School's Out!

It's Julia's last day of Mother's Day Out, and I wanted to document her first day photo and last day photo. We will miss you Mother's Day Out!!!

First Day:






Last Day:

It's a...

BOY!!!!

At the sonogram appointment... We ensured the sonogram technician didn't tell us the gender during our appointment:


The three of us went to breakfast at OHOP, where we opened up the envelope of sonogram pictures that revealed it was a boy! The photos had "BOY" written on them, but it was very obvious from the photos that it was a boy. I cried from overwhelming excitement, which surprised me. I really thought I'd be excited either way, but my reaction was so strong and I realized how thrilled I was that we were having a boy. I knew J was leaning towards wanting a boy, so I'm so happy for him that he got his desire.

Oh, and the other great news is that the baby is (currently) not breech! Not during any of Julia's 5 sonograms did we hear that she was head down, so this was a first. At least we know now that my uterus isn't abnormally shaped in a way that would force the baby to be breech.

We told our family over dinner by having them open gender-neutral gift bags that contained "It's a Boy" cookies inside. Some were in the shape of baby carriages and others in the shape of onesies.









The cousins had blast together running up and down the sidewalk, playing in the car, and dancing like maniacs when we got back to our house. I have a 5 minute video of them all dancing and acting like fools, but it's too big to post. We're so thankful Julia has her cousins in town to play with. She (and we) absolutely adores them!!

Baby #2

I forget that not everyone is on Facebook, where I posted the news that we are pregnant with Baby #2 along with his/her first photo!!! We are due October 8th, according to the measurements taken from the sonogram. That means we're currently right around Week 13. I don't even think I'd started to wear maternity jeans by this point in my pregnancy with Julia, but for this pregnancy I've already been in maternity jeans for several weeks now! I've been blessed to not struggle with nausea except for in brief instances, but the fatigue has been overwhelming. Luckily, I feel like I'm slowly starting to come out of the fog since I've had a couple days this week in which I've had more energy.

Here are some pictures from the day we found out we were going to become a family of four:




And here's our little one's first photograph!

Thank you Lord for a healthy pregnancy and for trusting us to lovingly raise another precious child of yours!

Go Fly a Kite

What do you do when you have a $4 item in your Amazon.com shopping cart and need an extra $21 to qualify for free shipping? You begin researching kites, since your hubby has repeatedly mentioned that he thinks flying a kite with Julia would be super fun.

The kite came in on Friday, which just happened to be a super windy day. Amazingly, we didn't need a park or a wide open space. We were able to test it out in our front yard, and just as hubby expected, it was super fun for Julia to do with her daddy.

Our Snow Day

Jarret here...

This post is long overdue, but life has been busy for us. Katie had a contract job recently which always puts us in survival mode. Her working is definitely a financial blessing, but even more so, it shows me how valuable, diligent, and purposeful she is with her time at home. She is THE best house manager and mother that I know so I'm grateful to have her on my team!



So on to the pictures of our recent activities:

Since we don't see snow very often we obviously do not own a sled. We did find a great substitute though and Julia thought it was a blast! Here she is on mommy's wakeboard being pulled all over the place by me.

Love this family portrait.

Julia liked me swinging her up and plopping her down in the snow.







Here is my wakeboarder snowman. Lots of folks driving down our street would stop to tell me how freakin' awesome it was. I would always just nod and casually reply, "I know."



It seemed deeper than 7" but definitely the most I've ever seen around these parts.

This picture was actually from the recent Dallas Winter Boat show where Julia and I went for our Daddy/Daughter date with some wakeboarding buddies of mine. She had an absolute blast climbing in and out of about every single boat at the show. A friend of mine (thanks Brian) was watching her for a minute and put her on this "kiddy" tube. Man, she thought that was the coolest thing ever. I guess we better start saving up for one! She is definitely a girl after my own heart. Take note of her "got wake?" t-shirt.