It's here!

Our happy, haunted, Halloween house!

We decorated for Halloween! Not only is it a fun tradition to put on a bad horror movie (this year: "I know What you Did Last Summer." Good stuff!), take out our bins of Halloween decorations and go to town, but after three years, I think we have finally perfected it!

The Halloween advent calendar I made last year. It was fun for me!

It wasn't 100% finished when we took these pictures, but I was very happy when I came downstairs this morning to a wonderfully decorated Halloween house. I so enjoy this cozy, wonderful time of year! Now we just have the outside left to do!!

Blessings

We are home from Vail, and had a wonderful time officially celebrating our marriage with friends and family for the first time. It was an awesome, exhausting trip, which I will post more about at another time. I just thought I'd share a FEW of the highlights... :)

Before leaving for Vail, we had our 16 week appointment. Baby was moving around like crazy, and everything looks great!

A dinner the night before with family and friends... and I am about 99% sure I felt the baby move for the first time! :)

Leaving the hotel for the venue in Vail

Finally, the big event!

After the excitement, we took a walk outside by ourselves near the hotel. It was a wonderful way to end a beautiful day.

Hooray!

In the News

1. I am running out of clothes that fit. As a solution to this problem, I have begun to wear pants that I can zip up most, but not all, of the way. Today I wore a skirt to work that zipped up about half way and had a full four inch gap at the top. Yeah, this is getting bad!

For some unknown reason, there are a number of rather terrifying articles about pregnancy and babies in the news today. Like:

2. Evidently it is possible to get pregnant while pregnant...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33006136/ns/health-kids_and_parenting/?GT1=43001

3. ...and also to have a two-foot-long, 19 pound baby!!!
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/32999499/ns/today-parenting_and_family/?GT1=43001

For the books

It is worth noting: this is the world's largest potato!

It has been absolutely freezing in Colorado (48 degrees outside right now... Brrrrr!!!). I completely adore it, it makes me feel like turning on the fire and breaking out the Halloween decorations. But, anticipating the cold, I knew when I planned our menu this week that I needed a potato so I could make broccoli cheese soup.

When Casey came back with this huge thing, I couldn't believe my eyes!!

It's the hugest, most ginormous potato I've ever seen! (And no, that is absolutely not a euphimism!) Seriously, I couldn't even hold it long enough to peel it; it weighs like 30 pounds.

It was worth it, though; our broccoli cheese soup turned out spectacularly! It was a delicious lead in to my favorite fall season!

A+

There are many, many reasons I love being a teacher. Dealing with 13 year olds with crazy germs, not so much... but that aside...

I worked Monday of last week, then found out the big swine flu news, so I stayed home Tuesday through Thursday, and finally went back on Friday. Maybe not completely well, but it seemed like the right thing to do just the same.

When I got back, not only were the kids extremely glad to see me (which was so ridiculously nice, I was pretty sure that, since they are at that ripe old age of 13 now, they would be too cool to have "missed" the teacher!), but they also wanted nothing more than to tell me about the array of substitutes they had had while I was away. It was really cute, even kids that I wouldn't consider to be very "into" talking to the teacher were eager to tell me all about it.

The reason I am relaying this story is that one of my classes also called me out on the pregnancy issue. I know that teachers aren't supposed to have favorites, but sometimes a class dynamic just really comes together much better than others. The students are cooperative, polite, hardworking, and it has that illusive something that's particularly illusive in middle school - maybe it's that they seem to genuinely like each other? I won't lie; when you have a class like that, it's difficult not to like them!

So I was lucky that it was this class that called me out. I hadn't been planning on telling them until at least October (when I can no longer hide it). But, one of my cute students timidly raised her hand on Friday afternoon somewhere between talking about one of her eccentric subs and my experience being swabbed up the nose to test for swine flu.

Student: "Mrs. S, please don't be offended if you're not, but... are you pregnant?"

I'm pretty sure my face shuffled through about 8 diffferent expressions - since I hadn't been planning on telling them! - and I finally decided it would be silly not to tell them the truth.

They took the news amazingly! They were all genuinely excited - which surprises me from 13 year olds!! They had a million questions, wanting to know whether we're having a boy or a girl and what we're going to name him or her. It was so fun!!

Evidently they are far more observant than I was at 13, because they decided that I was too "cute" and "small," so my belly must be a baby bump.

Yeah, no wonder I like them!

Bigger and Better

Welcome, 2nd Trimester!!!!

Hello, glorious second trimester! We have long-awaited your arrival!

I am so grateful to be able to say that I am in my 2nd trimester. As much as I would like to say I've played it cool from the get-go... I think we can all attest, that's just not in my nature. I have fretted over every little thing, particularly because that first trimester can be a little risky.

Even so, I have also learned a lot about myself in the past 14 weeks. I am proud of myself for the way I have handled that difficult first trimester. I am tougher than I think I am, and mind over matter really went a LONG way for me the past three months! I really can't complain, it has been comparatively easy to some of the horror stories I've heard. Although not everything was particularly pleasant, and there is definitely a lot to adjust to, I have enjoyed every single minute of being pregnant!!

Lovin' the maternity pants!

Here is a little snapshot of our first 14 weeks of pregnancy:

14 times I cried over something ridiculous (let's just pretend this number actually stops at 14, I didn't keep an exact count!)

13 friends and family members told the news (though more by word of mouth - our parents' big mouths!)

12 times a day (at least) I had to take a detour to the bathroom. Generally, at least 5-6 of those were at night.

11 extra trips to the grocery store - made by my awsesome husband, of course, because he's kind - for pregnancy-related foods.

10 days that we had bean burritos for dinner because it is all that sounded good to me.

9 foods - including chicken, salmon, almonds, most meats, and certain kinds of veggies - that I used to eat every day that sound absolutely disgusting to me since getting pregnant.

8 pounds gained. A little more than recommended, but I had been on a ridiculous diet and work out regimine prior to getting pregnant. There was NO WAY I was ever going to keep that up. Ah, size 4, I shall miss you.

7 centimeters Baby measured at last ultrasound.

6 articles of maternity clothes purchased, 4 shirts and 2 amazing pairs of pants that I'd like to live in

5 calls to the nurse to make sure what I was experiencing was normal

4 nights when I felt decent enough to make dinner. Poor Casey.

3 times we ordered Chinese food, which has been a huge craving of mine

2 visits to the doctor, complete with ultrasound pictures!

1 time I couldn't avoid the nausea and actually threw up.

HOURS and hours that I laid on the couch feeling completely exhausted and/or sick.

The joy of remembering every day that I am beyond lucky to have so many incredible blessings in my life. We are actually having a baby!!! These last 14 items could have said anything, and it would always have been worth it.

Sick

I don't know that I would have believed it a few months ago, but being sick as a pregnant lady is infinitely worse than being sick normally. Really, nothing is different...

Except it's terrifying.

There are so many precautions we are supposed to take anyway, that having any kind of an illness is just over the top. I have been feeling poorly for about 3 days - coughing and runny nose, not a big deal. But the one thing that my OBGYN kept reiterating was that if I develop a fever over 100.5 degrees, I needed to be seen right away.

When I went to bed last night, my temp was almost at 100. I wanted to wake up to check it throughout the night, but Casey assured me I'd be fine. So, when I woke up at 5 with a temperature of 100.6, I was pretty freaked out.

As per my doctor, I went to an urgent care center right away. Unfortunately, though, they had absolutely no idea why my doctor would recommend I go to the doctor, since there was really nothing they could do for me. They don't check the baby unless I'm at 20 weeks, which obviously I'm not. And they can't do anything to bring my fever down that I couldn't already do at home.

I called the on-call nurse at my hospital, and the big reason they are concerned is because of the flu that is going around. So evidently I need to find a physician who is testing for the flu, which, as it turns out, is easier said than done. The family practices are all happy to see me, but they are not testing for the flu right now... which seems a little silly.

It is very nerve-wracking to have all of this going on, and have to be responsible for the little life I love so much. Being a mommy is a scary thing in some ways - and this is just my first little forray into it!!!