Serious Growth!

It's time for the next baby picture. Today marks 25 weeks- only 15 to go! Carson could not believe that it was time to take another picture. Time is really flying now!


Just for fun I'm posting my 23 week picture again so you can see the difference. I have grown so much over the past two weeks!

2 Years!

Carson and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary this past week. We went to the same restaurant we did for our 1st and they actually sat us in the same booth. It was a weird deja vu moment but made for some fun conversation about where we were compared to last year. We asked each other questions such as: Did you ever think that we would be planing for our first child one year later? Or that Carson would have started his career? Or that we would have another puppy? So much has changed over the past year and it's so fun to sit and talk about how far we have come in that time. It makes us appreciate the experiences that we have!

Thanks for a wonderful 2 years honey! I can't wait to see what adventures God has in store for us to experience together!

Cabin Fever

Last Sunday night/Monday morning, we had a very big (for this area) snow storm hit. It brought about 8 inches of snow that is still on the ground a week later! It was fun and powdery the first day but then it began to ice over at night and even the dogs didn't like going outside because it was hard to walk on. You think we would have pictures this but things are still crazy for Carson getting settled into his new job and still working on grad school work. He had to work from home on Monday and Tuesday but was able to carefully drive to work by Wednesday. My entire work week was canceled and I only made it out of the house once to go grocery shopping and even then the road were still pretty icy. It sure felt good to finally get out of the house!

Carson is really liking his new job now that his is getting all settled in. The commute sure isn't fun, but he loves what he is doing and the people he is working with.

I've been getting settled into a schedule here at home with the puppies and just keeping up with things in general. I feel like there is so much that I should be doing to get ready for the baby so I'm trying to be productive with my time. Here is my newest baby bump picture at 23 weeks:

A New Year with lots of changes!

Carson has been continually on the job hunt for some time now with very few results but the day we left for Charleston, he received a very exciting call about a job. He interviewed as soon as we returned from our trip and came home from the interview with a job offer!! It is a local job which means we get to stay in the area! He was hired by a company called Logic Packaging and they will be sending him as a representative to work for another company called Bosch. While his boss will be very involved in the work that he is doing, Carson is the only Logic employee that will be there on a day to day basis giving him a lot of responsibility. Carson has talked about wanting a contract packaging job because he will always be working on something different. He is just starting his second week of work but so far he is enjoying his job. He is on a 30 trial period right now but if things go well he will have a full contract by the beginning of next month!

This is a very exciting change for our family. It a huge adjustment for me since all I have known for our almost two years of married life is him either working from home or just part time at the University, but this is a great opportunity that the Lord has brought along in his perfect timing!

December

On December 5th, I felt the baby move for the first time! It was still a couple of weeks before Carson was able to feel it, but it was exciting to be able to feel the baby growing inside of me. I was feeling much better by this time but still had very little energy and had to take things slowly.

On December 21st we had our 20 week ultrasound and found out that we are having a baby boy!! We didn't tell our parents about our appointment because we wanted to surprise them. We were able to record the ultrasound and so we made a copy of it for each family and mailed it home wrapped in a blue bib to open on Christmas. It was a great Christmas surprise!! We will call him Miles Thomas Snipes.

We stayed home again for Christmas this year and I am sure glad we did because it ended up being a White Christmas! It was very exciting for us. We've celebrated Christmas before in Orlando where temps were in the 80's! This was also Rylie's first snow so we took the dogs out the next day to play and we all had a blast!

Rylie's first snow on Christmas night

Right after Christmas we headed off to Charleston for Carson to photograph a wedding for a friend of his from Clemson. It was fun to work with Carson coordinating everything that goes into photographing a wedding. It was much more intense than we had thought but we somehow made it through the day and had a great time doing it. We got to stay right on the beach so I got some sunrise photo's one morning as well.

21 Week Baby Bump:

When we returned home, Carson's family was here to visit for a late Christmas/New Years family gathering. We did a secret Santa exchange with the extended family and had a nice visit for a few days.


To end this year, here are our family Christmas pictures. My parents decided to be in ours this year (normally it's just the kids) but I don't blame them since they have both lost 80 lbs each this year!

The puppies wanted a photo of their own too!

November

Because I was still feeling bad, not a lot happened in November until we went home for Thanksgiving. My baby bump started to show and I began to document with pictures every two weeks. The first one was taken on November 15, when I was 15 weeks along.

I was able to get about 10 days off for Thanksgiving so we took a long trip down to Florida to visit our families. We started off staying at Carson's house. Carson's grandma was there for Thanksgiving so it was a nice family visit. We had two delicious Thanksgiving dinners and then finished out our visit at my house. We took a family day out to Downtown Disney and took a picnic out on a pontoon boat. The weather was perfect and it was a great way to end our trip.

Family Picture at Downtown Disney

Mom and Dad on the boat

Baby's first picture with Winnie the Pooh (the theme for the nursery)

Captain Carson

And the baby kept growing. My 17 week picture.

October

By October my morning sickness had set in to stay for a while and I was good for nothing except growing the baby. Carson, luckily working from home at the time, took on a lot of the household responsibilities as well and did an excellent job taking care of me and the puppies. The puppies enjoyed being lazy with me.


We did make it home for a weekend to check up on the dads and to get some car troubles fixed. Carson's dad was still not back at work and was actually recovering from having a lot of fluid on his lung. Carson was able to help his mom and dad around the house with tasks that his dad could not do because of lifting restrictions.

September

I'm going to update by month to get caught up and then hopefully start fresh for the year!

September brought many changes to our life. In late August, I got a call from my mom that my dad had gotten a skin cancer diagnosis of Melanoma. I quickly rushed down to Florida to be with my family. They scheduled him for a biopsy surgery and while we were at the hospital the day before for pre-op, I got a call from Carson that his dad was being admitted to a hospital across town for heart problems. He had a heart attack that afternoon while I was visiting him, and then again while he was having a heart cath procedure done. He was immediately scheduled for emergency bypass surgery the next morning. Carson, still in South Carolina, quickly packed up the dogs and drove through the night to get there in time for his dad's surgery. He arrived at my house about 4 am where I greeted him with a positive pregnancy test! We didn't have much time to celebrate on such a somber day as we both headed off to different hospitals to be with our dads for their surgeries.

My dad got an excellent report in that they were able to remove all of the melanoma with the biopsy (no chemo!). Caron's dad also came through surgery with a good report, but he would have a much longer recovery. We were able to share the news of our pregnancy with our parents before we left to return home. Both sets of parents were very excited for their first grand baby!

I can't remember what else happened in September (I think that was enough!). We did return home to have our first doctor appointment on September 28th where we got to see the baby and hear its heartbeat for the first time! Once we had the doctors appointment, we began quickly spreading the news!