Morning Sickness Sucks!!!

I was really hoping I would be one of those lucky pregnant women who never got Morning Sickness.... unfortunately I wasn't. It started this past Wednesday, a day after I hit the six week mark, and it hasn't stopped since then. Its not only morning sickness, but more like "all day" sickness. Ugh. Fortunately for me, it hasn't been bad enough to where I've thrown up, but I pretty much feel nauseous off and on all day long. Nothing really seems to help either. I've tried, peanut butter crackers, toast, sprite and ginger root capsules. I've also tried mints, but they really only help while I have the mint in my mouth. Once its gone the sickness comes right back. I'm really praying this is short lived.   

Baby Names and Nursery Themes

As young girls growing up, my sister and I often talked about what we'd name our kids and how we'd decorate their rooms and all the fun stuff that goes along with having a baby. Of course its all changed since then and the names and nursery themes I liked back then aren't the same as now, but I always had fun thinking about it and planning.

Jake and I have decided on a definite boy name, and have been pretty set on this name for quite some time now. Our boy name is, Jackson Thomas Smith (we're thinking we'll sometimes call him J.T. for short). :-) I love the name Jackson and Thomas was my Great-Grandfather's name. Jake also likes this name because his favorite Civil War General was Thomas Jackson, so its kind of a play on his name. Jake's initials are J.T.S. so they would have the same initials. "J.T." was what they sometimes called Jake's Grandfather (his name was John Testrake), so thats part of the reason we're thinking about using that as a nickname. Plus we have a nephew named Jack on Jake's side, and at family gatherings it might be kind of confusing to have a Jack and a Jackson.

When my sister was pregnant with Landon, 4 years ago, we spent many days baby shopping. While we were looking for bedding for Landon, I ran across a couple I liked. This is the one I really liked for a boy and I still love it and plan to use it if we have a boy.

If we have a girl, the names that we have picked out are... Rylee Elaine Smith and/or Haylee Renee Smith. If at some point we end up having 2 girls, these will be their names, but we haven't decided which one we'll use if this baby is a girl. We are spelling both names with the "lee" because Lee is my dad's middle name. Elaine is my Mother-in-Law's middle name and Renee is mine and my Mom's middle name. Haylee is what Jake's name was going to be if he would have been a girl, but probably spelled different :-)

I'm going back and forth on baby girl bedding. Back when we were shopping for Landon, I fell in love with this bedding...

However, I ran across this set a little while ago and I really like it too...

I just love the girly feel to this room. Pink and brown is one of my favorite color combinations and I absolutely LOVE the chandelier. So I think I'm leaning more towards this second nursery, but I haven't totally made up my mind yet.

So these are the names and nursery themes we have picked out, whether its a boy or a girl. We're looking forward to finding out the gender, hopefully sometime in May. I can't wait to start buying stuff and decorating their room.

6 Weeks

I'm 6 weeks pregnant today and still feeling great. I've been able to do all my normal activities with no problems. Natalie, over at Sweet Notes from the Stickles Family, is 19 weeks pregnant with her third child and she's posting these pregnancy highlights each week on her blog. I thought I'd borrow them from her and add my highlights to document how my pregnancy is progressing each week. So far its a little boring because its still so early. But it will get exciting soon enough. :-)

6 week "baby bump" picture, even though I'm not really showing yet. It will be fun to look back on these early pictures and see how I've grown.

Pregnancy Highlights:

How Far Along: 6 weeks, 239 days to go.

Size of baby: About 1/4 of an inch, the size of a lentil.

Total Weight Gain/Loss: I haven't actually weighed, but I'm still not showing. I doubt I've gained any baby weight yet.

Maternity Clothes: Not yet.

Gender: ??? We should be able to find out sometime in May. I can't wait. :-)

Movement: Not yet, its still too early.

Food Cravings: None so far.

What I miss: Being able to eat fish and drink caffeine.

Sleep: I have been pretty sleepy in the afternoon and evenings and have been sleeping pretty well other than having to get up about once a night to go to the bathroom.

Symptoms: Just a couple little symptoms, but no morning sickness or anything like that yet, and I'm hoping it stays that way. :-)

Best Moment this week: I haven't had anything exciting happen since we found out a little over a week ago.

What I am looking forward to: My first Dr. appt. on March 11th.

TGIF!!!

Its finally Friday!! And to top it all off its another 3 day weekend... thanks to Presidents Day on Monday!!

We don't have a lot of plans this weekend, thankfully. However, we do have our Bible Study group getting together at our house tonight. We're on chapter three of the book, "The Next Christians", which is very interesting so far.

We are also helping my parents move tomorrow. Which is never really very fun, and they're having to downsize which I know they aren't happy about, but one good thing about it is they are moving closer to Jake and I, which we're happy about. Them living closer will be nice for when the baby comes too. We are planning on having my Mom watch the baby while we're at work and it will be so much easier for her to be able to come to our house to watch him/her rather than me having to drive 40 minutes out of my way to take the baby to where they live now. So this move has its pros and cons.

We also have church on Sunday morning, but other than that I don't have anything else going on. Of couse this can always change at any time. The weekends always seem to fill up quickly, but thats what we have on the agenda so far.

In other news, week 5 of my pregnancy is still

going very well. One new thing is, I'm having to go to the bathroom a lot more. I even had to get up in the middle of the night to go last night, which is unusual for me. I'm sure this will only get worse as the weeks go by, but I'm not complaining. I am so excited about this baby and can't wait to hear its heart beat, get my first ultrasound,  feel him/her move, find out whether our baby is a boy or girl, decorate the nursery and ultimately meet our precious addition. It still doesn't really feel real yet, but its starting to kind of sink in that I'm finally going to be a mom. I can't wait!!!

                                                                    
So do you have any fun plans for this weekend?

Wednesday Update...

I don't really have a whole lot to say today, but I thought I'd give you a little update on how things are going.

As of yesterday I'm 5 weeks pregnant and everything is going great. I have been feeling pretty good, just a little tired in the afternoon and evenings. No real morning sickness, but I did feel a little nauseous late last night... however, a Tums helped and I was able to go right back to sleep. Otherwise everything is going fine.

Heres a picture of what a baby looks like at 5 weeks, inside the womb. Its interesting to me to see how they grow.

The baby is apparently the size of a sesame seed. As you can see below, he/she is still very tiny.

I'm also excited because the weather has been great this week. Today its supposed to be in the 60's and tomorrow it may possibly get into the 70's!!! The snow is almost all melted and may be all melted after today!!! The only down side to this is my back yard is pretty muddy, so 12 muddy dog paws is never very fun. But regardless of the muddy paws, I'm hoping this weather sticks around for a while. I love it!

Look what I just got...

My husband had these delivered to me at work today for Valentines Day!!! He's such a sweety. :-) They made my day.

Happy Valentines Day!!

Happy Valentines Day to all of you!! I hope you have a fabulous day/evening with your Valentine!

Jake and I have planned to stay home this evening and Jake said he would cook dinner for us!! :-) He's going to pick up a couple steaks for dinner, yum!! I'm so looking forward to a nice candlelit dinner at home.

So what are your Valentines Day plans??

A Double Blessing!!

The GOOD news just keeps on coming. My sister, who has been trying for 2 years for her second child, just found out today that she's pregnant too!!!! She had taken several rounds of Clomid and had done an IUI and none of it helped her to get pregnant. They had taken a break this past cycle and to all of our surprise, she's Pregnant!!! We are so excited to go through our pregnancies together. Our babies are literally due within days of one another!!! Needless to say our parents are just ecstatic. God works in mysterious ways and he's given our family a double blessing. We are so thankful. :-)

Ashlee and I when we were little. She's 3 1/2 years younger than me. (I'm on the right, she's on the left.)

Ashlee and I just a couple years ago. (I'm on the left, she's on the right.)

We're...

And so excited!!

Wednesday night I started feeling really sick to my stomach and it lasted for quite a while until I was finally able to fall asleep. When I woke up Thursday morning for work I felt a little bit better, but in the back of my mind I thought, maybe the sickness is... "morning sickness" or it could be the flu, or something I ate, but there's one way to find out. :-) I had a left over test from last month, and though I was trying to wait til I actually missed my "time of the month", that test was very tempting. It was 1 or 2 days before my cycle was supposed to start back up again and I've read many women who are able to get a positive result at 12 days past ovulation (which is what day I was on), so I figured it was worth a try. After many many months of getting negatives, I was convinced this month would be the same. After all, it was only my first month of taking Clomid, and most women don't get pregnant the first try. But to my total shock, the test said "Pregnant". I couldn't believe it and still am having a hard time wrapping my head around it. I just started shaking I was so excited.

Now to tell Jake!! He was still sleeping at the time and I didn't really want to wake him because I knew he wouldn't be able to go back to sleep after he got the news. So I put the positive test in our medicine cabinet so it would be a surprise. :-) Of course, he being a total man, didn't notice it. So I told him he better go take a second look. LOL. He was like, "is this for real". Those were my same thoughts when I saw the positive. Yep its for real. He was just as excited as I was. He's been telling everyone, which surprises me in a way. Jake's not really what I would consider a "kid" person. He was the one that kept wanting to wait to have kids. I of course was ready about a year after we got married, but Jake wanted to wait, so we did. I'm thrilled that he's so excited!

So now we're praying for a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby. I called the Dr. office yesterday and we scheduled my first appt. for March 11th. She told me all the things I need to be doing to stay healthy and she also figured that my due date should be somewhere around October 19th!!! Which I'm really happy about because we don't have any October birthdays on either side of our family. I'm also excited cause I'll get to dress them up in a cute little costume for Halloween!!! My sister thought of that one. :-)

So thats our good news, and I'll definitely keep you guys updated with all my pregnancy happenings. Continue to keep us in your prayers.

Dreaming of Spring

Today I find myself dreaming of Spring and Summer. I always hate Winter, and after Christmas the hatred just worsens. I am so sick of the cold and snow. The high for today is only in the upper teens/low twenties and the low for tonight is only 8 degrees. I'm sick of the grass being dead and the trees being bare.

I'm dreaming today of 75 degree temps.,  green grass, sunshine, green leaves on the trees, BBQ on the back patio and the dogs playing in the green back yard! It can't come soon enough for me.

This is what I wish my back yard looked like right now...

Instead of this! :-(

Winter, I wish you would go far far away!

Good News and Bad News

Its only 10 a.m. and I've already had a crazy day. The bad news came at about 7:15 this morning. While I was finishing up getting ready for work, my husband called and said his brakes went out... Yikes!!! He was on his way to work and thankfully had only gotten to the end of our street when they started to go out. He made it to the shoulder safely, but he said it was a terrifying experience. Had there been cars coming, things would not have went so well. We had to call a tow truck to come pick up his car and tow it to our mechanic. While the tow truck was there, we noticed that Jake's car was leaking fluid (we're assuming its probably brake fluid). I'm hoping and praying its something that is easily fixable and relatively inexpensive. We shall see.

The good news is... once I finally was on my way to work, my cell phone rang and it was my OB/GYN with my progesterone test results. If you remember... my previous number before taking Clomid was 0.5, which meant I wasn't ovulating at all. They like your number to be at least a 15. Mine this month, with the help of Clomid, was 28.8!!!! Yay!!! I'm so happy. If I'm not pregnant, my cycle should start again sometime late this week or weekend. If it doesn't, I'll be able to take a pregnancy test by the weekend and it should tell me one way or another.The nurse on the phone said if I get a neg. pregnancy test this time, she'll prescribe another round of 50 mg of Clomid for next month since it helped this past month. I'm trying to wait patiently, but thats definitely easier said than done. This month makes it a full year of being off the BC pill. I'm praying we will get even better news this weekend! Please keep us in your prayers!

I hope you all are having a good day on this freezing cold Tuesday. :-)

Sweet Bacon Crackers

Here is another recipe for a yummy treat we had at our Super Bowl party last night. My sister made these and they are always a HUGE hit. Here is the recipe.

Crescent Pizza Pockets

Those of you that know me, know I'm not a cook, but I had seen these on a commercial and wanted to try making them for our Super Bowl party. I made some with pepperoni and some with just cheese. For my first time, I thought they turned out pretty well and they seemed to go over well at the party. I made them slightly smaller than this picture shows because we had so many people to feed. Here's the recipe.

Super Bowl Party 2011

Well our Super Bowl party was a success this year!! We had about 22 people over and we all had a great time!!! We had TONS of great food. I even tried a new, easy recipe which I'll post later. I had everything cleaned up and put back together, the dishes in the dishwasher and ready for bed before midnight... so thats what I call a success!! Here are a few pictures...

The food table with lots and lots of food on it!

The counter with more food and drinks on it.

Watching the game.

Landon and I watching the Puppy Bowl upstairs.

Cupcakes that my sister made and decorated for the party!!

Super Bowl Party Decorations

Jake and I host a Super Bowl party every year and this year I decided to be a little more festive and get some decorations for the party. Here are a few pictures to show you my decorations!

Going downstairs to the party.

The food table (what is normally my scrapbook table). I managed to get all the cute decorations at the Dollar Tree!!

 A close up of the food table. The big football in the center is a candy dish. The little footballs on either side are salt and pepper shakers that I got from Dollar General. The bowls will be for chips. :-)

The cute decorations over the food table.

The candy dish filled with roasted peanuts for the party.



The counter in my scrapbook room all decorated for the party.

More Valentines Day Decorations

Hope you are all having a great weekend. Mine is going great so far. I've spent most of today getting ready for our Super Bowl party tomorrow and I have pictures of my decorations that I'll post in a minute... but while I was out shopping for party supplies and food, I found some really cute V-day decor at Target and Michaels. I just love these colors! Here are some updated pictures of my kitchen and front door.

Our dining room table all decorated for V-day. I got the table runner, napkins and red plates from Target. All the candle holders are from Partylite, the ribbon is from Michaels and the confetti is from Schnucks.

A close up of my centerpiece. The inside is filled with little heart shaped red hots! :-)

A close up of a place setting. The red charger is from Walmart which I bought at Christmas time for our New Years Eve dinner at church. The white plates and silver napkin ring holders are part of my set that I use every year for our New Years Eve dinner at church. The little red plate and the napkin are from Target.

A partylite votive holder that I tied some cute ribbon around to make it more festive.

Our bakers rack decorated for Valentines Day.

A close up of some more Partylite candles decorated for Valentines Day.

My cute Valentines Day candy dish filled with V-day peanut m&m's.

The next two pictures are of a set of dish towels I got today at Target. :-)

Sign for our front door.

Yay... its the weekend!

Happy Friday everyone!! I'm so glad its Friday and that the weekend is just a few hours away. Here's what we have on the agenda for this weekend...

Today I'm working, then on my lunch hour I have to go get my blood drawn to check my progesterone level... oh the joys of trying to conceive with infertility. ;-) I finished my first round of Clomid this cycle and got a positive ovulation test last Friday and Saturday. They like to check your progesterone level 7 days after a positive ovulation test to check and see whether you actually did ovulate.  They like the number to be above 15 (my # w/out Clomid was 0.5). So I'm praying that the Clomid worked and I did in fact ovulate this month. I had some ovulation pain last Friday night and Saturday as well, so I'm hoping that means I really did ovulate. I should get the results from the blood test sometime early next week. I'll let you guys know what the results are as soon as I get them.

Tonight we are having our bible study group over. We are now going through
the book, "The Next Christians" by Gabe Lyons. We are just starting it and will be covering chapter 1 tonight. I've only read the first chapter, but its very interesting so far.

Tomorrow we don't really have any plans other than getting ready for our Super Bowl party on Sunday. We've had a Super Bowl party every year since we got married. We have a 61" t.v. so we always have some friends and family over to watch it together. I'm hoping to decorate a little bit this year for our party. Normally I don't really take the time to decorate and go all out, but I'd like to make things a little more festive this year. I'll post pictures if I do end up decorating. I don't normally even watch the Super Bowl cause there's never really a team I care about playing... this year is no different. I really couldn't care less who wins, but I know Jake always enjoys watching it with his friends. I normally turn on the Puppy Bowl upstairs, and those of us who don't care about the football game just talk and have a fun time together. I'll switch the channel over to the game every so often to get an update on the score, but thats about as much as I watch. LOL.

Sunday we'll go to church and then we're having our 1st Sunday of the month Food and Fellowship after the service. I think another family in our church is making beef stew!! Yum. Then we'll have our Super Bowl party later that afternoon!! Should be a fun day! Go Packers... I guess ;-) Thats who Jake is rooting for so I guess I will too! 

I hope you all have a safe, warm, relaxing and enjoyable weekend!!