30 weeks and counting

30 weeks pregnant. For some reason it sounds so much farther along than 29 weeks. Who ever thought of counting a nine month pregnancy by weeks anyway? talk about tedious.

Well, I am 30 weeks pregnant....no more...no less. We still don't know the gender but I have a hunch it's girl. Ethan often points at my tummy and then pretends to rock a baby in his arms. I am not sure he really realizes what's going on (if any of us do) but he loves to kiss my tummy which is too cute. I have learned to be careful about telling him when the baby is kicking because the first few times I did he started kicking me in the stomach! In his mind he is the baby. Half the time we ask him where the baby is he points to himself with a big grin, but we are getting there. No doubt it will hit him most assuredly when our bundle of joy comes home!

My pregnancy has been healthy and I don't feel like I can really complain. I have so many pregnant friends right now on bed rest, or constantly medicated--so for a pregnant lady I am doing amazingly well. After a little scare when Ethan was born with my confused blood type we were thrilled to learn this time around that Craig is a B- blood type! Which mixes nicely with my AB- blood. I guess we were made for each other:) So things have been good, and we have been blessed.

When I was near the end with Ethan I really missed the agility that a smaller body offers....that is probably the hardest thing for me. Soon I will be able to run again--without looking like a penguin:) Until then I will enjoy my large feminine body the best I can, and thank Heavenly Father every day for the beautiful little boy already in our lives and our second blessing on it's way.

Happy Fourth of July!

This year we visited Craig's family in North Carolina for the fourth. The six hour drive was much nicer than the 17 hours we use to have from Texas! Although sitting for even that long as a big pregnant lady is not the easiest thing--we survived the drive and enjoyed the weekend. We spent a lot of time just hanging out and enjoying family and the yard.

The fourth was spent at Uncle Barney's with the annual fish fry. It was a great party! The torrential down pour made things a little more interesting but we all had a fun time. Also, important to note: the food was amazing! (A wonderful part about this stage of pregnancy is food is soooo good and you just can't get enough!!!)

Here is Ethan and Grammy at Nanny's for Sunday dinner. Nanny gave him a big stuffed frog that he is "riding". He LOVES it.
















Ethan climbed on top of the car all by himself! I was just getting to him when we took this picture! He couldn't ride in it, he had to ride on top. Wild little man!

A fun Saturday morning

On Saturday we went to Great Falls National Park. We enjoyed hiking and seeing the falls early in the morning before it got too hot. It was great to be outside.

And here is a picture of Ethan just being his usual cute self trying on Dad's shoes.

Happy Father's Day!

We sure love our Dad's and are grateful for their wonderful examples to us. Craig and I are very blessed to both have Fathers who raised us well and taught us what is truly important.

I am also grateful for the great Dad Craig is to Ethan and will be to our new baby. Since Craig has been working from home so much more Ethan has been in heaven. At least 100 times a day Ethan runs to Daddy to give him a big sloppy (usually very drooly) kiss. We had a fun Father's day enjoying pork chops, mashed potatoes and cinnamon apples for dinner. I think every-bodies favorite part though was the cookies at the end. We caught Ethan eating Craig's "cookie bouquet" while we were skyping with our dads--so I think he enjoyed himself!

Ethan and his garden

Ethan has LOVED our garden this year. He spends at least an hour on the patio every day watering (or pretending to water) the plants. We got him a little camp chair his size so he can sit out there. You can't see it in this picture but he even has his own little squash plant. We gave him his own since he insisted on pulling the plants up by the roots. His squash has endured many a baby assault but is surprisingly still blooming regularly! It is is however less than half the size of all our other plants but the beauty of it is that it is his plant and he loves it. If you ask him how his squash is doing he will run over and check for you every time. Here is a picture of us about to enjoy our first garden fresh pea--it was amazing!

National Air and Space Museum

This memorial day we had a chance to go to the National Air and Space Museum with Wendy (Craig's sister) and her kids. It was great. Ethan loved it to say the least. He slept for the drive over and woke to see his favorite cousin Callan smiling over his stroller. That was enough to make his afternoon but when he realized we were going to see hundreds of airplanes he couldn't contain himself. He laughed and pointed up at all the airplanes the entire visit.  We thought he would enjoy the museum but we had no idea how much!

A funny quark

Ethan has a collection of funny quarks, but here is one that just makes me laugh. To start, he loves his blankie. He doesn't love to to just cuddle with it though, he loves to rip holes in it and tear the batting out. Then he loves to rub the fuzz all over his face while he sucks his thumb. I have recently noticed he has a hard time doing all the little boy things he loves to do with one hand holding a ball of fuzz and the other thumb in his mouth so his solution has been to store a ball of fuzz in his ear. This way he has at least one hand free but has his "blankie" of sorts ready just an ears shot away.

Here is a little bit of Ethan being Ethan. Diapers come off faster than they go on around here and poor blankie is always being torn to shreds. 

It's a........well, it's not a duck!

We are having a baby! 

I am due October 6th...of course always give or take:) Today was our big ultrasound to find out the gender but our little one was shy and didn't want to give out the surprise. We are kind of assuming it's a girl because we never saw any evidence of a boy, but the baby also never opened it's legs at all! I walked the halls a couple times to get this child to move around but we have a stubborn little baby apparently! So I guess we are going the old fashion route because the technician said she simply couldn't tell us! The important news is everything looked healthy and we are very excited.

Here is a shot of our beautiful/handsome baby:)

Apartment style gardening

We were excited to discover we had plenty of sun on our large balcony to grow a little garden this year. Ethan of course loves playing in the dirt, adding worms he finds to each pot, and pulling leaves off. He also really enjoys smelling the tomatoes--he loves tomatoes so I think he will be very excited to learn one of his favorite foods will start growing soon from his already lovely plant.

Frying Pan Farm Park

One of our first adventures here in Virginia has been to Frying Pan Farm Park. We went on our anniversary actually with Wendy and her kids (how romantic huh?) actually it couldn't have been better. The weather was perfect and the cows were super friendly. It is an old farm that was functional 80 years ago. The county bought it up and turned it into a park. I kept thinking of my Grandpa's farm and how his must have been similar. There are still lots of animals, a garden, a functioning smoke house, and even the cute farm house can be toured. It goes without saying: Ethan loved it...though I am not sure who enjoyed themselves more, Ethan or Craig. It's only about a 15 minute drive from us through the woods and it was pretty cool.