Nursery Progress

I was so excited to learn the gender of our baby so we could start planning the nursery. I love a good home project and planning her room was such a creative process for me, especially with Rich gone.  I did not anticipate how daunting it would be to do it however!  There are so many cute themes and colors out there, I never knew how I would decide what to settle on.

In the end, I kept with the same colors from our wedding, peach and grey with touches of goal and coral.   I wanted to bring some personal elements to her room and of course stay with in a budget, after all we don't know how long we will be living in this house #militarylifeproblemz

Here are a few things I found or assembled for her room over the weeks:

 My mother in law made this wreath for the baby shower she threw.  We decided to hang it on the front of our girls nursery to give a little floral welcome to anyone who entered her room.  

 I found this peach stocking at Michaels when I was searching for Christmas decor.  It was the perfect addition to her room for Christmas time.  Even though she isn't here with us for this Christmas, it's been fun to have her little stocking hanging.  I hope I can incorporate some fun tradition with her in the years to come with this stocking hung on her bed.  We ordered one that matched ours for the mantel, but this one was just extra special. 

 I wanted to make a floral mobile for above her crib.  My nieces wore flower crowns at our wedding so this was sort of a nod to that from our wedding and a way to really give her something visually appealing when she transitions to her crib.  I covered a form wreath in ribbon, added a bunch of silk flowers with pins, and hung it above the crib with the same ribbon!

November Happenings

November was another month spent without Rich but it brought lots of activity and excitement. We were lucky enough to have a few showers back when we were in North Carolina and it was wonderful to see all my friends and celebrate our new girl!

 My four best gal friends hosted an adorable and creative shower at my mom's house.  They thought of everything and of course the food was amazing. 

 How cute is this activity? All the guests got to paint blocks for our gal so she'd have her first set of baby blocks! 

 After the shower I was able to head to the Wake Forest football game with Kristen, just like old times! 

 I also managed to turn 32 in November the following weekend.  It was a little sad to be alone on my birthday, but I did treat myself to a birthday massage and mani-pedi!  My toe color is called "It's a girl!" ironically.  

November was a really challenging month for me personally.  I learned a lot about being alone during a weird and new season of my life.  I also discovered so many hidden blessings that come in suffering and sadness and felt the support of so many people loving our family near and far.  

Our Crazy October

After our babymoon Rich and I were prepared to spend the fall enjoying some time together, fixing up our house, and relishing in the last moments of our family of two before baby girl came.  But of course, the military had other plans and we learned Rich would be heading to a training  in Florida for 6 weeks unexpectedly.  This would mean he would miss my birthday, Thanksgiving, three baby showers, and all the plans we had together for the fall!  As excited as I was for him and his career, I was pretty bummed to be spending a good portion of this part of my pregnancy without him near by.  Things were really starting to get more difficult in terms of getting comfortable and doing housework, so it was daunting to think of doing it by myself.  

Here is a little taste of October:

One blustery fall Saturday morning I thought it a good idea to take Ellie for a walk around the block.  As would be my luck, I somehow managed to get taken down by her (she is 89 lbs after all...) and ended up having a really bad fall.  I bloodied my knees, hands, and elbows and because I wasn't exactly sure how I fell (it happened so quickly) the doctors wanted me to come into labor and delivery for some monitoring.  It was incredibly scary but I am grateful that the nurses were very kind to me.  It was very surreal being there that day and I had no idea what to expect.  Baby girl was find after about 5-6 hours of monitoring and now I know all I really need when we actually go in for delivery! 

That same day I was able to attend my co-workers wedding in Williamsburg, despite my little hospital visit.  I was bummed to not have my date with me, but it was a great night watching her get hitched!

Baby Moon

It's been quite awhile since I was able to post a good update.  Life has been busy of late-in both good and bad ways.  But with my job wrapping up before  the holidays, I finally have some time to document all we've been doing over these last few months.  

Rich and I planned a last hoorah baby moon before we welcome little girl.  My first choice was naturally the Caribbean but unfortunately Zika was a huge threat to pregnancies in 2016.  I was really disappointed we couldn't go on a cruise as we so enjoyed for our honeymoon.  Naturally we turned to another place we've come to love: The North Carolina mountains.  Last year we took a great friends trip to the mountains, and we love celebrating our totally made up holiday of "fall fest", so it was the perfect occasion to escape coastal Virginia life and head to the NC mountains.

We looked into a few options for our trip in terms of lodging. While we loved the B and B's in the mountains, we wanted a way to bring our first daughters with us on our trip, a place that was private, and a way we could do our own cooking.  We got lucky by finding a cabin through VRBO that fit all our needs and was comparable to the hotels and B and B's we had looked into.  It had a ton of space but still was worth the price for what we could get with it.  We are located between Boone and Blowing Rock, and found the drive between those two cities to be perfect.  Located just off the Blue Ridge Parkway it was easy to navigate. 

 Sophie and Ellie both LOVED the mountains.  We were so glad we decided to bring them.  It was very clear they enjoyed the mountain crisp air. 

 The house had an amazing porch.  We spent most nights and some mornings out here taking in the sights and smells.  Sophie and Ellie always joined us of course. 

 We spent time visiting the actual Blowing Rock, as well as Grandmother Mountain Winery (Rich got to drink and I had to watch!)

It was a great trip with only one incident of trouble-we did manage to lock ourselves out of the house (the dogs were with us) and had to call a locksmith.  We got lucky to reach someone before they closed up shop!