From poppy seed to watermelon

So I have always loved when people blog about the size of their baby each week with the little fruit and veggies posts, so I am going to start this each week. If you want to see the different stages our little babe has gone through up until this week, you can see the list here.

Your adorable little fetus is busy with thumb sucking, toe wiggling, and (not so cute but equally amazing) making urine and breathing amniotic fluid as the liver, kidneys and spleen continue to develop. Lanugo (thin, downy hair) is growing all over the body for warmth.

The first three months

I was thinking I should probably backtrack a little and share some information about how the first three months of this pregnancy have gone, before I get to all the new and upcoming stuff.
I feel like I have been pretty lucky so far, with only slight nausea and fatigue for about three weeks. No throwing up or anything crazy, just had to eat about every two hours otherwise the hot flashes and sick feeling would hit. I can't complain though, I love to eat, and what better excuse?
My co-workers started looking at me funny, since they didn't know I was pregnant and started eating everything in sight and making frequent trips to Sonic for their junior breakfast burrito. It's not my fault there is one across the street from our office and they are only $1. But I HAD to get it with the hot sauce, because anything bold and spicy hits the spot.
Brian, or should I say our bank account, was most excited about my lack of desire for Starbucks anymore. I have always had a weakness for Sbux and sweets in general, and couldn't even stand the sight of a latte or cookie.
But let me tell you how much my mouth waters at the thought of sweet pickles! I feel like its a total cliche pregnancy craving, but when I saw the giant jar of sweet and spicy pickles at Costco, I HAD to have them and am eating them by the bowl full.
I think Brian was getting a little concerned by the mass quantities of food I was consuming and was prepared to see me blow up to the size of a blimp in a matter of days. Fortunately for us, that mighty appetite and nausea has subsided and I am down to only eating every 4 hours, plus maybe a little snack in between...but the sweet tooth is back with a vengeance.
Other than that, life has been going on like normal.

... and then there were three.

On November 7, I found out something that would change our lives forever. While Brian was out of town taking care of "business", I was left with this lingering feeling that there was some business of its own going on in my belly. Why I felt that way, I am not quite sure, but it turns out my instincts were correct and after peeing on quite the sophisticated little piece of equipment it was confirmed.
We are having a baby!
Holy crap we are having a baby. I can't describe all of the emotions that flooded through my body after the longest two minutes of my life. I wanted to call Brian immediately and share the news, but knew that I had to wait because for one, that kind of news shouldn't be shared over the phone, and for two, he didn't need any distraction during his trip.
And I wasn't quite sure how he would react. I mean, we had always talked about starting a family and knew that it would happen eventually, but was he ready? was I ready? All of the sudden all of these thoughts of life flashed through my head and I knew. I knew we could handle this, I knew we were as ready as we would ever be. Ya you can always say that you would like more money, a better job or a nicer home, but we have a great home, good jobs and are making a living so when it comes down to it, we are ready.
Holy crap we are having a baby! Even today, 13 weeks into the pregnancy, it still doesn't seem real. We have seen the little babe wiggle its arms and heard its heart beat at our first appointment at 9 weeks which made it a little more real. We will be going back in this week for another check-up and hopefully get to see the little babe again.
I have been anxiously waiting to share the news with the World Wide Web, and finally feel comfortable. So look forward to hearing all about this little thing growing from a poppy seed to a watermelon inside my belly. I can't wait to share it with all of you!

Everything is breaking!

So have you ever noticed that bad things happen in threes? Well, in my world, it seems to be happening more frequently. Just within the past 2 weeks we have had our washing machine, dish washer, kitchen sink, both laptops and camera break. That's not even including our continuously breaking garage door. That's what I like to call a crap storm of bad luck!
Luckily, we have a home warranty and the kitchen sink and washing machine were a related problem so that was fixed in one visit (after both decided to overflow and make our kitchen a wading pool) but now we have to wait for another order to be put in for someone to come fix the dish washer. We must have really upset the household appliance gods.
The computers on the other hand, well, they have decided to not hold a charge AT ALL any more. Mine has been dying for a while, but all of the sudden, Brian's battery pooped out and on top of that our power cord likes to pick and choose when its going to work. And then, Brian's wireless internet thingy broke within his computer so we have to sit on the floor, in the guest bedroom, attached to the darn router.
Now my camera is another story, and partially a human error which is easily fixed, but a problem nonetheless (and I won't go in to for the fact that I will embarass myself, but bare with me on new pictures because it might take a while.)

Let's hope its just a bunch of bad stuff getting out of its system before the New Year and we can be problem free for a while.

a quick catch-up

Life has been moving in all kinds of directions since I last updated on here. I will spare you all the extensive details and just offer a quick rundown of life the past 6 ½ weeks.
First, to follow-up to the squirrel post. After I wrote the post about it, I couldn’t sit around and wait for Brian to get home so I geared up with a plastic bag, big gloves and a bandana over my face and prepared for what was to come down the chimney when I opened the flue. Nothing. I dug around with the fireplace poker and found nothing, so I turned the fireplace on as high as it can go, and we haven’t had a problem since.
:::knocking on wood:::
Brian’s sister, Darcy, and her boyfriend, Brian, came to visit us over Halloween weekend. We showed Brian around town, walked around Dealey Plaza (Where JFK was shot), went and toured the new Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, and Darcy and boyfriend Brian went to San Antonio for the WSU game against Notre Dame.
Brian and I attended our first game at Cowboys Stadium. Let me tell you … that place is pretty impressive. I felt like I was underdressed the stadium was so fancy. If you ever get a chance to check it out, I highly suggest it.
We spent Thanksgiving in Texas again this year, and decided to stay home and cook our first Thanksgiving dinner all by ourselves. I was pretty impressed. Everything turned out quite tasty, and more importantly … we didn’t burn the house down.
Since Brian has been traveling a lot lately for the “business” we agreed to stay in Texas for Christmas this year. We took a trip up to Washington in December to visit with my family and celebrate the holidays while we were there. It was great to see everyone, and just have a weekend to relax with the family. Brian also had some business to take care of while we were there, and hopefully soon I can tell you all about it. We are waiting for some final details before we share that news.
The Hall family decided to come to Texas for Christmas since we weren’t coming home. It was nice to have some family around for the holiday, and I believe that is what kept me in good spirits. I have to say that it was weird to not wake up at Mom’s house on Christmas morning. Hopefully we will make it home for the holidays for many years from here on out.
During the Hall’s visit, we did a lot of shopping, and also went to the ICE exhibit at the Gaylord Texan on Christmas Eve. It was a great holiday experience. AND…while we were there, it was snowing like crazy outside and I got my white Christmas after all. I don’t think I even have to say how excited that made me.

That’s about all we have been doing, beside the regular grind of work and life. Now that you are all caught up on our life, I will be updating more frequently and hopefully, with more exciting news.

(I will add some pictures to this post soon)

Bad blogger...

...Is exactly what I have been for more than a month! I promise to re-commit myself to this blog here shortly, as I have many things to update on. And now that the holidays are over, and my hectic few weeks at work are just about complete, I will have time to write about all the happenings in our world.

There's a party in our chimney ...

And only squirrels are invited.

So as most of you already know, we have had quite the run-in with squirrels since moving into our house. The squirrels have always liked to sit in the tree or on the roof tourmenting our dogs.

Then the squirrels found a way to get into the attic. That resulted in it making its way into our garage and Roxy, who loathes squirrels, acting as our rodent exterminator.

Fast forward a couple months and another squirrel finds its way into our attic. Well just repeat the previous scenario but in our back yard this time. Roxy is earning her suppers around here, and Mack on her heels helping any way he can.

Then, again, lets go forward a few more months to a couple weeks ago. This time things played out a little different. Instead of going into our attic, the squirrel decides to fall down the chimney and get stuck on top of the flue. This leads to Roxy freaking out and trying to get into the fire place ... running inside and outside to the fireplace chute.

We are assuming at some point it found its way out, but Roxy wasn't satisfied. After listening to Roxy sniff at the chute for hours on end, I decided to open the chute to show her there is nothing in it ... well I went back inside to return a few minutes later to this:

She dug her way into the chute and wedged herself in as deep as she could go ... absolutely covered in sut.

After hosing her and the patio down, I thought we were done with the squirrel issues. Boy was I wrong. A day or two later, I hear strange noises in the chimney again, and this time its loud and clear. Well this little squirrels buddy was on the roof making lots of noise. But no noise was louder than when that squirrel fell down the chimney itself and a squirrel fight broke out on top of our flue. I was home alone, and positive that these things were going to fall through into the house.

As soon as Brian gets home, the noises stop, but I am positive that they are still in there so we think that we can open the flue with a plastic bag under it and catch the squirrels...well nothing falls through and we haven't heard the noise since. Finally...our squirrel issue is over.

Until today ... when I start smelling something funny. Could it be? No...the squirrel couldn't have died in there could it? Hopefully Brian is in a good mood when he gets home today because he will be playing chimney investigator.

... to be continued