ourselves that evening at the beautiful Beverly Arts Center.  It was fun catching up with friends.  On the way home, we stopped at IKEA and picked out and purchased some nursery items.  Saturday night, we headed up to Dubuque for a dinner reception Ryan's grandma was being honored at.  Another great weekend in the books! 

The week of May 18th was when I finally had my post-first trimester OB appointment and as mentioned in a previous post, it was scary one at first!  But all is good.  I also have my first interview for a teaching job in the fall! It was not my best interview, but it was also not the best school, so I was glad to get the dreaded first interview out of the way.

That weekend, Ryan left for a bachelor party, so Emily, Alex, and I headed to Des Moines for a sibling weekend!  We left around noon, so when we got to Des Moines, we checked into our hotel and wandered around the neighborhood.  Then we got some swimming in at the hotel before grabbing dinner at Legend's and catching the Iowa Cubs game!  We ended the night with some more swimming, Alex's request. :)

The next morning, more swimming after breakfast (this time I passed), then we went to Trader Joe's and did some other shopping that morning.  We totally stopped at Buy Buy Baby and I found some great little Cyclone clothes for Baby H!  We took Alex to SkyZone so he could enjoy some trampoline fun and then we waited FOREVER for lunch/dinner at Zombie Burger.  

On Memorial Day, we spent the day swimming at Mom and Dad's.  This past week, I had another interview and have another scheduled for next week!  This weekend, we're doing more nursery painting (the doors and trim this time), I'm spending the afternoon with Hannah today, and I'm grabbing coffee with Steph tomorrow!  May was fun, looking forward to more fun in June!