Hitting the big 3-0!

This is a big week for us as my 30th birthday rolls in and we reach the 30th week in the pregnancy! Lots to celebrate and to do so, we're going on vacation for a week which we are verrrry excited about! It'll be really nice to have some time to ourselves and time with family as we head to the vineyard for the first half and then Chatham for the second half to meet up with my family. It's been a very busy few weeks with birthdays, weddings and working on the nursery so it's the perfect time to get in some R&R! Actually, I should start packing since I wont be home tomorrow night or Friday before we leave :) I'll leave you with a few pictures of the growing belly when we return hopefully I'll have some pictures of the painted nursery! Have a great week!

I love, LOVE

Let's be honest, who doesn't love love? Falling in love, being in love, witnessing love and being surrounded by love... it just makes you feel cozy like your favorite blanket on a cool fall afternoon. Last weekend we made the short trip up to Hartford, CT for a friend's wedding and it was a day filled with so much love. The bride was beaming and beautiful, the groom was grinning the whole day from ear to ear and the joy and love from family and friends that surrounded them on their special day was infectious.We were so happy to be there to celebrate such a beautiful day.

Unfortunately, I neglected to check our camera battery before we took off so I was only able to capture some shots from the ceremony and cocktail hour before the battery died. The rest of the night we spent chatting with friends and cutting a rug on the dance floor :) I found myself falling in love with my hubby all over again as I reminisced about our special day and how far we've come in a short time. Our hearts are so full as we get ready for the next phase of our life together and baby GG makes three!

Pictures of our LOVEly day:

Ahhh home improvements

We've been so lucky to have been able to make some big home improvement to our house since we moved in, in April 2010. We've redone the bathroom from top to bottom, ripped up the carpets and redid the hardwood floors and most recently renovated our kitchen! All necessary improvements and we're enjoying all the updates!

Next up on our list are smaller scaled improvements but to me, just as important :) The first is one I've wanted to do since we've moved in - change/update the shutters and paint the trim of the house white! It's pretty funny that I didn't notice this until our new neighbor pointed it out a month after we moved in, but our shutters had squirrel cut-outs in them - yup, squirrels! Ehhh, not cool. Brian was able to easily get the shutters down one night after work and has primed the new ones. I'm hoping that this weekend while we're home he'll be able to paint the new ones and get them up, but we've got a lot to do this weekend so I realize that might be a tad ambitious. One can hope right? I can't wait until the shutters are up and trim is painted, I know it'll be the perfect face lift!

We've also done lots and lots of organizing around the house and a few weekends ago threw out about 6 bags of junk that we'd accumulated over the last few years. Boy, did that feel good! We've switched our closets around and are ready to start turning our spare room into a nursery! Tonight, it's a grey room, that is almost empty, with a "desk" for our laptop but in a few short weeks, it'll be painted a light green or yellow and have a crib!

Here are pics of what we've been working on!

Before - any yard work last year

 (can you see the squirrels??)

During - I prefer no shutters to the squirrels!!

The soon-to-be nursery!

The home stretch....

Well we still have a little ways to go but we're 28 weeks and now in the 3rd trimester!! At our doctors appointment on Monday we had the chance to see a growing baby GG in an ultrasound again! Her spine, her leg bones, her heart.... it's just so amazing! She weighs 2 lbs and 14 oz now, a little above average :) Everything looks good and I'm still feeling really good. I hope to have another 3 or 4 weeks of feeling this good. Just enough to get through the heat of the summer and all that we have going on this month! Then things will quiet down a little in the early fall and we can relax and get ready for our little one to get here! We are SO excited to meet our baby girl!

I feel like I get a little bigger everyday and although I wasn't feeling the most photogenic, Brian snapped a few pictures of me at this stage to share!

Weekend with family!

It's hard to believe that it'll be August tomorrow, where has the summer gone?! Even though August will be a great month, with 2 weddings of good friends, a week long vacation in the Vineyard and the Cape, and my 30th birthday, it's tough to realize the summer is winding down! It will undoubtedly be a great fall, so we're looking forward to that as well :) Before we tackle putting together the nursery and the few other things on our to-do-before-the-baby-comes list, we went to the Vineyard for a long weekend and my parents and sister joined us! It's a blessing that our families mesh so well, Baby GG is very lucky :) It was a perfect weekend!

I have to admit, the highlight of the weekend for me was when Quigley went swimming, voluntarily, in the ocean for the first time. The pooch, who will be 3 in a few months, has always shyed away from the water, but while at the beach on Saturday he responded to a little coaxing and doggie paddled out and swam to Brian! When he reached Brian, he was both relieved and a little scared, and he threw his paws around his neck, it was so sweet. With both grandparents cheering him, and the two of us encouraging him along the way, it was a very proud moment for us, I'm not embarrassed to admit that I my eyes welled up a bit :) Of course I didn't bring my camera to the beach that day (grr!!) but I did manage to capture some great photos of the rest of time together!

Baby GG's genes

I recently asked our parents for some of our baby pictures and I've really enjoyed looking through them. There were a few, I just had to share.... I've heard that our birth weights may influence how big of a baby GG will be when she arrives and if that's the case, these pictures just about say enough! Since I tipped the scales at over 9 lbs and Brian weighed in over 10 lbs, I'm already curious to see if GG will take after her mom and dad and be a big baby! (Did you hear recently about the 16lb baby born in Texas?! wow!)

Mommy's baby pictures:

 I mean....

 and Daddy's baby picture - would you look at those cheeks!?

Lastly, I've noticed that many of our friends that have had baby boys, they look like their mommys when they are born and those that have had girls look like their daddys. This picture of Brian makes me smile every time I look at it, I could eat him up, he was (and still is ;-) just the cutest! I think it would be very neat if baby GG looked like her daddy :)

24 weeks!

Another month behind us and the belly is taking it's true form :) Baby GG moves around all the time, and finally last week Brian was able to feel her and I was able to see the movement on my belly! Very, very cool little steps to making it all feel more real!