First Baby Shower

I was blessed with my first baby shower this past Saturday and the wonderful women who threw the shower went crazy with the details. I posted just a few pictures that I took and will post many more when I get the other pictures from Karen. I just wanted to give you a small sample of the detail that went into this shower. If you don't guess by the pictures, the theme was Nursery Rhymes.

Shannon made this amazing Humpty Dumpty and just to give you an idea of how big he is, you can see me standing next to him below.

The party favors.

If you can't read it, the tile says "And the dish ran away with the spoon..."


We were blessed beyond measure and thank you to everyone who was there. I was overwhelmed by so much love and generousity.

Visiting Ashley

We're a little behind on the blog, so I thought I give you a couple of quick updates. I (Erin) flew with my parents to visit Ashley in Viginia. It was amazingly beautiful there and it was so much fun to meet her co-workers. Ashley really has a gift for working with people with disabilities and I can't wait to see what else God has planned for her. Here are a couple of pictures from Innisfree.

Ashley at the free range chicken pen.

Ashley's house

Ashley's house from across the field.

Do Not Cross!

So Erin and I went to our first Bradley Method Birth class the other week. I learned that there is a lot of stuff to learn. We saw a video of a birth and also got a book that had some birthin' pictures in it. After our class I stopped at the store and picked up some of that giant sidewalk chalk. My plan is when we get to the delivery room I am going to draw a line across the room in line with Erin's belly button. This will be the official "Ryan Do Not Cross Line". This will remind me to stay behind that point so that I do not have to see in real life any of the stuff I saw in that video and book. It was grosse!

Birth Classes

We started our birthclass last Thursday. We decided (well, I guess I decided) to do the Bradley Method. The Bradley Method classes are taught by independant teachers (not through a hospital or doctor's office), last for 12 weeks and are intentionally kept small in size (2 to 5 couples only) and focus on a natural, drug and intervention free birth (as long as there are no complications). What we weren't expecting was to be the only couple in the class. Actually, we won't be the only couple in the class forever, there are a couple of other couples who are coming later into the 12 weeks because they are doing a refresher, having had children by the Bradley Method before. Anyway, it was a little interesting having a private birthclass teacher, but Ryan was a trooper. We did watch a short birth video at the end of the class and yikes, June/July suddenly seem a whole lot closer as does the reality that this baby has to come OUT. I guess I'll just have to distract myself by getting to work on the growing list of "things to get done BEFORE the baby comes".

25 Weeks

Okay, I finally remembered to have Ryan take another picture of me on a rare occasion when we were actually both home at the same time. I know we haven't been great about keeping up with the weekly photos, but life gets amazingly busy. I think that I just need to get out the tripod so that I can just take them when I think of it and don't have to wait till Ryan and I are both home.

Anyway, here it is. Yes my belly is definately getting bigger and it would probably look even bigger than it does except that my boobs seem to be growing almost as fast and dwarfing my belly somewhat. They'd better not stay that way. :o(

Here is a belly close up to show just how big I've gotten in the last 5 weeks.

Photoshoots take even longer when you have to try to take a picture when our little camera ham dogs are out of the way. I think that Lucy was a little bit jealous and wanted to join in the fun too.

Snow

I woke up Friday morning to this beautiful sight. Thankfully, it was gone by the early afternoon and there wasn't a lot of it, but it was just thick and heavy enough to coat all of the branches in a fluffy white layer. Thankfully, just about all of our snow piles have melted now and our spring flowers are even starting to come up.

20 Weeks

Okay, I haven't posted in a while because I didn't really want to post this one because Ryan caught me with a totally stupid look on my face and then we didn't have time to take another and we never got around to it. But since that is the only picture I have and I didn't get around to taking one of 21 weeks, I figured that I better post this.

I noticed as I was posting this that the tie in the back of that maternity shirt makes me look a little bigger in this picture with this angle. Actually I didn't really look all that big at 20 weeks, but that bump is definately growing quickly now. I will have to be better about taking my weekly pictures from now on because I swear that bump gets bigger everyday.