18 weeks

This was a big week! We had our anatomy scan and got to see our little baby on the big screen again! We were both pumped :) I was a little nervous, just praying that all was healthy and Ian was so great about calming me down. 

Our prayers were answered and all looked well at the scan. Looks like we are growing a healthy baby......... 

BOY!!!!! 

We are absolutely thrilled and can't wait to see how much joy this little man brings to our lives. He was not very cooperative so we couldn't get a good 3D shot of his face, but we saw his little fingers, toes, heart, other organs, the lenses of his eyes-- crazy! 

Milestone this week: I felt (and saw) him kicking me!!! Coolest thing ever. I felt it first at dinner the day of our scan. Now he moves around a lot at night when I lay down for bed and I am losing sleep over just staring at my belly and waiting to see those little kicks. 

I'm still feeling good, I've had a few headaches and have been a little tired. But other than that, no complaints! I'm trying to soak up what's left of my summer break before going back to work. And working on getting the nursery together as much as possible before I go back. We now have all of the furniture we need with the exception of a chair/glider of some sort. I'm not ready to pull the trigger on that one ($$$$$)! 

17 weeks

We're rounding out week 17. I have been on summer break so I've had some much-needed time to relax around the house. It's SO hard not knowing the gender of this little baby because all I want to do during my time off is decorate the nursery!!! SIX DAYS and we'll hopefully know! That is when we will be having our anatomy scan. We are just praying for a healthy baby, boy or girl! 

I've been feeling good this week, with the exception of one day when I got sick in the morning. I hadn't gotten sick in a few weeks so that was a little disappointing, but it hasn't happened again since that day so hopefully it was just a fluke! 

Supposedly the baby will double in size within the next few weeks... but here he/she is at the beginning of week 17. 

16 weeks

Here is my 16 week picture! The picture in the last post was 15 weeks. 

Ian is so good at reminding me to do these pictures. If it were up to me, I would forget! 

What we were up to during week 16:

This sweet man put together our new crib! My mom and I took a trip to ikea and picked up a crib and dresser for the nursery. And when I say "picked up" I mean my mom did all the heavy lifting, per Ian's strict instructions! (Thanks mom!) 

I don't have a picture of the dresser assembled, but let me tell you... assembling an ikea dresser is no joke. I had to take it almost completely apart about 3/4 of the way through thanks to a mistake on my part. I blame the instructions which have NO WORDS. Only pictures. 

We're going with neutral furniture since we don't know if we're having a boy or girl yet! Not much longer!!! 

It's been a while...

It's been a while since I posted last... and my, how things have changed! Soon after I posted about our first home project, we found out some very exciting (and long awaited for) news! 

Our little family is expanding! We are so thrilled to be waiting for the arrival of a little one. The timing of it all just really reiterates to us that God has His own plans. As soon as we got settled in to our new home in our new city, our prayers were answered. Makes us think that all of the stress and uncertainty of selling our house and uplifting our lives to move across the state was worth it and meant to be! 

As I write this, I am 16 weeks along. That is nuts to me! I am four months pregnant... we are almost halfway there! Last week (week 15) is when I felt like you could start seeing my belly. Here's the only picture we have so far- mostly because I have felt like complete crap for so long that posing for pictures was not on my agenda. 

Although the first three months have been really, really hard for me- it seems that they still flew by. I am just now starting to feel like myself again. I was plagued with all-day nausea since about week 5. It was miserable. The type of nausea where I just wished I could throw up because it seemed it would make me feel better... well, be careful what you wish for. Come week 6, I threw up for the first time and it pretty much didn't stop until a few weeks ago. Some days I couldn't go to work because every time I tried to stand up, I got sick. I couldn't keep any food down. The thought of eating disgusted me. The smell of food, looking in the refrigerator to even entertain the idea of eating, walking through the grocery store, doing the dishes-- all of it made me so sick. 

As time went on, I was better able to tolerate the thought of food and I could sometimes think of something that I wanted to eat. 

Now, I have to eat every 2 hours or I will get sick. I've been getting much better at keeping up with this but sometimes I just DON'T WANT TO EAT. And I feel bad for myself when it's time to go to bed and oh, wait-- don't forget to eat again before you go to sleep! One night I laid in bed reluctantly eating a granola bar, crying because I wasn't hungry and I was so tired of force-feeding myself. Poor Ian having to listen to my pity party. 

There are still random times when I will get sick in the morning or at night and I can't seem to figure out a pattern of what I did differently that day. So I am trying to just be thankful that it is easing up and praying that it will make it easier for me to enjoy being pregnant. 

In a few weeks, we will get to have an ultrasound for our anatomy scan and will find out if baby Crane is a boy or girl. We are so excited and I feel like I will become much more motivated to plan and decorate a nursery once we know which direction to go! I am very excited about that part but have felt like I can't really do much until we know. 

Ian has been so amazing and supportive over the past months. I know he would take my sickness for himself if he could and despite there being nothing that he can do to make me feel better, he has just been so kind and loving and tries to help me in any way he can. He comes to all of our doctor appointments. He has been doing much more cleaning, cooking, and dish washing than ever before. He shops for groceries because I still have a hard time in a grocery store, being bombarded by all of those smells and foods. Yuck. All of that and he does not make me feel guilty about it at all. I never thought he'd be any different, but it just reaffirms to me how great of a dad he is going to be. 

I'll try to be better about posting updates as time goes on! 

First Project in Our New Home

This weather just can't make up its mind! 60 degrees over the weekend, snowing today. I now have a two hour delay for work but since they didn't announce it until this morning, I am wide awake at my usual time so I figured I'd take the chance to write about our first project this morning. 

Remember when I said we didn't need to do anything in our new home after we moved in? Well... that doesn't mean that I don't get the itch to do small projects anyway! 

That being said, we built some shelves over the weekend. These may look familiar because they are the exact same shelves that we built in our bathroom at the old house. 

Here's a reminder of the shelves at the old house that were above the toilet:

We have a built-in desk off of the kitchen in the new house. I really want it to function like a desk but was getting the feeling that it was going to function more like a junk collector since it is conveniently off to the side and sort of out of plain view. Seems like a perfect landing place for things that I don't want on the kitchen counter. Solution? Make it pretty! When I make things pretty I have a much greater chance of keeping them clean and neat. Although pretty was my main goal, I still wanted the shelves to be functional.

A few weeks ago, I made some home binders in an attempt to become more organized with our paperwork. I don't know if it's just us, but we hoard paper like crazy. I just always have that feeling like, oh we might need that later, we might need that for our taxes, etc. So a Pinterest post inspired me (of course) to organize it all into binders. There's a binder for pets, cars, general house information, medical information, etc. The point of all that is that the binders were taking up too much space on the desk. So I thought they should be on a shelf. Within reach but not in the way. In a way, the binders lit the fire for creating the shelves. Just another example of one Pinterest project leading to another and another until my life is spiraling out of control with unfinished projects. 

I'm happy to report that we started AND finished the shelves this weekend... no unfinished projects here! 

Here is the before... sorry for the photo quality. These were snapped with my iPhone and the lighting was not great. I never claimed to be a photographer but you'll get the idea. 

The during:

            Bottom shelf back support 

   Top & bottom back and side supports 

Just like the bathroom shelves, I styled the desk shelves with things around the house. Oh yeah, and those binders I talked about. Something had to be functional! And I put our printer back on the desk because we really do plan to use it as a desk and not everything office-y is pretty, sadly. I'm sure I'll change the decor around. I already have some ideas but I'm trying to avoid going shopping... ;) 

Here's a recap:

                           Before

                             After 

ANYONE can make these shelves, they are SO EASY!!!! The part that takes the longest is waiting for your finish to dry! 

I hope everyone has a great week! Stay warm! 

State of Our Life Address: Part 3

Hopefully this is the LAST post that deserves a state of our life address title... 

As it stands now in February, life has gone back to normal and we couldn't be more thankful! We have our own space, all of our belongings in one city and in one house, and our sanity! It is a HUGE adjustment to go from owning your own 2000 square feet to sharing space again. We are thankful to have had my mom's house and my dad's house to crash in while we were in limbo, but nothing beats your own home. 

After our house in Greenville sold, we began looking for homes more seriously. We knew that now, we could actually make a move if we found something we loved. The problem was- now that we could make a move, we couldn't find a house that we wanted to make a move on!! My two must-haves were a formal dining room and a kitchen that was open to the living room. I didn't think that was too much to ask for! The real estate inventory seemed pretty low. 

We went to see a few houses. Existing homes, new construction. Some needed updating, some didn't have a formal dining room, none of them had that feeling of home that I was looking for when we walked in. Ian, on the other hand, is pretty easy to please. Our agent joked that he liked every house we looked at. At one point, we put in an offer on a home in one of the neighborhoods we liked. After doing some research, I felt that it was WAY overpriced. So we put in what I considered to be a fair offer. The sellers rejected our offer flat out. They didn't even send a counteroffer. What that said to me was a) they didn't really want to sell their house and b) it wasn't meant to be. Funny story was that about two days after they rejected our offer, another house right around the corner from theirs went on the market. It was the exact same house and was listed for about $20,000 less than theirs (which was approximately what we had offered). I'm sure that made them nervous... and probably made them wish they had negotiated with us! The same day that the matching house went on the market, we had an appointment to look at it after we both got off work. We knew we'd like it if it showed well because we'd already seen another version of it. We anticipated that we would be putting in an offer on it. That afternoon, last minute, I found another listing for a new construction home and called our agent to see if she would schedule a showing immediately after our first one. I told her I knew it'd be dark, but I just wanted to see it because if we didn't look, I'd probably have that nagging feeling. 

We got to the matching house that evening. It showed very well, we liked the floorplan, and it was definitely a contender. I knew we could be happy in the house. The one compromise I'd be making was that it had no formal dining room. Ian was sold on this one. He was ready to make an offer. He even said, "I don't think we need to go see the next house." 

But I insisted. We drove to the new construction house in the dark. We couldn't get in the front door because the code our agent had was incorrect. So the neighbor and her little girls came over and gave us the code! Point #1 for the new construction house- friendly neighbors!! When we walked in, we both loved loved loved it! Ian could not stop smiling and neither could I! He even muttered the words, "I think this is it." He had forgotten about the matching house already! This was the only house that we both finally had that feeling I was searching for. It had a formal dining room and an open kitchen! It checked all of my boxes and was beautiful! So we went back to our agent's office and submitted an offer!!!! Who needs to sleep on a major life decision?? Not these two... ;) 

Three weeks later, we were homeowners again! And we began the process of re-packing our boxes to have them moved for the LAST TIME! We moved in on December 19 so we were able to spend Christmas in our new place, although I'll admit that I didn't put up a tree! 

We have loved this house from the moment we got here. We have no regrets and have enjoyed adding our touch to each room! One of the best things about having a new construction home is that there was NO work to be done when we got here! No painting, no cleaning, no updating. We can just be. Obviously, I have little projects that I'll be working on over time but there is nothing that I have to do right now. 

I will take pictures and post a home tour soon! For now, here are a few from the original listing. 

            Front door into dining room

              Living room into kitchen

 

                Living room windows

              Kitchen into living room 

State of Our Life Address: Part 2

Here is a post that I wrote in November... that apparently did not upload correctly.  A lot has changed since even three months ago and I'll get on writing a new post for that! For now, here was November's news: 

A lot has happened since my last post! Here is the state of our life as it currently stands! 

We FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY sold our house! It took a lot of patience and negotiating but it is done!!! 

The buyers ended up wanting to close earlier than expected, which we found out on a Thursday. We had to scramble and make plans to get a moving truck and head there to pack the next day! 

We had some wonderful friends come help us pack the truck (and the boxes... because we were so not done with that part). Thank you, friends!!! There was a moment on Saturday night- and then another one on Sunday morning- when I was convinced that all of our stuff was not going to fit in the truck. It was packed to the ceiling!!! So I just started throwing things away. And somehow, we got our entire house, ourselves, and our dogs into a 26' truck and my car. 

Look at that handsome man driving :) Dixie was in the passenger seat keeping him company!

Sunday morning was very bittersweet. Along with our first home, we were leaving behind "our" city. It is where we met, fell in love, married, and experienced so many "firsts" together- like buying this house! We were also leaving behind some seriously amazing friends that we will miss so much! There were definitely tearful moments when I stopped and looked around at our empty first home and reality sunk in. But somehow we felt that this was the plan for our life. If it wasn't, it would not have worked out so perfectly!

So now we have temporarily moved ourselves and all of our belongings into my dad's house. He has had it on the market for about a year now and it was sitting empty. He was gracious enough to let us crash here while we make other arrangements. This way, we don't have to rush into buying a new house. That whole process was so exhausting that I need a break from it! 

I'll keep you posted on our status.

Thanks for so many memories Greenville!