One step closer and tying up some lose ends

Well summer is in full swing.  I have been actively working around the house to try and get things lined out and organized.  Jon calls it nesting, I call it summer.  I do believe the motivation comes from nesting however I try to spend a lot of time when I am off work getting these things done because they always seem to catch up to me.  This summer, the excuse is that I want to get them done before Aaron comes.  I have been successful at organizing my scrapbook room, thanks to the help of my mom and getting all of Aaron's stuff ready to go.  I feel like we are constantly washing something and getting something ready but it is fun to see all of the little stuff that will soon be put into use.

We are almost two weeks in with our sweet Luna and I must say she has come a long way.  As I said before she had some stuff going on with her tiny body when we got her but they appear to all be clearing up very nicely.  She is adjusting very well to our house and starting to learn some of the basic "rules".  We have only had one cord fall victim to the puppy teeth and that was only because Houdini got out of her cage one day while mommy was running errands.  She is pretty much sleeping through the night, except when mommy wakes her up at a late night restroom break.  I am pretty sure both of our phones have 30+ pictures of the puppy from the last week and a half, what will happen when we have a baby and a puppy to photograph?

I am hopeful to be officially finishing up my masters next week.  I finished all of my coursework in May and have been waiting to take my Master Exam.  I have been trying to talk sweet, and sometimes not so sweet to my adviser and convince him to send me my exam now so I can be done.  He keeps pushing me off and telling me the beginning of July so I am hopeful that next Monday is the day.  I plan to sit down and pump out the papers so I can be DONE!

Jon has officially received his diploma and has crossed the bridge of a graduate.  He has been spending his time golfing and building stuff in the garage because he figures that time is limited.   Here we thought we would have all of this spare time with school being done but it has just switched over to other projects.

I went to the doctor on Wednesday and she said that Aaron is definitely getting ready to come.  When I went last week I was dilated to a 1 one and she said things were looking good.  This week she said I was dilated to a 2 and he was definitely putting a lot of pressure on me.  She also said that because of how my body is progressing she believes it will be a pretty quick labor.  This was music to my ears, well kind of.  It made me realize that the time was quickly approaching but it made me hopeful I will not be one of those women who is in labor for 24-36 hours.  I have gotten a jump on the final preparations and finally feel like we are ready.  Of course there are some things I would love to get done first, some scrapbooking and further organizing of the house but it won't be the end of the world it they don't happen right now.

Meet Luna

Well call us crazy, go ahead everybody else has, but we have a new puppy.  After the unexpected loss of our sweet Sienna we started talking about when we wanted to get another one.  We quickly found our house and heart were missing a little four legged something and decided now was as good a time as any.  We started looking in April thinking the longer we had her the better it would be when Aaron came.  Well we were unsuccessful at finding one that was ready to go home in April.  In all honesty, I think it is better this way since I am home and can focus on her.  But, we did find a litter of silver labs that had just been born and would be ready to go home in June.  As we continued to search this seemed like our best option.  After they were born we put a deposit down on the first pick of a silver female.  The breeder was very good about sending us current photos of the puppies, no mistake on her part, that we continued to fall in love with.  In mid May we drove about an hour away to see all the puppies and pick out the baby we would bring home with us in a month. 

As we sat there trying to decide which one we wanted to bring home, we got the WHOLE story on the breeder and her life.  When we finally decided, it was time to say good-bye for 4 more weeks.  This was hard because we quickly fell in love and were ready to bring her home.  As I said before it was good that we had those four weeks because we were both able to wrap up grad school and I finished work.  Finally it was time to go pick up our little baby and bring her home.  Last Saturday morning we woke up and got ourselves together fairly early so we could drive down to Texas City and pick her up.  When we got there she was sitting on the porch waiting for us.  After we got the low down from the breeder we were excited to take her and get her in our arms.  The ride home was an adventure, we had brought a laundry basket to put her in and contain her.  Well luckily I sat in the back with her because she was tiny, 4.8 pounds, and we quickly figured out could jump out of the basket.  So, I played with her and tried to contain her for awhile and then she passed out about half way home.  We had already called the vet and made an appointment to get her checked out and were going to take her on Monday.  The weekend was fun to play with her and get to know her personality.  She played hard and slept hard.

We had Kona and Sydney with us so she has had fun playing with them.

She took a nap with mommy.

Slept on Megan

Overall the weekend was a success.  The first night she slept in the bathtub because we wanted to be able to contain the cleanup if there were some bathroom accidents.  There was a little bit of whimpering but not too bad overall.  We actually made it through the night with no accidents in the tub, with mommy and daddy taking her out several times.  I considered both of these things a great success considering what it could have been.  On Monday I took her to the vet to have her checked out, and I am glad I did.  When we picked her up we had noticed there was some thinning of the fur on her head and she had some flea bites.  After much time and research the vet established she had some internal parasites and then something funky going on with her skin.  So, 3 medications later, we left the vet.  Despite all of the exam, medicine and everything else she is the happiest puppy.  Although she had all of this going on inside, she was always playful and super sweet.  Every day has gotten better and better, and I sure have enjoyed spending time with her during the day.  As Jon says, daddy gets the crazy playful puppy and mommy gets the sweet sleepy puppy.

There is our sweet Luna!

Finally, the nursery

After much deliberation and work, we finally decided what we wanted to do for the nursery.  Most of the decorations for boys were either baby blue and brown or some sort of theme.  We decided a theme would not really go with the rest of our house, and we had other rooms that were already baby blue and brown so we wanted something different.  We decided we wanted to go with bright colors so that it wouldn't be so babyish and maybe he could use it for awhile.  Here is the room before we started:

Jon decided he wanted to do something artistic and add some boxes to a focus wall.  Here is how it all started:

The next step was to get the old furniture out and the room painted.  I worked on this with my helper bees over spring break and made some major headway.  Then, we ordered the furniture that ended up being an ordeal.  Finally the furniture came in and we were ready to continue.  Once we had the furniture we started talking about what we wanted to do for the bedding.  Finally my mom saved the day and made all of the bedding and it looks great.  Jon made the bookshelf and he also did the art piece that is hanging in there.  Welcome to Aaron's room

The wreath was made by some friends for the shower and it now hangs on his door because it matches so well.

I find myself walking in there every day just looking around and I love how cheerful it is.  I am sure there will be some thing we tweek but it seems just right for now.

It's Still a Boy!

I went to the doctor today for our last little sneak peak of our little man before we get to meet him face to face.  It is truly amazing how he has grown and I can't wait to meet him.

We got a few pictures but they are kind of hard to see because he is so big.  It is very different than any of the previous ones because you could only see parts of his body and he was all squished up.  This first one are his feet pushing up against my belly.

There is his face, again pushed up against me.  And the only other one that was clearly defined he was showing off his boy parts so I will spare you that one.  They did a bunch of measurements and estimated that he is weighing about 5 and a half pounds now.  She said he is measuring within the 50 percentile which is perfect.  She said between now and his due date, he will put on about a pound and a half and she guesses he will weigh plus or minus seven pounds.  I am just fine with that because I was afraid of anything above 8 pounds.  In talking with the doctor she said it seems like things are progressing quite nicely and she thinks he will come right around his due date, which is about four and a half weeks away.  I did ask her how long she would let me go past and she said only a day or two.  In all of the talking it made me realize that the day is coming and it is coming soon.  I am very excited, yet very nervous.  So many emotions for a first time mom and I am pretty sure dad is feeling it too.

His nursery is DONE!  I am hoping to have Jon take some pictures tonight so I can post them on here.

Many things to celebrate!

Well it is official, Jon's has completed his MBA and is just waiting on his diploma to come in the mail.  I am so proud of him and all of his hard work these past two years.  I know it has not been easy, our lives have been a little bit crazy.  However, he was determined and stayed buckled down.  His hard work paid off with a great GPA and lots of bragging rights.  He continues to work at Spectra and has now gotten many of our friends a job there, and it has created quite the fun work environment for them.  We are hopeful that one day he will be hired on direct and have even more opportunities for advancement.  He has done very well and his boss seems to love him so things are looking good.

I am done with work and done with all of my masters classes!  I however, am not done with the whole program quite yet.  I have a masters "exam" that I have to take before I can graduate.  Unfortunately, they will not send me the exam until the beginning of July with a due date of July 12th.  This is a little bit of a problem considering we have a baby due on the 15th, lets just hope I finish it before he comes.  I have begged and pleaded for them to send it early but I keep getting denied.  At this point I figure there is nothing I can do, it will work out one way or another.  Until then, I plan to catch up on my scrap-booking.

We have about 5 more weeks until Aaron's due date and have a little bit more time to start thinking about preparing for all of that.  His nursery is ALMOST finished and I hope to get some pictures up here next week with everything done.  I plan to spend next two weeks getting some of the baby gear assembled and thinking through what still needs to be done.  It is so nice that I have the time off this summer to get everything done, and it is even better to have my number one helper here with me, my mom!

My parents' house is coming right along, they anticipate the building to be complete in about 3 weeks.  It is crazy how fast they can get a whole house built.  They are quite bummed out that although the house will be done, they will not have utilities for several more weeks.  They are looking to close on their house sometime in July.

Getting ready for sweet little Aaron!

I am happy to say that yesterday was the last day of the school year!  It was a rough ending to the year with all of the chaos that was going on but it made the last day so much sweeter.  I have finished my first year of second grade and look forward to a repeat, well improved repeat, next year.  I plan to fully enjoy my summer and get the most out of it before I have to go back.  I am almost done with grad school, I just have to finish one last paper, and then I am free from that too.  Not only does this mean it is time to relax but it is also time to focus on Aaron and make sure we have all things in order for his arrival.

 It never ceases to amaze me what wonderful and loving people we have in our lives.  Last Saturday we were blessed to have a wonderful get together in celebration and anticipation of Aaron.  I was so excited that Barbie was able to fly in and be a part of the festivities.  Her, my mom, Rick and I spent some time Friday night getting some of the decorations hung and visiting.  There were some amazing hostesses that worked very hard to make sure that all parts of the shower were amazing.  The theme was "Courtney's about to Pop".  It was so cute because everything had to do with popping.  Here are some pictures of the amazing food.

Abbey spent some time the week before the shower making white chocolate popcorn as a favor for all of the guests, it was yummy!  Barbie made the cute lollipop bouquets out of baby washcloths.

Shawna made an adorable page for his scrapbook that everyone wrote their guess on when he would come.  In addition each guest added their finger print to a picture that will hang in his room.

Abbey and Kara made a super cute wreath that we hung on the outside of the door that day but now hangs on Aaron's bedroom door.

And, many great friends came to celebrate.

Sorority Sisters

Neighbors from my Mom's old neighborhood

Family

Other pregnant bellies

And, some very special little friends

 Emma, my sweet friend Rian's little girl was one of the big girls this day.

Mikey, one of the Sellers Fellers want to come check out where his new friend will live.


We were blessed with not only great company but many wonderful gifts.  We are well on our way to bring this sweet baby home.  Now, it is time for mommy to go get busy organizing everything.