Pregnancy Update #3: 20 Weeks

Weeks 18-20

Size of  Baby: Baby Marler approximately 6.5 inches long, 10.5 ounces in weight, and about the size of a banana.

Cravings: Lately I've been dying for a really good burger and fries from Burger Supreme in Provo. But that's a little far to drive for a craving.

Symptoms: My back started to ache pretty badly last week, so I started doing prenatal yoga for 25 minutes everyday and since then I haven't had any problems

Clothes: I can still button two pairs of my normal jeans but it's not very comfortable, so I usually just wear a belly band with all my jeans now. I did go out and buy two pairs of maternity jeans which I'm really excited about because they're super comfy.

Gender Reveal: So the votes are in with 18 for boy and 15 for girl, and as you probably guessed from my baby bump picture we're having a Boy!!!

Here's a video of Brian and I finding out the gender of Baby Marler.

Even Ginger got to help us announce the gender reveal.

Milestones: Brian and I went to my 20 week appointment last Friday and got to get a look at Baby Marler. He's definitely a squirmy one already, but he gave the ultrasound tech a few good poses.

Baby Boy is raising his hand

Baby Boy's nose and mouth

Baby Boy looks like he is already sucking on his thumb

Baby Boy's profile

Baby Boy is looking at the camera

Pregnancy Upate #2: Week 18

I'm 18 weeks today, so it's time for another Pregnancy update!

Weeks 16-18

Size of  Baby: Baby Marler approximately 6 inches long, 8 ounces in weight, and about the size of a large mango.

Cravings: Anything sweet, especially if it has chocolate or fruit, so Brian and I may have bought a 48 oz container of chocolate covered raisins as SAM's club the other day.

Symptoms: Mostly I feel great, and I think it's due to the daily walks I take with Ginger. I do get tired and have to take a small nap every day, but luckily my puppy needs a nap everyday too, so we're snuggle buddies. I'm also hungry a lot more, and have started to out eat Brian every now and then.

Clothes: I can still fit into two pairs of jeans without a maternity band because they're Women's sizes and allow for hips, but I think I'm going to have to donate all my old Juniors size jeans to my little sister because I don't think my hips will ever get in those again.

Milestones: I definitely have felt Baby Marler move! I think the baby has been moving for awhile it's just been hard to pin point since I've never felt it before. Now that the baby is bigger I definitely feel it rolling around.

Gender Reveal! Brian and I will be finding out the gender of Baby Marler on November 8th, so cast your votes now of what you think we're having. Brian says it's a boy, but I definitely feel like it's a girl.

Boy or Girl?

Pregnancy Update #1: Week 16

So It's been a while since I announced that Brian and I are expecting. Now that things have settled down a little bit I thought I'd give a little update about how my pregnancy is going so far, and post the first official baby bump picture.

First Trimester Summary

So my first trimester went as expected, I was nauseous all the time, I had weird and random cravings, and any strong smell was disgusting. I was able to combat my nausea by eating a lot of pickled ginger, and eating a lot of little meals rather than 3 normal sized ones. All in all it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been and I am super fortunate to have a wonderful husband Brian who really helped me get through my nauseous phase. 

Here's a few of my first trimester cravings:

Saltine Crackers and Chocolate Frosting
(they taste even better refrigerated)

Nachos with Jalapenos
(had to specifically find the "fake" melty cheese)

Kraft Mac'n Cheese with Ketchup
(I used to eat this as a kid)

Weeks 13-16

The day after we moved into our new house I officially entered week 13 and my Second Trimester. Ever since then my nausea has gone, and my appetite has come back. I do get a lot more tired but so long as I take a nap during the day I'm good to go. 

I am now 16 weeks pregnant, and while my bump isn't much of a bump, I can definitely tell that me and my baby are growing. Right now Baby Marler is about the size of a large avocado! 

Brian and I are both so excited about this adventure, and I'll do my best to post more frequent updates and new baby bump pictures every two weeks or so to keep everyone in the loop.

Puppy Love

What's a house without a dog?

Brian and I have been wanting a dog for a long time, and really the only thing stopping us from getting one was not having space for one. Now that we've got a house and are settling down we are so excited to add a furry member to our family.

We started researching what kind of dog we wanted as soon as Brian accepted a job offer, and Corgi's kept coming up as the perfect breed for our little family. Corgi's are great with kids, they love lots of snuggles, and they also need exercise and want to run around and play. They are also a good size since they are small enough that Brian is okay with them on the couch (which is a must for me), but they're not tiny, yappy dogs.

Once we decided on a breed we got in contact with a breeder and found one near us with a litter due at the perfect time called Stafford's Corgis. Stafford's Corgis is a wonderful small breeder in Spencer, VA who truly loves and cares for her dogs and pups. She's been great at giving us advice on owning a new puppy, as well as letting us come and visit our puppy as often as we want.

6 Weeks

We first visited the litter when they were 6 weeks. Celie (the breeder) told us that one of the two fluffy girls would make excellent pets for us and that the lighter of the two was going to be the best fit for our family. We played with the pups for about an hour and we agreed the light fluffy girl was the best for us. We named her Ginger.

Ginger at Six Weeks

Neville the Tri-Colored boy

Waffles the Fluffy Girl

Ginger and Neville

Me holding Ginger for the first time

Brian holding Ginger for the first time

Ginger loves belly rubs

The whole litter tired after playing, Ginger is the one on the top left

9 Weeks

Even though we wouldn't be picking up Ginger until she was 12 weeks old, we couldn't resit another visit at 9 weeks. It was great getting to run around with her in Celie's back yard. She didn't know her name, but she knew that she and her litter-mates were called puppy. It was really cute to see her face light up when she realized that when I was calling puppy that I meant her. She'd run over to me as fast as her little legs could carry her and as soon as she got to me she'd want to be picked up and held.

I may be biased but I think our pup is the best pup out of the whole litter.

Ginger after a big run

Ginger loves Brian

Who could resist squishing that face?

Celie the breeder and Ginger

The whole litter at 9 weeks, Ginger is top left

12 Weeks

We brought Ginger home last night and she was so good even though the car ride was an hour and a half. We fed her a little bit of food and let her explore the house and the backyard. When it was time for bed we put her in her crate and she only fussed for 5 minutes before sleeping through the whole night.

She is already well on her way to being potty trained, and she's just as cute as cute can be. We are so happy to have a little furry addition to our family.

Our House

 We got the keys!!!

Now that the house is officially ours here's a tour...





Our house is a split level. Meaning when you walk in the front door you can either go up half a flight of stairs to get to the main level, or go down half a flight of stairs to the spare bedroom, laundry room area.

At the top of the stairs on the main level is our living room. Those two doors go out onto our deck in our back yard. If you turn right while standing in the living room you'll see the kitchen.

There are a lot of pictures of the kitchen because it is my favorite thing about the house. I love the peninsula, and the fact that we get two pantries. The white door in this picture is a typical sized pantry, and the previous owners added the cabinets between that door and the fridge.

All the appliances came with the house, which is a huge blessing. We have an amazing fridge with double doors and a slide out freezer. Also the stove top and microwave are new and super nice as well.

I love the back-splash in the kitchen it really makes it look finished.












This one of the two "kid's rooms". It's a pretty typical bedroom with a nice window and closet.

This is the second of the two "kid's rooms". It's almost identical to the first except that it's painted blue.

 This is the main level bathroom, it's pretty typical.














 This is the Master bedroom, it's hard to tell in this picture but the walls are painted brown and there is a darker brown accent wall.

This is the Master Bath. Again it's hard to tell in this picture, but it has a double vanity, and two really cute oval mirrors above the sink.

 Here's our walk-in-closet which both Brian and I are super excited for because that means he'll have room for his clothes in the closet too!

Down stairs is where the spare bedroom and third bathroom are as well as the garage and a storage/laundry room. Here is the laundry room with the washer dryer the sellers left for us.

 In the laundry room/storage room is a second fridge that the sellers left for us as well as some shelves for storage.

This is the spare bedroom which we'll use as a playroom/guest room. It's really nice since it is almost as large as the master bedroom and has it's own bathroom and walk-in-closet as well.
















 Here's the walk-in-closet in the spare room.

 Here's the bathroom attached to the spare room.














One of Brian's favorite parts about the house is the over sized two car garage. I like it because I could park two cars in it and Brian would still have a lot of space in the back of the garage to use as a work shop space.

Brian's other favorite thing about the house is the back yard.We have almost .4 acres with a deck a nice retaining wall and lots of side yard space.

Our backyard line goes just passes where Brian is standing in this picture. Basically right up to the neighbors shed.

We are so excited to have the house be officially ours so we can start planning our next adventures; like getting a puppy, and preparing the nursery for the future little Marler.

Baby On The Way

I'm Pregnant!

We are happy to announce that we are expecting! Our little one is due April 1st 2014 and we couldn't be more excited :)

I had my first doctors visit a week ago and up until that point it seemed so surreal that I had a live, little miracle growing inside of me. I mean I was definitely feeling all the usual symptoms of being 9 weeks pregnant, but it was still such an abstract concept to me. When Brian and I looked at the ultrasound screen and saw our little baby's heart beating away it really sunk in for me. We're having a baby!

Today I am 10 weeks pregnant, and in the middle of my "morning" sickness phase. Luckily it hasn't been as bad as I know it could be, and pickled ginger has been such a huge life saver. 

I will keep posting updates about the upcoming baby bump, cravings, gender, and all the other exciting announcements to come. We feel extremely blessed and are so excited to share our news.

The House Hunt

We are so excited about our future new house, but it took a lot of searching to find our perfect home.

The house hunt started long before Brian and I ever got to Virginia. As soon as we had decided to accept the offer from Celanese to have Brian be a Reliability Engineer in their Virginia location, we started looking at the housing market. We did research on housing websites, looked at our financial info and did a lot of in depth budgeting to see what we could afford and when. We then came up with a list of about 25 houses that we ranked in an excel spreadsheet that we definitely wanted to see in person.

So with our list we headed out to Virginia two weeks before Brian had to start work. We were able to see our top 15 on the list in the first three days of being out there and we agreed our number one choice seemed perfect for us. The only problem was another family also thought it was perfect for them and they were preparing to make an offer. We made our offer Wednesday afternoon, confident that ours was better that the other family who put their offer in the night before. We got a call from our Realtor that night that the seller countered the other family's offer and the other family accepted. Our Realtor was able to find out that our offer was better, but the seller wanted to counter the people who put their offer in first.

It was hard news to hear, and even though we knew there was another family wanting the house, and we tried not to get our hopes up; we were still pretty sad and could hardly think about going out and looking at houses again.

After a good nights sleep we got right back on the horse and started looking at houses that we hadn't had on our excel list, but that our Realtor knew that we would like. We found three houses that we liked, though none were as good as the house we lost. We did a lot of research on the three houses, weighed out pros and cons and were having a hard time making any decision. One was so charming and had a ton of square footage, but it was older and had problems that come with an old home. One was new and had everything we wanted except for an extremely tiny backyard, and we'd have to negotiate the price down to get it into our price range. And the last one was newer and had a great view, but it needed a lot of work to get the number of beds and baths we wanted and a usable backyard. We weren't in love with any of them.

Tuesday the next week our Realtor called us up and said there was a new house that another Realtor in his company is selling. It wasn't technically on the market yet, but he and the other Realtors of his company got a tour and he thought it'd be perfect for us. We were the first ones to see it that Wednesday morning and after we walked though it we felt great about it. We split for lunch and then that Wednesday afternoon made an offer. Again we tried not to get too excited, and when our Realtor called that evening I tried to brace myself for whatever he had to say.

When he said they accepted our offer, I started jumping around the apartment. We are so happy to have found a house that we like better than the house we lost, in a fantastic neighborhood, with all the beds and baths we wanted, and a great size backyard. So far we've had the home inspection and have given financial documents to the bank and are on track to close and officially own the house on September 13th.

Blueberry Picking & Archery Games

Instead of flying straight into Virginia, Brian and I decided to fly into Maryland to visit his family and then buy the "green" truck and drive south to Christiansburg.

Blueberry Picking 

Not far from where Brian's family lives, is a wonderful place called Butler's Orchard, where you can go out on their property and harvest your produce at a greatly reduced cost. Since Brian's favorite fruit is blueberries we decided to go out and pick those.

Everyone's got their own style of picking blueberries.

We picked a ton of blueberries

 And good times were had by all

After you pick the blueberries you bring them into the store where they are weighed and paid for. In the store they also had a slushy machine that had two flavors of slushy lemonade. Both flavors were delicious

Archery Games

Besides picking blueberries until our fingers turned purple, we also played a few rounds of milk jug archery.

For those of you unfamiliar with milk jug archery here's how you play.

•  Fill two empty milk jugs with equal amounts of water.
• Tie these full milk jugs on either side of a rope on a pulley
• Shot arrows into your milk jug and hope that you jug drains faster than your opponent's jug
• Whomever's jug hits the ground looses

Everyone taking a few warm up shots before the game.

Brian and Michael setting up for the first round

This is a video of Brian vs Michael and Gina

Here's a video of Brian vs Dad

Dad examining his milk jug after the game

It's always fun to visit the Maryland house!

PS sorry for the poor quality of the videos that was the best I could upload under our current internet conditions.