Merry Christmas!!

We are right at 20 weeks at Christmas and, according to the doctor, are right on track. We had our monthly doctor's appoinment this week and got to listen to her heart - her heart rate was right at 140 beats/min today, which is pretty much in line with how her heart rate has been throughout. Here's the 20 week belly picture:

We had a great Christmas this year. We got to spend time with both sides of the family and really enjoyed the time we got to spend with everybody. Of course, all of our gifts were really awesome, too! The dogs really appreciated their Christmas presents they got this year, if you'll check out the pictures below.

Playing with their new squeaky toys:

Richard giving them their massive Christmas rawhide bones:

 And digging right into them:

Richard gave me an awesome new camera for Christmas and I have gotten so much use out of it already. Here's a couple pictures I took Christmas Day (keep in mind, these are both taken from across the room, zoomed in about 14x):

 At the Gabriel Christmas celebration, I was able to get some really cute shots of both Miss Daisy and Miss Willie (in her very cute and stylish Christmas sweater):

And a shot of Richard in his Christmas hat 2009:

And Miss Sophie sitting with Grandpa at the Martin Christmas celebration:

We wanted to tell both of our families that we really enjoyed spending our Christmas with you guys and are really looking forward to next year! For everyone that we didn't get to see this year, we hope you had a very Merry Christmas and have a wonderful New Year!

19 weeks

...and getting bigger all the time! The baby's doing great, moving around a lot (we're pretty sure she has her daddy's energy level already!) and I'm feeling really great as well. I've had lots of energy and have been able to get so much stuff done around the house while off work. We painted the baby's room - it was orginally yellow, which would have been a great color to stick with, but the bedding we decided on is pink and brown - not so pretty with yellow. So we chose a different color and painted it this week - it turned out great, if I do say so myself :) We did much better this time around with our acquired painting skills! No pictures of the room yet - I'm going to wait until we have everything in place and then will post some pictures of the room all finished. Here is the 19 week belly picture:

We celebrated Katie's graduation the weekend before Christmas (congratulations Katie!!) - it's really hard to believe she's already graduated from college - that makes me feel really old! Due to some obstruction by a spectator while she was getting her diploma, I wasn't able to get a good picture of her. But, Tyler and Caleb gave me a great picture to remember the day by:

Afterward, we headed back to Katie's house for some delicious Mellow Mushroom pizza and yummy cake (Funfetti, of course, since it was Katie's choice :o) ) and some nice family hang out time.

18 weeks

Well, technically, we're on our 19th week, as of today, but this will be about our 18th week. Luckily, for me, this was also my last week of work for the year! It was a busy couple of weeks, as far as work is concerned, but given that I get to enjoy the last two weeks of the year with no work, it was worth it :o) . Other than working and hanging out at the house, we haven't been doing too much. We've been storing up our energy for the holidays! We did get to go to dinner with the Gabriel side of the family last Saturday, which was great. We all got to enjoy a great dinner and catching up time. We're looking forward to seeing them again at Christmas! Below is the 18 week belly picture:

****SPOILER ALERT!! If you don't want to know what Baby Gabriel is or are trying to stretch out the suspense a little longer - do not read below!****

And Baby Gabriel is.....

 

Yep, we're having a daughter! The girls are going to outweigh the boys in our household - too bad for Oz and Richard :o) . Here are some other pictures from that day - she was definitely showing off for the camera.

She was not fond of the ultrasound probe pushing on her!

Waving to everyone!

Our 1 year anniversary trip

It's hard to believe it's already been a year! We took a trip up to Asheville, to visit the Biltmore house and celebrate our first year as a married couple. This was Richard's first trip to Biltmore house and although I've been before, it was several years ago, so it really felt like I was seeing everything for the first time. The first night we got up there, we got to take a candlelight tour through the house, which was gorgeous. The house was lit with candles and fires were burning in all the fireplaces. We went back to go through the house during the day on Saturday and took an audio tour while we walked through. The house is so big it took us several hours each time to see it all. Although we couldn't get any pictures in the house, since they don't allow any photography, we got some great pictures when we meandered around the grounds and visited the Conservatory. It snowed on Saturday morning, which was a really nice surprise, and was really cold and windy most of the day - a perfect setting for a December day in the mountains. On Saturday night, we had a fantastic dinner at the Bistro by the Biltmore winery - the food was delicious! Here are some of the pictures from the trip:

And, as of yesterday, we are at 17 weeks! Below is my belly picture from this week - looks like we're getting bigger: