Oh My Goodness Y'all...

I just found a FABULOUS deal!!!  Right now if you go to restaurant.com and enter the code COOK you can get 80% off of your gift cards.  I got $100 worth of gift cards for...are you ready for this, are you sitting down, because it is literally a steal...$8 YES EIGHT dollars!!!  I don't know if you've ever done restaurant.com or not, but you buy the credits (so I bought two 50 dollar credits) and then you get your codes, and you go back in and choose your gift cards and print them out.  Here is the list of gift cards I got for my first $50 credit, and I'm going to let Brad choose the ones for the second credit...

• 2 $10 gift cards to Blues Brothers BBQ (our favorite BBQ restaurant downtown...we LOVE it!!)
• 50% off to E.J's Landing (for Mom and Dad...they love that place)
• $25 off a $35 meal at Mamma Maria's (awesome Italian food!!)

So...we got all of that for FOUR DOLLARS!!! It is absolutely insane...this offer expires March 31st, so go now and save yourself some money!! 

24 Weeks

Total Weight Gain: And this is the week that I'll stop putting up this number haha :)
Best Moment this week: Just feeling baby girl move around all the time, and buying some clothes and obnoxious bows (Charley's not gonna be the only little girl rockin those!)
Gender: It's A Girl!
Movement: Yes it is AMAZING! I feel her all the time, and Brad gets to feel her too.
Food Craving: Rice Krispie cereal with milk and bananas.
What I miss: Sleeping on my belly and my workout routine.
Sleep: It takes me awhile to get comfortable, and I miss sleeping through the night.
What I am looking forward to: Spring Break!!!! We're going to the beach and getting lots of things done for baby girl!!
Belly Button: In for now, but it looks like it is going to POP out!
Symptoms: Sciatica and still tired, but wouldn't trade it for the world!!

23 Weeks...

Baby girl is about a foot long and weighs about one pound!! She can hear noises going on around her, and she's practicing "breathing" by sucking in amniotic fluid. She moves around A TON and loves to kick and jab me throughout the day. She's most active first thing in the morning, right when I get off of work, and right around bedtime. (Sorry for the lack of belly pictures, I promise once I'm not so pasty white after Spring Break I will post some...I think I hear the song "you're so vain" playing in the background somewhere :) Oh well)

Total Weight Gain: 7 pounds at last doctor's visit
Best Moment this week: Just feeling baby girl move around all the time, and getting the swatches for her bedding in...LOVE THEM!
Gender: It's A Girl!
Movement: Yes it is AMAZING! I feel her all the time, and Brad gets to feel her too.
Food Craving: Nothing really...I always want ice cream, but I always want ice cream ha!
What I miss: Sleeping on my belly and my workout routine.
Sleep: It takes me awhile to get comfortable, and I miss sleeping through the night.
What I am looking forward to: Painting the nursery, and organizing some of the clothes I've bought for her.
Belly Button: In for now, but it looks like it is going to POP out!
Symptoms: Sciatica and still tired, but wouldn't trade it for the world!!

In Case You Need a Good Laugh...

I am going to tell you the funniest story I think I have EVER heard.  My best friend's Mom told it to her, and she passed it along to me.  For the record this story is 100% true, no part of it has been made up or even enhanced...


There is a lady who works with best friend's Mom who has a son who has some form of mental handicap.  He is old enough and capable enough to stay home during the day by himself (so we're thinking he's probably 18-20 years old).  Anyway, this lady calls her son to check on him during the day, and he tells his Mom that he caught a troll, and he locked it away in the closet.  This is nothing new to her because he makes up stories like this to keep himself entertained all the time, so she thinks nothing of it.  A couple hours later she calls back to check in on him and he says that he keeps trying to feed the troll Skittles under the closet door, but the troll keeps pushing them back, so he decides that trolls don't like Skittles.  Still the Mom thinks nothing of this, and figures he's just really amused with this particular story.  But, when the Mom calls back a couple more hours later (so at least 4 hours have passed) and the son is panicking and says that the troll kept trying to get out of the closet, so he shoved a chair against the door so he couldn't escape she decides she should go home and check on the situation.  When the woman arrives home she finds a MIDGET locked in the closet!!!!  Apparently the census worker came knocking on the door, and her son thought he was a troll so he captured him!!!  How hilarious is that???  I couldn't stop laughing for hours, I'm still laughing as I sit here and type this story out to you!! Luckily the census worker isn't going to press any charges...

Speaking of trolls...how many of you played with these when you were younger, or am I the only one??

Shopping and Thriftiness...

With baby girl (we're closer in the name search, but still not quite there yet) on the way I am trying my very best to be thriftier. Don't get me wrong, since being married I have been thrifty, but I am trying to find ways to be even thriftier (is that even a word because I'm using it like it is). Before being married I had an OBSESSION with designer jeans, as in $200-$300 dollar jeans...yea I know, I know, don't judge me please. Since being pregnant I haven't been able to find any maternity jeans that aren't HIDEOUS or awkwardly shaped, until last weekend when I set out to find the perfect pair of maternity jeans. I was just going to head straight for the mall, but I decided I would stop in Once Upon a Child first just to see if they had any good deals, and I was THRILLED when I found a NIIIIIIICE pair of designer maternity jeans for, brace yourself, EIGHT DOLLARS. I could not believe it!!! I also found a cute pair of Old Navy maternity jeans for nine dollars. It was a very successful trip and I managed to stay out of the mall traffic. Then, this weekend Mom and I went to a couple of consignment sales in the area, Back on the Rack and Lauren Alex & Friends. These are not what I like to call my type of shopping, but I just braved the crowd and I'm glad I did because I found some really cute things, and got some GREAT deals!!

Here are three Christmas outfits I bought for baby girl at Belk for 50% off, and then an additional 35% off....
The more I buy for her the more excited I am for her to arrive!!

And I have discovered my new favorite store in Roanoke...it's called Two and a Half Sisters. It's right across from the upper level of Tower's. They are all about some monogramming, I wanted to buy EVERYTHING in there, you should go check it out :)

Baby Girl Update...

Brad and I have been so busy lately I haven't even had a second to get on here and update!! Well here's a brief rundown of what's going on for us right now...

1. We started our baby registry at Target and at Babies R Us this past weekend. We were hilarious walking around both stores with our "Baby Bargains" book (I'm obsessed with that book!!) and laughing together on the stroller isle trying to figure out how to unfold the stroller we picked out. We had a GREAT time, I think it was even more fun to register for baby stuff than it was to register for wedding stuff. And I would remember seeing as how we were doing that only 2 years ago...haha. You seasoned Mom's check out our registries and let me know if you can think of anything I left off. I ended up going for Avent bottles instead of Dr. Brown's because I think they will be easier to clean (seeing as how we are lacking a dish washer). I also registered for the Chicco Cortina travel system. Brad thinks its HILARIOUS how excited I was when we walked into Babies R Us and I screamed "OH MY GOSH BRAD THEY HAVE IT!!" because no where else in Roanoke carries it in the store (you could order it online, but its more fun to be able to play with it before you register for it). I knew that's the travel system I wanted after all my research, so it made this momma to be very happy when it was there for me to see in real life!!

2. Yesterday we went for our 20 week appointment, and everything looked great. When I go back for my 24 week appointment I have to get a heart check ultrasound because Vickie (apparently I think we're on a first name basis) was unable to see the outflow of the heart, but she said that's nothing to worry about. Yesterday's appointment also made me thankful that I decided to just see Janet (my Nurse Practitioner) throughout my pregnancy because she just got back from a missions trip in Haiti, and we were able to talk about how blessed we are, and she shared with us how God is working down there. It was so encouraging!!

3. I also encountered a milestone I think every pregnant woman looks forward to. A stranger finally noticed that I was pregnant and not just fat. Haha! I was in Sam's buying new tires for Fanny Focus, and this sweet older black man offered to carry my groceries to my car because as he put it "expectin women shouldn't be liftin all that heavy stuff". I tried to tell him I was capable of loading my stuff into my car, but he wasn't hearing it, so as he waited for his car to finish he loaded my things into my car. It made my heart smile.

4. Basketball season is over, and soccer is now starting. Basketball is DEFINITELY more time consuming than soccer, so I'm kind of glad for soccer to be starting. I'm just hoping my hormones don't make me too obnoxious at soccer games (as if I wasn't obnoxious before???), oh well at least I'll have something to blame it on this year!!

5. And lastly I need your help girls!!!! I CANNOT decide what fabric to order for my bedding. Here are a couple that I like. Let me know which one you like...

Sixth Valentine's Day...

This will be mine and Brad's sixth Valentine's Day together. Wow!! Our first couple of Valentine's Days I would try to think of really creative things to give him. My college roommates and I would all head out to Michael's together and buy things to make creative Valentine's four our boyfriends. I don't remember what we did four our first Valentine's Day together...I was still in high school (which is why you will have to forgive me for the hideous blond hair haha)

One year I gave Brad a box with one Hershey's kiss for every day we had been dating, one year he got some homemade picture frames, one year I gave him a book called "I like you" and wrote approximately 2,000 things about him that I like all over the book...

and one year I sent him in invitation to a homemade dinner at my apartment in the morning, and made him dinner and decorated a table really cute and we ate dinner on the floor of my room....


But, last year was definitely my favorite Valentine's Day because it was our first as a married couple :) Unfortunately I had been REALLY sick the whole weekend of Valentine's Day, so I didn't feel like doing much of anything, but Brad made me get out of bed and participate in his scavenger hunt. He turned all the lights off and lit candles all around our house and waited for me to get done. It was so sweet. Anyway we don't usually go out for Valentine's Day because I don't like waiting 3 hours to eat, and we usually don't make a big deal about the day itself because to be honest I prefer to be well loved all year round than just on one day! :)