Birthday Bash

Wednesday we celebrated not only my birthday but a dear friend named Carly who was born on the same day, 9 years before me. Lots of people share birthdays, but this one is extra cool because our moms have been best friends for 41 years, and they both had their babies on the same day (just years apart).
Since i had Noah, i have a deeper appreciation for my mother on my birthday, knowing how it is to bring a baby into this world. I always want to give the moms and extra THANK YOU for having us :)
I had such a wonderful birthday. The saturday before my actual birthday we got together with the family and had lunch at Red Robin. YUM! And its just not a real birthday if someone isnt publicly humiliated at a restaurant right??

Thank you to all who came out-it was fun!

The day started off great with a delicious breakfast from my sweetie.

My actual birthday was wonderful, like i said. Heres a recap of the night:

 This was our attire. Who doesn't love a good 'stash?

Our moms went out of their way to throw a beautiful party.

As you can see, this stud enjoyed himself ;)

Got down on some pong. Even Noah!

What a beautiful person i get to share a birthday with!

 

And no one rocks a better Mustache than uncle mike!

The mamas who made it all possible! Love them.

 

My sweet Hubby went to 8 different stores to track this gem down, since my copy got lost a while ago. SO excited when i opened this!

 

Yay for being 22!

 

Moving Right Along

Wow. time is flying by! i just hit the 12 week mark. WHOOHOO!! as you can see i celebrated with a peach. hehe!

Today i went to for my 12 week check up with my midwife. And surprise! We got an ultrasound. My midwife Liz was having a hard time finding the heartbeat because the baby was hiding so she decided to do an ultrasound. I couldnt believe how much baby had changed since the last time (8 weeks). I dont think ive ever cried from and ultrasound, but today I came pretty darn close. Just seeing this little life beginning that is going to come in to this world and be so loved by kyle and noah and I makes me so excited. I know how much I love noah, and just knowing Im going to love this little person so strongly like that makes me so overwhelmed with love and all those warm fuzzy feelings. Haha. Its hard for me to imagine our family having one more person, but i cant explain how right it feels. Praise be to God for this blessing. Life is good.
On another note ill be starting physical therapy for my pelvis. When I was pregnant with Noah towards the end, I had HORRIBLE pelvis pain. It was hard to walk and sometimes i needed kyle to help me roll over and get up out of bed. It was BAD. I know pregnancy is full of discomforts, its to be expected but i thought this wasnt normal. My old OB at the time dismissed it as growing pains. When i talked to my midwife today I was so grateful for her care and willingness to go above and beyond to help. She referred me to a place to start physical therapy to hopefully ease and manage pain. Im really nervous for whats ahead when it comes to the pelvic pain because its starting so early and popping. oy! my midwife said its my pelvis seperating (that would explain the popping sounds) in the front and grinding against eachother. But you know what it could be way worse. Im grateful for and overall healthy and enjoyable pregnancy. My point in writing this was to see if anyone else went through this, or if someone is and their OB isnt listening to not just give up but keep looking for a care provider who will listen. Because i know how painful and frustrating it can be..

In case you haven't heard...

WE'RE EXPECTING!!!

  April 3, 2013.

First of all, YAY! Second of all YAY! We are praising the Lord for this blessing. I am grateful he has trusted us with another beautiful little person to love and nurture. and yes, its been FOREVER since ive blogged. I recently finished up another term of school (can i get another yay?!) which has given me THREE WEEKS off before the next term starts. You'd think id use some free time to blog about this baby i am jumping for joy about, but honestly i have been spending a lot of time running for the nearest garbage can. Haha. Yeah. pregnancy is brutal. Just saying. Absolutely an amazing miracle, and a huge blessing from God. But still brutal. With Noah i had little to no nausea/morning sickness, and with this one ive had quite the opposite. But i must say, i still do love being pregnant. Time is already going by pretty quick but heres a quick recap over the last few weeks :)

TA DA!!

There they are, in all their glory. haha. And i just wanna say that wet spot on the counter next to them is NOT pee. lol just water folks. Im grateful for being so in tune with my body. And because of that i knew from the start even before those two pink lines appeared that i was pregnant. I found out for sure only 10 days after i conceived. I also reeeeally have a feeling its a girl. I have from the very start. But i guess we shall see!

This is how we told our close family. We wanted to buy a shirt that said "big brother" but we could not find them anywhere, so we got crafty and made this :)

Here is my first ultrasound picture at 8 weeks. This is also the photo we used to make it "facebook official". I love the expression on his face. I am so blessed to be a mother to that beautiful boy, and now another little life. God is so good.

For any of you who have read a pregnancy book, the week by week size comparison always uses fruit to compare the size of the baby to, so, i thought it would be fun to do weekly pictures like this. Ive taken a picture of my belly every week since week 4 but i started this fruit picture at week 10.

I know what you're thinking. If im 11 weeks why do i look about 5 months. haha. Crazy right? In my defense i was showing at 3 months pregnant with Noah. I hear you show sooner with each pregnancy as well. The fact that my uterus is tipped forward is a huge factor too. If you remember i was doing the low carb diet when i got pregnant. I had lost 12 pound, and was soo close to my goal weight. My midwife was fine with me sticking to that diet since i was NOT starving myself or anything, but actually eating really healthy. And i planned on sticking to it. Until Morning sickness hit. At that point i do whatever i can to keep food down. Which mean a lot of crackers. The opposite of low carb. I was pertty bummed to not be able to stick to the diet because i was feeling so good and this time around i wanted to gain a healthy amount of weight during my pregnancy. So anyways doing what i can to make it through the rough days of MS (and yes, i admit, giving into a few too many cravings) i was convinced i had put on like 10 pounds. But to my surprise ive only put on three. As soon as this MS passed, i plan on hopping back on the healthy eating habits again. And to continue the prenatal yoga and exercise i started on. Until then im doing what i can to make it through the day.

And if any of you are interested id pass along what i am taking as far as prenatal care.
Far left is my vitamin D supplement. Most pregnant women dont have to worry about taking that, Im deficient in vit. D so thats why I take it.
PB8- is a great probiotic to take. helps the immune system which makes for a healthy mama, and baby!
Nordic Naturals DHA. great for brain and eye development. Nordic naturals rocks when it comes to fish oil. Super safe and good quality.
Rainbow bright prenatals are good and potent.
All of these you can buy at whole foods or even cheaper at vitacost.com .

Well I can talk pregnancy and all that jazz for hours. So i guess blogging is a good outlet for it. 
Hope all the other moms out there have a happy and healthy 9 months out there!

Seeing results!

So as some of you may remember reading back in January, one of my biggest new years resolution goals was to rock a bikini at the river this year. Which would make it the first time ive done this since having giant noah in my tummy. I started my diet about a month or month and a half ago.

AND GUESS WHAT??

It happened! oh yes, the meal planning and "lifestyle change" is totally paying off! I Haven't reached my goal weight yet, BUT this was a huge accomplishment.

Yay for summer!!

So Much

I feel like since i've been slacking, it would be impossible timewise for me to post about all the fun and exciting stuff that has happened so instead I will just do a quick recap:

Fourth of July with the cousins in Ridgefield.

Rivertime. Gemma has became a river rat.

The boys and I spent some time at home depot getting the back yard ready for BBQ season.

Id say it was a success.

Love having friends over to share this weather with!

Zoo trips.

It just isn't right if you don't stop at the cheese factory when you're in Tillamook!

One of our favorite spots to be. At the beach. (On dads birthday).

AAAnd a fun day at alpenrose dairy farm!

And there you have it folks. Thats us in the last two weeks in a nutshell.

Minus the homework part.

and stomach ulcers.

And wild puppies.

But thats another story. And not as exciting. So we will just skip that part and call it good!

Happy Birthday to you Papa Bear!

Barton to Carver was where my dad spent many happy years of his life floating the river. 

It is also where my mother and him shared their very first kiss.

It is also where his ashes were laid to rest. 

After we spread the remaining amount of them last year, Kyle and I decided we would float the river, just like he used to every year on July 11th, his birthday. When we did it last year we had SO MUCH FUN.

Wanted to do it this year but since we didn't have a babysitter we decided we would go to the beach with Noah and stop at a river along the way.

SO not exactly as we planned. But all in all we decided to make that a happy day remembering, celebrating and having fun in honor of my dad. 

I tried making this day not a day or mourning, but like i said celebrating.

But it was inevitable there would be tears. 

And God knew that. 

I had one moment where I broke down when I was eating breakfast at my kitchen table.

I have an app on my phone where I can read a daily devotional and a verse of the day. The verse of the day is completely random,  I have no control over which one my phone chooses. But during those 5 minutes I sat crying at the table, my phone lit up saying "dont forget to read your daily devotional" and so i clicked on it. and out of all of the verses in the bible that it could have picked for the verse of the day it just happened to be this one on this day at that very moment:

God knew exactly how to comfort me at that moment. I was blown away by his timing and love at the same time .

THANK YOU JESUS!

Finally a Moment

Okay I've REALLY been wanting to keep up to date when it comes to blogging because it is SO easy to fall behind and new events and things just keep piling up and it becomes more of a daunting task than fun. And blogging is all about a fun positive experience right? Well it is in my world :) 

SCHOOL SCHOOL SCHOOL. 

That is why ive been neglecting blogging. I started a new term 4 weeks ago and it seems that all I ever do is stare at a microsoft excel or word sheet. Noah doesn't nap anymore, so by the time he does to bed I have lots of homework and housework to do. And staring at a computer for even another single minute to blog sounds horrible.

But I am trying really hard to manage the time I do have as well as possible. 

An hopefully, blogging falls in there somewhere because I really do enjoy it.

Birthday Boy

I can't believe its been three years since the sweet arrival of my Noah. 

It went by too fast! But before I get into a sappy mommy moment I want to thank everyone who came out for Noah's party! It was a blast, and I loved seeing sweet faces that I hadn't seen in years! 

Oh yeah, and Noah loved it too!

 Because so many of our family members have food allergies, we made a gluten/dairy/wheat/soy free cake so we all could have our cake and eat it too:)

 And it tasted HEAVENLY.

 There is is, in all its glory!

 Although his actual party turned out wonderful, his actual birthday was a really special day spent with Noah, Nana, Kyle and I .

We sang him happy birthday (again) because he loves it and honestly I love watching his sweet little face get all bashful when all eyes are on him.

 

Nana bought him a DREAMLITE for his birthday. And what do you know, it arrived in the mail ON HIS ACTUAL BIRTHDAY. How cool is that??

 We had a great time on the lake chasing ducks, feeding ducks, blowing bubbles, and having a picnic.

Once Kyle got off work we set our for ice cream at Baskin Robbins 

He was SO exciting to get ice cream that was his favorite color..PURPLE!

After we finished our ice cream, we dashed over to the movie theater to take him to see his VERY FIST movie on the big screen.

And to be honest im not sure who was more excited about that...me, or noah?

Okay, maybe noah :) 

This day was such a blessing and perfect in just about every way. I am so greatful for my Noah, and how  God has blessed not only this day, but also our lives with this adorable little person.

 

Puppy Love

As if baby fever wasn't enough, I've had a case of puppy fever since our little Gemma is not so little.

Gemma was my dream dog. I wanted a German Shepherd so badly and for so long.

Kyle adores her, but he kinda wanted a little pup to take with him everywhere and to teach to skate (haha).

Sunday evening we came across this cutie 

A six week old Boston terrier.

Who is now the newest Hoverkamp.

Spinelli Hoverkamp.

Yep. She's a keeper!

3 already??

We celebrated three blessed years of having our Noah! although his actual birthday is Friday, we celebrated it on Sunday with many amazing family and friends.
Noah decided Angry Birds is what he wanted the theme to be, so it was.
I was pretty stoked on the ribbon I found at Michael's craft store.
Now the cake.
Oh the cake.
Lets just say it was good enough to make me cheat on my diet...several times. 
Since several of my family members, including the kiddos have allergies to things like Gluten, Dairy, and a few other things, it seemed a little unfair to have everyone come to a party where they watched us all eating cake that they couldn't have. I went to my cousins house and he showed me how to bake a gluten free, dairy free, wheat free, soy free cake. 
It was heavenly.
Most things that lack things like gluten can taste, well like cardboard. But this is SO good.

 We were so fortunate to have all of our friends and family drive towards our side of town and be here to celebrate. Some I haven't seen in years. As a mom there is nothing more special than to see your kids face light up with excitement.

Thank you so much to all who came out to help make this day special for this little man!

I wasn't raised to just see holidays or birthdays as a day to receive gifts. Im grateful for that. And I try my hardest to teach Noah the same thing. He was very excited for the new shipment of toys he received, to say the least.

Prayer

Much needed Prayer.

 I want to lift up my poor husband. After months of complaining about stomach aches and heart burn, he was suddenly in a lot of pain.

Now I just want to say, Ive known him for over 8 years, and he has only gone to the hospital/dentist  3 times. 

He went to urgent care suspecting he had an ulcer. 

The doctor spent a brief moment speaking with him then just dismissed it as "constipation" and sent us home with a 400.00 bill.

After the pain only became worse and worse he went back last night in the emergency room and it was confirmed he had a pretty nasty stomach ulcer.

He's on the mend, but still has long days of sitting at work ahead of him. 

So my friends, if you could please pray for my Kyle, we would appreciate it. God is good. And kyle knows it.

This too shall pass.

Stoked

Well here I am almost done with week one of my no bread/pasta/grain diet and I was so stoked to see I had lost 4 pounds! Hold me accountable friends and pray that I stay strong on this because I can't wait to reach my goal weight and feel healthier!