My best friend is a photographer and she takes our Christmas card photo every year and her forte is kids. So we asked her to do Cameron’s newborn photos and his first year of milestone photos. She came to our house about a week after he was born and took photos. They turned out so cute!
Life has been crazy. Christmas snuck up on us and then was gone even quicker. After Christmas I got super sick for over a week and being pregnant and sick is not fun. We didn’t do anything for NYE, I don’t think we even watched the ball drop. We are party animals can’t you tell. I haven’t blogged in a while so this is a hodge podge of photos.
The end of the year was good, minus being sick. The best was to come and sooner than we would have known. 🙂
This year our Christmas/maternity photos were last minute and my best friend Teri took them again for our 4 year. She took them and had to edit them before she went on her trip to Hawaii plus she had a 2 month old! Can you say superwoman. We didn’t have much snow at the time and it was super cold. We decided this year to do it at a tree farm which was really fun! This is our last Christmas photo with just us and Arie.
Here are some of our photos!
Little did we know that our peanut was going to be coming very soon. We made it home for Christmas. We did the drive in a day, we wanted to make sure we were close to home. What a year 2016 was, we purchased our house and 4 months later found out we were pregnant. We did not know that we would be spending a lot of our time the next 9 months at the doctor making sure our peanut was healthy and growing. We were so blessed in 2016 and didn’t take any of it for granted.
My second baby shower was hosted by my best friend and we had it at my house. It was the beginning of November which in the Midwest, you will never know what weather you get. We lucked out, we had beautiful sunny, warm weather. We all sat outside on our deck, we needed sunglasses and probably sunscreen, I think a few people might have gotten sunburned. The weather was perfect with the theme of Tacos, Margaritas and Sangria. We did some prep ahead of time to make the day of easier. I was excited to have all of my favorites! My friend did an awesome job!
Here are a few photos of the day.
Our first baby shower was hosted by my mom and I know my pa helped a little! 🙂 I have called baby wild thing because he really likes to move and wiggle. My mom took that and wanted to do the Where The Wild Things Are theme for the shower, it turned out great! She was so creative and worked hard to find the cool decorations! We decided on soup, bread, veggies, hot apple cider and sangria. The guests had a lot of fun. My mom out did herself and it was such a special day! Our peanut is loved by so many and he doesn’t know it yet! 🙂
Here are some fun photos from the shower!
Thank You Mom and Pa for throwing us a fun baby shower!
We are so grateful!
We had our 8 week appt the beginning of June and our 12 week appt at the beginning of July. We kept it a secret from family and friends until we finished our 12 week appt. At the 12 week appt, I did the genetic testing to make sure that nothing was present that we didn’t know about it as I am adopted and don’t know my family history. After we got our results back, we asked the nurse to put them in an envelope so we wouldn’t know the gender and decided to do a gender reveal with our family in September.
One of my sisters was bummed that we didn’t let her know sooner; so we decided to make her the keeper of the gender for the reveal. We decided to do the reveal with cupcakes. My sister had stayed at our house to watch Arie and we left the envelope for her and she left a gift for Carl. She said it was hard to open the envelope and actually know what the gender is and she had to keep a secret for a few weeks.
I have shared the health stuff that I have encountered over the last few years. 5 years ago I was diagnosed with Celiac’s and more recently, 3 years ago I was diagnosed with Sjogren’s Syndrome. This causes dry mouth and dry eyes and can be accompanied by RA or Lupus. When I have flare-upsI have to go on a steroid and everything hurts, I get chest pains, dry sore throat, joint/nerve pain and inflammation.
Last winter, I had asked my specialist if there is any risk if I were to get pregnant. He said because I have SSA+ and SSB+ which is the blood test that diagnosed me with the syndrome. The SSA and SSB can be transferred to the baby and put the baby at risk for congenital heart block. He also would consider me a high-risk pregnancy if I were to become pregnant. Also on top of it with Celiac’s you could have troubles getting pregnant in general. This made me nervous, scared and apprehensive.
So back in May, when we had our housewarming party/Carl’s 30th party, which was a blast. However, that Sunday morning I had a feeling and also heartburn, which was probably from all the jello shots my brother made and the elk cheese dip my sister made.
That Monday May 9th when I got home I took a pregnancy test and guess what?
That test was POSITIVE!!!
I texted my best friend a picture of the test who is also pregnant and asked her if they lie. She said, nope they don’t.
I was so conflicted, Carl’s birthday was the next day, but his sister’s wedding was that weekend, I did not want to say something and then it slips out. So I kept the secret my own for a 1 week. It was hard, I was tired, hungry and always having to pee. I know Carl wondered what was wrong with me. lol
When we got back, that Monday, 1 week later I took another test to be sure. It was also positive. I decided to put a little present together for Carl and pretend it was a birthday gift someone left. I put to cute notes in there, the positive tests and a Pink Floyd onesie-one of his favorite groups and a bag of peanut M&M’s but I ate those.
This was a major surprise to us because we were not sure what our fate was. We will discover that we have a long road ahead of us.
We are beyond blessed with this miracle we were given!
Day 3 of being in Duluth allowed us to be more flexible with our time and not have to wait in lines!
Thank You to our friend who let us stay with her while we were up there! It was fun to hang out and catch up!
We had a fun weekend!
In June this year, I bought tickets for us to go to the Duluth Tall Ships Festival, it had been a few years since the ships had been Up North, I really wanted tickets for the event in August. There were about 8 ships that came into the harbor. On Thursday, they had the Parade of Sails, where we got to see all the ships come into the harbor under the Aerial Lift Bridge with their sails open. We got down to the lift bridge around 10am and waited until about 3:00pm. It was a hot day, but towards the end, the weather was starting to change and a storm was rolling in. Some of the ships you could tour or sail on. I bought the fast pass tickets to be able to tour the ships. We got to tour 3 of the ships, one of ships was so popular that some people waited hours to see it-glad we had fast pass tickets!
Here are a handful of photos. You couldn’t get a “great” photo as there was so many people, lightening and using a iPhone played a role.
We did get to see all the ships and everything we wanted in Thursday and Friday. So Saturday was a free day for us to explore Duluth.
Here a few recipes that we have made in the last month or so.
This was chicken and lime soup. This was good, but to give more substance to the soup, I added rice. Carl did say, next time if I make it, I have to thicken the sauce a little more. It was fresh and light tasting.
This recipe is from Budget Bytes, I love her blog, I have cooked other recipes from there before.
Budget Bytes-Chicken and Lime Soup
Last week, I found this recipe on Pinterest. Carl really likes orange chicken, this was easy, made a lot and I made it gluten free. I liked that the sauce was only 3-ingredients. I did use the whole jar of orange marmalade, I didn’t want a strong BBQ sauce taste. This is from the Blog Crafty Morning, I haven’t cooked from there before.
Crafty Morning-3-Ingredient Orange Chicken Sauce Recipe
I had to share these photos from August when my family got together at my parents house up north! So all my sisters are amazing cooks and I love when they share that with us. 🙂 She made us homemade individual pizzas.
They were good, she used roasted tomatoes, sausage, fresh goat and mozzarella cheese, fig spread and arugula!
We love eating! 😀
Go Blondie! 