Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice...

...that's what little GIRLS are made of.

As many of you already know from Facebook and Instagram, Jake and I got to find out the gender of Baby#2 last night!! 

(Jackson admiring his new baby sister!)

... and we couldn't be happier!!! I may have even yelled "Yay" and clapped when she told us it was a girl! ;-) We are so excited!!

We'll have our actual gender scan at 18 weeks, but when I saw so many others getting to find out at 15 weeks, I looked into it and found a 3D/4D elective ultrasound center here in St. Louis that offered a special on Mondays for a discounted price. So after twisting Jake's arm, I called and scheduled us an appointment. :-) We didn't tell any of our family and friends so that it would be a fun surprise. 

It was such a fun little surprise and so cool to see our little baby girl moving all around in 3D. :-) Amazing in fact! We took Jackson along with us too and the three of us had a little celebratory dinner afterwards at the Olive Garden. (Thanks Chris and Holly.)

Here are a couple 3D pictures of our tiny little girl. 

In this one, her hand is up by her ear. The ultrasound tech said she's already on the phone. Ha.

In this one you can see her hands up by her cheek. So sweet. :-)

As for a name... well we're still working on that, but I'll let you know as soon as we figure it out. :-)

A Storybook Photography Photo Session - The Jacobs

I had two photo sessions over the weekend. The first was for my Sister and her family. The Fall colors were so vibrant this past weekend and so pretty! Here are a few of our favorites.

14 Week Bump Date

How Far Along: 14 weeks today.
(You can check out my 14 week post from when I was pregnant with Jackson here.)

Size of baby: (According to babycenter.com)14 weeks: Your baby is about the size of a lemon. Your baby – now weighing roughly 1 1/2 ounces and measuring about 3 1/2 inches from head to bottom – can squint, frown, grimace, pee, and possibly suck her thumb.

Total Weight Gain/Loss: Around 4lbs. gained.

Maternity Clothes: I'm wearing mostly all maternity pants plus some maternity shirts and still some regular shirts.

Gender: We should be able to find out in about 4 weeks. Sometime in early December. I can't wait.

Movement:  I think I've felt a few flutters here and there. Can't wait to feel it more often though.

Food Cravings: None yet. Just whatever sounds good at the time.

What I miss: Nothing at this point.

Sleep: Sleeping fine other than getting up a couple times to go to the bathroom.

Symptoms: Frequent trips to the bathroom and still pretty tired most days, but most other symptoms are fading away, thank goodness.

Best Moment this week: Having a pretty relaxing weekend and gaining an hour of sleep thanks to Daylight Savings Time ending Sunday morning.

What I am looking forward to: Getting to find out the gender of the baby next month and starting to feel the baby move. Happy to finally be in the second trimester!! :-)

**And just for fun, here's a comparison from 6 weeks to 14 weeks of this pregnancy. :-)

Five on Friday!

Yay for Friday!

We had so much fun trick-or-treating last night. We had my parents, my sister and her family, Jake's mom, brother and his family and all his nieces and nephews over. We ate pizza and then took all 10 kids out trick-or-treating! We went around our whole block and got a whole bunch of candy! Jackson had so much fun and did so good! We ended the night in his Halloween Jammies, watching "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown". I really didn't think he would sit and watch it since it's an older cartoon, but he was glued to the t.v. the entire time! So sweet and such fun memories!

These two were so into it this year. They didn't want anyone to help them with their buckets, Ha! They held onto them the whole time!

Our whole parade of trick-or-treaters.

 

While trick or treating, we ran into Darth Vader. :-)

I'm so happy to have a free evening tonight! It's been a while since I've had nothing to do on a Friday night. October is such a busy month for us with birthday parties and fall activities, I haven't had an evening free in a long time! I plan on doing a whole bunch of NOTHING tonight. :-)

Now that Halloween is over, I'm already getting excited for Thanksgiving! Bring on the turkey, chicken and dumplings and pumpkin pie!! Being pregnant during the holidays is gonna be fun! :-)

Starting next week, my dad will be putting a second bathroom in our house!! I'm so excited. We've lived in our house for 6 years now with one small bathroom. It will be so nice to have another bathroom and will make selling our house, in the next couple years, a little bit easier too. :-) It's going in our basement, which will be so convenient when we are down in the family room. I will be sure to post pictures when it's done. 

Jackson had his 2 year Dr. check-up this past Monday. He weighed 31.4 lbs (75-90%) and he measured 37 inches tall (95%). He's getting so big! He had to get 2 shots (one of those being the flu shot) and have some blood drawn for a lead test, which wasn't fun, but all things considered, he did pretty well and enjoyed his cookies for being such a good boy! That should be the last of the shots until Kindergarten, thank goodness!

Have a GREAT weekend everyone!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween Everyone!! 

Just for fun, I thought I'd share a comparison of Jackson from his first 3 Halloweens!

2011

Only a week old at our Harvest Festival at church, dressed up in his little Halloween outfit.

2012

We dressed him up as a "Little Golfer".

2013

We're dressing him up as a "Little Train Conductor". 

We are looking forward to Trick or Treating tonight in our neighborhood and praying the weather cooperates for at least an hour or so. :-)

Everyone have a fun and safe Halloween!

Jackson's "Little Blue Truck" 2nd Birthday Party

We had Jackson's 2nd birthday party this past Saturday afternoon! It was such a fun day and the weather couldn't have been more perfect! 

Jackson's favorite book is "Little Blue Truck" so I decided to go with that theme for his party! It was so much fun planning and decorating for his party. It's not a very common theme, so it took some research and a little creativity on my part for some of the decorations. We had the party in our church dining hall again this year. Its just so easy to have it there. We served a Farm/Fall themed menu of chili and chicken noodle soup (and hot dogs for the kids). We also had a hayride, which was a lot of fun. The party turned out really cute and I think everyone had a great time. Most importantly, Jackson had a great time!

Here are some of the decorations.

A few pom poms we made for over the food table.

The "Happy Birthday" Banner I made for the party.

This was a little table I set up with all his scrapbooks on it and his Little Blue Truck book.

The kids table.

Since Jackson's favorite part of the book is the Dump Truck. I had to incorporate that somehow. :-)

The goodie bags we made for the kids.

We made a place setting for each kid with their name tag on it.

Some of the adult tables decorated for the party. I also used the big dry erase board as a picture board with pictures of Jackson from his 2nd year.

The centerpiece for the adult tables.

 

The cupcakes my sister made. I ordered the file for the cupcake toppers here. I also used this file for the banner, the goodie bags, the kids name tags and the invitations that I made.

A close up so you can see the cupcake toppers better. They were so cute.

My MIL made the food and the blue punch! It was all so yummy.

 The cake table.

After many outtakes, we finally got a decent family picture. We had to swing him up in the air to get him to cooperate! Ha. What us mom's will do for a picture with our kids. :-)

While everyone was getting there, I had Little Blue Truck color sheets for the kids to color. Once everyone was there, we ate lunch.

Then we took the kids out to the entry way of our church where I had hidden some plastic farm animals for the kids to play "Animals on the Loose". 

Then we sang Happy Birthday and ate cupcakes! Jackson did such a good job blowing out his candle. He new just what to do and surprised everyone with how well he did. I wish I could have gotten a picture, but it's on video so that will have to do. :-)

After cake, we sent the kids out for a hayride while Jackson opened up his presents. He had so much fun opening his presents and did so good. Normally he cries at other kids' parties because he doesn't understand why he can't open the presents too. This time he got to open them and he was pretty happy about it!

We waited til he was done opening up all his other gifts and then gave him his gift from Mommy and Daddy, a Lightening McQueen car he could drive himself. :-) He loved it!

After presents, I took him on the hayride!

We had such a great time! The party couldn't have gone any better! Here's to another year and another fun party for Jackson!