We're Having A.....

...wiggle worm!!!

Sorry. Couldn't resist doing that :)

We had our first trimester screening yesterday at a different office in Huntsville. The first thing we did was an ultrasound. It was the coolest thing ever!!! That baby has grown so much since our ultrasound at 7 weeks. It's gone from a little blob to a baby with little hands and feet. We could see the brain, the heart, the bladder, the spine, and little bones in the arms and legs. We were both in awe just looking at the screen. The baby kept flipping around and waving its hands and feet in the air. I think he/she was saying hello!

The ultrasound tech said she felt pretty certain she knew if it was a boy or girl, so we had her write it down on a piece of paper and seal it up in an envelope. You can thank Travis for us not finding out yesterday. As of Monday night, I had convinced myself that we should just forget the party and find out yesterday at the office. Good thing Travis has more willpower than I do! :) He took the envelope and has hidden it from me somewhere. He must not trust me or something!! :) We'll take the envelope with us to our appointment on the 27th, and if they say the same thing (boy or girl), then we'll start planning our gender reveal party! I guess if they disagree, we'll wait a few more weeks to get a better idea on another ultrasound.

Back to yesterday's screening...the doctor was very confident that the baby doesn't have Down syndrome or trisomy 18 (another chromosomal abnormality), so we were thankful to hear that. They pricked my finger for some blood before we left, so we'll get the official results over the phone in a few days. The main thing we were worried about is spina bifida since my dad was born with it, but the doctor also felt pretty certain that the baby doesn't have spina bifida either. We were thrilled to get such great news!

Here are the latest pictures of our wiggle worm...

I'm on my back...posing for a picture! :)

Resting for a minute...

Hi Mom! Hi Dad!!

As for me, I'll be 13 weeks along tomorrow (going by our due date). Almost done with the first trimester! I forgot to ask yesterday how big the baby was, but according to the app on my phone, he/she should be almost 3 inches long and weigh about an ounce!  This week, I've been feeling a little under the weather. I guess it's just a cold or allergies. I've been coughing and my throat's pretty sore. Other than that, I feel ok. I'm hoping this cough will pass soon...it's just annoying more than anything! Travis took my first baby bump picture last Wednesday, so here's my 12 week picture. I'll have him take another one tonight :)

12 weeks

We had a very productive weekend! We hung the new ceiling fan in our guest bedroom AND hung blinds in the guest bedroom and study. Hooray! They make those rooms look much better. Next up...hanging curtains in the guest bedroom. Travis also wants to replace the ceiling fans in the living room and our bedroom, so we may be doing that before too long also.

No more ugly shade over the window!! :)

Blinds and a ceiling fan totally update this room!

These rooms are twins :)

Well, that's about it. Tomorrow is Dad's birthday, so we're heading to Trussville to celebrate this weekend. Hope you're having a great week!! :)

More Home Improvement Stuff + Wacky Weather

This past weekend was another "gettin stuff done" weekend. Yay! On Saturday alone, we hung blinds in our breakfast area and kitchen windows and curtains over the breakfast area window, and then we capped the day off with a 5 mile run! How's that for progress? The kitchen looks so much more complete with the blinds and curtains up, and we actually have some privacy while we eat at the table at night now. Before, I felt like people were staring at us at night through those windows, but not anymore. Now, the only windows uncovered are the little sidelight windows on either side of our front door. I may end up putting some sheer curtains over them in the future though. Here are some pictures of our finally finished kitchen....

So much better!

The navy valence matches the navy in our china and placemats...

Matching blinds and curtain over the little window

Yay!

I'm hoping this weekend we can hang blinds in the guest bedroom and study. Those will be somewhat difficult because they'll have to be mounted a different way, but we've got the hang of this now pretty well, so maybe it won't take too long...

Gabby is the only one who's not happy about the new blinds in the kitchen. She loves to look out of that big window, but it's a little more difficult to do now that there are blinds in the way. Poor kitty!

Pre-blinds

She saw something!

Sunday, I worried about the weather all day because we were supposed to get bad storms and possibly tornadoes that night. Sure enough, I woke up around 1:15 AM to the wind blowing and rain pounding on our windows. The tornado sirens went off about an hour later(which is enough to make me freak out after last April), and we jumped up to go turn on the TV to find out that the bad weather wasn't going to come our way. I may have gone back to sleep for just a short while after that, but soon it was 4:30 and time to get up for work. Luckily, we had no damage at our house (just a lot of rain!), but on the way to work, I heard on the radio that northeast Jefferson County had been hit by a tornado. They specifically mentioned Clay, Trussville, and Centerpoint. Well, hearing that made me panic, so I called Mom and Dad at 5 AM (sorry!) to make sure they were ok. They were, but the tornado came through only a few miles from their house. I think I heard that over 200 homes were destroyed in Clay. Very scary and sad. I've never heard of tornadoes in January, but I guess that's what happens when it's unseasonably warm outside. I'm lobbying for us to have a storm shelter put in our garage since we don't have a basement or really any good spot to hide in our house, but they are pretty expensive. Next house we buy will definitely have to have an underground basement or storm shelter.

I felt like a zombie yesterday at work on such little sleep, and I'm still feeling like it today. I work tomorrow 5:30-2 and Thursday 6-5 and then I'm done for the week. Whew. Friday night, we're having a few people from church over for supper. Luckily, Travis is off for the day, so he can help me cook and clean around here. I know he's so excited! :)

Mom met with her radiation oncologist this morning, and she's hoping to start radiation at the end of this week. She goes back tomorrow to get marked. She'll have 36 treatments total, and they'll be 5 days a week until she's finished unless something comes up. The doctor told her that this is the "easy" part, so we're hoping so!! Hopefully she'll be done by the middle of March!

Well, that's all the "news" I can think of for now. Not too much exciting stuff, but I guess we're just living pretty ordinary lives. I wouldn't change that for the world! :)


Erin

Getting stuff done!

As of a few days ago, we have officially been homeowners for one year now! Looking back, I would say that we really didn't know what we would doing when we began house hunting, but somehow I think we ended up with a good one. We really like living here!

The house has changed a good bit since we bought it, and I would say the changes are all improvements. We've repainted every room (minus the garage), put new shelving up in the pantry and master bedroom closet, installed a new garage door opener, weeded and pulled up old shrubs in our flower beds, fixed the fence in the backyard, and lots of other small projects that I'm sure I'm forgetting. The house has come a long way, but we've still got a lot more projects in mind for the future.

I would classify us as pretty slow when it comes to getting house projects done. I think there are several reasons for this. One, we've never done most of this stuff before. It always takes us a while to figure out how to do something the first time. Two, Travis is a perfectionist, which has its positive and negative aspects. It's a good thing because the finished product always turns out great. But, it's can be a bad thing because the project must be thoroughly researched, planned out in detail, and carried out, all of which takes a lot of time! And finally, we're just busy most of the time. It's hard to get anything done around here when we aren't here that much to begin with! So, those are our reasons/excuses for not getting as far along on the house as we'd like to be at this point.

But, just when I get frustrated and start thinking that we're never going to get anything done around here (because we really haven't done much to the house since the summer), a weekend like this past one comes along and totally proves me wrong. We had a very productive weekend! Several weeks ago, we ordered blinds for most of the windows in the house (minus our bedroom and the living room that already have drapes up). But, we hadn't had any time to hang them yet except for on the small window in our bathroom. Yesterday, however, we hung two in one day! Don't laugh...I was really excited! The back door and the big window in our bathroom now have blinds instead of ugly shades. Yay!! It took a good part of the day to get those hung (remember, perfection is the goal here...), but they look great.

This one turned out dark, but oh well. Back door is complete!

Big window in our bathroom

Hooray!

It definitely would have been easier to mount the blinds if they could've been mounted inside the window like most people's. When it's time to house hunt again, that'll be something to look for BEFORE we buy, and hopefully our next house will already have blinds installed!

Friday night and Saturday morning were dedicated to organizing Travis's study. Up until this weekend, there was still stuff everywhere on the bed, under the bed, on the floor, etc. But, now everything has a place, and the floor is clear. The study is one step closer to being complete!

So nice!

His desk is (mostly) clear!

We also organized the foyer closet and installed a new shower head in our shower this weekend. Don't worry...we made sure that the shower head was the top rated one on Consumer Reports before we bought it at Lowe's on Saturday night...haha :) By the way, it works great....we should have gotten it months ago! :)

Foyer closet + Gabby investigating

So, what's next on the to-do list?

1. Hang the rest of the blinds we bought (6 windows to go!)
2. Hang pictures in the study 
3. Repaint the window seat in the study (it's pink right now...definitely doesn't match)
4. Organize the guest bedroom closet (which has turned into the "junk" closet unfortunately)
5. Hang curtains in the breakfast room, study, guest bedroom, and our bathroom
6. Replace ceiling fans and light fixtures throughout the house (most of them are brassy gold...yuck)
7. Plant new shrubs in our flower beds
8. Plant the dogwood tree that Baugay gave us

Those are the projects we've got coming up in the (hopefully) near future. Should be enough to keep us busy for a while!

I'm sure you're wondering what Gabby and Felix have been up to lately. It would be nice if they would help us out with our projects, but they've apparently got better things to do...

Like snuggling on the bed...

...and watching/catching bugs...

Oh well. They're pretty cute doing what they do, so I guess we'll forgive them for their laziness.

Mom had surgery yesterday to get her port taken out, and it went well, so we're glad for that! She said the area is a little sore today, but not really that painful. Next Tuesday she meets with the radiation oncologist to find out when radiation starts. Here's to getting the last phase of treatment started and finished! Go Mom!! :)

Running is going pretty well I guess. On Saturday, we ran 4 miles in the neighborhood across the street from ours. It may have been a little ambitious because that neighborhood is very hilly, so I had to walk a couple of times, but at least I finished. I know I'm getting more endurance, but we'll see how 5 miles goes this Saturday. Yikes! :) There's still over 3 months til the half-marathon, so I think I'll be fine...hopefully. Travis is still running with me and enjoying feeling more in shape, so I'm very proud of him!

I'm working Thursday and Friday again this week, and then hopefully we'll have another productive weekend. Is it too much to ask for two of those in a row? :)

Hope you're having an awesome day!

Erin