Life is changing....fast

It's been a long time, my poor blog has been severely neglected. No one realy reads it anyway, so it's not a big deal, but I like to write just so a have a document of my thoughts and experiences.

Everyone knows by now, but we're FINALLY expecting our second child. It has been a long time coming, and the three of us literally couldn't be any happier! We got rid of everything as Katie got older, partly because we simply didn't have the room to keep it, but also because there was a time that we truly thought we'd never have another child. We've been buying things here and there over the last few weeks, we traded in our old travel system for a new one, and we found a crib and changing table on clearance because it was being switched from in store to online only for purchase. We aren't made of money, so we're trying to spread our purchases out and make them as economical as possible. We currently have 3 rather large boxes sitting in the living room waiting for a more realistic place to rest over the next 5 months or so. We'll be starting our baby clothes collection from scratch too, but we'l be waiting until we know the gender before we start shopping for that!

We are also blessed with truly great family and friends who have decided and declared that we will be having a shower for this baby. My feelings on it are a little mixed, it's not my first baby afterall, but I'm also not in a position to tell a group of people who love us so much no, so we will graciously accept it when the time comes.

I literally found out about this baby 3 days before I transferred jobs within the University to a permanent clinic near my home. They have been completely great about the situation. I was hesitant to tell them at first, being as I had just started working there, but I'll have more than a year in with the university before I go on maternity leave, so my job and benefits are secure. I really had to tell them right away though as I'm back on blood thinners, for the duration of the pregnancy, to help prevent and potential blood clots (one DVT in a lifetime is enough for this girl!!), and being as I work in a health center the risk for injury can be pretty high, they needed to know what I needed if I ever got hurt.

Because I'm high risk, from the history of DVT's, and we had such a hard time getting pregnant, I've had the privilege of seeing this baby on ultrasound 3 times already. It's amazing to watch him/her grow. Our next ultrasound is April 12, it's the big one, they'll give the baby a complete check and attempt to tell us the gender (which we've decided we NEED to know, selfish I know, but it's how we are :)).

That's all for now!! I'm off to bed, 8 o'clock comes early lately!!!

Weekends are a wonderful thing

I've been working at my new job for 4 weeks now, and honestly, I love it. The biggest transition has honestly been adjusting to working Monday through Friday and having Saturday and Sunday off. We had originally planned to go camping this weekend, but things just didn't work out that way. We stayed home instead, and I really can't complain. We had already promised Aurora that we would ick her up for the weekend, so we did as we promised and picked her up Friday night. It's been a nice weekend. The neighborhood we live in had a resident appreciation day yesterday. They had a bounce house for the kids to play in, and an inflatable obstacle course for the kids to run around on. After that we went to see Toy Story 3. Katie had already seen it, but she's always up for a trip to the movie theatre, she went for the first time when she was only two months old. Aurora had not seen the movie yet, and still hasn't seen the entire movie as she fell asleep about half way through. It has been a crazy weekend with the two of them, it seems like they have done nothing but fight, and it's driving me crazy, we love Aurora, but we might need the girls to take a break from eachother for a while so that they can learn to appreciate eachother again.

Everything's Changing

'Tis the season for change, atleast that's what people always say.

A few weeks ago I went on an interview at the University of Michigan. It was for a job that they already had a candidate for, but they had another opening in the department too, so they wanted to interview me for it. The interview went GREAT, I left there feeling confident, and two days later she called and offered me the job. I started my orientation on Monday, it's going really well, I'm excited to get into the clinics next week and really get to work.

Katie is on vacation in Florida with my parents for two weeks. I know a lot of people can't fathom the idea of being away from their kids for one night, let alone two weeks, but to me it's not really such an issue. I did it when I was a kid, and I LOVED it. Don't get me wrong, I miss Katie, a TON, but I know that she is having a great time and doing things that she might not otherwise get the chance to do, plus, with me having a new job we won't really be taking a vacation again this year, so this is her vacation before she starts school in the fall.

Dan is back to working 6's again. To put it in plain english they are working a mandatory 6th day of overtime. It's hard for me, I won't lie, I miss him, a TON, Katie does too, but the money is great, and having extra money coming in never really hurts anyone.

I'm really working on establishing some order around this house. I'll admit it, we live in a constant state of chaos, keeping house just isn't my strong point. I'm working on it though, and I'm working on Dan and Katie being a part of it. I am NOT superwoman, I can't do it all, not by myself, not all the time.

My final Wilton cake class is this week. It has been great to have a few hours of mommy time every week. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with myself now, but I'm going to try to find something. There is going to be another Wilton course sometime in the future, maybe until then I'll take some sewing classes or soemthing.

This summer has been an odd one for us. We've only been camping once so far, way back in April on opening weekend at our favorite campground. We are going next weekend with our friends up to there families property, I'm really looking forward to it.

Dan and I will be celebrating our 4 year wedding anniversary next Thursday. It's hard to believe it's been four years already, but it's also hard to believe that it's only been 4 years. I'm certainly looking forward to what the future will bring!!!

Katie danced in her first ever ballet recital last Friday night. It was supposed to be 2 hours long. About 2.5 hours and 2/3 of the way through it the storm sirens went off and they shuffled everyone down into the schools basement until the all clear was issued, then the recital resumed. We arrived at the school at 6 that night, the recital started at 6:45, we didn't leave until 10:45. It was a long night, but the girls all did a great job. Tomorrow night is the pre-enrollment for next year, so when I get off work that is where I'll be going.

Preschool Graduate!!!

Well, it's official, Katie's a preschool graduate!!!

Catching up

Things here have suddenly been hectic again. Dan and I are still both working, a lot actually, he has been getting tons of overtime and I was just offered a 3 week stint at the engineering firm I worked for (which of course I had to take, can't pass up extra money like that!!)

Katie is still going to ballet class every week. Next wednesday is the last day of preschool. They are having a little cap and gown ceremony in the park next to the school. Ballet recital is coming up on June 18. My parents will be in town the first few weeks of June, when they leave on the 19th they are taking Katie with them. They're going to be stopping in Tennessee to visit my grandpa before continuing on there way to Florida, where they will stay until my mom flies her home on July 3rd. It's going to be a long two weeks without my baby, but she is sooo looking forward to it that I could never deny her the opportunity to go.

I'm going to try to post a few things this weekend from our adventures the last few weeks (pictures too, I promise).

Hello Blog!!!

Wow! It's been a while! I feel like I've abandoned my little blog here, but I'm back, and we're going to turn a new leef!

Going forward my little blog is going to contain as much information as I can cram into it, so be prepared for stories of life, baking adventures, crafting adventures, family adventures, you name it, I'll blog about it!!!

For now I'll tell you that things here have been good, crazy at times, but otherwise good. Katie will be done with preschool on the 26th of May, they're having a little graduation ceremony and everything. She is starting Kindergarten in the fall and couldnt possibly be more excited about it, she is ready, beyond ready, she will do great, and Dan and I are excited for her future. She has also been taking dance classes since September. The Recital is scheduled for the 17th or 18th of June. There costumes are ADORABLE, VERY pink and VERY puffy. They are dancing to pinkariffic from pinkatastic the musical. She has already said that she would like to continue dancing next year, so we're looking forward to that. Dan and I have both been working. I took the first two Wilton cake classes at Joann Fabrics in March and April, I'm going to sign up tomorrow to take the last course in June.

Our house will be a hub of activity for the next month or so, more on that later.

Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow to post some cake decorating adventures!!

Final Camping Trip of the Season

We spent the weekend after Katie's birthday camping at the KOA that we frequent.

Let me start by saying that it was COLD, and we didn't get the propane tank hooked up right, so we weren't able to run our furnace at night as we had initially planned to do. We do have another little heater that we carry with us just for cold nights though, so it helped to take some of the chill out of the air. We will be adding an adjustable wrench to the junk drawer in the camper BEFORE we take our first trip next April, as you can bet it will still be pretty chilly then too!! We'll probably also upgrade to a slightly bigger emergency space heater, in the event that we ever unexpectedly ran out of propane we'd still have sufficient heat.

So, the theme of the weekend was Halloween. There were sites that we decorated to the nines. A group next to us had rented 5 sites for the weekend and literally built an entire haunted house for the other campers to go through during the trick-or-treating time. It was amazing! Saturday night from 7:20 to 9:00 pm the campground closed the front gate and prohibited and cars from driving in the campground at all and every kid in the place went from site to site trick or treating. It was so much fun, everyone was dressed up, and the best part is that everyone had amazing manners and were very kind, even after we had run out of candy!! A lot of people stopped to warm up by our fire and say hi before they continued on there way.

This year for our whole family is going with a theme for Halloween, the theme is Candy Corn, Witches, and Vampires. We got Katie the cutest Candy Corn witch outfit, which inspired Dan to replicate a comic that he reads and be a Candy Corn Vampire. Katie helped pick out a witch costume for me, Cocoa (our girl dog) is also a witch and we found a vampire costume for Yoshi (our boy dog). I forgot to mention earlier that since Cocoas skin condition has been so much better lately we took both of the dogs camping with us for the weekend, so of course we took there costumes too, and boy did they look cute!!

It was a tremendous weekend, just us as a family, no extra guests, spending time together relaxing, having an all around good time.

Again, I'll post pics a little later.