My baby is one

Today is our youngest puppy's birthday. Rylie (and her brother, Baxter, who lives with my parents) have now experienced the first year of their life. She only weights 63 lbs so I think we are going to end up with a pretty small dog for a lab. Rylie celebrated her birthday with trip to the vet. I know that doesn't sound fun but we didn't realize it when we made the appointment. It wasn't all bad; she got to pick out a nice new bone while we were at the store that she has been chewing on ever since we got home. Here are some pictures of her playing.

Ginny got to do everything Rylie did today so she didn't get left out. She had so much fun playing with daddy in the yard this afternoon that she decided she wanted to chill on the porch. This picture just melts my heart.

One Month

Tomorrow will be one month until Miles' due date! It's so crazy to think that we will be meeting him so soon. I am so ready to meet him and so ready to not be pregnant anymore. I feel like all I remember is me being pregnant. Although time has flown in some aspects, I feel like I have been pregnant forever! I don't mean to complain but it is the truth. I am not one of those lucky women (like my mom) who just absolutely loved being pregnant and didn't have any problems with it. Maybe the next pregnancy will be different. People have told me (and warned Carson) that the last month is the most miserable so I am totally looking forward to that- NOT! Ok, enough complaining from this tired, cranky pregnant woman. Here are some pictures to enjoy.

Here I am at 35 weeks. I think my smile gets a litte more fake every time we take one of the photos.

Carson's dad built us a co-sleeper. The bedding just arrived for it so now it's all made up and ready for Miles.

Sitting in our glider in the nursery tonight I took some random up close shots of different aspects of the nursery. Enjoy some of these detailed shots. Final pictures of entire room still to come.

Wubanub pacifier- I love this little puppy. Someone said that this should make it easier for the dogs to be able to pull the paci out of his mouth. Oops!

We got some Winnie the Pooh wall hangings to go over the crib that are so precious. Here is Roo. He is just one of the five characters hanging on the wall.

Boo Boo Bunny. Comes with a reusable ice cube to soothe boo boos. I had one of these guys when I was little. I was so happy to find them when I was registering and blessed to receive it as a gift.

These are the monogrammed drawer pulls we had made for some of the drawers on the crib. I love how they turned out.

Cute little baby sandals. From my experience babies just love to kick these off, but it will be cute while they last.

Good-bye crazy gas bills

As I mentioned in a previous post, we sold Carson's jeep a few weeks ago. It was a great car and he had a blast with it in college, but we needed a more grown up, family friendly car and also one that wouldn't kill us with gas bills. So this past week we purchased a Toyota Prius for Carson. He is loving his new (to him) car and is making it a challenge to maximize his gas mileage. Let just say that 48 mpg is way better than 17!!

Nursery Progress

Well my thought of finishing the nursery all in one weekend sure didn't happen but I feel much better with the furniture in it. It actually looks like a nursery! My parents came to visit for about a week and it was so wonderful to have them here! Dad worked hard putting the changing table together that he had built and then mom and I got our turn to get in the nursery and put all the baby items away.

We are so thankful to have all of this special furniture that our dads made!!

For right now I just have pictures of the changing table. We're still working on getting the crib finished up and put together, but I'll post pictures as things come together.

Gardening

On top of the may things we have to do to prepare for the arrival of our little boy, we (I) decided it would be fun to try our hand at gardening this year. We had a tomato plant and some herbs last year and I thoroughly enjoyed being able to make a meal using produce that I had grown! I had heard about square foot gardening and I so I did some further research into it. It looks like a great way to garden and once we get it all set up and started, it should be a very low maintenance garden by the time Miles arrives. By that point I'm thinking it will be great to go and get food out of my garden rather than packing up a baby and going to the grocery store. We'll see if my theory pans out. . .

We are planting Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Pole Beans, Green and Red Peppers, Basil, Broccoli, Zucchini, Rosemary, Oregano, Lettuce, Spinach, Cilantro, Marigolds, Zinnias, Mint, and Lambs Ear.

But for now, I have some pictures of getting all set up. I have had some seeds growing inside for a little while and just transplanted our first little plants, so the plan has been set in motion.

Carson was very helpful in the manual labor of building the actual boxes and carrying the large bags of soil.

Ginny had to leave her mark and be a part of the garden building

Our finished main garden (except for the netting for the tomatoes and cucumbers to grow on) We put the trellis up to deter the dogs from running through the garden when they are running through the yard.

This another box that we put by our back door. We'll put Marigolds and Lambs Ear in this one.

In the home stretch

I am now 33 weeks along and as it gets harder to breathe as Miles grows, we are getting very excited about meeting him soon. I thought I would freak out when I hit 30 weeks but instead I became very excited about the fact that I'm going to be a mom soon! I have spent the last 12 years of my life babysitting and playing with other peoples children, but soon, God will bless us with a little boy that he has entrusted to us! That thought just thrills me!

We have almost completed our pregnancy classes and I am feeling much more prepared on what to expect. I used to be scared of labor because I handle pain very poorly but it's the means to an end. It's what has to happen to welcome little Miles into the world and at the end, I won't care about the pain he caused me as I'm holding him in my arms.

I have just a few more day left working at Hallmark and then I will be home to fully concentrate on getting things ready for him and to get as much rest as I can.

Here are the latest pregnancy photos:

31 weeks

33 Weeks. A few notes about this photo. Not to point out my flaws but yes, my eyes look very tired. This baby is wearing me out! I am getting very tired very quickly these days. Also, Miles wanted to be a part of this photo. He was kicking my bottom hand the whole time!

Playing catch up once again

I have desperately been wanting to sit down and update this blog about all the happenings in our life but just have not had the time to make sitting at the computer a priority. So I'm staying up late tonight to at least say that I haven't forgotten about my faithful readers. We have had a very exciting time lately. I have been doing some traveling since pretty soon I won't be able to for a while. I went to visit my grammy recently in Alabama and we had a great weekend spending time together. We rarely get one on one time any more because normally I have hubby or one of the puppies with me so it was a special time. A few weekends later I traveled home to Orlando for some baby showers (pictures to come soon as soon as Carson can edit them for me). Ever since I returned from Orlando and recovered from the sleep deprivation I have really been focusing on getting things ready for Miles' arrival. Each weekend I have different projects lined up for Carson to help me with. Poor guy never gets a break! Two weekends ago we started our square foot garden (more to come in a later post) and this weekend we pretty much rearranged the entire house preparing for all of the nursery furniture coming up next weekend! Things are getting accomplished here but there still seems to be so much to do!

Our most exciting news (or sad if you are Carson) is that we said good bye to the beloved Jeep this weekend. We found a private buyer without even looking and before you know it we were one car down and I had a very sad husband on my hands. We are on to a better, more family friendly (and fuel efficient) car now and I'm sure I'll have picture of that to share as well as soon as we find the right car.

So there is very brief update on our life. Hopefully I can get the other post I mentioned up soon.