Louie Graduated!

Louie graduated with his Masters of Divinity on May 24th. We had a lovely dinner together with many of our immediate family members to celebrate this huge accomplishment. I'm so proud of him and so glad we could be there to honor this special day for him.

Louie with his proud parents, Joe & Jackie.

 Here's my sister-in-law Megan, our family and my Mom, Fran.

Congratulations, Louie!!

Here's Louie with some of his good friends from his mod in seminary. 

Our "babymoon" from March

In March, Louie and I flew to Florida to visit his Grandma Millie and spend some time together before our second baby arrived. Here are the pictures from that trip and we had a wonderful time. We relaxed, walked the boardwalk, hit the beach and a nature reserve as well. We're so thankful to my Mom, brother and sister-in-law and my dear friend Jess, who all helped take care of Zach while we were away.

Here's our night walking the boardwalk. People watching, sunset enjoying and sweet time together.

And here's the botanical gardens, they were beautiful and it was the perfect day! There were signs everywhere warning people not to feed the alligators, but we didn't see any anyways. :)

Pregnancy Pictures

Here are the rest of the pictures of the pregnancy waiting to meet Miss Sophia.

 Family day at the Minneapolis Art Institute.

Here we were at Louie's graduation (40 1/2 weeks above) and here I am two days before Sophia was born (41 weeks and one day).

Some Pregnancy Pictures

Here are some pictures from 13-30 weeks of "the baby bump" as it has grown so far. Now I'm almost at 33 weeks, so need to add more pictures that are more recent soon.  :)

Starting with 13 weeks, in the blue sweater, and then 16 weeks in the black and white outfit below.

Here I was at 20 weeks with this baby:

 Here's me at 24 weeks and the picture following is me at 30 weeks.

This pregnancy has continued to go pretty smoothly and I'm measuring right on track. The baby's heartbeat continues to be strong at every check up and I can hardly believe we're closing in on about seven weeks until we meet our newest family member! We're getting more and more ready, including moving the crib from Zach's room to the guest room this weekend (thanks to a surprise from Louie!) and some decorations are on the wall above the crib. Some clothes are washed and in the dresser for baby and some other things are ready too. We also just asked one of the midwives I've seen in rotation if she will be our delivery midwife if possible, I just met her two appointments ago, but I really like her and she said yes!

Zach's 3rd Birthday and a few updates

Back in January, right before his actual birthday, we had both of our immediate families over to celebrate Zachary's third birthday. We had a lot of fun, but as you can see in some of the pictures, Zach was a little out of it. He had not felt well the day before, but seemed fine the day of the party - until everyone arrived. We still had the party, but found out the next day that he had Influenza A, the poor guy! Thankfully, no one else got sick, but it was a long birthday week, and not in the best way. We took turns staying home with him until he recovered, about a week later. Here are some of the pictures from the party. He got some really cool gifts from everyone and was very excited to play with his new things, when he finally had the energy! Thank you everyone!!

The following week, Zachary started pre-school three days a week, for about 2 1/2 hours each day. Here he is playing when he was finally feeling better and the picture I took of him in the cute little wagon they use to bring him to his classroom. They are pretty awesome in helping him get to where he needs to be, as he continues to get stronger and better at walking either independently or with his little walker.

 

Once Zach was finally all better, we celebrated with his birthday cupcake, topped with three candles, and Louie and I sang to him. He thought it was pretty cool and even tried to touch the lit candles, so I had to help him blow them out.  :)

                                                                   

2015 Surprise!

Some of you know this already, but many of you don't yet... so I'm going to spill the beans!

We are expecting our second child in mid-May, right around the time Louie will be graduating with his Masters of Divinity from Bethel Seminary. It will be quite the eventful month for sure!

Things have been going very smoothly with this pregnancy, just as they did with my pregnancy with Zachary... although possibly even better? I've not had any nausea or morning sickness and the worst symptom I've had is increased insomnia, which isn't fun, but it's definitely preferred over the alternative symptoms. Praise God that this little one has been pretty easy to carry so far. I'm getting more and more movements each week, which is so cool!

We just had our 20 week ultrasound over the weekend and everything is looking great, we are so thankful that baby looks healthy and everything seems to be right on track. We decided not to find out if baby is a boy or girl until delivery day, because it was honestly really fun not knowing until delivery last time, so we figured we'd do that again. :)

Here's a picture of me at the end of last week, at about 20 weeks. It is definitely true that you "show a lot sooner" after your first pregnancy, but I'm enjoying the bump and feeling pretty good most days. I am so thankful for God's grace that I'm not battling sickness on top of Louie's last year in school (including Greek), working about 25 hours a week and interning at our church 16-20 hours a week (and me working full-time).

Zach is also getting more and more independent and learning new play skills and is pretty creative. He recently realized that he could successfully get into and out of this water table, that we usually have outside in the summer. He likes to put a few toys in, climb in and play a bit and then get out. We're also working with him on puzzles. Most of the time he'd prefer to just take the pieces out and throw them repeatedly to some destination or another, but with hand-over-hand guidance, he will stick with it and put them back in (or at least get pretty close). He also likes to line up the pieces sometimes, which is new, and you can sort of see that in the second picture.

It's also hard to believe that Zach will be 3 in a few short weeks, and this sweet boy will be starting pre-school soon too - more on that for another post, though!