Continue reading »]]> First and foremost, May the forth be with you! So I’m sitting here enjoying my last day off of my 4 day work weeks. Not because my job decided to take them away, but because I decided to change jobs. Next week will be my last week at my current job – three days left there! I’ve been with the company for about two and a half years and decided it was time for a change. Part of it is because I don’t necessarily want to make a career out of doing mass spectrometry. I feel as though I went to college and grad school to gain all of these different skills and haven’t really gotten a chance to use most of them.

May 14th I’ll start my new job working in the Consumer Healthcare Division of a global pharmaceutical company! I am really excited about it, but I’m also anxious. I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m scared, but I think anytime this big of a change is made it’s a little nerve-wraking. Still, I can’t wait!

Continue reading »]]> Caylee will be 4 months old on Tuesday! My, how time has flown! I really can’t believe it’s been that long already. I went back to work with the new year and seem to be adjusting to being a working mom pretty well. Luckily Mom O. has been awesome and has been watching her Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays while Chase and I both work. It’s so nice knowing that she’s not in daycare at such a young age right in the middle of cold/flu season. This week and next while my mom is taking some time off, Chantel has stepped up to the plate to take care of her niece.

One of Caylee’s favorite hobbies is blowing spit bubbles; she’s been blowing them for the last two months! I think we may have to start having her wear a bib around the house because of all of the drool. Although it’s kind of cute to pick her up out of her jumper or her activity center and have her front be covered in drool from where she had been gnawing on the seat and leaned into it.

Continue reading »]]> I could nearly sum up this entire year in one phrase: preparing for baby. But that doesn’t justify all that we have been up to (just nearly all).

In February, we went down to Florida to visit Mom and Dad A. and watch one of the last shuttle launches (STS-133). We were able to watch it from just across Indian River and get some great shots. We also went to Jungle Adventures; it was pretty amazing to see all the animals they have.

We spent Easter at Mom and Dad O.’s house in Northern Virginia. We also got to visit with one of my parent’s exchange student’s family who was in town.

In August, we drove down to Savannah, GA with Chase’s sister, her husband, and his son. We had fun touring all around downtown Savannah and even braved Paula Deen’s restaurant. We then continued down to Florida to visit Mom and Dad A. one last time before Caylee was born. It was nice to be able to relax one last time.

Our lives turned upside down in early October when Caylee made her grand debut. Becoming parents definitely changed our lives; but I don’t think we could be more proud. It’s only been two months, but she has grown and developed so much already!

We spent the weekend before Thanksgiving feasting with Mom and Dad O. It was great to be able to take Caylee up there and relax while someone else cooked up a storm. Black Friday, Mom A. came up to visit from Florida. We enjoyed her company and I’m sure she enjoyed spending time with Caylee.

We’ll be spending Christmas at Mom and Dad O.’s house. I’m sure Caylee’s first Christmas will be wonderful. I hope she can grab better by then so she might be able to help open some of her presents.

Well, that sums up our year! We wish you all a wonderful holiday season!

Continue reading »]]> Wow, time has flown! Caylee is more than seven weeks old now. The weekend before Thanksgiving we headed up to my parents house for a Thanksgiving feast. I can’t imagine trying to cook that much food for just Chase and I when we have an infant around, so it was really nice for my parents to do Thanksgiving early with us.

On the actual Thanksgiving Day we got down all of our Christmas decorations and set up the tree. I trimmed it during Caylee’s naptimes. Chase’s mom came up for several days after Thanksgiving and she watched Caylee so we could actually get the outside decorations up. Chase even combated his fear of heights to put the lights up on the gutter of the second floor!

We did take Caylee out for some shopping on Black Friday, but we didn’t do any of the door busters – we started shopping around 9 am. It’s kind of nice with how young she is, we got all of our shopping done for her while she was with us. We also were able to make a small dent in the rest of the shopping we needed to get done. Although, I can say I’m looking forward to Christmas next year much more than this year; mainly because she’ll be older and actually able to enjoy it rather than just sitting around while Mommy or Daddy opens her presents.

Well, there’s my update for now. I’ll be writing our End-of-the-Year post soon in case you’ve missed something throughout the year!

Continue reading »]]> We would like to introduce Caylee Isabelle to everyone! She was born October 7th, weighed 6 lbs 9 oz and was 20.5 inches in length.

I woke up to my water breaking around 4:30 Friday morning. After figuring out that indeed had broken I called my doctor’s office (I had a 9 am appointment) to find out if I should head to the hospital or just wait until my appointment to confirm. They sent me straight to labor and delivery. Unfortunately, I didn’t actually start contractions until about 7:30 or 8. So by the time my doctor came to check on me about 1:30 that afternoon I hadn’t really progressed. We discussed augmenting my labor, which I finally decided to do since we had been pacing the halls for hours by that point. But before she went to order the medicine she grabbed an ultrasound machine to make sure what she was feeling was a head engaged. About 30 seconds later, she informed me that my little girl was breech and we should start prepping for a C-section.

They brought me into the operating room about 2:45, gave me a spinal block and at 3:06 our little bundle of joy was born! Caylee and I just got home from the hospital this afternoon. I’ll try to get some pictures uploaded later this week.

Continue reading »]]> So we’ve had a fun past 10 days here in Richmond. Last Tuesday, August 23, there was an earthquake. It measured a 5.8 with the record in Virginia being a 5.9. So it was pretty significant for our part of the country. It happened about 40 miles from us, so while we didn’t have any damage we definitely felt it. Although, in my case I had to look at one of my co-workers to make sure I wasn’t going crazy.

Then to add insult to injury, this past weekend we were hammered with rain and wind from Hurricane Irene. Here, according to news reports, we saw gusts up to 71 mph. But the winds whatever they were, were strong enough to knock over plenty of trees. Just in the few streets surrounding us, there were 5 trees down (that was only 1/2 of the subdivision); and we were some of the lucky ones who were only without power until Monday night (49 hours without power). One of my friends from high school and one of Chase’s co-workers both had trees fall on their property causing major damage (roof needing to be replaced and totaled vehicle, respectively). Unfortunately, my work still doesn’t have power so they’ve been sending home people who can’t actually get any work done even with the back up generator running. Although, I’m not sure how much longer that is even going to hold since they were already tripping breakers on it by the time I left this morning.

Continue reading »]]> So my little sister, Amanda, and my sister-in-law, Chantel, threw me a gorgeous baby shower last weekend. We had a variety of guests attending from Mom A’s friends to co-workers to friends from high school and family! We had some delicious finger food with pink lemonade and pink sherbet fruit punch. My mom also bought a delicious and beautiful cake.

We played one game called “How Big is Mommy?” in which roll of plastic ribbon was passed around and everyone had to tear off a piece that they thought would indicate how big I’ve grown so far. The best part was that my family members were the ones who were off by the most thinking I was a lot bigger. One of my co-workers go it exactly right!

The second game we played was guess the baby food. Amanda had Dad peel off the labels of 6 jars of baby food and code them with numbers instead. We passed around the jars and had a little taste to try to guess which was which.

Third game was guess the cartoon character! I thought I knew cartoon characters, evidently I’ve fallen quite a bit behind. This was followed up by decorating the onesies with paint and markers. Our little girl is going to some very unique shirts that were made with lots of love! We had a few other activities as well, but as you can see we had a great time!

Then I got to open all of our little girl’s gifts while the guests played bingo based on the gifts opened.  I’m so thankful for all of the gifts we received. My mom even smocked her a little dress and bonnet with matching socks and onesie. She also got lots of other clothes, socks, and bibs. My big sister, Melissa, made her a quilt to match her bedroom decor and bibs that match. In addition we got a bathtub, a bassinet, a night light, and a few other odds and ends. I also got a breast pump so that way I can still provide food for her once I go back to work.

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Wow, only about a week or so until I’m in my third and final trimester! Where did the time go? In the last few weeks we’ve been really stepping up on getting prepared for her arrival. We took a 5 hour Newborn Care & Safety Course last month. And we’re taking Infant CPR later this month. This weekend we picked up the crib from Babies ‘R’ Us and Chase set it up Friday night. My parents came down Saturday to help us start decorating the nursery a little bit. It’s starting to really come together now. We even got a rocking chair from Cracker Barrel to rock her to sleep.

(Edit by Chase: added a picture of the nursery)

Continue reading »]]> Friday, June 3rd we had our anatomical ultrasound where they checked to make sure our little one had two arms, two legs, all of its organs, and gender scan. We found out then that I am incubating a little baby girl! Of course, she’ll be Daddy’s Little Princess. Since this revelation we decided to forgo the underwater bubbles theme in lieu of butterflies. While the new theme is more purple based, we decided to keep the light blue on top, dark light blue on bottom paint scheme.

Chase and Chantel painted on June 4th while I was out of town at bachelorette party/bridal shower. This past weekend we painted and hung the chair rail molding. Which actually went surprisingly well. In fact, the hardest piece was actually the smallest piece.

We also went out and registered at Babies ‘R’ Us and Target for items for our little girl and her nursery. It was quite overwhelming going through all of the things we need for her.

Continue reading »]]> Katie’s pregnancy seems to be dominating the blog these past few months, but several other things have been going on as well.

First, you may have noticed that the blog is loading much faster.  This is all thanks to our friend Chris and his company Meriditech.  He is now hosting our website, instead of GoDaddy.  You would think that that site would run faster on a large company such as GoDaddy, but that isn’t the case.  What was even worse is any time I attempted to contact support, they blamed the issue on our site.  A plugin to link our posts to Facebook has been added, this also brings the likes and comments from Facebook to the blog.

The Avalanche was also involved in another minor accident while it was parked.  The first time this happened was August of 2008 when it was parked in the back of the parking lot when we lived in the apartment.  This happened the Friday before Easter, while I was at David and Sara’s helping them demo their attic.  Sara’s sister didn’t see it (How?!?  It’s bright freaking orange!) and backed into the driver’s side rear of it.  Luckily her insurance covered the repairs, which totaled almost $1400.  The rear bumper cover has to be replaced and painted and the driver side quarter panel (which runs from the rear door to the tailgate) had to have the dents fixed and the whole side painted.  Haley Buick GMC did an amazing job repairing the damage.  You can’t even tell it was repainted.  Fortunetly, they were able to save my Fire & Ice LED Tailgate Bar, since it was mounted to the step plates on the rear bumper cover.  Pictures of the damage are below.

Around the house, I have been slowly starting to prepare the nursery for the baby.  I have removed all the furniture and have cleaned it.  We will find out the sex on June 3rd and that weekend I will paint the room.  It works our well because Katie will be out of town for a bachelorette party for her friend who is getting married June 17th (Ha!  My parent’s anniversary).  She isn’t supposed to help or really be in the house while I’m painting.  It looks like we will be going with 2 colors in the room with a chair railing separating the colors.  Good thing I have friends who own a miter saw and finish nailer.  That should make things go faster.

This year, I decided to not put fertilizer on the lawn, instead we are having Virginia Green Lawn Care do it.  They have been amazing with their first couple of treatments.  Every time after, any weeds that were in the yard are brown and dying.  I am stating to regret it just a bit though.  It seems like every time I look at the lawn, it needs mowing.  We had to mow wet grass last Sunday in between thunderstorms just to make sure it was done.  It is just growing like crazy.  The same goes for all the plants we planted last year.  We did end up losing 2 boxwoods, but we replaced those and we also put new flowers in the pots and the annual beds.  After a little bit of mulch, the landscaping looks just as good, if not better, than last year.

The last thing to happen was just last Saturday, May 14th.  My best friend, Dustin, graduated from John Tyler Community College.  We are definitely proud of him, especially since he graduated with such high honors.  The best part?  He’s going to be a Hokie next year!  Gives me some perfect excuses to go out to Blacksburg every month or so.  Looks like I will be helping him move in this summer, since I really do owe him for all the times he has helped me move.  I have added a link to the few pictures we took.

Dustin's Graduation

Well that seems to have covered most of the major things that have happened in the past couple of months.  Until next time. . .