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!