Finally Pictures!

Taking time to load pictures to our computer and then upload them to the blog is for the birds. I am too lazy to do this all the time. So I will dump them on you all at once.

Here was our best attempt at a picture of the two of us at the Nutcracker. Matt got free tickets to see the show at the Kaufmann Center, the new performing arts building downtown, so we were stoked. I took him to see the Nutcracker for the first time last year. Now that he knew the story, it was easier to follow along. Pretty fun date night, complete with a baggie of Crispex for baby to munch on because that was not a feeling good day.

Then the next day of that weekend we traveled to Leavenworth to pick up this awesome hutch for our kitchen. We found it on Craigslist for 75 bucks. I have been wanting a hutch since we have moved into our home but was refusing to spend a lot of money on one. Plus I wanted one with some character. Our patient waiting paid off, along with some searching help from my mom, and we found this guy. Matt and my dad are going to sand it all down and then paint it. I can't wait for it to be in our kitchen and brightening up the room. Plus the extra storage is going to be great for all our kitchen and party supplies.

This is my fun craft I talked about in a previous post. I found a DIY tutorial on how to make these trees last year. I didn't have time to make them so I stored the link away. Beth came over and we crafted one afternoon and made them finally. We each had a big, medium and small guy when we were through, these were just the first round after the dried. I was pretty happy to have to new decorations to put around the house for winter time and I thought they turned out very close to the online version we were trying to copy. So great when that happens. We also made these billybutton flowers out of rolled felt but I need a cute vase before I can display them. They are complete but all laying on my desk in the craft room/soon to be baby room.

This picture was taken right before our small group came over for our advent celebration the week of Christmas. I was feeling better that day and decided to decorate a bit. I dipped the mugs in red chocolate and sprinkled them with sugar sprinkles for our hot chocolate bar and got out my tissue pom poms. It was so great to have everyone over to our house and celebrate with them. We made advent wreaths together as a group and celebrated lighting our candles each week at someone's house. It was fun our week ended up being the last one because I was feeling up to hosting and our house was decorated by that time. My advent wreath on the other hand was too embarrasing to even take a picture of. I didn't even secure my candles onto the actual wreath. Minus two points to me for lack of creativity, I will do better next year.

So here, finally, are the pictures you really care about. I am officially showing, barely, with clothes on. So we decided it was time to take our first belly picture. Here we are at the start of 14 weeks. I am finding some things with this pregnancy to be going oddly quick. I thought about belly pictures and how cute people make them and what creative way I wanted to document our own. I thought I thought about it for awhile but I guess in all that thinking, I never made any decisions. Before I knew it I was showing and I didn't want to miss taking a picture just because I was indecisive, that's just silly. So for the sake of capturing a true 14 week picture, we scrambled around before I left for work and took a few. After I looked through them, this was the only non-blurry one. I decided Matt needs a little coaching since I thought we just got the gray wall and me, when clearly you can see our random picture and the inside of our bathroom :) So here is to a better picture tonight for 15 weeks. Still not sure if anything cute will come of these but 20 yrs from now I prolly won't care anyway.

And here is baby! This was from our 12 week appt. Here is the classic one foot picture that confused Matt :) I know this is zoomed in more but it was crazy to me how different this one looks that our first. I mean, it's a baby. So wierd that baby is growing inside of me right now. I think a good part of me is still in denial over that fact. I can face that we will, God willing, welcome our first child to the world this year but I can't seem to grasp or even remember all the time, that there is a little human growing inside of me. Maybe when I feel the baby start moving it will hit me, but so far, it is still bizarre.

The baby got some fun gifts for Christmas too. The common theme from the Clarks seemed to be ducks. All of the aunts got some cute duckie thing without knowing the rest of them did. I think it will be easier to buy things once we know the gender but everyone was playing it safe. My mom got me this hat box with all sorts of fabric to start sewing things for the baby. This was a genious gift! I just got a sewing machine right before Christmas and am excited to make things with it. This will give me a jump start. We also got a food processor and a baby food cookbook, both were great ideas too. Our family was so generous. It seems very worldly of me to say but tangible things have really been what makes this seem real so far. I am just surprised how long it has taken me to come to grip with the fact that this is happening to us. I feel so blessed and undeserving.

Because motivation has been lacking around our house I need a to-do list that I am held accountable for. So here are my goals for this week ....

1. Come up with vacation plans for our last get-away with just the two of us before we add another member to our family. Somewhere warm, sometime in march...that's all the progress I have made.

2. Figure out how we want to tell everyone if we are having a boy or girl.....get together/party or informal announcement. Just how big of a deal does this need to be and do we want it to be?

3. Start organizing my craft room and move things out to make room for baby...sounds easy but you have not seen the looks of my craft room as of late.

4. Pull out my sewing machine and learn how to use it.

5. Take another picture of how big baby is tonight :) Yay for 15 weeks

Side note: I am a terrible speller and the spell check function on this is not working currently, so sorry for any typos!