Post Christmas Post

Well, Christmas is here and gone and I must say I'm glad (as bad as that sounds!). While we did spend last weekend in Erie to celebrate Christmas with my family, it's just not the same without your own family. Christmas Day we spent visiting Steve's mom and then dad and his brother, nephew and niece. Steve and I agreed not to exchange gifts this year since we are in the process of buying/selling homes and we buy most of the things we need throughout the year so buying gifts would just be buying things to buy something. I just can't wait until next year with the baby in our new home where we can start our own traditions. I plan on inviting everyone over for Christmas Eve so we don't have to travel to three different places and everyone can be together.

Even though we didn't exchange, I still finished out the twelve days of Christmas! Last week I left off at day 5 so here's the rest...

DAY 6: Six slices of ice cream cake... Originally I had planned on six ice cream cupcakes. However, when I got to Dairy Queen on the day to get them...they only come in packs of four. In a panic, I decided to go with the log cake and cut it into six pieces.

DAY 7: seven scratch off lottery tickets. No winners :(

DAY 8: Eight paws. Two framed photos of the dogs.

DAY 9: Movie night bucket! Popcorn, five boxes of candy, two drinks, and a DVD (Home Alone 1-3) 

DAY 10: $10 gift card to chick-fil-a, which we used today!

DAY 11: Daddy's diaper changing toolbox :) with 11 items

DAY 12: 2014 Calendar. 

Can't wait to keep the tradition goon next year! I better start planning now!

Today we had to take off work to take Reece to the vet. On Tuesday night, Christmas Eve, he was acting off. Laying around, not eating much and just not interested in anything. He was laying on our bed sleeping when Steve went in to check on him. He was petting him and moved his collar back and saw his skin was red and irritated. He took his collar off and it was pretty bad. We washed it, which actually only made it worse, and I took his temp. He had a fever of 104, poor baby. It was pretty bad yesterday and we almost caved and took him to the ER vet. I'm glad we didn't though because I'm sure it would have been at least double of what we paid today. We took him in this morning though and they got him taken care of. We had to leave him for a few hours so they could sedate him, cut his fur down, wash and treat it. They sent us home with a surgical scrub, ointment and two antibiotics...needless to say he won't be wearing a collar anymore unless we are taking him out of the house! Poor buddy :(

The Joys of House Hunting

I am officially done with school until the baby comes! Such a relief! I could have fit in one more term and gone until March, but with so much going on with selling the house and stuff, I thought this was a good spot for a break. I ended strong with two A's in my last two classes :)

Speaking of selling the house, let me just mention how exhausting house searching is. Sure, it's fun to look at houses, but when you look a them and try picturing your family in them, you find nothing is ever what you want. We went to look at one yesterday that was beautiful! We absolutely loved it from the moment we saw the listing online. When we got there, we checked out the outside and still loved it. Here's really nothing wrong with it but I just don't see us in it. The living room is a little small,which I don't think I can compromise with. Our living room now is pretty big and I really don't want to downsize. The dogs play in there and I'm sure that's where we will spend the majority of our time with the baby. We were also hoping for a decent living area in the basement which it didn't have, but it did have a 2 car garage, where we currently only have one. On top of that, it needs new kitchen appliances, fresh paint and all the carpeting needs to be removed. It does look like it had hardwood floors under the carpet, which have probably never been walked on...but if not then we need to add in the expense of new flooring. Since the house is at the top of our price range, I'm just not sure it's going to work out, but anything can happen!

Other than school and house hunting, things have been pretty quiet. We spent the last weekend I'm Erie to celebrate Christmas with my parents. I'm actually writing this post from my new iPad mini my mom got me for Christmas! :) Steve and I both got one so no more fighting over the computer!!

Finishing up the last two days of Christmas today and tomorrow then I will post an entry with the last6 gifts! I love the twelve days of Christmas...can't wait to keep the tradition going next year with the little one!!

Hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas!

The Twelve Days of Christmas

It's been a busy and somewhat hectic week this past week…

For a while now we have been tossing back and forth the idea of putting the house for sale and moving to a better area. While we love our house, the area it's in is not the best. The public schools in Pittsburgh are less than stellar and while we have time to think about it, we were wondering if it would just be easier to do now. I'm sure before we know it it will be time to register for school and I don't want to be stuck in a panic here wondering what we are going to do.

So we made the jump. We called Steve's sister Natalie's friend Lauren who is an agent through Remax to come check out our house and let us know what she thinks. That was last Tuesday. By Wednesday we had all the paperwork turned in to her, the house was listed and a photographer came on Saturday to take pictures for the listing. We had our first showing on Sunday, but I guess the woman didn't like the road. One side comes around a somewhat narrow, dark bend and the other side is a pretty steep hill. We were actually kind of afraid they would put an offer in right away, Lauren included. She said "where will I put you guys?!" because apparently she's on a hot streak.

For the past week we have been looking at house listings non stop online. We have found quite a few we like but the majority of them are contingent. It also doesn't help we are being really picky. I figure if we are moving into a house to start our family, it should be everything that we are looking for. I don't want to outgrow our hour in 2-3 years when we add another baby and be in this same situation again.

We did go to look at one house on Sunday that we thought we loved. Turns out it was a foreclosure, but we went to see it anyway. When we walked in it needed some work, but nothing major. It was all wall paper so that would have to be taken down and and the walls painted, horrible blue carpeting, but no biggie there either. It had a BEAUTIFUL living room that actually reminded me of a ski resort! High wooden ceiling, huge fireplace, beautiful wood floor, opened up to an upstairs deck, it was perfect!! But then we went downstairs…THe entire downstairs of the house was designed as an in-law suite with two bedrooms, full bathroom and kitchen. However, the walls were covered in mold and someone had broken into the house and stolen all of the copper piping from the walls and ceiling.

We debated putting in a low offer to the bank and gutting the whole basement to fix it, but it just isn't worth it. Theres no way of knowing how deep the issue is with the mold, we can't have a home inspection, the entire house runs on electric and no gas, septic and well water. Too many things that could be an issue so we had to walk away from it. So our search continues!

In other news, my 12 days of Christmas have started!! Each year, I get Steve gifts for the 12 days leading up to Christmas. So Dec 13-Dec 24. Its just a fun thing I started last year and would like to continue for our kids so I figured I had to keep the tradition going this year!! So far I've given him five gifts, today being day five!

DAY 1: An Ornament for the tree. I did the same last year and will keep this tradition every year.

DAY 2: Hot cocoa mugs and mix

DAY 3: I don't have a picture of the finished product since its actually not finished yet, but I have the picture of the inspiration for it. For our anniversary this year I painted him a picture of two birds on a branch with our anniversary date at the bottom. Seen here:

So as I was searching the internet high and low for ideas for day three, I came across these paintings and thought they were PERFECT!!

I gave him canvases with the pink paint the the sketched birds, just need to finish painting them!!

DAY 4: Four bottles of Famous Dave's BBQ sauce. We seem to fly through BBQ sauce around here and we love Famous Dave's (and don't have one here) so I thought this was a good one!

DAY 5: Five "daddy's girl" onesies and bibs :)

Stay tuned to find out whats to come for Days 6-12!

Shopping, photo shoots and doggies :)

It's been about a week now since I first felt the baby girl move for the first time. It seems like every day since she has gotten more and more active and I feel her swimming around in there. Its such a weird but wonderful feeling and unlike anything I've ever felt before. It literally feels like theres someone swimming in there!! My favorite, of course, are the harder kicks that I can actually feel from the outside. :) Steve even puts his hand on my belly sometimes to let me know when he can feel movements!

This past week was a little hectic and unorganized so I didn't have a chance to share any yummy recipes or ideas but I will be getting on that soon! I don't have anything planned for this week yet, I'm being a slacker! Usually on Sunday's I make my list for the week along with my grocery list and go to the store to collect everything I need for the coming week. Today, well, this whole weekend really, has been pretty busy!!

Started off early Friday morning for a prenatal appointment. Everything went fine at the appointment, baby girl is measuring right on track and she sounds just fine. I do, however, currently have a low lying placenta, so I have to go in on January 17th for another ultrasound to check to see if it has moved. They say it will usually move back to its "normal" position by 28 weeks, but they like to check anyway, which is fine with me! An extra sneak peek!! After the appointment I headed to quest for to get blood work drawn, then we spent the rest of the day shopping! Costco, Target, Marshalls, Tj Maxx, Old Navy….

Saturday I did a little housework while Steve helped his friend replace a part in his truck. Afterward we went out for some lunch and a few other errands. Last night we had Steve's work holiday "party". We stopped by a friend's new house before then headed to the bowling alley. It was fun and entertaining to watch the guys mess with each other, but definitely not as exciting when everyone else is drinking beer and I'm sipping my sprite. At least there was free pizza. :)

This morning started out early, especially after such a late night! We had pictures scheduled with a friend for our holiday cards at 10 am. We were originally supposed to do the photos on Friday afternoon, however, since they were calling for rain and crappy weather on Friday, we switched the date to today, and I'm glad we did! We had some snow for our photos and it even started snowing a little while we were taking them! We headed out to a friend's property in Sarver where they have a huge house, tons of land, horses and an old barn which they are in the process of restoring! It made for some really cool pictures! We got to spend some time and take a few pictures with this guy, Dakota! I'm getting so impatient waiting to see them!

After our pictures, we headed down to spaghetti warehouse in the strip district with our doggy friends for an early dinner and a gift exchange. We did a "favorite things" party where everyone brings the same gift for however many people are at the party. Since most of us were couples, and we were doing it for the dogs, we did one toy or treat for each couple/dog(s). So, we had to bring 8 gifts total, all under $5. We came home with some pretty cool stuff! It is such a fun idea and would be a blast to do with some girlfriends and cosmetics or other girly products!! By the time we got home I had to finish up some homework (which I just finished, in between keeping up on all the latest on Facebook of course). I wanted to get the rest of the house work done, but that just didn't happen!!

This week we have a realtor coming, a good friend of Steve's sister. She is going to check out the house, give us her honest opinion on how much she thinks we can get, if we should sell, what updates we should make or not make, etc. I've been killing myself looking at houses, so I'm hoping she will have some that are not listed online to show us! That's the scary part when thinking about moving…I just can't find what we're looking for in our price range!!

Hope everyone else had a great weekend as well! I'll leave you with a photo shoot preview!!

The Beginning

Well, for quite a while now I've been wanting to start a blog, I just didn't know what I would write about or who would read it. Now that I'm expecting my first child, a daughter to be exact, I thought it would be a good time. This will be my place to come to write about pregnancy, birth, milestones, holidays, birthdays, etc. Somewhere to share the joys and of course, the frustrations of being a new parent. I want it to be something I can look back on 1, 2, even 5 years from now to see how our lives have changed.

So this is the beginning. 

I would also like to have a place to share recipes, meal ideas, pinterest activities, children's activities, holiday ideas, decor, etc. I always find myself struggling to answer the question "what's for dinner" so I will try to keep lists and recipes on hand as well as reviews from the family on if I should repeat them.

Today marks 21 weeks along in my pregnancy. So far, so good. I can't say I have any major complaints. I have not been physically sick, although in the beginning I was very nauseous and had MAJOR food aversions. I often compared it to having a bad hangover. The kind where you know you would feel better if you threw up, but you're too scared to do so and the thought of any kind of food makes you want to die. I'm sure we've all been there a time of two (or three, or four, or fifty, or three hundred…who's counting?!) Otherwise, everything has been fine, I have felt completely normal for the most part, and I walk out of every doctor's appointment with a good report.

We do have a name picked out for our baby girl, however, it will remain a secret to the rest of the world until the day she decides to grace us with her presence (4/14/14?!) 

I will warn any potential readers in advance, I am a picture junkie!! If that's not your thing, this isn't the blog for you!! Pregnancy weeks will be accompanied with a bump picture, pictures will be sure to follow new recipes and for now, a lot of pictures of my dogs. Until April that is, when I will bombard the world with pictures of my daughter. #sorrynotsorry!! 

Thank you to anyone taking the time to read this!