20 Weeks and Counting

Ahh! We're half way done! Its hard to believe... in a way its gone by really fast. In other ways its felt like 20 years. I'm starting to feel a little better now, getting sick less often. I think God started feeling sorry for me... or this baby just decided to chill out. Either way, I will live a happy life if I never throw up 3 times before 7am ever again :)

We had our 20 week appointment today. Annnndddddd......... its a GIRL! We are so excited! Here are a few pictures from our UltraSound:

Two blurry little feet... wouldn't keep still long enough for the picture:

 

 Body is sitting up on the left side, legs extended with feet on the right:

Upside Down baby! Feet on top right and head on bottom right, body on the left:

Profile shot... look at that face! You can see a little arm behind it too:

The best part about knowing now is that we get to start picking out cute things :) Here are a few things I'm really excited for, now that we're having a baby girl:

A girly Dr. Seuss room:

Cute dresses and leggings:

Sweet sweaters:

 Baby beanies:

In other July/August news, Ryan has been working hard on our deck remodel. Hopefully we'll get that and the fire pit done in time to have a summer BBQ before it gets too late in the year.

We also decided to adopt our sweet Oatus out a couple weeks ago. He is a 4 year old golden retriever that unfortunately was still in his puppy phase, much to hyper and wild to be around a newborn. He went away to a nearby farm with 15 fenced acres, other dogs, cats, sheep and goats - its perfect for him! He loved it there so much it was much that it was pretty easy to say goodbye. Its a better situation for him and better situation for us... A win-win all around! He will be missed though (mostly by Ryan lol... I'm not really a dog person).... but I even found myself missing him a couple days ago when I was making dinner. I dropped some onion on the floor and thought "well I'll just let Oatus inside so I don't have to bend down and pick that up". Fail...  :(

My mom came to visit me for a week in July and we baby shopped til we dropped! I have all the staple furniture that belongs in a nursery now. We found some great deals and got to spend some quality time together. My sister Rachel is coming out in early September as well, so we will get to shop for fun girly things! Clothes, decor and so much more :) .... the fun begins!!!!

Never Ending Home Improvement...

We always manage to under estimate the time and cost of house projects... maybe its wishful thinking? Or denial? Either way it seems that we finish a project just to start another one. Of course, we did all the fun stuff at first when we where excited to make the house our own... now we're left with the boring stuff - painting, changing outlets, swapping out floorboards. Its fun to look back at where we started though! Since I cleaned today I was able to take some more "After" shots... haha! 

The Kitchen came with old appliances and HORRIBLE wall paper. We were lucky to find that the wallpaper was so old that it was actually really easy to peel off, it just came off in big chunks with no scraping required. However, underneath there was this thick pink glue residue that we were stuck looking at until we managed to paint over it:

Before:

 

 After:

I really don't have a good "before" picture of this part of the house, but when we first moved in there was an iron railing (like one that is meant to go on an outside porch) separating the den from the kitchen. Our realtor gave us the idea of building a half wall with a bar top instead, so we did!

Before:

After:

Then there was the Pink Bathroom. I'm almost embarrassed to say I didn't hate the pink all that much... I don't know whats wrong with me! We started doing some research on how to update a pink bathroom with out stripping it of all it's vintage glory. I found this little website and was inspired: http://savethepinkbathrooms.com/

We still have some work to do - find the perfect paint color, update the doors/window covering and get a new shower curtain - but all in all I'm pretty happy with how it is looking so far:

Before:

After:

The Guest bedroom had wall paper that was as equally bad as what was in the kitchen, we tore it down right away so we wouldn't have to look at it any longer!

Before:

After:

Lastly, my piano. This wasn't necessarily done for our new house, but i just love it too much not to post it!!! We got it for $50 from a church that just needed someone to haul it away, it was in pretty bad shape on the outside but amazingly pretty well in tune. I browsed Pinterest for ideas and decided to paint it rather than try to re-stain.

Before:

After:

We're holding off on any more inside projects for the time being now, since the weather is nice we can now work outside. Our summer projects are repairing/restaining the deck and building a fire pit & bench out of cinder blocks! Oh and of course building our nursery :) Yay!

Here's to Blogging!

Yay for blogs! I thought now would be the perfect time to start our own blog, so friends and family from all over can read about what is going on in our lives. Ryan and I will be the first to admit that we are pretty bad at keeping in contact with long distance friends and family... And when I say "pretty bad", I really mean "terrible".... Neither of us really use Facebook all that much, so we thought starting a blog would be a good way of keeping others updated with what we have been up to!

I've always enjoyed reading others' blogs and have wanted to create my own, but never felt like I had anything interesting to write about... However, our world is about to change - we should have lots of stories to share as our family will be expanding at the end of the year! Thats right, we are expecting our first child January 1, 2014. We are very excited (and a little nervous!) and we hope that you'll enjoy reading up on our posts as we start this next chapter of our lives.

So, where to start now? I suppose a little history lesson is in order, just in case you were wondering if we dropped off the planet due to our lack of communication with the outside world... ;)

Ryan and I started dating in Portland, OR in 2009. Things were great from the start and soon we found ourselves in this predicament:

We tied the knot on May 21, 2011:

Shortly after the wedding, we relocated to Coeur D'Alene, ID. This is where Ryan's family lives and the area is spectacular! We both found jobs - I am working for an online retail company and Ryan started his newest job as a residential appraiser for Kootenai County. In October 2012 we also bought our first house! It was love at first sight.... with the horrible brown carpet and the 60s vintage pink bathroom, we knew we had our work cut out for us. We've made so much progress on updating the house, or shall I say, Ryan has made so much progress on the house... However, I am a darn good supervisor, lemonade bringer, idea brainstormer and color picker if I do say so myself!!! Here are a few before and after photos from the work we've done so far...

Before:

 After:

 Before:

 After:

 Before:

After:

Well, that is all for now, next time I'll try to add more before and after pictures of our house! I hope you enjoyed our first post - if you would like to be notified when we post something new, feel free to enter your email address in the box at the top-right of the page. Stay tuned for more...  ;)