Halfway!

I can't believe I'm already halfway! 20 weeks has gone by fast! The main change with the pregnancy is that I have been able to feel the baby A LOT. She moves all the time. And since this is Marshall's child, who is surprised by that?! It has been really neat to feel her kick the past 2 weeks and Marshall has gotten to feel her a couple times too. Even today I was able to see the kick from the outside. I can't believe she is that big already to feel and see! Our next appointment is September 18- the day after my birthday. And, since we are making the trip to Florence and Starbucks gives a free drink for your birthday I am taking full advantage of that on that day!

These past 2 weeks have been crazy because we were closing on a house in Sumter and in the process of moving into that house and painting. I really realized how tired and kind of useless I was in the moving process! I could help paint though :) We were very blessed to have lots of help moving which was great for us not to have to do it all by ourselves since we JUST moved 3 months ago! We LOVE our house! We've already had 2 guests and are having a third this weekend! There will be pictures of the house to come once we get it a little more unpacked... although I feel like we've done a pretty darn good job since we just moved in a little over a week ago! We are still deciding on nursery colors... although I'm leaning towards light turquoise for the walls and hot pink accents. We'll see.

I will share a sweet story of our neighborhood that we have loved living in so far. Yesterday we heard a knock at the door and there was a little old man standing there. He introduced himself as our neighbor across the street and gave us a card with his name and phone number on it with a box of chocolates to welcome us to the neighborhood. He said if you ever need anything- I'm retired- and we would be happy to help in any way we can. Well, we'd seen him cutting his grass on a riding lawn mower earlier in the week and we still haven't purchased one for this yard yet so Marshall says if he would be willing we'd love to borrow his mower to cut our grass sometime. He said that was perfectly fine and whenever we wanted it, it was ours. Fast forward to this morning. Marshall was off shooting guns with some other guys and I'm home around 10:00 sitting and watching t.v. All of a sudden I hear a lawn mower that sounds like it is right outside our house! It was that sweet old man on his riding lawn mower cutting our grass! He did the entire yard this morning! Isn't that just so precious and sweet? I think we will love being his neighbor! :)

Kitchen Inspiration

So, I don't know how many of you watch Design Star on HGTV... but I'm addicted and LOVE the show! I'm jealous of their budgets of course to be able to go into stores and point at what they like and design spaces with whatever items they love. However, while watching this past season, I was inspired. When we decided we were going to buy a new house, I knew I wanted to do my kitchen like this kitchen by Brittany and Danielle. I love the pale blue wall color and yellow accents. We are moving into a kitchen that's completely updated but has dark brown almost black cabinets and tan granite countertops. I knew I had to do bright colors to liven this kitchen up. The pale blue and yellow accents are what I chose! We will see what happens when I paint and get some fun accent pieces. I just thought I'd share my inspiration. We'll see how close I come ;)

17/18 weeks

I just hit week 18 today! Hard to believe I'm this far along! We had a big appointent with the doctor yesterday where they measured the baby's progress and could tell what the gender was....and for those of you who don't already know...

That's right! We have a Harper girl coming! We were actually afraid that we weren't going to find out the gender because she had her legs together and her feet were hiding it. But finally she started moving around and kicked her legs long enough to see that it was a girl!! She was also facing my back so we didn't get a profile view but we got a full face view. The main thing about the appointment was that the doctor said she was very healthy and measuring really good. She was measuring exactly on the date and was a good size. She commented that the "anatomy looked good" and that all fingers and toes were there! She also had a really strong heartbeat. We were able to get a DVD of the entire appointment so we can watch it. We were thrilled to get such a good report. I've definitely had to get used to saying "she" and "her" when talking about the baby. I told Marshall that it was also an old wives tale (that's right Brooke- WIVES) that girls steal the mother's beauty when in the womb, so I'm thinking I should have known all along because my face has been so broken out! My doctor also said that I've only gained 1 pound in the past 2 weeks and only about 3 pounds overall, so I could stand to eat a little more- sounds good to me!

I do feel like my belly is starting to shoot out and people can finally tell I'm pregnant. But I'm still feeling great minus the hip pain at night that I've had since the FIRST trimester. We are still working on names too and haven't decided yet but I'm very into originality. Continue praying for us to have wisdom as parents and to be prepared with a newborn! Still no news on the hospital yet, we still haven't toured them. But I'm kind of leaning toward the smaller hospital but I'll let you know once we tour them. We also close on our house on Thursday and I'm super pumped to move and decorate! More pics of the house to come! And P.S. I'm super excited to have had Adam and Ashley come and visit us and now in the next few weeks Chad and Christy! What a great month!

15 weeks!

I am almost done with my 15th week and I will be 16 weeks tomorrow! People keep telling me they can finally see a little belly in tight shirts. Most of the time I can wear things that you can't tell I'm pregnant. We had our 2nd doctor's appointment at my new place and got to meet my doctor today! We got to see the baby on the old machine (which is free because it's not that good of quality) but we did get to see the baby move it's arms and legs. We couldn't quite see well enough on the machine to see if it's a boy or girl (he or she had their legs together-sneaky) but we are scheduled in 2 WEEKS to go back and get the big scan with the 3-D machine done to check the progress of the baby and find out the gender. I am SOOO excited to find out what we're having and to make sure everything still looks good with the new machine. The doctor today said that everything looks great and that my placenta (this might be TMI) is in the back and since I'm thin I should be able to feel the baby soon- which are good signs! She also said I had a good cervix and pelvis- haha. Why, thank you. Anyway, we were really happy with today's appointment and rejoicing to hear that everything is moving along as it should. Our next decision is which hospital to deliver at in Florence. There is a smaller hospital actually attached to the doctor's office I go to that I could go to or go to a bigger hospital, McLeod. We are planning on touring both and trying to decide what would be best. I talked to the doctor today and she said that it would be a more homey feel with the smaller one but with the bigger on if I go into labor before 34 weeks would be great to be at because of the NICU. So, we will be praying about which hospital fits our needs more. All the doctors at my office have privileges at both.

In other, non-baby news, we will close on our house in Sumter this month! We are still working out details, but we are hoping to close on the 23 so that we can have a little time to paint and find some furniture pieces while we're still in the rental until the 31. That would give us some time to move and get our house move in ready! I am SO excited about finally being in a permanent location and getting everything ready for Baby Harper to come! I also met a teacher friend up at the private school today and got the paperwork to be a sub there and met some of the teachers. My friend Susan introduced me to the lady in the office and she assured me that I would be busy there and sub a lot. I was a little discouraged that it was so difficult through central office in the public school system to jump through all the hoops, but I am encouraged now that it's not been as hard with the private school. Hopefully I'll have a subbing job when the school year starts! Woo-hoo! Continue to pray for the health of the baby (and myself) and for wisdom with all the upcoming decisions we'll be making.

Baby Bump?

Here are the baby bump pictures so far. I took the last one today and it officially started week 13 so that's why I put 12/13 weeks. I think it's kind of hard to tell in these pics but you can start to see the slightest bump!

Feelings so far: I have had a GREAT first 13 weeks! I can't believe I am starting the 2nd trimester! The first was great and I didn't have too much nausea- it would come and go every now and then and I only threw up once! The biggest pregnancy symptom that I noticed right away was a heightened sense of smell. Everything is stronger and I can definitely tell I'm repulsed by some smells. The other thing, unfortunately, is bad skin. I have been cursed with the crazy hormones that give some people flawless skin during pregnancy awful skin for me. It doesn't help that I can't use anything but facewash! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that maybe in the 2nd or 3rd trimester things will even out and I can get my skin back. Because this is miserable!

Doctors Visits: I went to my doctor in Cheraw for my first two visits for pregnancy and I love her! We got to see the tiny little baby at 6 weeks and 2 days and then went back for an 11 week appointment. I had lost 2 pounds from the first appointment to the second, but she said she wasn't concerned about it and assured me I would gain the weight! She wasn't able to find the baby with an external ultrasound (because my uterus was so tilted) so- lucky me- I got to have another internal ultrasound at 11 weeks. Which actually turned out to be good because we got a really clear picture of the baby and she said everything looked great with the arms and legs. We also captured an eye on the ultrasound picture! She also wanted us to be able to see the baby move so she waited during our appointment and we got to see the baby stretch out his/her legs and then curl them back up- which was so cool! It's truly an amazing testament to our Creator who enables our bodies to carry babies! I went to Florence last week to sign paperwork to have my medical records transferred so that I can be with a new doctor there. Please be praying that I like this doctor and feel as comfortable with her as I did the last doctor I saw. I'm hoping that we MIGHT be able to tell the sex of the baby at our next appointment- I know it would be kinda early- but I'm so ready to find out! If anyone has any feelings of what it might be- feel free to guess! :) I already have people who have ideas of what it might be! We, however, have no feeling one way or the other! I hope that the next trimester goes as well as this one has!

Baby Harper!

We are officially announcing the arrival of Baby Harper on January 22, 2013!!!  We are very excited to be parents and ask that you would pray with us for our little baby!  I am almost twelve weeks (tomorrow) and have a long way to go!  We just had our 11 week appointment and the doctor said everything looks great!  Thanks for all of your support!!! 

Photos courtesy of Walker Barber... an 11 year old!  He did pretty good didn't he!?! :)

Meet Aunt Rachel!

I played a lot of Aunt Rachel this weekend!  A role I love!  We headed to Durham for the weekend to celebrate Marshall's birthday with my family and to meet Baby Bennett! I got to be Aunt Rachel twice this weekend!  We met the Moore's over at the Blalock house and had japanese food and some DELICIOUS cupcakes that Adam and Ashley picked up!    We had a great time hanging out and swooning over Bennett- what a heartbreaker he will be!  Ashley and I took turns holding him and talked for a long time about the recent life changes.  I thought to myself later the Friends quote- what did we used to talk about?!  On Saturday, we met with the family at my mom's house to celebrate the April birthday's (Marshall, Jessica and George).  We had a great time and even played a game of kickball in the backyard with Logan and Hailey... sorry we didn't snap any pictures of that!  However, the thing you don't want to happen at that time happened.  I was up to kick and we were trying to teach the kids how to play and Hailey was beside Marshall while he was rolling the ball. I kicked it and it smacked Hailey right in the face.  hard.  She was a trooper though- didn't even cry!  It was a really lightweight ball, but I felt AWFUL!  So, Aunt Rachel lost some cool points there.  Another thing that other money-savers/surprise sale lovers will enjoy about this weekend happened when we stopped on our way home to Cheraw for dinner.  We decided to stop at Bonefish Grill for dinner even though we knew it was a little more expensive.  We both ordered the bang bang shrimp tacos for dinner and got our bill for $20 and saw in the insert that they were having a special everyday from 4-6:30 that bang bang shrimp tacos were $5.  We asked the waitress about it and she said that she rang it up wrong and ours should have been $5 each- so our total was only $10 for dinner!!!!  We were super pumped because you got appetizer bread and dipping sauce, tacos and homemade chips and ranch for $5!!!  That kind of made our night!!!  But anyway, it was a fantastic weekend and we got back to Cheraw at a reasonable time on Saturday!  

outake: classic Ashley face....