Baby Merkl

Last Wednesday John and I went to the doctor for our first appointment and ultrasound. Everything went great. The baby is measuring spot on (8 weeks and 2 days) with an official due date of August 9, 2010. The heart rate was around 163 beats per minute which is perfect. Our next appointment is at 12 weeks on January 27 and our next ultrasound is supposed to be around 18 weeks to see how the baby is growing and hopefully find out if it is a girl or a boy! As for me, I have been pretty sick. I got some nausea medicine at the doctor Wednesday and it seems to be helping a lot! I still get nausea spells, but no "loss of lunch" (if you know what I mean) since last week!! Here are a few pics from the ultrasound. The first is without an outline where the baby is (see if you can find it) and the second is the same view but with the baby outlined by the ultrasound technician. Enjoy!!

Christmas Lights

John and his brother Timothy put up Christmas lights last Sunday. Here are a few pictures of their work.

A Little Landscaping

Last week we had two trees in the front yard cut down. They were both very big trees that were leaning towards the house and made us nervous during storms. They were blocking a lot of sunlight for the grass in the front and to come into the house. Also, the one closest to the driveway was messing up the concrete on the driveway, popping up one of the seems about 4 inches and creating a large bump. Here is a picture of before and after.

Charles Payton Smith

I went to Maryland a few weeks ago and stayed for the birth of my nephew Charlie. The plan was to get up there 2 weeks before my sister-in-law's due date and hopefully be there for the birth to help babysit my niece, Anya, for a few days so my brother and sister-in-law (Matt and Kim) wouldn't have to worry about her (since they have no family in town or even within driving distance to them). All went as planned as Kim went into labor at 3:00 in the morning the night after I got there (Friday morning, I got there Wednesday afternoon) and were able to come home by Sunday afternoon. I took a few pictures while there, so enjoy!

Atlas

So, some of you may know, John and I got a new puppy about 3 weeks ago. So far things are going really well. He rarely pees in the house anymore (he knows to pee when we take him out, but he doesn't know to ask to go outside yet, we still have to tell him about every 2 hours or so, or when he starts to sniff suspiciously) and he hasn't poo'd in the house since about the first week. We weren't really looking for a new puppy, we were at PetSmart getting Caly some food and happened by the adoption room and there were about 5 little puppies running around. They were all super cute and came from a litter of 9 (the lady only brought 5 cause I guess they were a handful). We went in just to see them and play with them and ended up leaving with the bigger, more rambunctious of the litter. We aren't exactly sure what he is, we think he is some part yellow lab, some part golden retreiver, and some part terrier (because his tail curls); the lady said the mom was about 40 pounds and was a stray they found pregnant, so we are thinking he will be a little smaller than Caly (she weighs 50 pounds) maybe around 35 or 40, we'll see. He weighed about 4 pounds at 6 weeks when we got him and weighted 9 pounds tonight. We got him because a.) he's really cute b.) Caly now has a playmate and isn't quite so all over us all the time c.) we're idiots!! Anyway...here are a few pics I took today of him, he turned 9 weeks old this weekend.

Las Vegas!!

As many of you know, John and mine 1 year anniversary was last month (sorry it took so long to post the pics!!) and we went on an anniversary/honeymoon trip (since we never took one) to Las Vegas!! We left on a Friday morning and came back on a Wednesday night. We had so much fun!! We basically slept in until 10 or 11 every day, went shopping, saw some shows, and were incredibly lazy...can't get much better than that!! We tried to go all out and stayed at the Bellagio (the hotel Ocean's Eleven was filmed in), it was super nice and the room was amazing!! We even upgraded to a view of the fountain's outside!! So every afternoon/night that we were in the room, we would leave the curtains open and when we would see the fountain's start we would run to the window and turn the tv to the channel with the music that went along and watch. It wasn't until we left that we even realized that we never watched the fountain's from street level, only from the room!! THe view from our room was great, we were across from Paris Paris and had a great view of the Eiffel Tower. We also saw two shows, Mystere by Cirque du Solei (spelling??) was amazing, we couldn't get over all the awesome things they were doing, and The Blue Man Group which was hilarious, we laughed the whole way through!! Anyway, I could go on forever. I put the pictures in a slideshow...Enjoy!!!

Random

So last Friday as I was sleeping off three nights of working, John got home at about 2:30 (his usual time) and noticed that it was mighty hot in the house. Upon further inspection John realized that the air conditioning must have a leak that caused it to freeze over and stop working. So we went all weekend without air conditioning. It wasn't as bad as it sounds, luckily out house has an attic fan, so we have had that on for the most part, with windows open and ceiling fans going full blast, and, since the weather was rainy most of the weekend, it never got too hot outside which helped keep it cool inside. Also, the way our house was built, the main living rooms (the master bedroom and living room) don't get much direct sunlight, if any, which helps keep it cool. So, for now we are going it air condition-less. We decided to see how it goes and if we can bear it for the rest of the summer without air conditioning. We'll see, we might have to break down and get someone to come out and fix it, but we might be able to save some money with the electric bill and be able to wait till next summer to get it fixed.