1 Year Anniversary!

Happy 1 year anniversary to my best friend, lover, husband, and baby daddy!!

Since I’ve had a bit of a rough pregnancy, we decided it would be wise to forego going away for our anniversary.  Instead, my charming, amazing husband planned an all-day date for us!  He told me in the morning to dress nicely, as if for church.  I’d been in the dark about our plans, and trying so, so hard not to pry details out of him.  This was my first exciting clue!!

We drove north and I was trying to run through the places we might go from I-5 North…Mt. Vernon where we had one of our first dates? Bellingham (he knows I love it up there!)? Ahhh, Seattle. We pulled into Seattle and I began to notice that the Space Needle, which was flitting in and out of view between the buildings, seemed to be growing steadily closer.  Sure enough he’d made us brunch reservations.  We could not have asked for a more beautiful Seattle day!

We ate (and ate and ate!) a beautiful, gourmet, three course brunch.  It was some of the most amazing food I’ve ever tasted.  I told him at the end of it, in my most Brian Coury-esque voice “That was the best brunch EVER!!!”  It was true, and he agreed. 

Fully satisfied from brunch we headed down to walk along the water and take in the views we’d seen from a distance up close. 

Enter Hempfest.

Okay, change of plans! We were not up for walking through the now-legal marijuana-mania, so we redirected our course to Alki, where we took a long stroll along the beach, dipping our toes in the water as we watched boats sail by.  Did I mention it was a perfect day? 

All that food and walking (whilst growing a little person) fully exhausted me, so we headed home for delicious Sunday naps, followed by pool time.  We capped the night by snuggling up on the couch to watch a movie.

A perfect day for our first anniversary! I cannot believe it’s already been a year.  It’s been a full year, a good year, and a sanctifying and unifying year.  I pray that each year we can say the same as we take the day to celebrate the living out of our vows.  We both agreed over brunch that a year in we have no regrets, and could not have faced the year alone as well as we did together.  Thank you, Jesus!

It's a... BABY!

We decided to find out the gender of our little one pretty early on, and as this has been a rough pregnancy on both of us, we were looking forward to having a good, fun memory to cherish from this time!

We went in on Monday, and decided to tell our family the following evening. We had a great time at the ultrasound.  There was a monitor set up in the corner of the room so we could just sit (well, I was lying back) and watch our baby appear on the screen!  Our first glimpse was of the spine, and what a beautiful little spine it was to a mama and daddy! Our tech was great and explained each thing and printed a ton of pictures out for us.  I think my favorite moment was seeing all four chambers of that tiny little heart, beating away in perfect time! It looked so little and perfect!


We thought perhaps we were going to remain in the dark about the gender. Baby really wanted to show off its spine, and when rotated, kept a foot modestly tucked up, but the tech was persistent. She got a first glimpse (and I do mean glimpse -- it was a couple frames on the ultrasound -- so maybe a couple seconds long) and said "it's a girl!".  I wanted a little more confirmation as she didn't sound too sure, so she went for another look and baby cooperated briefly, and she confirmed -- we're having a GIRL!

We came home thrilled to know the little life growing inside of me is our little girl!  We got right to work on a plan to share our happy news with our family.  (Thank you, pinterest, something finally went as planned!!)

We whipped up some yummy cupcakes, then went out to eat (I mean pick!) some blackberries while they cooled. I think it was about 95 degrees in our kitchen that night! We had the slow cooker making dinner, two batches of cupcakes, and two bodies working away! Whew!



Isaac carefully carved a hollow in each cupcake and I filled them with the filling depicting the gender, then we stuffed the tops back on and frosted them in the always-neutral white.  It was so fun!

Our family gathered promptly at 7:00 the next night, including Isaac's parents who came in from Montana!  We had everyone take a cupcake and bite into them simultaneously. It was so fun to see the many reactions as they saw the centers!!

Apparently we threw everyone off with our coordinated blue outfits...

But in the end they all saw it was a GIRL!!!