It's been too long.... Hello Again!

OK, firstly my most sincere apology for having left it so long since I posted on here. I have been wanting to post an update for a while now but life has just been totally crazy and it hasn't happened... no excuses, I know, but you might just understand why here in a little bit.

At the end of October, we went to Salt Lake City to visit with some friends for a long weekend. Alex & Tara are an amazing couple and are so much fun to be around. I had a blast in SLC (for my first time in Utah) and they were the perfect hosts, showing us the sights and giving me the low down on the history of the place. I was a little sick while we were there tho, headaches and feeling 'odd' but we kind of put it down to the altitude and hoped it would be long gone after a couple days back in Oregon...

Well, not so much...

On our flight back to Oregon for the first time ever I thought I was going to have to use one of the barf bags on the landing at PDX. Cory laughed thinking I was joking but I was more than serious. I really wasn't feeling good, and that niggling feeling I'd been having for the past week or ten days was back in the pit of my stomach... something wasn't quite right.

We stopped for lunch on the way back from the airport and still my stomach hadn't got back to normal, so when I popped out to go get groceries and left Cory in the garage working on the last of his brew sculpture I picked up a little box of tests (yep, you know the kind).

I came home and took the test, but didn't want to look so I put it back in it's package and took it out to Cory so he could see the results. He took one look, put it back in it's package, handed it to me and carried on talking about the project he'd been working on. I couldn't contain myself, I had to know - he just said, look for yourself. I was certain it must have been -ve and almost jumped out of my skin when there was two little lines on the test.

We're pregnant??? I sat down..... "Cory, the test says we're pregnant..." that was just about all I could get out that was coherent.

A few minutes the shock had worn off and we were both excited, woah - what an adventure we were starting!

So, the sickness I'd had for the days before I took the test never actually went away. The nausea lasted about another two weeks and then turned into full blown all day, all night pregnancy sickness.

I remember at one point thinking to myself, "why do they call it morning sickness? it doesn't go away at noon..."

We decided to get a check up at the Dr's before we made the formal announcement so I went to the Dr and had a blood test. My levels were great, it was definitely a viable pregnancy. So, I did the first thing that came into my mind, I called my Mum and told her. She was beyond surprised, she was down right shocked! I can't repeat the words she used, but I could tell she was so excited. There was also some concerns, but that was only natural. I assured her we were seeing the best Dr's around and would do everything they told us to for the good of the baby.

We told our good friends John & Janet, and of course Andrew but we wanted to wait a few more weeks to make the formal announcement. Christmas Day would have been the perfect time but we were going to be in London, so we decided on announcing on Thanksgiving. It seemed so fitting, this baby was a blessing we were SO thankful for and we knew Cory's parents would be too.

I wasn't sure how to tell them and we had a few ideas swimming around, but we settled on making a card for them. A thanksgiving card with a twist....

The front of the card said:
SHHHHHH
what's that noise?

and the inside read 'it's the pitter-patter of tiny feet!'

(So, here is where I would insert a photo of the cute card, but being that I was sick and had pregnancy brain I guess I didn't take a photo of it! Du'h! I'm pretty sure it's still on my MIL's shelf so I'll have to sneak a photo of it next time I'm there....)

I walked in to the house, Cory was sneakily videoing the reactions. I gave Genie (my mother in law) a hug, handed her the card and said "Happy Thanksgiving Genie".

Then I stood back and let the card do it's work.

The reaction was funny... she looked at it, then looked closer, and then tried to show it to Doug who didn't have his glasses on, so she read it out to him. He took one look at me and whispered "Are you having a baby?" when I said yes he replied "It's about time!"

Anyway, it was a bit of fun, they were pretty excited and it will be the most memorable Thanksgiving ever for me.

Right after Thanksgiving things got even more crazy - we had dinner for Genie's birthday, followed the next day by the rehearsal for Cory's Grampa and Wilma's wedding, then the next day we had the wedding.

I was not dealing well with food, so all the while this was quite a challenge for me, but I was taking the official wedding photos too, so I was just hoping and praying for a good Saturday afternoon.

Thankfully I had a good few hours on Saturday afternoon to get the formal photos taken, then I could relax a little.

Not too much though, as we were leaving for the UK for several weeks the following Wednesday morning. I had no idea how we were ever going to be ready to leave, I hadn't felt any way near normal in weeks and was barely functioning. I was sick all day and all night, exhausted and just about ready to break.

Thankfully I have a wonderful husband who did everything he needed to in order to get us packed up and ready to leave for our trip! What an awesome man! :)