WC Save the Date: October

It's hard to believe it's the end of another month!  We were able to enjoy a lot of time together this month and had fun on our October dates.

The first Sunday in October, I ended up being pretty sick and run down.  I was so worn out that I ended up napping most of Sunday afternoon after church while David did our laundry and other things.  When I woke up, we went out to dinner at Chiloso--which is probably one of our top date places because we both love it so much!  It was a nice low-key evening with him.

I meant to take a picture of our morning painting the nursery together, but I completely forgot.  So I grabbed a picture of our lunch break out.  We had to go to Home Depot to get a few supplies, so we stopped for Raising Cane's on our way home.  So delicious!

We've tried to get in a few more evening walks this month.  With the sunset getting earlier each week, most of our walks are when it's already dark, but it's still fun to get out together and do something other than eat and watch TV!  Hopefully we can continue some evening walks even after the time change this weekend.

I love days when David gets to work from home and we get to sneak a lunch date in together.  We had a coupon for BOGO free Chipotle, so we headed there for a lunch together last week.  It was a nice mid-week date.

Now on to November!  We have a lot going on next month and are looking forward to even more celebrations together.

October Fun

In addition to all that has been going on with Life Lately, there have also been a few other fun things we've tried this month.

The day we painted the nursery we were planning to have dinner with our friends Lucas and Yali.  They generously offered to come early and help painting which let us knock out the 2nd coat very quickly.  After that we headed to check out the Richardson Food Truck Park together.

David and I have been talking about checking out the food truck park for a long time but hadn't made it out there yet, so it seemed like a good thing to do with friends.  They have different trucks every day.  The night we went they had a Mexican food truck and a Meat truck as well as donuts for dessert. 

 We enjoyed the weather and the live music while we ate.  It was such a fun atmosphere

 And we tried the s'mores mini donuts for dessert.  They were so good!

One of the benefits of not working this Fall is the flexibility I have.  So when my brother and sister in law were taking my niece and nephew to the Fair on a Thursday I enjoyed tagging along with them and my mom.

 They fed and looked at the animals.  There were lots of different animals to feed, but C liked the goats the best and only wanted to feed them.  This baby goat was so cute and fun!

Then we headed over to another children's area where they both went through growing crops and selling them at the market.

 

It was such a fun day with them!  I can't believe how big they are both getting, but it's fun to see them learn and experience new things!

Life Lately

I feel like right now we have a lot going on and nothing going on all at the same time.  There's obviously a lot of changes coming that we are spending a lot of our time talking about, planning for, and dreaming about.  But day to day, life is pretty boring.  Not a ton going on, but still want to be able to look back and remember some of these things, so I thought I'd do a little Life Lately update.

Right before we left on vacation, I started the Women's Bible Study at our church.  I haven't been a part of it before because of scheduling and other Bible Studies I was doing, but I felt like this semester was a good time to check it out.  We are going through the Sermon on the Mount and it has been a really great study so far.  I'm enjoying the daily questions and the group time and getting to know some new women at our church.

I started a Prenatal Yoga class that our hospital offers.  In early August I saw a Groupon deal for 6 months worth of classes for a really great price.  So even though it was still very early in my pregnancy, I went ahead and bought it.  I got registered and finally started going at the beginning of this month and I usually go once a week (although it is offered 2x week) and I'm really enjoying it.

I've got my Fall decorations all our and ready to go.  The biggest hit is always the Fall candy that I put out as part of our decor-- it's a variety of Reese's, Hershey Kisses, York Peppermint Patties and Candy Corn-- we snack on it with our Community Group when they come over on Wednesday nights and I definitely grab a few Hershey Kisses while I sit on the couch since they are so closeby :)

I am also teaching ESL again this semester since I have some extra time during the day.  The class is different than the last time I taught because it is based at an elementary school and is parents of students at that school.  The students are at a variety of levels with their English, but we are working through several lessons together and trying to find ways to make it applicable to their lives as parents and their involvement in the schools.

For about 2 months the walls of our nursery have looked like this.  I knew I wanted to do something different than the bright blue we've had, but I had the hardest time deciding on paint colors.  I borrowed several samples from Erin and then ended up buying several more to find the right color.  I even almost completely covered one of the walls with 3 different colors so we could see which of those we liked best.  We settled on a color in late August and even bought the paint over Labor Day weekend, but we were waiting to donate some of the furniture and get that room a little more organized before we painted.  We finally got it painted a few weekends ago with the help of our friends Lucas and Yali.  David and I did the first coat ourselves that morning and then Lucas and Yali came over after lunchtime and we did the second coat all together and it went by much quicker.  Thankful for friends who offer up help for tasks such as these!

So we've got our newly painted walls and we rearranged some of the furniture to make it fit better.  David's parents also very generously bought us this new rocking chair and I love it.  It is so comfortable and I sit in it a lot even now.  With my ridiculous sleep schedule and being up for a few hours in the middle of most nights, I find myself sitting in this chair to read and relax and it is so comfortable.  David even moved the TV and Wii (that we use for Netflix) from our room into this room for now so we have a really comfortable place to watch Netflix.  I can't wait to rock our baby in this chair and I know we will get a lot of use out of it!  So thankful for it.

Other than that, I've been doing a lot of cleaning and organizing around our house, going on lots of walks, entertaining my puppy and watching lots of college football on the weekends.  I also usually spend about 1 day a week bugging (or hanging out with) Erin while she is on bedrest-- I take lunch over and we talk about all kinds of things to pass the time.  

I'm so grateful for this slower season of life as we gear up for a lot of changes to come.  Trying to enjoy all of the little moments and the rest right now!

And that's life lately.

Announcing Baby

I thought I'd share the ways we shared the news with family.

I mentioned that I found out I was pregnant on our anniversary.  So then I had to start thinking up ways to tell David.  He was working from home that day, so I had to sneak around a little bit.  I made a trip to Walmart to try to find something to give him.  I was originally looking for a neutral onesie that I could add vinyl or something to make it say whatever I wanted, but they didn't have a whole lot of selection and I didn't have a whole lot of time.  So when I saw that they had Rangers onesies, I thought those would work well for my baseball-loving hubby.  We had lunch together at home that day and I gave David his gift.  We had planned not to get anniversary gifts for each other, so I told him I knew we'd planned that, but I found something perfect and couldn't pass it up.

It started with this card

And then a gift. 

 He was very surprised and excited.  It was so fun finding out on our anniversary and celebrating together that day.  

After we found out we had the discussion of whether or not we wanted to share the news with anyone or wait.  David wanted to wait and that was fine with me, but I knew it would be hard.  A few days after we found out, my Aunt came to town for 2 weeks and we spent a lot of time with my family.  So after several outings with them where we didn't say anything, we finally decided it was too weird and so we started coming up with ways to tell our family.  

My other Aunt came in for the weekend and we were going out to dinner with a lot of my family, so we decided that was a good time to tell everyone.  I had seen this idea on Pinterest to use heart shaped candy and we thought it would be perfect because we could give the one with the note to my mom and then everyone could have candy.

Except I didn't realize that heart shaped candy doesn't really exist in July.  For some reason I thought some chocolates were always heart-shaped, but I went to several stores including party ones and found nothing.  So I improvised and made some heart shaped Oreo truffles (I used this recipe, but replaced the white chocolate with normal {better} chocolate).  We gave the one in the box to my mom to unwrap with the note and then shared truffles with everyone!

We had David's parents and sister over for dinner the next weekend and had these notes ready for them when we sat down to eat... 

I also used our fence posts to make these countdown blocks for his parents since this will be their first grandbaby.  

We also called his Nanny that night and told her--it was fun getting to talk to her while family was still over.

We had so much fun telling family and friends.  And we are so excited that the news is finally public after keeping it a secret for what felt like forever.

We are so grateful for all of the love and support from family and friends and are excited about what's next for our family!

WC Save the Date: September

The first Saturday in September, we got up and watched college Gameday and then headed to Chiloso for breakfast tacos before coming home to watch the first weekend of College Football.  It was a fun day with my guy!

The second weekend in September, we walked about a mile to try a new-to-us ice cream place in our neighborhood.  It was a good evening for a walk and the delicious ice cream helped cool us off! 

And of course our trip to Boston and beyond was like a weeklong date.  It's fun to go on date nights and have evenings at home together, but there is something really fun and special about spending a whole week together exploring a new place and enjoying each other's company!

September was a fun month together!