IT'S A GIRL

I went for the big u/s today and we are having another little girl. The girls are going to rule the house. Poor Austin. It was real exciting getting to see her. She was moving all over the place. I think that is because I had my morning coffee drink and a bottle of o.j. right before the appointment. The doc said that everything looked great except my blood pressure is still a little high.

Here is how I am doing:
How far along? 20 weeks
Maternity Clothes? Yup...

Stretch marks? Yup...they are getting bigger.
Sleep? Great. But I am having some crazy dreams
Best moment this week? Finding out we are having a girl.

Movement: Tiny little kicks. Mostly in the evening when I am relaxing

Gender? Girl

Labor signs? Nope
What I miss? Beer

What I am looking forward to? Getting the room ready

Milestones? Made it the halfway point

No news is good news

It's been a while since I update this little old blog. I have been a little bit under the weather the last few months. But now I am feeling o.k. and have enough energy to give it another try. I am sure most folks know that we are expecting a new addition early November. We are really excited and Abby is very, very excited that she is going to be a big sister. She ask me everyday if the baby is here.

Even though I haven't been able to keep little old blog up we still have been keeping busy and having lots of fun. Here is just a peak of what we have been up to:

We planted a garden


Abby and I went to the Sparkleberry Fair

Abby turned 4 years old (my little baby is becoming such a big girl )

Abby and I went to cousin Steven's High School Graduation

And can you believe that a helicopter landed in Shawn's yard at Steven's graduation party and Abby went for ride. But if you ask Abby she enjoyed the slip and slide more.

We have also had friends stop through Columbia like Austin's childhood friend Laura and her family to attend her niece's play. We were lucky enough to have a quick lunch with them. (We took some pictures but they are still on Austin's camera). And last weekend , we were able to babysit Abby's boyfriend Graham and baby Sophie while there parents went to a wedding. Abby and Graham had a blast running around and playing while I was just in aw having a three month to hold. I think I was so excited having them here I forgot to picture's. I blame that on my pregnancy brain farts. I did get a few pictures of Sophie but I haven't been able to upload them yet.

Here is how I am doing so far with this pregnancy:

How far along? 18 weeks

Maternity Clothes? Yup....I have been in maternity clothes since around 8 weeks. I can't believe that since with Abby I didn't start showing until 20+ weeks.

Stretch marks? Yup...the lovely stretch marks that I was lucky to get with Abby are starting to grow.

Sleep? Pretty good right now. At the beginning of this pregnancy, not so much. I am really enjoying sleep right now.

Best moment this week? Going to Carter's outlet on Sunday and seeing all the great deals and finding the Fisher Price Nature Swing at the consignment shop which was a great find and great price.

Movement: Little flutters here and there.

Gender? ????- A few folks keeps telling me it's a boy but we will find out real soon, June 23rd.

Labor signs? Nope

What I miss? Feta Cheese

What I am looking forward to? Finding out the gender on June 23rd

Milestones? Making it 18 weeks :)

I will get Austin to take a picture of big fat belly when he gets home this weekend so you can see how fat I getting.

Happy Easter

Image from: http://vintageholidaycrafts.com/free-vintage-clip-art-easter/

Getting ready for Spring

Last Saturday ( I know I am posting these backwards sorry) the weather here was fabulous. We went to Sesquicentennial State Park which is just a couple miles from where we live. It's a nice park to take the whole family. There is lots you can do there: picnics, walking trails, dog park, playgrounds, paddle boats and canoes. We let Abigail burn off some energy on the playground (of course) and then took her on the paddle boats.

This little guy followed us around. I think he thought we had some food. I felt kinda bad because we didn't.

Here are some of our crafts that we worked on to get the house ready for spring:

Hum, Abigail is concentrating really hard!

Making sure we get the pieces in the right spot

And our final projects. We made flower sun catchers, lady bugs and for St. Patrick's day a four leaf clover.

Sophie Grey Calhoun

Last Sunday we took the day to go and meet the newest member of the Calhoun Family. Her name is Sophie Grey Calhoun.

Isn't she adorable?

Mommy and Sophie

Abigail really enjoyed going up there. Abigail thought the baby was "sweet". But the best part for Abigail was she got to play with Sophie's big brother Graham.

They are too cute...:)

Oops...It was an accident

KIDS + SCISSORS = OOPS...IT WAS AN ACCIDENT

Remember what Abigail looked like with lots of hair

Here is what happens when Abigail gets hold of scissors:

This is what it looks like after we visited the hair dress:

Adding some accessories

Mommy has been crying a lot.

A Valentine Craft... a little late....

Here is something fun to do with all your broken crayons. Instead of throwing them out, make new ones.

This was super easy and lots of fun. Check out this tutorial if you want to try.

Abby and I also made these yummy cup cakes for her daycare Valentine party. I was pretty bummed because I didn't get to have any.

New Look

I wasn't happy with the way the blog was looking so I gave it a face lift. I think it turned out pretty good especially for not knowing what I was doing.

Please check out the new recipe and photo links sometime in the next few weeks.

Under the recipe link I will be adding new and old recipes that we enjoy. I have tons of recipes laying around and I thought this would help me become more organized.

Under the photo link we will be adding just random photo's that we think are pretty cool.

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY

Catching up

I've been bad blogger again. I really didn't mean too. I have just been real lazy.

First, let me update you on our weight loss or the lack thereof.

Week 4:

Kristina: 0

Austin: 0

Week 5:

Kristina: +2 (I am blaming this on that time of the month)

Austin: +1 (sympathy for me)

Actually, the last two weeks I went to the store I didn't have our meals planned. I just went to store having no idea what we were going to eat. This is a real bad idea. I end up buying not so healthy meals and lots of junk we don't need. This week I have everything planned. Problem is the last two nights we have tried two new "healthy" meals and both bombed. After last nights meal I had to make something yummy so we made these (only because I already had all the ingredients in the house). And yes they are very yummy. Tonight's dinner was so bad we both had to eat Chef Boyardee and some more of those yummy cookies. So again we are off to a bad start.

So what have we been up to? Other than eating bad. The weekend of the 31st I (alone no Daddy or Abby) went up to Greenville. It was one of my closest friends baby shower. And can you believe that 6 of 11 guest were also preggo. I made sure to stay far away from the water up there (just joking, Abby needs a sibling so I made sure to drink lots). After the baby shower we went to see Dar Williams. It was a great show. If she happens to come to your town you definitely need to check her out.

While I was up in Greenville, Daddy and Abby had a slumber party. They ate lots of junk food, watched movies and had lots of fun. Here are some pics and a video of there weekend:

Party time, mommy's gone :)

A little painting to keep busy

In this video Abby does her now famous shake your booty dance. When ever she hears music or whenever she feels like it she breaks it out. Your lucky she didn't drop her pants which she does most days...:)

This past weekend we had spring fever. The temperature actually went up to 74. That was hard to believe because at the beginning of the week it was 20 degrees and I was bundled up in a scarf and hat. Since the weather was so nice we made sure to go out both days. Saturday we went down to River Front Park to walk the dog and let Abby ride her bike. Sunday we went to Finley Park to let Abby kick around her soccer ball and play. I am not sure if we are going back to Finley Park because there were lots of characters there (that's me being nice) and way too many kids on the play ground. It was way to hard to keep track of Abby and quite frankly scared me. Needless to say we had lots of fun. Here are some pics from this weekend: I was going to add another video but that last one took way too long to upload.

Off I go, let's see if you can catch up

I am cool

Daddy taking a nap on the deck

Story time

Time for some soccer

Just looking cute

Here is one of our valentine crafts we started. I will share more this coming up weekend.

Abby had me write on the hearts all the things she loved and then she traced it with the blue marker.

Road Trip

Another rainy Saturday. We started off the morning being really lazy. Why not? By the afternoon Abby started to get a little restless and wanted to go to the playground (I bet you couldn't of guessed that). Instead of going to McDonald's we headed down to the mall. She played for a little bit and then she decided that she wanted to ride the escalators. This was a good opportunity to get away from the playground and head over to Barnes and Noble to grab coffee, read some books and let Abby play with there train set. She was real nice and didn't steal a train from anyone. Then we headed home and had a yummy dinner.

When Abby and I got up Sunday morning @ 6:15 I decided that we were not staying in if it wasn't raining. We have been home the past few weekends and it was time for a road trip. While daddy was still sleeping Abby and I layed around, read some books and in honor of the snow this week we made some snow flakes.

All our markers are dried out except for the green so we couldn't get the cool tied dyed look. Oh well!!

We finally went and woke up daddy around 8:30 and told him that we were ready to go on a road trip. We decided on going to Charleston and off we went.

Here are a few pictures from Folley Beach:

After gathering tons of seashells we left the beach and drove around downtown. We didn't get out because we plan on going back in a month or so. And before we left Charleston I had to go to Whole Foods because we don't have one in Columbia. We grabbed a few things, had a slice of pizza and back home we went.

Week 3 Diet Result

This is going to be short and to the point.

Results:

Kristina -2
Austin -2

Not so bad. They say that you are only supposed to loose 2-3 pds a week.

I have some bad news for everyone. Austin slipped up and smoked today. We have come to an agreement that the patch is not working and he is going to need wellbutrin. He has been having some emotional issues over the last few days.

Snow

ABBY'S FIRST SNOW

It's was fun while it lasted

Express yourself

Let me first say "I love heat". We finally got our heater fixed after it being on the edge of blowing up for the past two weeks. The first heater guy told us that we should just start saving our pennies because we needed a new machine. I had a funny feeling so after talking to my cousin's ex-husband (who is a heating/air man up in DC) we decided to get a second opinion. And you know what? They were able to fix it. Just in time, it is very, very cold here in SC. I moved back South to get away from this kind of weather.

Since it was cold and rainy we spent just about all weekend inside (except for the occasional trip to the grocery store and to McDonald's for Abby to play).

Here are some of the highlights of the weekend:

Painted our nails with a purple marker

Daddy made Abby a tent

Paint, Paint and Paint

Daddy was in charge of craft's this weekend and his motto was "She needs to express herself".

And some how Abby talked Daddy into giving her this after breakfast today

Then she was doing flips and bouncing off the walls

I think Daddy is a sucker for his little girl :)