19 weeks

How far along? 19 weeks

Total weight gain: only 3 pounds under pre-pregnancy weight this week.

Maternity clothes? Mostly maternity things with a few "regular" pieces thrown in.

Stretch marks? Thank God, NO!

Sleep: I'm still sleeping about 6 hours a night. I have all this energy!

Best moment this week: Being with my mom for the last few days :)

Miss Anything? having a "normal" body. I managed to get a small sinus infection this week. I toughed it out with some OTC meds, but I longed to just grab a z-pack and go.

Movement: All the time! This baby is active.

Food cravings: I had to have El Chico on New Year's Eve. My sweet hubs drove me all the way across town for it!

Anything making you queasy or sick: the smell of urine. Awkward, I know.

Gender: We find out TOMORROW!! Whoo hoo!! I'm praying this little one will be active for the US and we will get a clear shot of everything. Also praying that we find a healthy baby in there!

Labor Signs: No, praise the Lord!

Symptoms: Some indigestion, excessive energy and frequent bathroom trips.

Belly Button in or out? still in

Wedding rings on or off? my real ring is off. However, I found some cheap rings that aren't giving me any problems at all. Planning to take my real ring to the jeweler tomorrow to see if they can coat it in something that I'm not allergic to.

Happy or Moody most of the time: Happy and energetic!

Looking forward to: Tomorrow's US and getting my to-do lists going for this baby!!!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! I love the feeling of a brand new start and I love making changes for the New Year. I actually started my "new year" plans the week after Christmas. That really feels like the beginning of the year for me. I started planning my new habits and routines using this post and personal retreat guide. It really helped me get my priorities straight.

So here are a few of the things I'm doing this year:

-Reading my Bible. I knew I didn't want to start a 365 reading plan this year. I felt like with the baby coming that my plan would get thrown off track during the summer as I try to adjust to being a new mom. So instead, I'm doing some specific plans throughout the year. For the month of January, I am doing the New Thru 30 plan (found here). I also used YouVersion to create some other plans for months throughout the year. I am loving it so far!

-Consistent Bible Study. Right now I'm reading through Rick Warren's Bible Study Methods. I have been reading this for a few weeks now and I have only made it through a handful of pages. It is intense reading! The content, however, is really feeding my soul and providing some great insights and principles to apply to my personal study time. I also created a list of books and bible studies that I want to go through this year. I am a huge fan of Inductive Bible Study. There are also several lists available of suggested order for studying specific books of the Bible. I am starting with the book of John.

-Prayer time. I need to be more consistent with my prayer time. No doubt about it. I have found several great resources reading Rick Warren's book, the POA's prayer site, Praying Through the Tabernacle (also available through POA), and the girltalk blog.

-Personal Goals. I have several small personal goals that include specific things with serving our church, creating relationships with people around me and loving my family. Nate and I have a goal to spend time at least once a month with our families in some sort of fashion.

-Housekeeping. I am taking the CleanMama challenge this year. I use her printables and love the fact that she follows the same principles as my beloved FlyLady.

-Financial. We are continuing with Dave Ramsey's financial plan. Love us some DR! I would like to be more consistent with record keeping this year and actually utilizing our cash envelope system more than what we do.

-Health. I am continuing to menu plan for 300 calorie meals and meal replacements to equal 6 balanced meals a day. Thankfully this works for pregnancy and post-partum! I am working up to my 30 minutes a day on exercise and have great pregnancy routines and I'm finding great things for post-partum exercise. I would like to start a running program this fall, but we will see how that goes! I also need to be more consistent with my water intake on a daily basis. Thankfully, I have craved water with pregnancy. Let's hope that continues!

-For Fun. Two things I want to do "for fun" include keeping up with this blog and my 365 blog. I really want to document our life this year and all the changes coming our way. I am hoping this eventually leads to improving my photography skills with my Rebel. Right now I'm stuck with my iPhone camera and editing software until I get a new memory card for the Rebel.

So these are my goals this year. I'm anxious to see how this all works out! Be looking for my 19 week pregnancy post later today or tomorrow.

Happy New Year from our family to yours!

18 weeks

How far along? 18 weeks

Total weight gain: still 6 pounds under pre-pregnancy weight!

Maternity clothes? mostly regular clothes with a few maternity dresses and skirts thrown in

Stretch marks? no. Faithfully applying the cocoa butter!!!

Sleep: I have always been a good sleeper. Especially since pregnancy hit. Now I'm averaging 5-6 hours a night and I feel great. This is so weird to me.

Best moment this week: Feeling the baby roll around in my tummy during the candlelight service on Christmas Eve!

Miss Anything? breathing normally

Movement: definitely!

Food cravings: nothing big. Still wanting my daily dose of chocolate :)

Anything making you queasy or sick: Chinese, BBQ and anything with MSG

Gender: waiting for January 3rd! I get daily "guesses" from my patients. I've had two different ladies tell me this week they just "knew" I would have a boy, then it was a girl. So who knows?!? I don't have the "motherly intuition" that tells me either way.

Labor Signs: No

Symptoms: Heart palpitations [SVT], frequent bathroom trips, and difficulty breathing at the most random times.

Belly Button in or out? still flat

Wedding rings on or off? off right now. I'm having the worst allergic reaction to my ring. So depressing!

Happy or Moody most of the time: Happy and my hubs says I'm more dramatic than usual

Looking forward to: a week off at HYC with the kiddos and then the Jan 3rd US!!

Surprise!

I last published on Jan 4th. Ouch!!! So this blog has taken many turns, but here we are almost a year later and I'm 4 months pregnant. Surprise!!

I keep thinking, "I need to write that down" or "I'll want to remember this" as I make my journey through pregnancy. Have I done that yet? Why, no. Of course not. So here I am, attempting to capture some precious memories so that I can recall them years from now.

Let's start from the moment we found out. The beginning of September 2011 I was hit with an extreme amount of fatigue and nausea. No surprise there, a nasty bug had been passing itself around to all my patients. I really thought nothing of it. The first week I slept through my alarm the entire week. I wrote it off as stress from a particularly trying family situation. The second week I was hit with the nausea. Again, I thought nothing of it until it started hanging around longer than the required 72 hours. We were in the middle of a college retreat and I felt like I had been run over by a train. Finally, extremely frustrated, I sent the husband off to grab some pregnancy tests (that I was sure would be negative) and then I would call my doctor's office to get worked in on Monday. We ran home, I hurridly took the test (we were on our way to watch a VERY important football game) and waited impatiently for the little pink line to pop up. Imagine my surprise when both lines turned pink! This couldn't be right!! We hadn't planned for this and had taken every precaution to be "safe". I walked out of the bathroom in shock to inform my husband of the news. It took a few weeks for it all to settle in.

We decided to wait to tell our family and friends. We wanted to make it safely through the first trimester and wait until my brother-in-law was married before we spilled the "beans". I was glad that we waited to share the excitement with everyone around us.....I felt so horrible! I slept 12-14 hours a day and spent the rest of the time in a state of nausea and uh....relieving my stomach contents.

Let's fast forward to our first OB appointment. We were both so nervous about what would happen. We ended up having a great appointment, met our wonderful doctor and her staff and then got to see the ultrasound of our little peanut. It was surreal to see the heartbeat go across the screen. There really was something in there!

I'll finish this post with a sweet picture of our peanut at 8 weeks :)

It's A New Season

I love starting over. I love the clean & crisp feeling of a new year. It's a time for renewal, regeneration and fresh commitments. It's also a time to make those dreaded "New Year's Resolutions." Ugh. I despise making 'resolutions' that I know I'll never keep.

So instead, I'm doing something else. With the help of this post and these posts, I'm creating a life plan for the next 6 weeks of my life. Much easier to do!

My goals include financial goals, spiritual goals, organizational goals, fitness and meal planning. I'm creating a series of steps to reach these measurable goals and making myself accountable to others.

I LOVE great resources, especially when they're free! I also love when I read blog posts that share great resources, so I thought I'd do that here. These are some of the things I'm using to help me reach my goals.

Mvelopes: A great financial system. We also love Dave Ramsey!!

FlyLady: Love her household routines. I use the bedtime routine, the morning routine and clean our house using the Zone technique. I also subscribe to her daily Flight Plan (email) and Twitter, which often have useful tips and explain things in greater detail. The greatest thing about "flying"....it's just a few baby steps at a time.

Wii Fitness/Zumba: I use this to get myself moving every day. Zumba is fun and super energetic! It's a combination of intense cardiac workouts based on popular Latin and hip-hop dances. Warning: It does require some coordination, but if I can do it, you definitely can too. Wii Fitness has a better combination of stretching, weights, cardiac and yoga. Wii Fitness also tracks your progress and personalizes a plan based on your fitness goals.

Meal Planning: This is a hard area for me. I tend to be too much of a perfectionist and I find it hard to work with what I have on hand. However, I found this small series on meal planning (written by a SAHM of 4 children!) to be extremely helpful.

Until next time!

Ashley

Christmas Joy

I know it's been a long time since I've posted. One of my resolutions for the New Year is to keep my blog current! Today has been a wonderful celebration of family and Christmas. Here is a photo recap of the day:

birthday cake

the tree

special ornaments

presents

Merry Christmas!!

And we're back....

The last 8 weeks of our lives have been a complete blur!

First of all, we did it! We got married July 9th. It was the day of my dreams and the wedding of a lifetime. I married the love of my life and my best friend!! Thank you to all our friends and family who helped us, encouraged us, supported us and were there for us during our wedding. It was simply fabulous! But more on this to come...

We just got back from our beautiful honeymoon to Hawaii. It was incredibly fun but the overall feeling right now is exhaustion. There's only so much you can see and do in 10 days! We are so thankful to our parents for the sending us on this trip and for helping keep the home front intact while we were gone (i.e. house sitting, taking the car to the shop, running our errands and taking care of our puppy!). I'll be posting pics as soon as I can figure out how to set up a Flickr account!

Normal life. Routine. These are words I have been dreaming of for the last few days. I'm ready to get back to the real world and do "real" things. My OCD kicked in big time during the multiple flights home. I have a to-do list a mile long and note after note in my iPhone. (Speaking of....anyone have any great apps they use for organization on their phone??). I have a ton of follow up to do, emails to return, phone calls to make and thank you notes to write. So on that note, it's off to bed to prepare for the full week ahead!

Aloha my friends :)