Christmas decorations, turkeys and a birthday

This has been a busy week! First for the baby stuff - we're at 16 weeks today and although I don't feel significantly bigger, it looks like the belly's getting a little bigger from the pictures last week to this week's picture. My face also seems to be getting rounder, which usually happens when I have some extra pounds hanging around. Sorry for the rough appearance of this week's picture - it was taken after a very nice, relaxing day when not much of anything was accomplished.

Since Thursday was Thanksgiving, we got to head back to Greensboro and Asheboro to spend a little time with both of our families. This year we had Thanksgiving dinner at my parent's house, which was delicious. We went home very nicely stuffed, with some tasty leftovers - although somehow we forgot to bring home any turkey! Go figure. Oz and Stella also got to have a little turkey on Thanksgiving, although their turkey probably tasted a little different from ours.

 

 One very exciting thing we did this week was to go pick out our Christmas tree at the Farmer's Market. We found a great tree from a really nice family's farm - I think we'll head back there next year to get our tree from them as well. We picked up the tree on Sunday, but had to wait until Wednesday afternoon to decorate it (it was so fresh it didn't fall until then!) We also finished up decorating the rest of the house, although just the mantle is shown below. Everything else is kind of scattered around the house. We have a very nice Christmas-y atmosphere now.

We did brave Black Friday to do a little Christmas shopping - a very little bit of shopping! We stopped by Petsmart to pick up Oz and Stella's Christmas presents, since they were having such a great sale. Of course, we couldn't resist picking up a couple of toys for them to have now - they really love their hedgehogs.

Friday evening, we met up with my family again in Greensboro to celebrate Katie's 23rd birthday - which makes me feel very old! It was a great dinner and a really fun time to catch up with everyone again. During dinner, we realized it's only a week from today that we will be celebrating our one year anniversary. This year has really flown by and it's very hard to believe that we've already been married for a year! Here are some pictures from Katie's birthday celebration:

15 weeks

We're moving right along! This week, I feel even more like I'm expanding, although there's only a slight change in belly size, from what I can tell. My energy level's still improving; I'm able to do a lot more at night when I get home from work now - rather than just collapsing on the couch and not moving until I hit the sack. Between last weekend and this weekend, I have successfully managed to get almost all of my Christmas shopping done! I had a goal to try and get it all done (or as much as possible) before Thanksgiving and it looks like I might reach that goal.

If you'll notice in this week's belly picture, the house is decorated for Christmas! At least most of the way - we still need to put up the tree (hopefully tomorrow). I was able to convince Richard that, yes, it really would be ok to go ahead and decorate the house, so we would have more time to enjoy it. I'm not entirely sure he was convinced, but he got the decorations down from the attic for me anyway :o) .

We had a doctor's visit this past Tuesday and everything went well. It was a short and sweet appointment (my favorite) and we got to listen in on the little one again. The heartbeat was right in the 140's, although it took a little while to get it, due to all the flipping around the little one was doing!

Here is the 15 week belly picture:

14 weeks...

Disclaimer: I didn't get a chance to post last week, so the 14 week post is actually being written on week 15 - just pretend it's 14 weeks :o) .

Things are still going well - I'm happy to say that for the past week and a half or so, I have successfully stayed up past 9:00p - a definite improvement over my previous 8:00p bedtime!

We've been pretty busy this week with work and such, but were able to have a really nice dinner and catch-up time with Richard's parents over the weekend. It had been awhile since we had gotten together, so we both really enjoyed getting to spend some time with them - and having a yummy dinner.

On Friday, I was in to the doctor's office for an exam, unrelated to the baby, but got the chance to get a sneak peek at what was going on with the little one - which was a great surprise! Those pictures are below - if you notice, in the first one, he/she is stretching out their legs and you can just see a little foot. In the second (my personal favorite), they're sucking their thumb - very cute! The little one was very busy, bouncing around and stretching its legs, which was very cool to see.

 

Below is the baby belly at 14 weeks - not much of a change between this week and last, but I sure do feel like I'm expanding!

13 weeks

Yay for the second trimester! This week has gotten even better, as far as my appetite and range of things I get to eat goes - only one incidence of a really bad stomach moment this week - very nice! My energy level does seem to be slowly going up as well, which is really nice. I'm looking forward to an even bigger jump in energy soon (I hope!). Due to my increased energy level and pretty stable tummy, we got to have our first date night out in awhile. We had a delicious dinner at Firebirds and are hoping we can go back to our weekly date nights pretty soon.We took some belly pictures today, at 13 weeks, as this is probably the first week there's even a slight belly to see.

This weekend, we got to celebrate with Matt and Cathleen at their wedding in Asheboro. It was a beautiful and really enjoyable ceremony and reception. We had a great time catching up with friends and family and got to reminisce about our own wedding day, which took place in the same church. It's hard to believe we're coming up on our year anniversary already!

Pumpkins and Dog Costumes

Yep, we dressed the dogs up for Halloween this year - it took some convincing of Richard, but eventually he warmed up to the idea - especially once we realized they mark all the costumes 75% off by Halloween. We dressed Oz up as a fireman and Stella up as an angel. We really wanted to find her a little devil costume, since that fits her personality so much better than an angel, but since we couldn't find one, we settled for an ironic costume instead. She liked hers much more than Oz liked his fireman outfit (he really didn't like his hat), but eventually we had to take it off of her - when she started attacking her wings!  



We carved our pumpkin the night before Halloween this year. Richard carved a scary face pumpkin and we had at least a few comments from our trick or treaters that it was indeed a very scary pumpkin. Since Richard has the artistic talent in the family, my job was the scooping out of the pumpkin guts. Luckily, this year's pumpkin had great color and a great face to carve and not many guts at all - a nice change from one of our pumpkins a couple years ago. We only had about 20 trick or treaters, leaving us with about half of our candy supply left over. Luckily, we'll both be able to take some to work to share - we definitely don't need it around here - way too much of a temptation for me! Now that Halloween's over, we're getting closer and closer to my favorite holiday - Christmas! But, the rule in our house is no decorating until Thanksgiving is over, so I will be anxiously awaiting the weekend after Thanksgiving. 


On the baby front, we are about 12 weeks along now and everything has been going smoothly. My appetite is still good (sometimes too good!), but I do still have to be careful about what I eat, as some things don't sit as well as others. From everything I've heard and read, things only get better in the second trimester and I am definitely looking forward to some increased energy. We hope everyone had a safe and Happy Halloween!