the 7 month journey

Since this is our first baby, I have tried to be an avid picture taker of the adventures we've had during this time. Sad to say, I haven't done great. But I fo have some pictures and decided to put these last 7 months into a nutshell. So here goes : )

well it all started on september 14 when our pregnancy test said positive! so then we had to announce or exciting news.

the weeks went by and slowly but surely my tummy started getting a little bit bigger.

14 weeks

15 weeks

16 weeks

We got to see our little baby when I was about 18 weeks pregnant. It was such an awesome experience and we found out we'd be having a baby girl!

It was also at 18 weeks when I felt her move for the first time! It was what I had been waiting for... and it was so cool. I definitely teared up on that one : )

20 weeks we got to spend celebrating christmas and new years with our family here in Houston.

James and I on new years

At 21 weeks I went on a cheerleading trip to Dallas, TX for a cheer competition. These are my fellow cheer coaches.

22 weeks

23 weeks I threw a baby shower for my bestest friend Erin (with the help of my mother in law of course!) Our other friend Jamie, who is a couple weeks behind me, was there also.

The three of us... bellies and all ; )

24 weeks

26 weeks I had my 24th birthday! I'm starting to feel old! I went to dinner with my mother in law and sister in law because James was working. But James brought me lunch and I was surprised with flowers and balloons from some of my students. It was a very good birthday.

I flew to California when I was 28 weeks and had my first baby shower! It was so great! I got ro see a lot of good family friends that I grew up with, and even a few special friends from high school! But I must admit, I was also extremely happy to hit up a few local favorites - In n' out and Tito's Tacos mmmmmmmm!

At 29 weeks we had another cheer trip to San Antonio for our last competition, we got first place! The girls did awesome!

Now at 30 weeks, I only have 10 more to go until we meet our daughter. We are getting very anxious and excited! My pregnancy has been fairly easy, even until now. My only complaint would be the swelling that my hands and feet decided to start doing just recently.

Later this week I will be flying to Utah for my second baby shower with most of my extended family. I am soooooo excited! So that will definitely be the next blog update.

random update

As I was reading through the blog posts I realized that there hasn't been an update about anything other than the baby for awhile. And I missed a lot of important things! So here is a quick picture update of some of the adventures we've had the last couple months : )


James and I had a beach vacation to Galveston before school started this year. We only went for a few days but it was a good break before school started for the both of us.

On the very first day of school, I was driving and right before I turned in to park I noticed this poor bunny right in the middle of the road, still alive! Cars were driving right over it and I just couldn't bare to let this bunny die that way. So I grabbed a blanket out of my trunk, went into the road (stopping traffic by the way) and picked up the rabbit. Needless to say it was a hectic morning, but I would not have been able to have a clear conscious that day if I didn't save it. After a few hours the bunny's shock went away and we realized there was nothing wrong with him, he was fine. So we set him free into a big open area : )

With James starting his master's program at A&M university, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to go to at least one football game. We were in the student section which I must say was quite the experience. It was really fun though!

My family flew down here to Houston for Thanksgiving. We went to a lot of fun but one was the renaissance festival. They loved it! On our way out we went to check the picture they took of us and noticed we were the example picture they printed out and had displayed on the counter. So we got free pictures for being such a good lookin family!

We did thanksgiving dinner easy this year... went to a buffet! It was actually very good but we missed having my other brother Derek there who is on his mission is Paraguay. So we made sure he knew we were thinking about him.

We had our first out of town cheer competition in Dallas - NCA nationals. Since we were there the whole weekend we got to do an outing to a western restaurant. It was really fun. The girls got 4th place out of 7 teams which was awesome because most of our girls had never been to a competition before. This is me and the other two cheer coaches.

I threw my first baby shower for my friend Erin (on the left) a couple of weeks ago. It went very well which was exciting! And I couldn't have done ti without the help of my mother in law Janice either! Our other friend Jamie came also who is due about 2 1/2 weeks after I am. We are all having girls!!!!! So we just so we just couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a picture of all of our bellies. It turned out pretty cute I think.

we finally know!

GUESS WHAT?!?!?!?!?!? We're having a baby GIRL! can you believe it?! I am so excited I can't even stand it : ) and James is pretty excited too lol

My appointment was right after school... so after the excitement of our cheer christmas party I hurried over to the doctors where I met James, my mother-in-law, and my 2 sister in laws Kayla and Wendy! It was so fun to have everyone there when we found out what we were having.... I will never forget that experience. It was so awesome : )

But man our little girl is VERY modest... I mean VERY modest! The whole time she had her knees bent up with her feet crossed right in front of her "area" lol. The tech tried many different things to try and get this little girl to reveal herself. She was definitely annoyed at being bothered so much because she was moving alright..... she just wouldn't move her legs! I tried turning from side to side, twisting, the tech was pushing her and moving her and nothing would work. Finally, the tech said "You've got to trust me and just do what I say".... well I basically ended up upside down on the reclining chair with me legs hanging over the top HAHA... glad we didn't get a picture of that but IT WORKED! She finally moved her legs : ) I hope that this is not a sign about this little girl... becuase that means she is going to be quite stubborn!

With so much family and so much excitement at the appointment, it was really such a memorable experience.... YAY ITS A GIRL! Can't wait for all the pink : )

we're going to be parents!

We knew that this day would come eventually.... but its still a surreal thing to say.... we're having a baby! Little almond joy is due on May 21st and currently I am almost 16 weeks pregnant. We are BEYOND excited. It took a lot of patience, prayer, and trust in the Lord to get where we are today.

We decided to start trying for a baby at the end of my last school year. After about 4 months of trying, me being a worry wart, I started well...... worrying lol. I had already started tracking my cycles with my temperature every morning for a few months and I was an expert on my cycle an all that stuff but for some reason we just couldn't get pregnant. After a few more months James finally convinced me to call the doctor and make an appointment to try and see what's going on. So I finally got the courage to call, made the appointment, and just like magic........... found out I was pregnant 3 days later! Finally on September 14 my pregnancy test was POSITIVE!!!!!! I honestly was shocked! I called (kind of screamed) James into the bathroom and frantically asked him to look at the test and tell me what it says. James was very practical at this moment... looked at the directions... read them over a few times.. and then said "well it means your pregnant!" I will be completely honest right now..... I completely broke down with happiness. After 6 months our dream was finally true. Wow that was quite the moment : )

Well my first doctors appointment was on October 6th. I was sooooooooo nervous for this appointment. I don't know why because I had taken a few test just to make sure but I was worried that the doctor would tell me I wasn't pregnant. I literally started feeling sick while I was waiting in the office waiting to be called in. Luckily James was there to calm me down and reassure me, I am so happy to have him : ) Well doctor confirmed that I was 7 weeks pregnant and right on track... and due on May 21st. Another awesome moment.

Since then I've just been truckin along. My pregnancy has been very easy. I can't complain especially because my friends who are also pregnant have not had it so well. No smells have got me yet, there's no foods that make me want to gag (yet), haven't had any weird food cravings... I fell mostly the same as before I was pregnant. I haven't had any real sick days. Honestly my worst days have just been from extreme tiredness, that's the only time I really have felt somewhat nauseous. I haven't thrown up at all.. and not because I'm fighting it. I haven had a VERY easy pregnancy - so morning sickness for me. This was just another testament to me about how much the Lord knows us personally and our situations. I am still teaching full time and now one of the cheerleading coaches as well. After only teaching for one year, I don't have too many sick days and even though you can take maternity leave up to 12 weeks... you only get paid for however many sick days you have - the rest comes out of your paycheck. James is still in school at A&M so I am the only one working. I could not afford to use any of my sick days so I have been able to go to school everyday because I have felt pretty darn good : ) What a blessing!

At our last appointment we got to see little almond joy. It was the most amazing moment I have had in my life so far. I had tears running down my cheeks just looking at the screen and seeing my small baby growing inside me. It was the most incredible thing. And it was so fun because the baby was moving around so much - it made it that much more real! The baby flipped over a few times, stretched out its arm, and did a lot of twisting. Yet another amazing moment in our journey : ) Here's our pictures

I am now into my second trimester and loving life! I am so excited about being pregnant. I talk about all the changes that I feel and my belly all the time! James and I talk about names and things we want to do with our child pretty much everyday. And it's definitely been very fun being able to share this with all our family and friends. This will be the first grandchild on my side. And between my family, James's family, my cheerleaders, and all of my students at school we never get tired of the excitement. Its been even more fun having all my students and cheerleaders to share this with. There is so much curiosity with them - I have students ask me everyday if they can touch my stomach (even though I'm not really showing yet) and asking me about how I feel and what I'm going to name it and so on and so on. It makes for an interesting day everyday!

We are anxiously waiting for our major anatomy scan/ultrasound which is set for December 16th. This is when we will find out what almond joy is! So that's our current countdown.

oh.... and here are my current belly pictures : )

14 weeks

15 weeks

wilson

So back in September.... the 24th to be exact.... we gained a new member of the family - our dog Wilson. We had been wanting a dog and had been looking around online at different rescue shelters trying to find a dog we would BOTH like. That day at school James had sent me an email with a link. James wanted to see if I liked this dog from the picture online.... he was pretty cute and I told James that. It's a good thing I thought he was cute because by the end of the day we already had an appointment to go meet him at 6:00 that night. I was a little hesitant because it was all happening so fast but we went anyway. When we got here they brought out this cute little Pembroke Welsh Corgi. I'd seen corgi's before because my friend Emily had one when we were in high school. He was even more cute in person then he was online with his big ears and little nub for a tail : ) We took him outside for a walk and got to know him. We both fell in love in that short half hour we were with him but we weren't ready for a dog - we didn't have any food, no collar, leash, dog bowls, no kind of bed or crate, NOTHING! So we talked to the lady and asked if we could think about it... she then informed us that he had only been up for 1 hour when James called and set up the appointment to see him... and that after we had done that there were about 4 other people waiting after us - in other words if we didn't take him then he would be picked up later that night by another family....... so we were put on the spot and after much pondering we decided to go for it : )

It was one of the best decisions we ever made! Things started out kind of rough - he had to get his manly parts taken, then found out he had heart worm so he had to go through that, then was sick off of the heart worn medicine for months, but slowly things started to fall in place and now we can't imagine life without him. He's good tempered, patient, listens very well, and loves people and cuddling. He is an odd dog - doesn't really play with toys or other dogs, not into bones or dog treats too much - but we LOVE him to death. So does mostly everyone else who meets him as well! We always get comments on how cute he is and everyone wants to pet him which he thoroughly enjoys.

He's been such a great addition to our family. He brings us a lot of joy and happiness... and laughter too : )

After having to carry him up everywhere when he was sick he has become very comfortable laying on his back and being carried around like a baby. There's some proof!

summertime

Wow I can't believe that it's already the end of July! That means school is less than a month away (little tear)..... but we've had so much fun so far this summer! School got out on June 1st - teachers had to stay until the 2nd and I had some teaching hours to do on the 3rd so my summer didn't start until the 4th really. Poor James has been working his pest control job this whole summer but he only has about one more week!!!!!! He's taking some time off before his master's program starts so he can prepare himself : ) But since summer began we've been pretty busy having lots of fun!

On June 6th my little 11 year old brother flew into Houston to visit us! He flew all by himself to come - what a big kid he is! It was seriously the best time we've had all summer long. We did so much stuff with him since it was his first time coming to Houston to actually visit - he came when we had our open house here after we got married. The day after he flew in James, Connor, Steven and Christian (James's brothers) and I drove about 4 hours to San Antonio so we could go to the Six Flags there - Connor LOVES Six Flags and has a season pass. We left early in the morning on the 7th and went straight to Fiesta Texas. It wasn't busy AT ALL and we pretty much walked onto everything! We had finished all the rides we wanted and gone to the water park side and everything by around 6 or 7. So we left to go to our hotel that my awesome father got us right on the river walk in the city. The next day we went to the Alamo and hit up some other attractions like the Guiness book of Records Museum which was very fun! Then we left back for Houston.

While in Houston we did a lot of other things too! We went to Schlitterbaun one day, went mini golfing another day, swimming a lot, and made sure to take him to a real Texas BBQ place of course! We also went bowling, helped Janice with some "remodeling of the kitchen" work (Connor helped her strip some of the cabinets), and one of the best things of all we went to the Houston Space Center. By the time it was time for him to fly back home our wallets were empty (and then some hah) - but it was all worth it we had SO MUCH FUN and enjoyed every minute he was here

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The rest of the summer James and I have been trying to get our apartment in order, enjoy our family time with Wilson : ) and just relax. Right now we are living in our apartment and our in-laws house while they are in Utah. We are watching the house and their dog while they're visiting family in Utah and Idaho. Yesterday I just got back from cheer camp... yep cheerleading camp! I went to camp every year in high school, but his time I was a coach and it was soooooooooooooooooooooooo fun! You know your a cheerleader when you can have fun as a coach at cheer camp - anyone else would just want to poke their eyes out I'm sure : ) Brought back a lot of memories but I am really enjoying being a coach, this is something I dreamed about while in high school so sometimes I still have to tell myself its real. We have a lot of new cheerleaders on the team this year, but our squad did so well at camp it was awesome! We even had one of our seniors get asked to join the staff for next year - a very special award. We won the game time top team competition and got the spirit stick everyday. It was a really fantastic week and even though I am completely exhausted I can't wait for next year! Poor James was all alone while I was gone though, his family is in Utah and I was away at camp, and our good friends are out of town as well : ( Thankful for an amazing husband who works so hard for our little family

Practice starts back up again on August 1st. James will be relaxing and enjoying the rest of the summer. Then school starts on August 22nd (teachers go back on the 15th). So summer is almost over but hopefully we'll be able to squeeze in a few more fun things before then!

AND.......... Rob (James's brother) and Kayla and Boston are moving here in a little over a week so that will be so much fun yay!!!!!!!!!!!

Past year... in a nutshell : /

Big kid life is soooooo busy! oh my word this last year was quite crazy and well.. I just never really got the chance to sit down and think about it. But now that things are going to start settling down for ahwile, I figured I could do a catch up post since I kind of stunk it up the last long while.

Alright, well today was the LAST DAY OF SCHOOL! I survived my first year, on my own, real classroom and students year of teaching! I seriously can't belive it. The time really did go by so fast now that I have begun to look back. However, going through it was another story..... every day seemed like eternity! But honestly, as miserable as I was sometimes, it was a great year! I was just thinking today, as I was takin down all my decorations and packing up my stuff... that I never put up or even took any pictures of my room. Oh well, guess I'll never get to look back and remember what my first year's room looked like. But you better believe that it was freakin cute! All the other teachers would always comment on how cute my room was and what they are going to copy for their room : ) so that made me feel even better! Especially because it just seems like a classroom can never really be CUTE if you know what I mean... but I guess I acheived that this year woo hoo! As for the teaching aspect, this year went WAY WAY WAY better than I could have ever imagined. The first year teaching horror stories did not happen to me. I can't even tell you how many people warned me about how terrible my first year was going to be: 1. Becasue my classroom management would be bad so my classrooms would be a little out of control. 2. Becasue I was so young I was going to have a lot of problems with the immature young boys in my classroom. 3. Since it was a new state, new curriculum, etc it was going to be very stressful doing all new material everyday.

1. I know that I'm still learning, but if my classroom management was the worst its going to be then man I can't wait for the years to come! I really had some awesome amazing kids! And I'm not teaching in the best area of Houston either. It's a pretty tough school demographically, but my biggest issue was not keeping them under control. Honestly, my biggest struggle with my students was to get them to do homework! Geeze its an almost impossible task. Many of them work, watch their siblings, and even don't go to any home, so I can understand that to them homework comes after getting dinner and taking care of themselves. But.... I mean once in awhile couldn't they do jsut a little bit?!?!??!?!?!? That's what we're going to have to work on next year for sure : ) Many of my kids (after they finally found out this was my first year) told me how great of a teacher I was. That was very satisfying knowing that the kids even thought I did a good job.

2. I only have a total of 5 comments said to me about my age and looks. And they were all from 1 kid... who transferred from another high school with only 5 weeks in school so he was feeling brave. But it was so awesome because my kids were actually the ones who kind of dealt with him, telling him not to say stuff like that to me. Other than that, all my boys were very respectful and kind. It was a total surprise to me not to have any problems with that. But I heard that I looked like a student a million times. I have been mistaken as a student even, and that happened a numebr of times (embarrassing!) I'll look older eventually

3. This part was super stressful! Every day I had to prepare for what I would be teaching that day. I knew the background material on it no problem, but all the activities and notes and such were the hard part. I was on a biology team of about 9 teachers. We all planned together, divided out the lessons and worked together for just about everything. This was very helpful because it took a lot fo the load off. But our team had a lot of rough moments throughout the year where things just kind of went sour. Man those were hard times. I had a lot of sleepless nights, total breakdowns, and a whole lot of stress. But I managed well wnough and survived til now. I learned a lot, but I'm glad it's over. Hopefully next year will be better : )

Well.... for those of you who don't know, we got a dog about 8 months ago (last september 24th). We rescued him from a shelter and man do we love him! He is a corgi named Wilson and he couldn't be any more awesome. He's around 3 years old and quite small for his breed, everyone always thinks he is a puppy. And man do we get attention walking him around! All the people in our complex (and at James's parents neighborhood) all know Wilson by name and come over to pet him. He's a very beatiful dog and he LOVES the attention... from people. He's got some quirks though like every dog. About our little Wilson: not a dog lover - at all - he never plays with his toys or even us really, he sleeps a lot, loves to cuddle on the couch and likes to be carried like a baby. We sure do love him, and he couldn't fit our life more perfectly.

As for James, he's been working at a company called Preventive Pest control. Yep, currently he's a bug guy. It's been a great job though during this transition time. He'll keep working there until August when he will start commuting to College Station to go to A&M University for his master's degree. He will be going for Public Administration - a two year program.

In march, my younger brother Derek left for his mission. He went to the MTC (training center) for a couple months before he left for Ascuncion Paraguay, spanish speaking. He's been in Paraguay now for almost a month and it sounds like he's doing great. He still struggles with the language but he loves... and I mean LOVES being a missionary. Every email just screams his excitement about what he's doing. I miss him a lot and it's been very hard for me not being able to jsut text my brother during the day at school like we used to. But I am so proud of him. And I can;t wait for him to come back and help me with my spanish so I can understand what the heck my students are saying!

With us both working, we really haven't had any exciting outings or things to talk about. the last year of our life has been mostly about working, paying the bills, sleeping, and trying to save money : ) you're jealous of our life aren't you?!?!??!?! But even though it's been a little bit bland, we've enjoyed struggling together. We love our little apartment (which I will hopefully put up pictures soon ------- hopefully), our dog, our fish, and each other <3

Can't wait for a summer vacation off of school though! Woooooooooooooo!!!!

Oh and my little brother Connor is coming to visit us for 10 days next week which I am soooo excited about! I miss him so much so it will be great to have him with us for awhile.