Blessings

It has been a while since I have taken the time to write.  Things have been so busy around here!

First, we went for a week long vacation in Bradenton at the end of the summer, which was amazing.  We spent hours at the beach, stayed up late like we were in college again, and did a lot of relaxing.

Thank goodness for that beach umbrella and beach chairs from the condo!

The amazing peach pie from Yoders.

I had to report back to work as soon as we got back.  Work has been great.  I am enjoying first grade and my new school.  I got a great group of kids, and my first grade team (we are a team of two!) is wonderful.  We both have 23 students, and have since the beginning of the year, so hopefully within the next week or so a new teacher will be hired.  I decorated my room with all kinds of beach paraphernalia, and the kids love it.  I did it in the hopes that I would feel like I was spending every day at the beach.  If the kids weren't there with me, it just might have worked!!!

But all of that seems insignificant since September 2nd, because...

We found out we are having a baby!!!  A real, live baby!!!  We were so incredibly excited when we found out.  We couldn't keep the secret for long, and told our families the following Monday, Labor Day, when they came over to our house for a little birthday get-together.  We pretended we wanted everyone to pose for a family photo, then recorded their reactions.

It was so much fun telling everyone!  

We had our first ultrasound today.  We found out that I am almost 9 weeks and the due date is April 26th.  Seeing our baby for the first time was like nothing I have ever experienced.  I am so in love.

There's our precious little gummy bear!!!

People ask me how I'm feeling, and I feel pretty lucky to say that I feel good, for the most part!  I've had some nausea, but I have kept everything down (so far!)  Eating a few saltines in bed every morning, although making my sheets awfully crumby, seems to be helping with that.  I'm also pretty exhausted at all times.  Once I come home from work and sit down, I have a hard time getting back up.  I am so blessed to have a husband who has gone out of his way to make me comfortable and happy!  We are both beyond excited about growing our family.  He is going to be an amazing daddy!

While I will try to blog more regularly than I have been, I can't promise anything.  I am busy growing a person, you know!

Beach Days

The last few days have been busy - full of relaxing at the beach!

On a whim, we decided to head out of town on Wednesday. We headed to Port St. Lucie to watch the Mets and Marlins play something called baseball. Yeah, I really had no idea how little I knew about the sport. I knew the point was to have someone run around all the bases (I know, my terminology is quite poor. I asked when it was going to be half-time, and Jon guffawed at me.) but that was about it. I fully respect the sport, and I understand how important it is to some people. I, however, found it boring and played on my phone half the time. I guess I'm more of a football girl. I took a picture of the field (is that what it's called, dear?) using every effect my phone offered. This was my favorite.

I also took a picture of us, in an effort to entertain myself for two seconds. The husband was quite accommodating, and even made a fun face.

The Mets won. I wasn't rooting for anyone in particular, I just wanted someone to win!

After the game we headed to Stuart, where we had rented a hotel room for the night. We got sun-screened up, then drove out to Jensen Beach for a few hours.

It was after 4 when we got to the beach, but were still able to spend a few hours there. Thank you, daylight savings time! After a few hours, we headed back to our hotel, got cleaned up, then went to Outback Steakhouse for dinner. We had received a gift card for Christmas, and were ready for some steak! It was delicious! No photos, though... I forgot part of my phone charger, and only had the car charger. My phone was dead at this point.

We were going to check out on Thursday and spend the rest of the day at the beach, but with the storms we decided it might be safer to stay put for the night instead of driving home in it, so we stayed in Stuart for Thursday night as well. Thursday was spent at the beach, where I got a lovely sunburn on my upper back and the back of my thighs. When the clouds started coming in, we got in the car and found this adorable little dive called Kona Beach Cafe.

We both got a turkey burger. Before...

And after...

Yum! That night, we went and saw The King's Speech (wonderful movie!) and had pizza for dinner. We spent about 6 hours at the beach on Friday, as well. We had subs from Publix (to us, a trip to the beach isn't a trip to the beach without subs from Publix!), saw an adorable beach-loving dog and some pelicans, and did a lot of laying around. So much laying around, in fact, that we were exhausted come 6 o'clock when we decided to start packing up.

Some photos from the day...

I ♥ the beach!

Today we met up with Sarah and Justin and the kiddos, and my mom at Lake Eola's spring Fiesta in the Park. I've been going there with my mom and sister for as long as I can remember, and this year I somehow convinced Jon to go as well. It was great to spend the morning with our family, and it was a gorgeous day to be outside. A photo was an afterthought, as we were almost at our car. This is all I got.

It was a wonderful Spring break, and while I am sad to see it end... with the end of Spring break comes only 2 months left in the school year. Bring it on!

Love Soup and a sunset.

Ahhh.

Jon and I got home late Saturday night from a delicious beach vacation. We thought it absolutely necessary to take a vacation from vacation before the school year started again. I am not going to take the time to write about it in full now, because I have to go to the grocery store. I am making either "Quinoa Stew with Potatoes, Spinach, and Chard" or "Butter Bean and Summer Vegetable Soup" for dinner tonight. Either way, I have to go to the store because we have no potatoes, spinach, chard, or butter beans, and very little in the way of summer vegetables (do canned green beans and corn count?!). I got this book from the library and I am so excited to make soup. I think it's a huge comfort food, and I love it. This will be my first try at soup, and I hope there will only be a few disasters.

Until the dinner experiment is over, this will be the only picture I will post from our trip to Bradenton. A beautiful sunset, because the few pictures I actually took of us are either bad or of Jon making funny faces.

I sure hope that my photo-taking desires, skills, etc. grow and improve by the time we have babies. I'm pretty awful!

Well, I'm off to shop for soup ingredients. Wish me luck!