Snow Day

Thankfully my 3-day weekend turned into a 4-day weekend when it snowed overnight last night! Let me tell ya how much of a blessing that is when you are 36 weeks pregnant! :) We took advantage of the rare snowfall and played outside with Ally. She would have eaten all of the snow in Charlotte if we had let her. :)

Baby Shower, Birthday, and more!

The past few weeks have been very busy! Allen and I have been getting the nursery ready for the baby's arrival in February. She will be here before we know it! The nursery is not finished yet-we still need to find a glider chair and accessories for the room-but at least it's painted and the crib is put together. Here's a picture of what it looks like so far:

All of my wonderful friends showered me with gifts and love at a baby shower last Saturday, which also happened to be on my birthday! So the day was extra special. :)

Here's a few of us: Aimee, Libba, Julie, me, and Ashley with Madelyn

To cap off an awesome day, Allen & I went to Maggiano's for my birthday dinner.

When we got home from dinner, I had so much fun going through all of the baby items I got at the shower. This is the sight Allen saw when he came looking for me! I was buried in baby things!

Ally is not sure what to think of all of our baby preparations. She likes to follow me into the nursery, but she has no clue that her world is going to turn upside down when her baby sister arrives in February. :) Here's a pic of us in the nursery (and a belly shot--28 wks. pregnant).

It's A...GIRL!

We had our 18-week anatomical ultrasound this afternoon. The doctors looked closely at all of the baby's body parts, including the brain, spinal cord, and heart, and assured us that everything looked perfect!! We were so thankful and relieved! They also gave us the good news that the baby is a GIRL! Yay! Estimated due date is around February 15, 2009.

Ally!

Ally has had a very rough week this week. First she developed a very bad ear infection that we now have to treat with 5 different medications every day for the next 2 weeks. Then on top of that, I found a "suspicious" mole while petting her head one day a few months ago and decided to have the vet take a look at it. He recommended that we have it removed, just in case it's cancerous. Keep in mind as you see the pictures that the mole was approximately the size of a pencil eraser. I'm not sure how in the world she ended up with a 4-inch incision and all of those stitches!!! Poor baby!

Also, I've posted some pictures from Christmas. We gave Ally a stuffed toy Duck for Christmas. Of course my dad the corn ball had to bust out his hunting shot gun to look like they had gone duck hunting together! :)

Chicago!

For Allen's 30th birthday, there is nothing he wanted more than to see a Chicago Cubs baseball game. We had bleacher seats, great weather, and, best of all, the Cubs won!

This man, er, hotdog?!?, stood outside the stadium behind our bleacher seats for the entire ball game! He must have been hot in that big bun!

This past week, we took the biggest plunge of our lives and put an offer on a new house! We are so excited; we can't wait til the day we have the keys in hand. :)

No, we are not nasty people. But yes, that IS a mushroom growing out of the carpet in a closet in our apartment!!!!! After frantically contacting the maintenance team, they found there had been a water leak behind the wall which prompted this unwelcome fungus to grow. Eeeewww!

Ally finally reached doggy drinking age so we decided she was allowed to go to The Dog Bar with some friends. She had a great time-sniffing other dogs' tails, eating doggie treats off the bar, and drinking to her heart's content. As you can see, it turned in to a pretty hard-core night for her which she regretted on the car ride home. :)

So, you've met the guy and the girl on this blog. Now here's the golden...with her friends Gerry and Hedgie. She loves to play with them but somehow it always wears her out!