Baby Bump

Here's a picture of my tummy at 18 weeks pregnant. I'm just waiting for the day for it to really stick out. I guess there are advantages of being smaller...I can still wear all my normal clothes! Also, about 1 1/2 weeks ago I felt the baby move/kick. I know for sure that it was a kick because I had to look at Brian to make sure HE wasn't the one who was poking me in the tummy. It was such an amazing feeling. I've been able to feel regular movements almost daily since then. Actually, I feel them most of the time at night. We even think Brian was able to feel it last night! He felt something at the same time I felt a kick. I can't wait until it gets stronger. And I also can't wait to stop calling it an "it". We get to find out if we're having a boy or girl July 1st! Anyone have a guess as to what we're having?

San Antonio Trip

Last weekend my mom and I took a weekend trip down to San Antonio. My old "teacher" friends were just finishing school and I wanted to get down that way to see them before Heather and her family moved to West Virginia. They were the ones who were nice enough to let me live with them for a few months last summer while I was still down in TX and Brian was up here in KS. It worked out nicely because it was Hadley's birthday and I was able to make it there in time for her party. Here's Hadley and her dad, Jeremy.

This is the amazing cake that Heather made for Hadley. I really want to learn how to do this! I tried signing up for a class at Hobby Lobby but it's full all summer long!

Heather and myself. Sorry, the picture doesn't go down far enough to show my TINY baby bump!

The following day was the math department end of the year party. I LOVE my old math department. Everyone is so nice and fun to be around. Little did I know, Heather had planned a small surprise baby shower for me at this time!

The kids always have a fun time. Here's Hadley and Asher swinging. Asher is Jamie and Kyle's little boy. Aren't they adorable!

Here's a picture of me opening some gifts. And no, still can't see the baby bump!

Here's our old math department.

On my last day in San Antonio we got our old Pre-Calculus team together for lunch. We always have so much fun together. Here's Laura with her 6 week old baby girl, Amelia.

Then there's Christine, Jennifer and Heather. The little girl is Kadence who belongs to Jennifer.

My mom and I stayed two nights with Jennifer and her family. We had a lot of fun!

Here's a picture of my mom, Kadence, Zoey and myself.

This is Christine. We also stayed two nights with Christine and her husband, Oscar. It was so nice to have friends to stay with. We were able to have some GREAT home cooked meals and even better company!

One last visit with Heather and family. They are actually on the road right now to West Virginia. Jeremy got into a residency there. I hope we can see each other again soon!

We had a wonderful trip and it was nice to have my mom along for the ride. That can be a very long and boring drive by yourself! Hopefully we can make it down that way again next summer, only I hope to have Brian and BABY with me for that trip!

Fun at the Omaha Zoo

This past Saturday I met up with my friend, Bobbi and her family at the Omaha Zoo. We did this last year and had so much fun, so we did it again this year. They live in South Dakota so it's a good meeting place for us. My friend (and neighbor) Katie came with me. I've been to the zoo quite a few times so I didn't take very many pictures of the animals or exhibits. Actually I only took this one picture of a monkey holding a mountain dew bottle.

This is my friend Bobbi and her little girl, Abby.

This is Katie. It was her first time to this zoo and she loved it!

Here's Abby riding the carousel.

We were in the jungle area and there was some water dripping down by the water fall. Abby found herself underneath it and she didn't know why she was getting wet, but she didn't try moving either. It was quite funny!

I'm excited to go next summer because I'll be able to bring our little one for a fun day at the zoo!

Pickles Anyone?

It's been so nice to have my appetite back!! And I really haven't had any weird cravings or anything I don't think. But I do LOVE pickles right now. That was one thing I could eat even when I was feeling sick. At least I haven't had the infamous "Pickles and Ice Cream" craving yet.

I'm still not into chocolate really though. Kind of depressing I know! I can eat a chocoloate chip cookie, but if the main ingredient is chocolate I don't want it. I guess it's okay though, I know I need to be eating healthy anyway. Another weird food aversion I've had is chicken. Prior to getting pregnant, chicken was my main source of meat. Now all I want is red meat. (Not bloody red, but beef.) Who knows....this whole experience is just strange to me.

So the other night, Brian and I sat down to watch a movie. We watched the Clint Eastwood movie, Gran Torino. At the end of it, I found myself crying! And not just a tear or two, but I had some pretty good waterworks going. Brian found this to be really funny!! Don't get me wrong...he was being nice about it. But he thought it was funny that I cried during a CLINT EASTWOOD movie. It did have a sad ending though (at least I thought it did!). If you haven't seen it, I would say that it was pretty good. We did skip through quite a few scenes in the beginning though. I thought it had a pretty slow start and I hated all the swearing that they had in it. But the middle and end were definitely great!

Nothing else is really new here. I'm still not showing really. So I don't have any pictures to post. But I'll keep you all updated!

More Pictures!

Here are some more pictures from Brian's Change of Command Ceremony.

And here's more pictures from Brian's Bataan Death March.
This is a picture of the big group that went to compete from the hospital.

Anxious to get the race started.

The Co-Ed Heavy Team!

Beautiful Scenery!

The big finish!!

These past few weeks!

I know I haven't updated this in over a month, but I do have an excuse as to why I haven't. Some of you have asked if there is a Spring Break Part 2 coming...and there was supposed to be. I had good intentions of putting up pictures of Brian's Bataan Death March that he participated in the last weekend of Spring Break but that obviously hasn't happened. I would do that now, but I'm not sure where those pictures are currently located. So they'll come at a later date! But, his team did very well at the Bataan. They beat last years winning time by over 30 minutes!! Despite those efforts, they did not come in first. I believe they got 3rd...but it was so long ago that now I'm not 100% sure.

The big reason I haven't been updating my blog is because I'm pregnant and I really wasn't feeling well at all for about 6 weeks!!! I had some bad morning sickness, but it hit me in the evenings. Starting at about 4 PM, I would start to feel nauseous. And that would last until I went to bed. I ended up losing 10 pounds, but I'm definitely feeling better now!!! Thank goodness!! Brian and I are finally eating dinner together again. Poor guy lived on cereal for dinner for way too many weeks!! He knows how to cook, but he didn't mind eating cereal. Plus, if he made something that gave off too much odor when he cooked, it would make me feel worse!

We are very excited! The baby is due November 19th. I'm into my second trimester, so hopefully things just keep getting better!! I promise to do a better job of keeping you all informed on our progress. As far as future plans go, I'm still planning on going to Graduate school this fall. Just need to figure out how my semester finals will work out for this first semester. Brian is also the current Company Commander for the medical company. Here are a few pictures of his Change of Command Ceremony.

Spring Break Part 1

My spring break is almost over. It has been a great week away from work. Brian and I headed off to Las Vegas last Friday. Here are the highlights:

We took a tour of the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam.

We're smiling in the picture below...but not so much once we were on our drive back from the Grand Canyon. It ended up being a lot longer drive than what we expected. Basically we were on the road from 7 Am to 10 PM and only stopped at the Hoover Dam for about 10 minutes and the Grand Canyon for 2 Hours. The rest of the time was spent in a bus!!!

I wouldn't say that it wasn't worth the bus ride there, because it was absolutely breath taking. But, we probably would've done it all a little differently if we would've known how long the drive was and how little time we were going to spend at the Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon.

The following day, we met up with my friends from Texas. We spent the day and night gambling, people watching, and walking. A lot of Walking!!!

Here's the hotel we stayed at: The Luxor. It was pretty on the inside and out. The only bad thing was the fact that the bed was pretty hard...but who sleeps in Vegas anyway?

We also went to the Shark Reef exhibit at the Madalay Bay Hotel and Casino. Here we are petting a stingray that was trying to burrow under the sand.

One of the most exciting parts of the trip was playing in a Blackjack Tournament. It was a $20 buy in, and you got to play with $2500 worth of fake chips. They gave cash prizes to the top 10 people out of the 96 that signed up. Brian can probably tell the story better, but in short I was so nervous to play for some reason. My heart was pounding and my hands were shaking the entire time. Especially when I put all of my chips in on the last hand which was $15,000!!!! I won that hand and that put me in second place overall!!! But that didn't last very long because Brian beat me out of the second place position. Oh well...if someone was going to beat me, I was glad it was him. So we ended up taking 2nd and 3rd place!!! It was a lot of fun!!!

Here's a picture of us with our winning certificates!

We also visited the M & M World Store. It was 4 stories tall and one of my favorite stores we went to while being in Vegas.

And here's a picture of us prior to leaving. It was a great time and we can't wait to go back again!

The last part of our spring break will be spent apart. Brian is headed off to the Bataan Death March in New Mexico and I'm going back home to Nebraska to see family.