Its a...

We had an ultrasound today to see your sweet baby. I had NO clue that we would find out the gender because I am so early along in my pregnancy (13 1/2 weeks).

Bryce and Ava came along with me for the ultrasound. It was Bryce's first time to see an early ultrasound since he was deployed for almost all of my pregnancy with Ava.

The ultrasound was actually for a Down Syndrome test. I chose to get the test because I get a free ultrasound out of it. :)

What they do for the test is measure the back of the babies neck in the ultrasound and take some blood from a finger prick. Easy! :)

Once we were about 10 minutes into our ultrasound, the tech asked us if she could check to see if its a boy or girl. I was a little shocked but of course I said YES! She checked and immediately we knew what we were going to have!! There are two ways to check and both ways showed the same gender. The tech is 90% sure what it is but can't be absolutely certain since I am so early in my pregnancy. So, without further adieu....

ITS A BOY!!!!!!! 

We are ELATED and SO excited!!!! The babies heartbeat is 154 and measuring right on time. Let the shopping begin!!! :)

BIG Announcement!!

DETAILS:

I am 11 weeks along.
Due March 26, 2014
We are SO SO excited!!!
Ava thinks I'm having a boy.
This pregnancy has been SO different than my first.
Nausea and mood swings were in FULL swing but have subsided.
Had my first doctors appointment today and the baby's heartbeat sounds great!
Usually only one thing sounds good for a meal and I have to have that thing! But its something different everyday.
Today it was Arby's for lunch. Yesterday it was Jambalaya.
Fatigue has been BAD! I feel tired ALL. THE. TIME! Slowly getting my energy back.

All about Ava Drew!

I am SO behind on my monthly updates for Ava Drew. Instead, I will just update on what she is doing.

• Ava Drew is probably the funniest and sassiest little diva I have ever met. 
• Her favorite thing to do is watch Barney on my phone. She got in a bad habit of playing on my phone all the time when we were living in a empty house. She was bored so she fell in love with my phone. ha! Now, we are trying to limit her time on my phone now that she has toys to play with and books to read. 
• Ava has all of the sudden become a snuggler and I am LOVING it!!! 
• She can almost count to 10. She skips 1,5,7, and 9. We are working on it! :) 
• You can SPELL YOUR NAME!! I know, my not even two year old can spell her name. Granted, her name only consists of 2 letters. 
• Her favorite song to sing is "Wain wain, go away". We have gotten lots of rain lately. 
• She loves "hamburgers" and every time we drive into sonic, she assumes she is getting a hamburger. 
• She loves to draw and every time she see's a pen, she insists on drawing and throws a tantrum if we don't let her. She says "A" which means she wants to draw. Why? Because every time Bryce draws with her, he spells out her name on the paper and she tries to write her name. 

• She has always been really good at going down for naps and bedtime but lately, it has been a huge challenge. 
• We still haven't potty trained her yet but we are starting that next week. She is so ready but we wanted to get settled first before we took on that challenge!! Any tips? 

Cheyenne Frontier Days and Family!!

I am back tracking on this post a little bit. My family came to visit us for a week during Cheyenne Frontier Days! They came two weeks before we got our stuff so they had to sleep on blow up mattresses and eat on fold out chairs with us!! It was fun!

We stayed SO busy while my family was here. They got here late on a Sunday night so on Monday, we decided to get out of the house and explore Cheyenne. We went to Frontier Park which is where the rodeos and concerts take place. There is also lots of rides and food booths and venues. We walked around and let Ava go on a slide ride with Bryce. She LOVES slides so we thought she would love it. We were wrong. She hated it. Poor thing.

On Tuesday, we went to the parade downtown. We live about 3 blocks from downtown so we just walked. Ava loved the parade. I think the "Neighs" (horses) were her favorite. This town is about as country as it gets. And I thought Texans were country....the town of Cheyenne doesn't even compare!! 

Thanks to my sister Sarah for the cute collage.

Once the parade was over, we hurried home to get in the car and go to Estes Park in Colorado for the day. We climbed a mountain, explored a waterfall/river and drove around the beautiful park. We all had a blast. We saw lots of animals like elk, sheep, deer, and a bison. 

Ava looks scares sad but she really wasn't. She was happy to be cuddled in her Pop's arms. 

Can you spot Bryce? He was in heaven! Nature is his thing!!

It was really chilly on top of the mountain and Ava thought it was so funny that she got to wear her Momma's jacket!!

During Frontier Days (which is a week long), there is a huge pancake breakfast. This year, they served over 30,000 people! And its FREE!! So on Wednesday, we went and stayed in line for about 30 minutes. The line was probably a mile long. It wrapped around a building and zigzagged all the way down the road. It was crazy! But the line went pretty fast and we were always moving so it wasn't bad at all. We got free pancakes, so why not!!

Once the pancake breakfast was over, we walked around the downtown area and checked out a few antique shops. Bryce had to go shoot for work so he left around noon and the rest of us went home to relax for the afternoon. We were so exhausted! 

On Thursday, we went to the parade again. There were 3 parades during Frontier Days. We heard the parade on Thursday was supposed to be the best one so that's why we went a second time. After it was over, we went to the state museum which was a couple blocks away from the parade. We wanted to check out the Capitol but we ran out of time. 

On Friday, we left really early and went to Mt. Rushmore!! It was about a 4 hour drive. We got there around noon, toured Mt. Rushmore, then went downtown to eat lunch and check out a few shops. 

The next morning, my family got up bright and early to hit the road back to Texas. We really enjoyed their visit and we were so sad to see them leave. 

Moving to Cheyenne!!

Hello Blog World! I know I have been MIA for the past couple of months but I think I have a pretty good reason. We moved across the world back to the U.S.A. and we are finally getting settled in Cheyenne, WY!

Once we got to Cheyenne, we stayed in TLF (temporary living facility aka hotel) for 10 days until we found a house. We had a HARD time finding a decent place to call home. We get a small allowance that doesn't leave us many options as far as houses go. The house that we found is tiny and much smaller than our house in Germany...like, its probably half of the size. So, we have a ton of stuff stored in our garage. Thankfully, it is a huge garage so our stuff fits perfectly in there. Hopefully we will only be here about 9 more months and then we can move again. yay!

Since we lived without our stuff for 2 1/2 months, we are not attached to our stuff at all. We have so much stuff that we don't "need". We will be having a HUGE garage sale soon.

We are slowly getting settled in. Almost all of our boxes are unpacked but we need to get organized and put more stuff in our garage. I haven't been feeling well lately so things have been progressing SLOWLY!!

This was one of TWO trucks! There are four crates on this truck and we had 8 crates total!! Too. Much. Stuff!!

Ava 19/20 months old!

I am combining Ava's 19 and 20 month old posts! Ava has grown up SO much since we have been back in the states. Her personality has come out so much!!

Ava, you (almost) weigh 20 pounds! I have no idea how tall you are or how big your head is. You are All. The. Time!!!! You go to bed around 8pm and wake up around 7:30am. You take one nap a day that last about two hours.

You LOVE your family and can name almost all of them which is A LOT! (Gigi, Pop, Nana, PawPaw, Hayden, Harrison, Charles, Dina, Rebekah (Beckey), Luke, Sarah (Rah Ray), and Laura (Lah Lah).

You are SO SO smart and everyone always comments on how smart you really are! You communicate so well!

You LOVE being outside!

You LOVE our new dog, Brinkley, or "Brinkey" as you call her!

You love drinking out of a water bottle and you have to hold the cap!

You really like to help me clean. You can unload the clean dishes from the dishwasher and put them where they belong. You like for me to hand you the wet clothes out of the washing machine so you can throw them in the dryer. You LOVE to take a clean baby wipe and clean the floors and walls.

You HATE to have your hands and feet dirty! You won't go outside without your shoes on. If you are outside without your shoes on, you will tippy-toe. ha! It is SO funny!

You are SO ready to be potty trained. You tell us when you are stinky. You say "shewww". We are going to wait until we get moved and settled before we start potty training you.

You are SO SO fun Ava and I can't wait to see the little girl come out in you!

Goodbye Germany, Hello USA!

My poor blog. I have been MIA for awhile due to our move back to the states. 

Our last day in Germany was May 29th. We flew out that night on a 9 hour flight to Baltimore. We flew out at 8pm (German time) and arrived in Baltimore at 11pm (Baltimore time). We slept a lot on the plane but thankfully we were still tired once we got to Baltimore so we stayed the night in a hotel and woke up at 4:30am wide awake!! Jet lag was kicking in! :)

Saying goodbye to friends in Germany. It was so sad saying bye but I know we will see our friends soon! 

 

We got to BWI airport at around 8am for our 10am flight. We flew to Dallas and then from Dallas to Amarillo. We got to Amarillo at around 4pm. Ava did amazing on all the flights and slept most of the way. We had a two hour layover in Dallas so we spent our time in the USO and Ava got SPOILED by the volunteers there. We came out of there with our tummy's full and a few books and candy! :) The USO is a place in the airport for military members. They have a movie theater room, kids room, complementary food and snacks and even a resting room. Its amazing!! 

Getting back on track...once we arrived in Amarillo, Bryce's family picked us up, we dropped our bags off at the house and then went to eat at a Chinese restaurant. Ava was horrible not so happy because she was so exhausted from our trip and I could barely keep my eyes open since I had been up since 4:30am so once we got home, we went straight to bed. 

The two weeks that we were in Amarillo, we relaxed, ate out a lot, shopped, bought a car (!), and enjoyed family. We played outside A LOT! Ava was asking to go outside every chance she got and the weather was so beautiful so we were rarely inside. 

My new (to us) car!!! I am in LOVE! We sold both of our cars the week before we left Germany. We did not want to go through the hassle of shipping a car, waiting 2 months for it to get here, and renting a car in the meantime. 

We stayed 2 weeks in Amarillo and then headed up to Sherman for 2 weeks. Since we have been in Sherman, we have been so busy. We went shopping, took a weekend trip up to Tyler for my 24th birthday, Bryce and I got to go to the movies for the first time in months, went to Dallas a few times, and went fly fishing for the first time out at my brother-in-laws house. 

We are going on a double date with my sister and her husband tomorrow and then having family pictures done on Wednesday and then on Thursday, we are headed back up to Amarillo for the night and then driving to Colorado for a family reunion the next morning. Whew!