We thank thee for this bountiful *$&#@!

So, anyone who has seen the Simpsons movie will recognize the title of this post.

Katie and I went for our 17th week checkup last Monday. Although its too early to do the ultrasound to check the condition of the baby's heart, etc., we convinced the Dr. to let us slide into the ultrasound room really quick just to take a quick peek at what's inside for a little Christmas surprise. He agreed. Hooray!

Before he performed the ultrasound, I gave the baby a little pep talk. I told him/her to be a good little son/daughter and spread his/her legs for us. The George genes have very prominent spread eagle qualities. Katie can testify to this per my sleeping habits. I tried to get him/her to use those genes he/she was blessed with and give us a show. :)

The Dr. stuck on the the ultrasound and immediately we could see the baby's heart beating. Then he panned down to the crotch area......

I looked at Katie and said, "did I just see what I thought I saw?" Katie smiled and said, "I think so..." The Dr. chimed in and replied, "You sure did!"

Here's an ultrasound of the baby. You can see almost the entire body:

Here you see a close up. You can see a little more detail in the heart and spine:


And lastly, my favorite of all, the gender! Yes....it's a boy!!

[Censored for content.....sorry all you late readers]

Let it Snow

I love the snow. Every year I get so excited when it starts snowing again. By the time February rolls around I'll be hating it but right now I love it. We had a big snow storm yesterday and now the grass and everything is all covered. It's so pretty. Last night I had my siblings over for a Christmas/Birthday party. We ate cinnamon rolls and drank hot chocolate and watched A Year Without Santa Clause.

Then we took a picture in front of our small but beautiful Christmas tree.

Since we're covering up all but the top 2 inches of the tree, I took another picture of just the tree so you can see how pretty it is.

I can't wait for Christmas. Only one more week of classes for Ryan and then he'll be done with this semester. Yay! And then we're going to my parent's house in St. Louis for Christmas. It's going to be so much fun. Oh and don't forget to vote on our poll on what gender the baby is. My doctor's appointment is tomorrow. We hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!

I have a kumquat in my tummy

Most of you already know this but I thought I'd just officially announce on our blog that I'm going to be having a baby. I'm 16 weeks along and my due date is May 26th. Here is a picture of me on the day we found out I was pregnant. I was about 4 weeks along. We were so excited.

And this one was taken yesterday at 16 weeks. I'm wearing a maternity shirt so there is a lot of excess fabric around my tummy, but let me tell you, my belly is getting huge. I think I've gained about 12-15 lbs already.

Like I said I'm 16 weeks along so our baby is 4 1/2 inches long, about the size of an avocado. When I was 10 weeks they compared the baby to the size of a kumquat, I had no idea what a kumquat even looked like and I just thought that was funny so that's where the title of the post came from. Our baby has all its arms and legs and fingers and toes. It even has toe nails. It has a fast heart beat too, just like me. At our last appointment the heart beat was 170 bpm. Although I can't feel it yet, our baby can kick and move around, sense light apparently (but I shined a light on my tummy and nothing really happened), grimace, squint, and they say it can suck on its thumb too. I'm sure my baby is advanced so it can probably do all this and calculus already. My next doctors appointment is on December 17th and even though I'm not scheduled for an ultrasound, cause I'll only be 17 weeks along and they like to wait till around 20 weeks, my doctor said he would just take me down to the ultrasound machine and take a peek to see if we can find out the gender. We can't wait and I hope our baby cooperates so we can get a good look. We'll let you all know as soon as we find out.

Thanksgiving

This is a bit late, but I never seem to be able to get around to blogging lately. This Thanksgiving we got to spend time with both my family and Ryan's family. It was a bit busy, but we had a lot of fun. My brother and his wife and two little kids stayed with us at our apartment. Ryan and I made a feeble attempt to baby proof our apartment but obviously we don't have a lot of experience with this stuff, cause we did not do that good of a job. It was so much fun waking up to these cuties, though, that we didn't really care. And my nephew loves cereal as much as Ryan does; they were like twins. I just love how cute and cuddly babies are when they wake up.

On Wednesday night the whole family had arrived in Utah so I made some clam chowder for dinner for everyone. It was the first time I'd ever tried the recipe and it turned out amazing. We ate the soup in bread bowls. Everyone loved it. We had a whole pot full of soup and there was barely enough leftovers for one person. I'm definitely going to be making that one again. My dad also made this delicious chocolate melting cake. It was seriously amazing. Here's everyone enjoying their dinner.

My niece crammed both of her feet into this shoe. I thought it was funny so I took a picture.

Now this is the sad part. I feel terrible but I completely forgot about my camera after this so I didn't get any more pictures of our Thanksgiving holiday. We spent most of the day on Thanksgiving with Ryan's family. We had delicious turkey and gravy and mashed potatoes and some raspberry jello stuff that is my favorite. After we left Ryan's parent's house, we went back to my little sister's apartment where my family had Thanksgiving dinner, and we helped them eat pie. I think I had 5 pieces, and then I ate more for breakfast the next day.

On Friday we spent some time shopping. We went crib shopping and found a few cribs that we liked but we still need to decide on the one we want. We also went to the fabric store and got some crafty stuff and I bought fabric to make a quilt for the baby's crib. I'm making a gender neutral one with creams and browns and green. I think it's going to be so cute. I'm not exactly sure how to quilt though, so for now I'm just cutting out fabric squares and piecing them together to find a pattern I like. I was working on this last night. It took me all week to cut out those pesky squares.

My mom brought a sewing machine for me out from St. Louis with her when she came to visit, so now I have a sewing machine to use to make this quilt. Hopefully when we find out the gender of our baby, (and when I get better at quilting), I can make more quilts and cute things. I'm so excited.

Now everyone is gone and we're back to boring school and work. We miss everyone and we're so glad my family could come out to visit. I love Thanksgiving and I'm so thankful for both of our families and the love they show Ryan and I.