31 Weeks 5 Days

Things have been very busy here, sorry we haven't posted more. Today we had another Doctor appointment, everything is looking good. I'm feeling pretty good; sleeping is getting difficult and my lower back and hips are sore some days. But overall I feel pretty good. Russ and I started childbirth classes last Monday. It's hard to believe how close it's getting!

Beginning of the Christmas season

We got all of our Christmas lights up early to kick off the holiday season. And our "adorable" cat, Killian knocked over our Christmas tree, just 2 days after we put it up. We've had the same artificial tree up for 4 years with that cat and he's never done that, but he is a bigger trouble maker this year. He denies all culpability.

Some of the ornaments broke, but overall it could have been worse. Still a little tweaking to do on the the outdoor lights.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
We spent the yesterday and today at my folks new house. We ate the traditional turkey/stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and had an apple pie and a chocolate pecan pie too.

Today we went back over for the Colorado/Nebraska game. The Buffaloes won 65-51! and became bowl eligible. Not bad from a 2-10 season last year. Texas lost today to Texas A&M, but still have a shot at the big 12 title game if Oklahoma loses to Oklahoma St.

We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!

28 weeks 3 days

Well we're officially in the third trimester! It's hard to believe. I think the first trimester went by somewhat slow but the second tri went a lot faster. I have a feeling with the holidays coming this last tri is going to go by fast too! Although I'm sure it won't feel that way those last couple weeks!

Thursday was Russ's birthday! We went out to a nice dinner Thursday night, just the two of us. And tonight we went out again with Russ's parents to the Melting Pot, which was great!





Here's a really cute picture of Killian whose taken to sitting in a little photo box on the new desk. He totally doesn't fit, but it doesn't seem to bother him!

27 weeks and 3 days

Just a quick post with some pictures because it's getting late and I need to get to bed!


Me :-)


And here's our crib in the Baby room!

new desk

Our most ambitious carpentry project yet. Lots of priming, painting, measuring, and finding someone with a table saw.

More Baby Stuff!

This past week we bought two big baby items; a stroller and a dresser! We're super excited about our BOB Revolution jogging stroller that Russ got highly discounted from the latest REI garage sale! It's sweet! :-) We also picked up a dresser for cheap on craigslist. We're giving it a new coat of white paint and replacing the white pulls with silver knobs.







We've had a very productive weekend at the Denny house! We cleaned our grout and tile in our kitchen and resealed it today. I've been spending a lot of time organizing all kinds of stuff. Now we're working on getting the new desk setup! We'll add some pictures when it's done.

Today I'm 26 weeks and 3 days! I've been feeling the baby move for several weeks now, which is the coolest thing! Russ got to feel the baby move for the first time when we were in Bermuda. Lately the kicks are getting a lot stronger, every once in awhile they catch me be surprise! I'm still doing good! I'm a little more tired than non-pregnant Michelle and my sides (hip muscles?) get sore at the end of the day, but overall I feel good!

A Scary Halloween!!!

Yesterday afternoon, a bank (Wachovia Bank) branch about 1 mile from our house was robbed by 3 armed men! I drove on an errand from our house and noticed all the police cars and police ribbon around the bank. When I got back from my errand, a police helicopter was circling over our neighborhood.

About 15 police cars were cruising around and we learned on the news that they caught 2 of the 3 men. They had crashed a Ford Mustang into a ditch (no further than 1/2 mile from our house) and the car completely burned up. They arrested one of the men at the car crash site, and another in someone's backyard using a police dog.

The 3rd man got away. About 30 mins after the police basically left our neighborhood, our neighbor and his wife saw a young man come out of the storm gutter through the man hole cover!! He had been hiding out.

This is 2 houses down from where we live. He had a cell phone and was picked up by an accomplice in a Nissan pickup!! The police caught him today, but it was a weird Halloween.

We had about a dozen groups of kids trick or treating last night. And we watched the James Cameron movie Aliens.

[Michelle here adding on...] Here's what I wore to work yesterday for Halloween, I was a pregnant school girl :-) And check out the sweet pumpkin cutout we had in our front yard. Some of you might remember this sign. Before I moved to Texas my Dad cut the board into the shape of a pumpkin and painted it!

Bermuda trip, Oct. 07

Michelle and I spent 4 and a half days in beautiful Bermuda October 19-23rd. On our mini-vacation I also swam the Round the Sound Open Water swim which has been held there for 17 years. There were different distances and about 160 swimmers there and I did the 2.5 mile distance. My finishing time was 1:09 and I was 2nd in my age division.

We spent a good bit of time at the beaches and getting around the 21 mile long island nation. They have a great public transportation system and we got around by bus, ferry boat, and scooter. Our favorite beach was called Tobacco Bay Beach. We went there twice.

Our non-beach and non-swim race time was spent in Hamilton, the biggest town there, and at other points of interests like the Royal Naval Dockyard.

At dinner on Sunday we saw one of the largest mega yachts in the world, Octopus, owned by Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft. It's 416 feet long and has a permanent crew of 60 including several former Navy SEALS. Very impressive ship.
Bermuda was very cool.

Trip to NY

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, it's been very crazy here! I just got back from recruiting at RPI and visiting my family and then on Friday we leave again for Bermuda!

The trip was great! (Besides the mess up with my expired license and got being able to get on my original flight...) Saturday my family surprised me with a baby shower! It was so nice! Thanks to everyone who was there! Here are some pics:

Milwaukee trip

We spent 4 days visiting Milwaukee, WI (Sat-Tues) with Nora/Kevin and Dan/Karen in the Milwaukee suburbs. We got to see their new baby girls, Allie, and Cassidy, (ages 7 mos. and 4 mos. respectively). Michelle's college friend Lauren and her husband Josh drove from Michigan 7 hours to see everyone and stayed just 24 hours.

On Sunday we went to the Milwaukee Zoo and had a great time. Very nice zoo there. Big cats, polar bears, grizzlies, Elk, Gorillas, apes,wolves and many more. And a hyena who did a cool trick by standing on his back legs and spinning around.

We went to Downtown Milwaukee on Monday and Lake Michigan, near the yacht harbor. Never having been to any of the Great Lakes, it is more like the ocean, but not as blue. Saw kite boarders at the beach launching off the waves 20 feet off the water's surface. Had lunch at a hipster coffee shop.

We grilled on Monday night and prior to leaving Tuesday toured Miller Park, home of the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team.
The photos are the Milwaukee Zoo, the harbor, and downtown.
Great trip!

20 week Ultrasound

We had our 20 week ultrasound this morning. It was amazing! I loved watching the baby move his or her little hands, mouth, feet, everything! They shut off our monitor when looking at the babies gender so we still don't know (which is what we wanted). I don't think there is anything in the videos that shows the gender but if there is, please don't tell us!

Here is the video we got:

Home Improvements

We've been busy with home improvements lately. I believe this phenomenon is called "nesting" :-)


Here's our dining room, we added a cabinet to store glassware and serving ware. We also finally added curtains!


Here's Killian enjoying the curtains!


Russ put in a cat door so the cats can get out into the garage from the house. The idea is that we'll be moving the kitty litter and their dry food bowls out there. Although we're currently still working on the transition. The cats LOVE the garage, the go out and then they don't want to come in!


Here's the drawers/file cabinets for the desk we're semi-custom building in the extra space in our kitchen.


And lastly we added some curtains to bedroom today! We're not sure on the color, we'd like to go a little lighter... but you get the idea :) And that's Max sitting on one the three of the picture frames we're going to hang over the bed.

Just a couple photos

Here's a pic of me tonight (18+ weeks) in one of my new maternity outfits


And here's a pic of Russ and I tonight. We just got back from spending a nice evening with Russ's parents.

Maternity Clothes

Well I finally did it, I went shopping for some new clothes this past weekend. I've been talking about getting some clothes for weeks now, but I don't really like to shop to begin with so shopping for clothes that I'm only going to be wearing for a short period of time was even less appealing. But I made it out! I went to the local mall and hit up the Motherhood store. I ended up getting two pairs of Capri pants and two short sleeve shirts. I love the clothes! The shirts are nice and long which is great! I've been living in t-shirts that barely cover my low rise jeans (which I can no longer wear a belt with...). So it's nice not to have to worry when sitting down / bending over... And the pants have elastic waist bands which are like the best thing ever! I love the elastic waist band, makes my hourly bathroom visits much better!

I also wanted to answer some of the questions we've been getting (btw thanks for all the comments! It's so neat to see y'all are reading our blog!!).

Do you know the gender? Nope, we're actually not going to find out - it's going to be a surprise! Our big ultrasound (where we could find out) is on 9/20.

What my work plans? The plan is to work as long as I can. I guess it all depends on how the rest of the pregnancy goes but I hope to be working until I go into labor. Afterwards the plan is go back to work after 2 - 3 months. I can take up to 3 months off but I only get paid (i.e. take sick time) for the first 6 weeks. I'm thinking I'll probably end up taking the whole 3 months because I won't be ready to go back after just 2.

Are you working on a nursery? The plan is to turn our current guest room into the baby room, and move the guest room into whats now the office and build a desk in the nook of extra space in our kitchen to put our office stuff in. :-) So right now we're working on the desk, the rest is kind of a chain reaction! The room is already painted a nice light blue and we're going to leave it that color. We'll probably get some light green & yellow bedding and curtains to go in there too. But that's about as much as we've thought about it so far.

Wow, this might be my longest post yet! We'll I'll stop now before it gets any longer!

4 Month Appt

Friday we had our 16 week appointment. It went well! We got to hear the heartbeat again which was in the 130s. The doctor said I was measuring right on target and my weight gain was in a healthy range. :-) Last week I had a headache that lasted several days and Tylenol was doing nothing for me. So I called the Doctor's office and the nurse told me to take a Tylenol, a Sudafed and drink a Coke! And it worked!

I'm slowly moving into full blown nesting mode. We haven't done anything major yet but as soon as we do we'll post pics!

15 Weeks

15 weeks - yay! Next Friday we have our 16 week appointment and then its only one month until our next ultrasound! I'm feeling much better, I cooked dinner twice this weekend, which is something I haven't done in months.

Symptom Update
I still gag at bad smells, but I haven't thrown up in over a week. I also have: bad gas, mild headaches, increased hunger- especially in the mornings/lunch, and I'm starting to have a belly. I'm sure most of my belly is still due to food / lack of working out...

Here's a picture of me today:

We're Expecting!

Our due date is February 7! I'm 14 weeks along now and finally starting to get over the morning sickness (i.e. all day sickness). We're really excited and we'll try and keep you all updated on our blog. The ultrasound picture is from 7 weeks when the baby was only ~10cm!

Texas storms

We've had lots and lots of storms this July and besides the yard being green and the lakes being full, the occasional sunset is very cool to see. This photo was just as I was arriving home to our neighborhood tonight about 8:30.

July NY trip

We took our trip to New York for the 4th to see the Boss' and go camping. Camping in the Adirondacks was cut short by rain and thunderstorms, but we did get to canoe and hang out by the lake on the good weather day.

We saw Lake George and drove up Prospect Mtn. then headed back to Ballston Spa to relax and drink beers on the screen porch.
Had a great time in NY.

Finished front landscaping

We finished the front yard landscaping and planting yesterday. We planted 5 kinds of plants: Nandinas, Dwarf Yaupon Holly, Abelias, Japanese Sedge, and Salvia Greggi.

We had moved the Live Oak over, and planted a Red Oak as well. We're really happy with how it all turned out and now it's just maintenance time.

Here are a couple of photos:

Tour de Cure charity bike ride

The Tour de Cure charity bike ride was today benefiting the American Diabetes Assn.

Great course, only about 400 riders, much smaller than some other charity rides. I rode from Texas St. Univ in San Marcos to Austin (80 miles). The fun part was going though the town of Lockart in an organized pack of about 20 cyclist going fast. (I was catching the draft at the back).

Yard Update

Friday evening and Saturday morning we got a lot more done on our yard. We got most of the edging in and planted some scrubs in front of the house! We're hoping to finish next weekend!

Landscaping

Russ and I are working on a pretty big landscaping project for the front yard. So far we've planted a new tree, a Red Oak, moved our live oak, and started digging up the lawn/weeds where we'll be putting in a bed of native plants.

Here's the front yard back in April


Here it is after we planted the new tree and moved the live oak (about 2 weeks ago)


And I don't have a full front yard pic after yesterday but here's a bunch of photos that kind of give y'all an idea of what we're doing. We've toughly outlined where we'll dig up the bed with string. After we dig out the grass / weeds (its mostly weeds back in the corner thanks to the renters next door) we'll put down some green edging and plant a bunch of native plants in the bed. We're removing all the white limestone rocks too, we'll probably try and re-use those in the backyward.







And here's Russ carving out where the edging along the property line will go