Thanksgiving pics... finally

Well now that we are all getting ready for Christmas, I decided it was time to post some Thanksgiving pictures...

Shan and me dancing in the kitchen...

The tribe.

Our real crazy selves...

Uncle Shoaf carving the fabulous turkey made by Shan and Mom!

Photos from the crazy charades partner game called the "Dutch Game"

Scott and Josh

Greg and Layne

Shannon and Greg

It was such a fun few days in Michigan. I just love Thanksgiving.

A busy boy...

Our little guy is really wiggly! He is moving like crazy now, and I think this is the most incredible feeling in the world.

And last night was a big night too... Greg got to feel him kicking for the first time. And then again tonight, he kicked him three times. It was an awesome time for our little family.

It's A Boy!

Our little guy! :-)

Flexing his muscles already...

Our "It's a boy" shot... I couldn't tell anything until they explained it to us...

21 weeks! Getting bigger....

What we've been up to...

The majority of our summer and fall was spent on a new home improvement project, and it is ALMOST done!

The previous owners of our house had a hottub, which sounded like a fun thing when we bought the house. However, they let the pipes freeze (and burst), so we decided to get rid of the hottub rather than fix it. This left us with a large hole in the middle of the deck as well as lots of warped and peeling boards.

So... we decided to take on the new project of rebuildling our deck. Greg did an awesome job of planning and laying out the whole thing. And then with the help of some great friends, the purchase of a miter saw (and a new drill and new skill saw) it is three rails short of being done! Hooray!

Gutting the old deck!

Measuring boards for the lower level.

Framework for the upper level!

We were so thankful for the friends who helped us!

Good thing we picked only strong friends to help!

Getting there...

Yeah! Almost done!

the baby bump...

Well I promised belly pictures, and since we have so many family and friends who won't be able to see me a lot during this time, here you go...

Here I am at 17 weeks! It is so much fun!

Pregnancy Update: Everything has been going great so far. I had some morning sickness during the first trimester, but nothing bad at all. The biggest change I noticed was how tired I became... I could literally come home at 7:30 and fall asleep on the couch for the whole night. Now that we've moved into the second trimester, I feel a lot more like myself. (I make it to at least 8:30 before falling asleep...) haha! I've had a lot more energy, and have wanted to eat a lot more too!

During our doctor's appointment at week 12, the doctor's told us they were worried about my sugar, and so they tested me early for gestational diabetes... I did that test last week, though, and everything came out great. They'll retest at the normal time (week 26 I think), but other than that, they said everything sounded good! It's starting to feel more and more real, and we go for our 20 week ultrasound on November 18th... we are still deciding if we are going to find out the sex, but we'll keep you posted.

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like... Halloween?

We got hit with one of the biggest October snow storms in 12 years last week!

Our grill on the deck... we got over 2 feet of snow in 2 days!!!

Greg trying to get out the back door to shovel...

This was just day one... digging our cars out on day two was pretty interesting...

Our pretty backyard! It's all melting already...

Our big news!!!

We have finally decided to join the world of blogging... we'd been talking about doing this for about a year now, but never really started.

But now, we have some news that made me sit down and create this thing. Especially since we have loved staying connected with other friend's growing families through this...

We are PREGNANT! And we are so excited (and nervous and anxious and every other emotion that this time brings), and we wanted a place to share this with you.

So here comes my official first blog...

I found out I was pregnant on July 30 at work. I took a test during the middle of the day (word to the wise: big mistake if you plan on doing anything productive the rest of the day...) I hadn't been feeling the greatest, but I honestly didn't think I'd actually see the positive sign. So Greg and I were meeting friends for dinner that night in downtown Denver. I called him, just to see if there was a chance for us to meet earlier, but he seemed busy at work and said we could just meet at the restaurant.

So I went to Safeway, and looked around for a fun way to tell him the news. I found a cute card that said "Congratulations on your bundle of joy" and I wrote "Surprise... Congratulations Daddy." But I still had to make it all the way through dinner and then drive the 35 minutes from downtown to our house in Highlands Ranch... long drive...

When we got home, I told him that we needed to check the mail. He looked at me like I was crazy, but he checked the mail pile and found the card. As he opened it, he just got this confused look on his face and when he got to the "Daddy" part, he just looked up at me and said "You serious?" After lots of jumping around the living room and questions and laughing, we finally made it to sleep that night.

Since that night, we have had so much fun with everything. We told our families first, and that was such an awesome time for everyone. We waited until we were out of the first trimester to start telling other friends and family, and it's crazy to think we are into week 17 now!

God has blessed us in so many ways already. We are so excited to experience everything that is to come with our little miracle.

I will post some pictures soon as the belly is starting to grow! =+)