Nursery Pics

Last Monday we had an ultrasound and found out that they are estimating Conner to be 6 pounds, 3 ounces ... he is going to be one big baby! Tuesday I had an appointment with the doctor and she said that hopefully I'll go into labor on my own at 37 or 38 weeks ... I'll be 37 weeks a week from tomorrow. I was excited because (1) I am so ready to meet our sweet baby boy, and (2) I am also ready to not be pregnant anymore ... everything is getting very squished in my belly, and I am getting more and more uncomfortable. And as excited as I was, I was also feeling more and more anxious about all the things we still needed to do in his room. So, the day after Thanksgiving Jason and I went to IKEA to pick up the last few pieces of furniture for Conner's room. We came home and put everything together and basically finished his room. It is such a great feeling to know that we are ready for him when we bring him home.

Next on my "to-do" list is to pack the bags for the hospital. Can't believe that it's time for that!

Maternity Pics

Here are some of my favorite shots from our maternity shoot on November 13 (33w3d). Natalie Pitts was amazing to work with and she did an amazing job on our photos. I highly recommend her for your next photo shoot!

Photo shoot ...

So our maternity portraits were so fun. A guy I used to be in the youth group praise band with married the sweetest girl who is also an amazing photographer! He and I are friends on Facebook, and so through him, I found his wife's website, and I contacted her for our maternity photos because all her stuff is so good. Here's a link to her website: http://blog.nataliepittsphotography.com/. I absolutely cannot wait for our sneak peek! She showed me a couple of the shots on her camera screen to show me the lighting ... and Oh.My.Goodness I seriously can't wait.

Here's a pic Jason snapped on his phone while we were at the shoot. It was so fun. :)

Showered with love...

This week was the week of my showers! Nothing makes a pregnancy more real than receiving gifts for your baby boy and knowing that he will be in your life before you know it. We are so blessed by great friends and family who contributed to all the great stuff we got to bring home for little Conner.

Thursday the ladies at my old job threw me a shower and I could not have been more excited! I haven't worked with them since May, and so it was truly so sweet that they wanted to share in the excitement of our growing family. My friend Debbie hosted at her house and we had really yummy food (coconut chicken, chicken quesadillas, and chicken salad with crackers) and drinks and a Nothing Bundt Cake for dessert! It was delicious! It was a great time catching up and chatting about what's going on at the office for those of us who have moved on to other jobs and me getting to talk about my pregnancy and how all of that is going. I opened a ton of gifts and was so blessed by the amazing generosity of my friends! It was a great time of laughing and talking and lots of fun girl time. I loved it and can't wait to bring Conner up to the office so he can meet all of my friends.

Friday night Jason insisted on a date night, which was a-okay in my book! We had both been craving pancakes so we went to IHOP for dinner. It was unbelievably good and we enjoyed just catching up with each other. Jason got to tell me all about how things are going for him at work and some of the things he's been thinking about regarding the pregnancy and Conner and being a soon-to-be dad. I was able to share with him some of the things I've been learning from the books I've been reading and just tell him how awesome he is and how thankful I am for him. After dinner we were going to go down to Coffee N Cream in Allen to listen to the live music on the patio ... but there wasn't anyone there! So we headed over to Saxby's and got Caramel Apple Ciders ... Oh.My.Goodness DELISH. We sat outside in the chilly evening air sipping our piping hot drinks and laughing and talking into the evening. It was such a good time to just reconnect after a long and busy week and we agreed that this will be a necessary thing for us to do on a weekly or bi-weekly basis once Conner is here.

Yesterday my friends threw me a shower and it was amazing! All the decorations were super cute and the food was awesome. There were meatballs, pinwheels, cream puffs, cookies, punch, and another Nothing Bundt Cake! I LOVE these cakes - they are so good. One of the hostesses made a diaper cake that was absolutely adorable! She did a great job. The shower was kind of a "worlds colliding" type event because I had friends from high school, friends from FBC, friends from Cottonwood, family, and my mom's friends from when I was a kid. It was so much fun to see everyone and get to celebrate and be excited for this new phase of life we're entering into. We played a game where we had to guess how many peanuts were in the jar (peanuts because if you know me well, you know I love elephants), which I highly overestimated. Ha! And then the other game we played was to write the word "elephant" down the side of the paper and then write down something baby related for each letter. I'm horrible at stuff like this, but  eventually thought of something for each letter. It was a fun game!

I opened a ton of great gifts and was so blessed by the generosity of my friends and family. I was so excited to receive one of my friend Beth's book boxes, and it could be more perfect for Conner's room. All the hostesses bought books for inside the box and it was such a fun gift to open. After the presents, we all sat and talked about my pregnancy and my plan for labor and it was fun to have more girl time. During the girl time, they had me read out loud the "Wishes for baby Conner" that each person had filled out. Talk about choking back the tears ... it was amazing to read the things my friends and family wish for my baby. And of course there were some really funny answers to make me laugh, too. It was such a great idea and I really want to put them in a scrapbook for Conner to read when he's much older. It was a wonderful shower and I feel even more prepared for my baby boy!

Today we have our maternity portraits and I couldn't be more excited for them! I can't wait to take some great pictures of me and Jason and the glow that we both have because we are both just so excited to become parents!

Everyone should go on a Babymoon...

This past weekend Jason and I enjoyed our last weekend getaway before we become a family of three. These days people call this a "babymoon" - and I highly recommend it. It was such a great time to get away from the daily grind and just reconnect and spend some good quality time just the two of us. It was so fun! Jason got off work early on Friday and brought home Chicken Express for lunch. We packed up our stuff and made our way down to the Embassy Suites in Dallas. 

 

Excited about our weekend - in the car on the way.

 My super cute hubby - ready to relax for the weekend!

We arrived right at check-in time - 3pm. Our room was great and we immediately opened a bottle of our Sparkling Apple Cider to kick-off our celebration weekend. We had talked about going to see a movie so we headed out to check out the area and find the movie theater. We found it and ............ it was a little sketchy. It was in the Valley View mall which has several department stores closed down and there was a creepy carnival set up in the parking lot. I was super freaked out so we decided to check out the Galleria. It was very large and ominous and we just didn't feel like fighting for parking and figuring it out. Jason was getting pretty tired at that point, so we decided to head back to the hotel for a little nap. Jason had hardly slept the night before because he stayed up late watching the Rangers game the night before and woke up for work at 4:30am that morning. Needless to say, he needed a little rest. I decided to take a nice warm relaxing bath while he napped and it was so nice. It was definitely the perfect start to our weekend.

Once Jason woke up we decided we didn't want to go anywhere and just wanted to order pizza. We turned on the Rangers game and enjoyed our pizza. There was a 3rd or 4th grade football team along with 3rd or 4th grade cheerleaders along with some parents. The key word in that sentence is some. Our room was just outside the elevator, and the kids were going hog-wild with running to their rooms (down the hall from ours), and then running (while screaming) to the elevators, down and then back up, RINSE AND REPEAT 738 times. Jason and I just had to laugh that on our babymoon which was supposed to be our last time alone before kids, there were tons of screaming wild children just outside our room, on the elevators, at breakfast, etc. Of course, our kids will be supervised, and will not be running or screaming in hotels ... so at least we'll have that going for us. ;)

 I was so glad I planned ahead and brought plenty of strawberries and this easy melt chocolate for the microwave along with our bottles of Sparkling Apple Cider and Sparkling White Grape Juice. It was definitely a nice touch and much cheaper than ordering that stuff from room service. It made us feel fancy.

Of course, this is what we looked like while eating our chocolate covered strawberries and watching the game...not so fancy. However, we had an awesome time just being together watching the game (I actually really enjoy watching baseball on tv with J), even though they lost. It was a frustrating game to watch - especially with the Rangers pitchers walking so many Cardinals batters. Kind of ridiculous. Oh well, maybe next year.

After the game was over we decided to watch a movie on TNT, Ransom with Mel Gibson - which had commercials, and didn't cut anything out of the movie, so what should have just been a couple of hours turned into over 3 hours of movie watching. We had to see how it ended, though! It was really fun to just hang out and do whatever we felt like doing, with no set plan for the next day.

On Saturday, we woke up at 8:30 and decided it was a perfect day for the Dallas Zoo. We got ready and had a yummy eggs, bacon, sausage, and pancake breakfast at the hotel then headed to the zoo.

 Here's a 31 weeks shot.

 

 We got to the zoo at 10ish and got to see a lot of great animals. Here's a shot of me with my favorite animal - the elephant. there were two of them and they were awesome to watch.

 The Dallas Zoo has an amazing elephant and giraffe exhibit. Here are some of the giraffes - we were standing on a platform that was face-height with them. SO COOL.

You could spend $5 and feed them lettuce. We didn't do it, but saw plenty of people who did.

SO CLOSE!! Ah, so cool.

I was just so excited to be touching a giraffe, and had been watching the zebras playing in the distance ... so cool.

 More giraffes. They are so pretty!

 Here's a little glimpse into the area where there were giraffes, antelopes, ostriches, and zebras. It was beautiful.

 Finally, a picture of the two of us!

A better picture of the whole area. 

Our yummy zoo lunch and rest break. I love corndogs!

 Here's Jason just outside the holding area for his favorite animal - the tiger. There was one that was pacing back and forth probably for his lunch. It was so cool to watch him walk - they are so powerful and their paws are huge! It was also cool to see the other tiger behind this gate Jason is standing in front of - he was pacing, too.

We lasted about 3 hours at the zoo and then headed back to the hotel to watch some tv and relax before our nice dinner out. I ended up taking a short nap on Jason's chest while we were watching tv. We had a great afternoon of just chilling out and then started getting ready for our nice dinner out.

 These are the swans they had at the hotel - they were sleeping standing up. It was kind of cool to see. Sometimes I wish I could sleep standing up...

Here I am all ready to go out on a nice date with my hubby. We went to Houston's for dinner and it was DELICIOUS!! The atmosphere was intimate and our service was great. We had spinach artichoke dip for our appetizer, both got salads, and Jason got a cheeseburger and I got a filet. It was probably one of the best steaks I've ever had. Then we had cheesecake for dessert - and it was so yummy. It was the perfect meal and choice for our weekend getaway.

When we got back to the hotel we got comfy and just had a great time hanging out together. A little later we had more chocolate covered strawberries and Sparkling Cider. It was the perfect end to our time away.

The next morning we got up and ate breakfast at the hotel and were out of there by about 10am. We stopped by our house to unpack and get settled, and then headed out to Frisco to look at rockers/gliders again. We had started thinking that the one we picked out a few months ago was a little too nice for this phase in our lives. So we looked at Buy Buy Baby and Haverty's ... and think we've picked one, but are just waiting to sleep on it some more to make sure it's a good decision. After looking at gliders, we stopped by Best Buy and Jason bought 2 new xbox games. I encouraged him to do it - he never spends money on himself. He got a baseball game and so when we got home he played that and I watched and had fun figuring out the game with him. We ended up watching a couple of the shows we had recorded - Terra Nova and Suburgatory. So far we're not too sure about Terra Nova, but find Suburgatory very funny. We've only seen the first Terra Nova, so we haven't totally given up on it.

All in all we had a fantastic weekend together and are even more in love, if that was even possible. It's been so cool to see our marriage get stronger and better throughout this pregnancy. It's been great. I have the best husband in the world and am so thankful that he'll be my baby's daddy!!