19 weeks & counting

I've been wanting to do weekly "bump-dates" (get it, like updates?)but am just now gettting around to it. For 2 reasons: 1. I don't get dressed up nearly as much as I used to. 2. I refuse to be captured in time permanently in my jammies. So I'm making it my weekly goal to wear at least 1 cute outfit & head to my Kid's Church room at work where I have a chalkboard wall to make the most of. So I figure starting out at the halfway point is better than nothing. And I'll totally say I had planned it that way all along ;)

{pardon the "artsy-ness"- i was having a bad hair day}

how far along: 19 weeks!

gender: definitely still a boy

total weight gain/loss: had lost 4 but have gained 4 back

maternity clothes: most favorite jeans EVER from Motherhood- get compliments on them all the time, from teenagers!

stretch marks: nada

belly button: still an innie

sleep: hit or miss- if I wake up anytime before 4am, I'm up for hours.

fetal movement: a few possible flutters here & there. i keep telling him to get his butt movin!

cravings: chocolate milk!!! fruit in any form!!! veggie sandwiches from Jimmy Johns. Chicken & wild rice soup from Panera.

mood: i think i've been pretty decent, not sure what those around me would say. i can cry on a dime.

best moment of the week: a wonderful delux pedicure from my wonderful hubby!

not so great moment of the week: went from feeling cute & preggers to huge & bloated OVERNIGHT!

looking forward to this next week: Grandma Carol is coming, my 20 week ultrasound & my 1st baby shower :)

what is baby up to: started to yawn, hiccup & can suck & swallow. developed a protective coating over his skin called Vernix Caseosa. His brain his developing the nerves for the 5 senses. Moving around much more & mom should be feeling him more easily in the weeks to come.

Planning

Now that I feel more comfortable with getting ready for this little guy, let the prepping begin! First things first! Well, first names actually. Drumroll please...dadadadadaadadada (yeah, thats how you spell "drumroll")

The whole baby-name thing is absolutely exhausting. There are so many factors to take into consideration. Are people gonna like it? Will he get made fun of? How will it affect his future? Yeah these are the things I thought about. I wanted something different but not crazy. Cody just had to make sure it would sound good being announced during the highlights on ESPN. Jax was the first boy names we agreed on liking quite a while ago. (It may or may not be from a TV show but I'll let you figure out which one.) I've always like Jackson but thought spelling it with an "x" was a better fit for Johnson, plus I got that little dash of unique I was looking for. And yes, it may sound like he has 3 last names (which I really got hung up on for a while) but I've always wanted to have my maiden name as a middle name.  After making a list (which only consisted of "J" & "C" names for some reason), Jaxon was the one that didn't get crossed off for one reason or another. And I love it!
Probably one of the funnest parts of the planning process is registering! And I wanted to do it as soon as we found out what we were having, like that day! Partly because it's just fun but also because I thought it would help get me get alittle more into all this boy stuff. I'll be honest- my eye naturally goes towards all things pink, ruffled & sparkly. I knew it was gonna take some getting used to being attracted to blue & well, plain. But thanks to Target & the internet, my hopes are high! Anything the screams "little man" is right up my alley. Like those tiny little church suits complete with vest & tie. Ugghhhh!!!! Feel free to peruse my greediness, uh, I mean registries, if you have a minute that needs passing :)

Target     Babies-R-Us     Pinterest

Last but not least is the nursery. Pinterest & I have gotten very close these last few weeks, especially when I was on bedrest. All I know is that if I ever wanted to start my own business, I'd desing nursery bedding & decor. You know, like stuff that does NOT have dinosaurs or whales or bugs or winnie the pooh on it. Stuff that could possibly go with the rest of your house. Stuff that could grow with them past age 2. All I wanted was plain colors & patterns but not pastels or plaids. Is that too much to ask? Turns out, it is. So I will be doing some pretty heavy mixing & matching. If I were on one of those HGTV shows my mother so desperately loves I'd title this episode "Little Man Cave". Vintage sports, motorcycles, "guy stuff". I want my husband to be jealous of this room.

Here's a sampling of what I'm thinking...

So there you have it. Good has been done here! And it's only gonna get better!! My mom is coming next week (cha-ching!). Oh & we get to prepare for the arrival of a handsome little dude. That too ;)

Very 1st Baby Bump Picture

Ta-da!! The first bump pic I've taken since I've been preggers :) This was Valentines Day & I'm 17 weeks. More to come!

OK, let's try this again...

I see all these cute blogs about being pregnant & doing the whole weekly-update & bump-shot thing & think "love that! must do it!". Well I'm 18 weeks & have yet to begin. I totally planned on it, not just to keep creeper friends & family (you know who you are) updated, but also to act as a journal for myself. Just as I was starting to think "Ok, let's blog!", I was thrown a curve ball.
I guess you can call me a bit a of a worry-wart but ever since I saw those 2 little lines on my Dollar Tree preggers test the thought of something going wrong has been in the back of my mind. I couldn't wait to get out of the 1st trimester since the chance of a miscarriage goes down significantly. The first day into my 2nd TM was one of the worst days of my life.
Just a few details: 1st day into 13 weeks - Had just dropped my hubby off at football practice - Was walking into Target - Thought I had uncontrollably started to pee my pants - Discovered it was in fact not pee - Commenced the freaking out - Drove to the ER.
I will spare you what followed but lets just say after the most HORRIFIC emergency room experience I'm sure I'll ever have, I was told "Yep that's a lot of blood. You're probably having a miscarriage. Sorry." They handed me one piece of paper with a couple sentances explaining what they said was happening, said to call my OB in the morning & sent me home. Uh, excuse me! I don't think I've ever cried so hard in my life. You know that kind of crying where you don't care who sees you & you can't catch your breath & you feel like your brain is melting out your eyes? Yeah, pretty much like that. So we went home. Elevated my feet (per the instructions of that extremely helpful piece of paper) & tried to catch a few winks on the couch.
Fast-forward 6 weeks...
I am now 18 weeks along with healthy baby boy! Those nerds in that ER had no idea what they were talking about, thank God! Literally everything they told me was untrue. My little guy stayed strong & held a great heartbeat the whole time. What had happened is called a subchorionic hemorrhage & I won't even pretend to be able to explain what it means. Feel free to Google it if you feel so inclined :) All I know is that after over a month of bed rest, I have been cleared & can be treated as a normal pregnancy. Thank you Jesus!
That whole experience has been burned into my brain & will forever affect how I feel about being pregnant. But I can't tell you what a relief it is to finally be able to feel like I can start planning for this little guy. Up until now, I didn't want to do too much "just in case". But I'm feeling good & ready to go baby boy crazy!
Bring on the baby-bump pics & Pinterest links & blog updates!!!

Pie N' The Sky: Girl Talk: The Pastor's Wife

My lovely friend Melisa has a wonderful little blog called Pie N' The Sky and she has been doing a series about all the different types of ladies in her life like The Newlywed, The Artist, ect. She asked me to be a part of it and I am officially The Pastor's Wife. (Never thought those words would all go together.)

It was such a fun thing to do and I wanted to share it with you. Check out her blog too! She is crazy adorable and if your into all things cute, pretty, fabulous, & lovely, she's your gal!

(Love ya Nickles!)

Cliky-click below :)

Pie N' The Sky: Girl Talk: The Pastor's Wife

the grass is always greener...

Oh yeah. I totally forgot. I started blogging a few months ago. I'm not sure if you can consider it "blogging" if I've only posted like 3 times but still... Let's just say that the last few weeks, well months really, have been, as per usual, intense. I literally have not had a moment to sit down and put a thought together, let alone type it all out cohesively. Ok well maybe that's not entirely true but it sure felt like it. Since I like doing this as a way of getting all of the stuff in my head out... well here goes...

Is it sad that the best way for me to tell what I have done recently or long it's been since something isn't to look at a calendar, it's to look back at the pictures on my iPhone. Let's just say that I had to really scroll back quite a ways to figure out where I had last left off blog-wise. Let's hit the highlight real, shall we?

We had our 2 year anniversary June 27th. Can it really be 2 years? I can't believe how fast that flew by. And how much we've done since then. New jobs, new homes, new states... I'm ready to slow down bit now please. It has been a absolutely wonderful 2 years and I'm so so sooooo blessed to be married to the most amazing man I know. Like seriously, the MOST amazing EVER! We celebrated by chowin down at Outback and hittin up the drive-in for a little Cars 2 action. Crazy romantic right! Yeah, we're getting better with age ;)

We got to take a little tripy-trip up to my parents over the 4th of July. We filled the week with going up the Upper Peninsula in MI to hang out with a little bundle of perfection I like to call Grams. We enjoyed all the wonders a bustling metropolis like Ishpeming, MI brings in the summer (if you've never been there, you can just tune this part out) pastys, cuhdighis, The Island, Jilberts, the giant "hot tub" known as Lake Superior, 4th o' July parade, picnic at the Sports Club, losing a piece of my heart finding out that Pamida is now a Shopko, Jubilee, Marquette Mall... pure magic!

We got to spend a day in our favorite city of all time and Cody got to check a big'en off of his bucket list. We finally toured Wrigley Field. Yeah, he was like a little kid in candy store. All I wanted out of the day was a Chicago dog. A real one! So I thought certainly, in Chicago, no matter where I go, I can get one. Sadly, the Cubby Bear let me down. Don't advertise it if you don't stock celery salt or peppers! (whew... better)

Our lives got really turned upside down when we finally moved into our new church building. We've been meeting in a movie theater since October and got to move into a space right next door last month. It is so nice to have a permanent home! We had a team come from our church back in TX to help out for a week, getting the place spiffed up. We figured that the work they did in 5 days probably would have taken us a month, so thank you! (You know who you are!) It's not a done deal yet, but when it is, I can't wait to share the before and after's. It's been so crazy to see the transformation.
After a jam-packed summer, I'm hoping that the fall will bring calm and normalcy. It's been a very rough month or 2 for us, well, me. We're in the process of looking for a place of our own. We've been blessed beyond belief to stay with Brad & Connie for the last 10 months but they have a baby coming in Oct. and we all need to get back to normal. Long story short, we had found a house but the owners were bad with money so we backed out and are now looking at apartments just to get into something quickly. It's been an extremely stressful process.

I've also found out a few months ago that I have Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome, or PCOS as us in the club like to call it. I get to, yes, get to, be on some very wonderful medication that makes me an absolute joy to be around. Who doesn't like someone who has the emotional capacity of 2 year old, crying at the drop of a hat, laughing the next and then throwing a huge, irrational fit. Creepy is probably how my husband would put it. (Yes you should feel sorry for him.) You don't know you're gonna have problems with all that baby-makin stuff until you start trying. You think it's gonna be just as easy as it was for your friends but... Well it's definitely not. After lots of Dr.s visits and tests, I'm still at square one. Just gonna keep on truckin with what I'm on now and take it month by month.

I say all that, even if it is TMI, to ask for prayer for these things. I figure what better way to get as many shout-outs up to the Big Man, right? Thanks for letting me spill all that :)

Love ya'll!

family fun.

So I thought having to come back home after being at my parent's was hard (especially when I was horribly homesick in the first place), but having them come visit us here in TN and then have to leave was really sucky :( I guess it's cause I know that when I'm up in IL, it's just for a trip. But them being here in my world started to feel so normal. They came to visit for about a week and we had a blast! I really got used to them being here and can totally see them moving to this neck of the woods. I was able to spend Mother's day with my mom for the first time in a few years, so that was nice.We spent most of our time driving around, sightseeing. We spent the day over in Gatlinburg and took a chair-lift ride up the mountain. We drove up into the Virginia, through the hills and over to Abingdon. The funnest part of the trip though was starting to go through some houses with our realtor.

Yes, we are getting a house! I am so so so so sooooooooooooo excited! We are blessed beyond belief and have some people who are wanting to help us with getting our first little starter home. We've looked at about a dozen or so but I think we may have narrowed it down to 2. Hopefully we'll have good news on one here in a few weeks. I can't wait to finally unpack all of our stuff that has been in storage since October and start feeling like we actually do live here. I have been spending countless hours on the internet looking at ideas and projects, loving every minute of it. Can't wait to get started!
We've also been working on the new space for our church. It's about half way done, with all of the walls and lighting done. We'll be picking out paint (the best part) and hopefully moving in next month. It's going to look so great! I not only get to decorate my office, but the nursery and youth room. It's been so fun picking out colors and putting together design boards. Fingers crossed it turns out as good as I see it in my head :)

Well that's about sums up the last few weeks. Still workin on doing this more regularly. Love ya'll!

eventful

So I think 26 days is a pretty decent wait for another blog post, don't you? Ok maybe not really. Let's just say that the last, oh, 26 days have been fairly eventful. As I look up at my calendar, the last 3 weeks or so are covered in pen and marker (mostly in pink cause it makes busy look prettier). Let's recap, shall we...

The month of April started with a little weekend getaway to the booming metropolis of Gatlinburg, TN. Well not so exactly booming, but what could be better described as a little bit of Six Flags mixed with Branson, MO with a splash of Dolly Parton. It is a beautiful place to visit right at the edge of the Smokey Mts. And there is sooo much to do there! There's attractions that you'd see at a Six Flags (and if you're in need of an Old Timey Photo or an air-brushed tee shirt, this is the place to be!), shows like in Branson, and then of course it's famous for being the home of Dolly Parton and Dollywood. We mainly stuck to the shopping/eating areas this trip but did venture out to the Titanic museum.

It was actually in the shape of the Titanic. You go inside like you're a passenger and get to see stuff from the ship, and of course the movie. The coolest part was where you get to go in this room that's dark, like you're on the deck of the boat at night and there's an actual wall of ice and you can stick your hand over the side and feel water that is 28 degrees which was the temp of the water that night. I couldn't keep my hand in for 5 seconds let alone have to stay in there for hours. It was quite "chilling". (ha! ok i know that was in bad taste. too soon?)

The biggest adventure of the last few weeks was getting to go home for a few days. (and then barely getting back to TN thanks to a highly inconvenient cancelled flight) Home to good ol' Rockford, IL. The church my dad is at does a Women's Conference every year for the last 5 and I've never gotten to go. Well this year, thanks to a case of home-sickness and an extremely loving mother, I got to go home for a few days and attend the conf. It was so good! Not only did I get to hear some amazing Women of God speak but I got to spend a few days with one of my best friends in the whole world, Mrs. Kristin Nicole Holdeman (shout out!) This is the first time since she got married that we spent more than a dinner out together. Loved it!

Oh, side note #1: Kristin's sister Amber was there also. She's ok I guess ;) Side Note #2: I got bangs! Very big day for me since I'm a bit of a hair-aphobic. Bad haircut the day before my 16th birthday, I really can't open that wound up yet. But I'm loving the new style. Even threw in some pink again :)

If you ever get the chance to be in or around Rockford in April, I would highly recommend looking into the Original Women's Conference at Rockford First Assembly (http://www.originalconference.com/). We got to hear some amazing speakers that are on staff there at the church who started the women's ministry. Absolutely anointed and admirable women! The "head-liners" were Lisa Bevere and Nancy Alcorn. I've, of course, heard of Ms. Bevere before but not Ms. Alcorn. Lisa had a lot of good things to say but I really enjoyed hearing Nancy Alcorn speak. She started Mercy Ministries, a girls rehabilitation home that is all over the world. She is based out of Nashville which is so close to me! Def thinking of a way to do some sort of missions trip there. (http://www.nancyalcorn.blogspot.com/) I wish she would have gotten to speak more :( The last day they do something called "Original Gives" where they surprise deserving women in the community. They gave a family 40 bags of groceries and paid 2 months rent, they sent a girl to prom all decked out, honored a women who's heart is in missions. The most touching was a family who found out that both of their small children have a disease and they most likely won't live past their teens. Heartbreaking. (if you get a second, send up a prayer for the Boyce family)

But over all, great weekend! The team they have there put together an amazing experience! It was decorated so cute too (the theme was Country Fair), all very hand-crafty. They are so talented! I took home a lot of ideas for the girl's ministry I'm starting soon.

To wrap up this very wordy post is Lifepoint's first annual Easter Egg Hunt outreach that we did on Friday for the surrounding community. It was so fun and a huge success! Almost didn't happen due to weather though. But through the power of a few little prayer said in the car driving through the rain to get there, the sun literally broke through the clouds the second we opened the car doors to get out. We had about 300 peeps come out! (the human kind, not the yellow, sugary kind) We had 2,700 eggs that got hunted in the form of a human egg lawn mower. The kids literally moved in one big formation that left a clean path behind them. If you ever need a large piece of land weeded or anything, employ about 150 kids and they'll be done in 5 mins flat. With that and then busting through our goal of 100 in Sunday AM attendance with 124, I really felt blessed this Easter weekend. I know it's not November, but it reminded me that I have so much to be thankful for. Jesus dying on the cross, redeeming me from my sins, my wonderful husband, my amazing family and friends... I hope everyone had an equally awesome weekend!

And I promise to keep future posts a little less blah, blah, blah :) But thanks for letting me share! I'll try to stay more current. Love ya'll!

so who is this stephanie person anyhoo?

so i may have gotten cold blog-writing feet. i was realy excited about starting this and then i realized that it may not be all that interesting. i'm stickin with it though! baby blog steps. so i thought a good post would be a little "gettin to know ya" thing. i'll assume that anybody reading this knows me allready... or do you? either way, here is 55 totally random facts about the person who's blog you have decided read right now. buckle up.

1. i am 26 years old. which is over half way to 50. which is half of 100. i may as well fit my coffin now.


2. i don't handle aging too well.


3. i'm married to the most wonderful, amazing, kind, loving, caring, talented, funny, strong, athletic, driven, HOT, Godly man in the whole wide world!


4. i really love adjectives.


5. hi i'm stephanie and i'm a coffee addict. the taste. the smell. the starbucks.


6. i feel the need to purchase at least one thing a day.


7. i don't balance my checkbook. ever. unless my best friend corina does it for me.


8. i over use ...'s and ( )'s. (they really give extra emphasis....don't they?) :)


9. elementary special education is my passion and has been since i was in the 2nd grade.


10. i'm a pastor's wife. which probably anybody i went to high school with would find hard to believe.


11. my husband's passion is for church planting. so that's what we do.


12. i'm the children's ministry director for our church. not something i ever thought would describe me.


13. i scrapbook. or in other words, i buy alot of scrapbooking accessories with every intention of doing it more than twice a year.


14. i love making things crafty. and i hate it when they don't turn out like i had in my head.


15. i adore being in the kitchen. i'm pretty sure i get it from my grandma and aunt chris. def not my mother ;)


16. i love watching people cook, especially if it's something i'd never eat. like on iron chef when the secret ingredient is mushrooms (eww!) but they make it looks so delish that i start drooling.


17. i love to read. in spurts. i am in one right now. i'll read about 3-4 books in a row and then take a break.


18. if you were to ask what is the one thing my husband and i enjoy doing, i'd have to say watching movies. renting movies. buying movies. watching movie previews. we love movies!


19. i kind of live in the country right now and i desperately miss the city!


20. chicago is my favorite city ever. followed by colorado springs. then ishpeming, mi.


21. i amour all things paris. it's my dream to go there and take pictures under the eiffel tower at night.


22. i am extremely self-conscious.


23. i over compensate for my self-consciousness by trying to act really confident. i'm faking.


24. i'm an only child. i'm spoiled. and i own it.


25. i love getting gifts but i really love to give/wrap them. especially when it's something i KNOW they'll love.


26. hates it when things don't turn out as i'd planned.


27. regret: i have taken violin/piano/drums/voice lessons and don't do any of them.


28. kristin wiig (f/ snl) is one of my role models.


29. i have a new favorite color every week. right now it's yellow.


30. regret: i didn't go to college. i went to rock valley community college but i didn't GO to college. i think that's an experience i really missed out on.


31. i could go to target &/or hobby lobby every day. and i really try to find excuses to do so.


32. really want to get married again. not to a different guy or anything, just to get to do another wedding. cause there's so many new ideas out there that make mine look lame.


33. i would love to be a wedding planner. jennifer lopez style.


34. i love most every movie jennifer lopez and mandy moore have ever done.


35. i want ALOT of kids. i'm an only and my husband is 6 out of 7. we'll compromise.


36. puppies!!!!! thats it. just puppies.


37. my hubs makes fun of me for my love of animals. even the animated kind.


38. i'm addicted to burts bees chap stick.


39. i gave up buying magazines a few years ago.


40. i love party planning.


41. i love pedicures. except when they push on that pressure point by my toes that makes me nauseus.


42. i'm addicted to cranberry-grape juice.


43. i'm a complete and total momma's girl.


44. i have never missed my dad so much as i have in the last 5 months.


45. i am homesick every other day.


46. i would be covered in tattos if i could.


47. i have one tattoo. a 4leaf clover. it's lame.


48. my secret dream job would be a photographer.


49. i really dislike shopping with other people unless your name is kristin or melisa.


50. i'm considering a job in esthetics.


51. i would like to learn how to sew.


52. i love making lists and calendars.


53. would eat totally organic if it wasn't so darn expensive.


54. is starting a girl's ministry and is super stoked about it.


55. i'm addicted to my iphone. absolutely can not live with out it. i'm serious.

well there ya go. maybe that's let you a little bit more in on the awesomeness that is me. cause i'm awesome. not really. but i pretend to be.

10 minutes into day 2

So I feel like I should only post one time a day, max. I'm 10 minutes into day 2 and am already at it again. So let's not write any rules into stone.

I had really wanted to start blogging for quite some time now. Like I said earlier, I'm completely addicted. It started about the time we moved...(que flashback squiggles and "Do-do-le-do's") I was putting together a bunch of themed activities for my classroom before I left. A school years worth of weekly themes that had games, crafts, worksheets, snacks to go along with it. So I'd Google the different themes and started finding tons of great ideas on these things called "blogs". One blog led to another, and then another, and well, I think we know where it goes from here. Absolutely no turning back. I not only found stuff for school, but ideas that I just wanted to log for myself. There were so many other fab girls out there who seemed to have all the same interests as me: cooking, crafting, teaching, shopping, clothes, decorating... You name it, I've found a blog about it. I have files and files of saved pictures and recipes and ideas saved on my computer. So I'd like to be able to share all this great stuff too, along with the occasional life update.

Feel free to share anything you find too! I love being able to bookmark a new site full of cute ideas.

Happy Tuesday!