hello again

Well, I haven't really been good about blogging lately, actually, I haven't really been good about anything lately!

Things have picked up since I turned the 18 week mark... the sickness started to subside, I now have just a day or two of sickness per week and while it's still fairly frustrating to be sick on a regular basis it's no way near as bad as being sick all day and night. That was just plain exhausting, not to mention frustrating!

I'm at the 23 week mark of my pregnancy now and it's exciting and fun to be able to not only feel the baby moving, but to actually see the baby move inside my belly. At first that was a little weird, I must say... but now it's just exciting and fun at the same time.

We had our big ultrasound up in Portland a few weeks back and that was just plain amazing. We got to see the baby in such detail - we got to see and count fingers and toes (YAY, we counted 10 of each), we were able to see the baby moving and jumping and flipping all over the place and we got to see a profile shot of the baby's beautiful face.

I am just so excited to see that cute little face in person, to kiss those little lips and look into his or her eyes!

After the big ultrasound we talked with a perinatologist, and he was one of the most amazing Dr's I think I may have ever met with. He took as much time as we needed to talk through with us all the concerns he had due to my thyroid disease, and he reassured us that everything was perfectly on track, but that between him, my OB and my midwife they would be keeping a very close eye on me & baby and would be doing blood tests and ultrasounds every 6 weeks to make sure everything was good, and that way if anything went even slightly off course they would catch it quickly.

Since then my belly has been growing quickly, some days I wake up and can't quite figure out if the baby had a growth spurt in the night or what happened? My belly feels huge, and honestly, it's fairly uncomfortable some of the time but having our baby wriggling around inside of me is the most amazing feeling ever - I am starting to feel like a Mum already.

We've been working on the baby's room - we have a bird & tree theme going on in there that I totally love. We have also started slowly buying the more expensive items so they don't all have to come out of one pay check, it's good to find a nice deal or a bargain on something too - you know me, I hate to pay full price for anything!

Here's some pics of my growing belly in the last few weeks - it's crazy how much it's growing :)

19 weeks

20 weeks

21 weeks

Oh baby!

OK - So, if you haven't noticed in the mammoth posts below I'm preggers... up the duff, knocked up, baking a bun - whatever you want to call it, I'm it!

I'm right at 16 weeks and so that means I'm in my second trimester, I should be starting to glow and enjoying being pregnant and looking beautiful... hummm, well two of those things haven't happened and I wouldn't exactly say I'm 'enjoying' being pregnant, but it is exciting.

Flying while pregnant - not recommended!

Being back home with my family for Christmas was great, getting there was horrible!

I never, ever want to travel longhaul again while pregnant. Travelling to LAX was bad enough, but then having to get onto the 10.5 hour flight to London Heathrow was bad... real bad. I thought since we were there for almost 4 weeks that I'd be feeling 'much better' by the time we had to make the journey back home... I was wrong. The flight(s) home were even worse. The flight to LAX from London was a nightmare, nothing else can describe just how bad it was. I had sickness the whole flight and I couldn't get a moment's rest. I'm sure having just experienced an emotional goodbye a couple hours before flying didn't help but let me just say, DON'T DO IT! It's horrible!

Mr & Mrs Marvin Fast

Here are a couple of photos from Grampa & Wilma's wedding. They both looked lovely and it was a beautiful ceremony. They are such a special couple and great together - I am so glad they found each other!

Love you both!

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.

Marci Ehrhart Concert

I have had the pleasure of helping our friend Marci with a concert that she is putting together on Friday November 12th!

It's going to be a wonderful night, Marci is so talented and has a wonderful voice, and the rest of the band are awesome too - it'll knock your socks off!

Click below to check out the blog site for the concert and make sure to mark your calendar :)

http://concertforamber.blogspot.com/

I Dragged The Gut

As an immigrant to the USA I am constantly finding things here in my new home that are new to me or are just different...

Dragging the Gut is one of those things that is unique to the USA and here in McMinnville it was outlawed in the mid-late 80's.

It was such a wonderful evening, we had a great time dragging the gut with our 1972 Suburban and our Victory... I can't wait for next year! :)