all things happy!

Just a few updates on what's been going on lately. I have been so utterly exhausted lately, so blogging has taken the back seat. I am hoping to find some energy and spunk here very soon!!

I am 12 weeks today! Baby is the size of a plum today. No belly pics yet! I am not quite showing yet, but will take some pics soon :)

Everyone tells me that I am going to feel GREAT and have a lot more energy in the second trimester. I am waiting on that day! I am still so exhausted, I live for naps! I wish I could take one at work on my long days but I know that would NOT go over too well.  I am hungry all of the time! I do good most of the time and make healthy snack choices but the urge for pizza kills me from time to time :) Baby M is going to be a pizza lover when he or she is older for sure! 

Now that the weather is nicer I am going to try to get outside and enjoy it. I like to go for walks and really like to ride my bike, but not sure that is the safest thing right now. 

I am still able to fit into my regular clothes but some of my pants are getting a little snug and uncomfortable. Picking out work outfits is becoming a daily chore.

I keep seeing all these fun cute spring/summer outfits in the stores and online and I want to go on a shopping spree!! BUT, I have to remember that I probably won't be fitting into most of them before long. {sigh} I am keeping my eyes open for cute and stylish maternity clothes or regular clothes that allow for a little "bumpage."   :) I have found some good fun things on ebay!

I love this fun, floral, flowy dress from the Liz Lange Maternity line at Target.

Tonight Patrick and I have date night and are celebrating a healthy first trimester. We are grilling out steaks at home (YUM!) 

Another fun thing going on in our family.. Melissa made cheer! We are so very proud of her! She is going to be in the 8th grade at Southwest Junior High School next year. OMG!

She made the cheerleading squad a few weeks ago and has already started practice! They are having practices and a cheer camp throughout the summer and then in August for a couple of weeks before school starts, they will even have 2-a-days (practices twice a day). O my!

She is super excited! The girls on her squad call her "short stuff" because she is one of the littlest girls. She is going to be a "flyer." This makes P and I a little nervous, but I am sure she is in good hands.

We are looking forward to watching her cheer on her school's football and bball teams come fall. :)

Melissa also tried out for choir at SJHS and made it! She is going to be one busy girl!

She makes us proud!

On another note... we still have our 2 houses. We are still in the process of trying to sell the house we are in now. We had an open house this past weekend and had a few lookers. I also showed it Monday to someone who seemed pretty interested. I just keep praying the right buyer comes along. I would love to be in our other home by this summer so I have some time to plan Baby M's nursery and get all settled in before he or she arrives! 

P has been making some great progress on our other home renovation project. He has had some help from some guys at work and they have really knocked some projects out! I am proud of him and all the great work they have done! Hopefully I can post some pics for you soon!

and the journey begins....

So as you just recently found out, I am pregnant! Patrick and I are expecting a little baby Marbury in October. I wanted to share a little bit about our journey so far :)

We found out about our little bean in early February. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the 2 lines on the pregnancy test, so I had to take 5, yes 5! just to make sure :)

We went to the doctor on Valentine's Day and they confirmed that we were in fact pregnant!!

We had a special dinner already planned at Ruth's Chris steak house for Valentine's day but we had 2 reasons to celebrate that night! Here is a picture from that night.

Here is the first picture of my little bean... this was around 5 and 1/2 weeks.

I wanted to call my mom right away and share the good news, but we decided it would be more special to tell  our families in person....so we came up with the idea of wearing fun t-shirts to reveal the exciting news.

Patrick designed and made our shirts. We planned a trip to visit my parents and wore our shirts underneath jackets. When we arrived, we we just getting settled in and talking and then I said, " Hey, we want to show you something that Patrick made for us." We took our jackets off and it took a minute but my mom screamed in excitement! Everyone was very happy! It was a fun reveal :)

The day we got back home, we had a dinner planned with Patrick's family. We did the same thing for them and they were so excited and surprised too!

Melissa is so excited to be a big sister! She loves babies and is so good with them! Some of my girlfriends are already hitting her up for babysitting jobs and she loves it! She is going to be a wonderful big sister and a BIG help too! ;)

These first weeks have really flown by. I have had some nausea but nothing overwhelming. I've learned how to keep it under control by eating snacks throughout the day and making sure my belly never gets empty. 

My cravings so far: FRUIT, pizza, anything with marinara sauce, chocolate milk.

My biggest obstacle right now is exhaustion! I am ready to have some energy back! Today I am 11 weeks,1 day. The baby is the size of a lime!

We had our first big OB appt this past Wednesday and we were able to hear baby's heartbeat! Baby had a strong heartbeat and it was so incredible to hear it. Its really amazing to know there is a little life growing in my belly. Doc said everything looked picture perfect :) My due date is October 20. October is my favorite month!

We are very eager to find out baby Marbury's gender. We have to wait until June 2nd to find out. 

So far, Patrick has said he just has a "feeling" that it is a BOY. 

When we told my Granny, she looked at Patrick and said, "Its a BOY," just like she just knew for sure.

I took a silly gender prediction test for fun and it said it was a BOY.

Chinese Lunar Calendar says its a BOY.

So far everything leads to BOY!

Of course, we would be happy with a boy or a girl!

Just a couple more months and we will know :) I can hardly wait to be able to call baby by his/her name and start buying some cute baby stuff!

March Adventure

Patrick and I just got back home from a whirlwind trip all over the world. Ok not the world but it felt like it was. We left on Monday, March 14th and arrived back home on Sunday, March 20.  The reason for taking this trip was to sell our fish and ski boat to a guy that lives in Canada. RANDOM huh? This trip had been in the making for months. We agreed to drive our boat up to the border to meet the guy who was buying the boat and he in return agreed to pay for some of our travel expenses. We decided to make an adventure out of it! So here is a summary of our trip!
Our first stop was in Indianapolis..we didn't see anything but the hotel we stayed in. It was halfway between Buffalo, NY which is where we were meeting up.
On our second day of driving we stopped of to see Lake Erie. It was an awesome sight. I had never seen any of the great lakes before. I was amazed at how large it was, it looks just like an ocean! It was still frozen which was  incredible to see.

After 2 days of driving, we ended up in Buffalo, NY. We stayed on the outskirts of Buffalo and then met our boat buyer the next day. All went well with the transaction! We were very excited to say goodbye to the boat ( well I was!) For P it was a little bittersweet. On Wednesday we ventured into downtown Buffalo, NY to try out the famous ANCHOR BAR. It is supposedly the home of the original buffalo wing. It was super yum and we were so glad we stopped there. Here is a funny pic of us in chicken wing hats!

Niagra Falls is only about 30 minutes away from Buffalo, NY. Everyone has said that the Canada side was way better, so we ventured across the border into Niagra Falls, Ontario, Canada and stayed for the night. We had a room with an amazing view of the falls. It is a very touristy town with lots of shopping, great restuarants, and a casino. I am not big on gambling but we decided to spend $20 each at the casino and I was lucky! I put my money into 2 different slot machines ( one of which was named "HEE HAW" ;) and won 90 dollars right away! I cashed out and ran with it! 

The falls on the Canada side are STUNNING! Words can't describe how powerful and amazing they are. It was great to just stand there in awe and listen to the roar of the falls. We got some great pics!

This time of year, there is still lots of ice as you can see in the last picture. The only thing I wish we could have done is take a boat up to the falls, but they do not run this time of year. 

After Niagra Falls, we headed up to Toronto, Ontario. Toronto is a BIG city of about 2.5 million people. It was a little like NYC.. busy busy busy and cabs everywhere! It was St Patricks Day and people were lined up around corners since the morning to get into the Irish Pubs in town. We didn't get to spend too much time in Toronto and it was really cold so we didn't get to do or see a whole lot. 

All in all, Canada is much like the US. They have a lot of the same restaurants and stores, but many different ones too. Canada is VERY expensive!! We ate at an IHOP one morning and our tab was a shocking $50. It would have been about $15 in the US. 

Canada is also on the metric system so that brought much confusion! The highway signs are all in kilometers or meters, and kilometers per hour. The thermostats are in Celsius. Kind of crazy. 

We enjoyed our Canadian adventure! Our last big stop was CHICAGO!! It was my first time to visit the windy city and I had several missions to accomplish in our short time there...

1. Eat a real Chicago style hot dog

2.  Stroll down Michigan Ave/Magnificent Mile and buy myself a treat!

3. Take a trolley tour of the city

4. Eat some amazing Chicago style pizza!

I was able to accomplish all 4 of my missions in just a matter of about 9 hours. We left Chicago full and happy but VERY EXHAUSTED. What a fun place! It is so fast paced and busy like any other BIG city. There is so much to see and take in. I loved Michigan Ave, but wish I could have had some more spending money to really do it justice! I could have done some damage so it was good we only had one day there. :) The food is yummy! I wish I could have tried more of it. 

Here are some highlights from Chicago...

On this trip, we logged about 2400 miles of driving, drove through 8 states and another country,  stayed in 6 different hotels, saw 4 of the 5 great lakes, and saw one of the natural wonders of the world!!

We are grateful for the opportunity to go on such a fun trip but it was so good to get back home last night.

Car travel can be tiring and its always good to get home to your own comfy bed! I wish I had more time to rest before going back to work but I have to go back in just a couple of hours. :(

Have a great week!

teeny hint of spring and a little goodbye

Even though its dreary, cold and rainy outside, I can't help but get a little excited about springtime! My forsythia is blooming and my tulips are sprouting. Two of my favorite things about spring! I wish these were pics from my yard.. but they are just pics I found online. :)

 There is only one thing about spring that I do not look forward to...
SPRING CLEANING!
I really don't like to clean anytime of the year. I can "tidy up" or "de-clutter" a room anytime but deep cleaning it is a different story. I have to be REALLY really really bored to want to do that. I usually call on my bestie who LOVES to clean and she helps me out when needed :) ( I pay her of course!)
We are also starting a spring cleaning program at work soon and we will be in a competition with the other stores in our community. Gee, sounds fun! I am actually better at keeping my workspace clean more so than my home. I guess because I spend MORE time at work than I do at home. I am always disinfecting counter tops at work in fear that I will catch all the bugs my patients have. It won't be too bad.


On another note, we made the decision last week to give Izzie, the dachshund/beagle mix dog to another family. We tried it for a few months and it just didn't work out the way we wanted it to. She was a super sweet dog and very loving but she was still very much puppy and drove us as well as Tucker ( who is almost 6!) crazy! He was always trying to get away from her as she liked to chew on him and chase him everywhere. She was also a chewer of anything and a digger. Bittersweet goodbye. Things are much calmer and quieter around the Marbury house now. Izzie went to a sweet young couple who just adored her. She will have a little companion to play with too.

Goodbye Izzie..we hope you are loving your new home and new mom and dad!!

treasure!

After work today I was in the mood to run around and check out some a couple of antique stores in downtown Rogers.  I stumbled across this super cute treasure that I couldn't live without. The best part was that it was only 10.00!! What a steal! :)

It is an old pewter bird cage. 

Now.. what to do with it? I have to find the perfect place for it. That's the really exciting part! I searched the internet for ideas and came across these pics for possible inspiration...

You don't have to do much to make a cute display.. bird cages make a statement on their own just simply sitting on a shelf, bookcase, or accent table. I love the pewter color of it now, but would also LOVE it in a bright funky color too!

OR, maybe save it for a nursery one day? what a cute idea...

I love finding treasures!

What I Made Monday

Just a quick little post about what I made last night for dinner. I was introduced to this recipe by my bestie, Tiff. It is a Southern Living recipe and sure to please! It is very simple and can be made ahead.

Poppy Seed Chicken

Our poppy seed chicken recipe is a Southern Living stand-out. It's easy to prepare and loaded with rich flavor.
Prep: 10 min., Bake: 40 min.

Yield: Makes 6 servings

Ingredients

• 3  cups  chopped cooked chicken
• 1  (10 3/4-oz.) can cream of chicken soup, undiluted
• 1  (16-oz.) container sour cream
• 3  teaspoons  poppy seeds
• 31  round buttery crackers, crushed
• 1/4  cup  butter, melted

Preparation

1. Combine first 4 ingredients. Spoon mixture into lightly greased 11- x 7-inch baking dish.

2. Stir together cracker crumbs and melted butter; sprinkle evenly over casserole.

3. Bake at 350° for 35 to 40 minutes or until hot and bubbly.

Note: For testing purposes only, we used Keebler Town House crackers.

IN LOVE!

I am IN LOVE with my new desk! :) It was finally shipped to me a few days ago and we just finished putting everything all together late Friday night.  It came in 2 huge heavy boxes in a bajillion pieces and came with a 30 page manual...but it was sooo worth it. It has cubby holes, drawers, & a filing drawer! I know its silly to get so excited about a piece of furniture but I just can't help it. I have spent the majority of the weekend getting everything in its perfect place... from my many fun colorful paper clips and highlighters to my stationary and post-it notes.  So here is my new desk... it is in the sun room for now until we sell this house.

The sun room is one of my favorite rooms in my house. It is now a multi-purpose room as it serves as an office, the room where the dog bed and toys are, and a place to get comfy and read a good book.  I will miss this room so much when we move.

Another thing I did this weekend was FINALLY put my wedding shadow box together.  My friend, Angela bought i for me as a wedding gift for our wedding celebration in October. She had it engraved & it reads... "Kim and Patrick   October 30, 2009." 

I wish I had more memorabilia from that night but I added some pictures, our invitation, and a couple of other cute things and I love how it turned out...

I had a pretty productive weekend! I love my weekends off, just wish I had more of them.

I also found time this weekend for some other fun....

Dixie, my bestie's dog turned 8 and she threw her a dog birthday party. It was super cute and I think about 7 dogs came, including my boy, Tucker. The girls enjoyed some yummy food compliments of Tiff and the dog shared some doggy cake. They had a ball. Here is the birthday girl...

Happy Birthday Dixie!

After the party, I took Melissa and some friends to see Justin Bieber's movie, "Never Say Never." I honestly REALLY enjoyed it! It was a great movie about how Justin got started, his family, and life on tour. He is a sweetie. I might just have bieber fever now ;)