April

Happy Spring! It has been an exciting month for us. Elsa continues to grow strong and healthy, we are still loving our apartment, Easter is coming, we celebrated our one year anniversary, and we have been given 2 baby showers. What a month!

I'll have to wait until later to post pictures of Elsa's room, but in the mean time I can at least tell you about it. My mom gave us a bed to put in there for guests, which we were able to use a couple weeks ago when the K's came to visit. It was fun to host them. We have also set up Elsa's crib and changing table since then as well. The room is full of baby stuff. She's kind of taking over our apartment, so it is pretty impossible to forget that she's coming. She is 5 short weeks away! I would say I cannot believe it, but I can. These weeks have been crawling by. And I don't have a belly button anymore.

April 3rd, my mom's friends threw us our first shower. It was a huge blessing and we got a lot of very nice things. The food was great, and the cake was the best cake I've ever had. We still have some in our freezer that I pull out ever few days to eat off of...YUM. Here are a few pictures from the party.

These are the hostesses! Thank you so much Mrs. Anderson, Mrs. Winslow, Mrs. Slice, and Mrs. Howe!

And the Kirkpatrick and Puffer girls. Thank you for making the trip Mrs. K!

Shane surprised me on our anniversary. We both got off the 10th and 11th (Sunday and Monday) and were wanting to go down to Wilmington or Myrtle Beach, but had decided to stay in the area and just relax at home. I calculated a week or so ago that we have had 10 days off together since January 1st, so we were very excited about having 2 days off in a row together. I didn't really care what we did, as long as we were together. Well, he ended up booking us a night at the Umstead Hotel, which is a beautiful 5-star hotel in Cary that my brother, David, works at. He is able to get very nice family discounts, so we took advantage of that. David bought us a night over there after we got back from our honeymoon cruise, and it was an unforgettable experience, so Shane wanted to repeat it. He also bought a little video camera so that we can record all of Elsa's tricks. It was a perfect combination of gifts. Thank you Shane! We've been taking some fun videos since then, but I'm not sure how to post them on here yet...I'll try to figure it out.

This past weekend, Mrs. K's friends threw us a shower in Charlotte. My mom and dad followed us down there. They drove separately so that they could bring back the changing table that the K's refinished for us. We love it, thank y'all for all the work you put into it. It looks great in the room, and the drawers are already full!

The shower was, once again, a huge blessing. We got a little bit of everything and I am overwhelmed. God has proven to us time and time again that He will provide above and beyond our needs, and our little girl's. And let me just say, between this shower and the last, Elsa is going to be the best dressed little girl in town. This kid has nicer clothes than Shane and I do, not that that says too much...

Here is a quilt that Mrs. Sonia made for Elsa. It's beautiful! The colors are bright and fun! Shane and I actually bought blue curtains the other week for our room, but they match perfectly with the quilt so we switched the blue ones to Elsa's room and put the red one's in ours. It really brightens up her room!

Mrs. Sonia made the quilt, and her daughter, Cori, is on the right. Thank you so much! We love it!

And here are the hostesses of the shower. Cori, Mrs. Sonia, and Mrs. Brenda. Y'all really made it special. Thank you for all that you did!

And while we were at the shower, the guys went to Victory Lane to ride really fast go-carts and then came home and shot guns. How manly. Here are the grandpa's bonding. Good thing they like each other.

Sunday afternoon Shane's friend, John, came over. I was tired, so I took a 3 hour nap while they went out to the gazebo to fish. Shane caught a nice sized Bass. They captured it on video, but the video doesn't seem to want to load fast enough, so I gave up. I need to go to bed soon.

As for the baby update, I had an appointment the day after the April 3rd shower which made me dislike one particular doctor (just kidding, she's very nice). I found out I had gained a lot more weight than recommended for the 2 weeks prior and my doctor gave me a hard time about it. She made me get onto another scale in the office because, "surely I didn't gain THAT much in 2 weeks. The scale must be off..." Well, I DID! I guess Elsa decided to pick up the speed of her growth. :)

Yesterday I had my 34 week appointment and met the last doctor in the practice (there are 6 doctors in the practice, 4 women and 2 men, and any of them could be delivering Elsa, so the office wants you to meet all of them.) This was the second man, and he was great. Pretty much every appointment is the same. They take my weight, I give a urine sample, they take my blood pressure, and they measure my stomach. My stomach should measure in centimeters what I am in weeks from my pelvic bone to the top of my uterus. I read last week online somewhere that the doctor should be able to feel what position the baby is in, so I asked him to see if he could tell. He said she was in head down position. All the movement I should feel from here on out is her stretching, kicking, kneeing, elbowing, and punching. She can't really turn anymore because there isn't enough room, and she's all set for delivery. I was excited to hear that. Everything looked great and he said we should be having a health 7 1/2 pound baby girl in 5 short weeks. She is a little over 5 pounds right now (about the size of a honeydew melon according to the website I read most often). I feel her move all the time and I love it! We can't wait to meet her.

Alright, sorry for the long post. I had a lot to catch up on, and I couldn't fall asleep, so I wrote. It's now after midnight. Eake! I'll post some pictures of the room in the next few days.