It's been a long time since I've posted much here. Sadly I can't seem to find our camera so this post will be without pictures, but nevertheless I thought an update might be nice.

The past two months have been quite challenging for us since I was hit with all day, every day "morning sickness." I don't know why they call it that when it lasts all day. We've definitely been living in survival mode, meaning I wasn't cooking, cleaning or running any errands. My family has helped us a TON (I would not have survived without them!) and Jeremy has picked up a lot of my slack. Thankfully things are starting to turn around and I'm able to contribute more to the household operations now. I'm not yet feeling as well as I would like, but way better than two months ago.

As for the baby, as far as we can tell everything is great with him/her! I'm almost 16 weeks now so I expect to start feeling this little one moving soon. I felt Clara at 18 weeks, which is right around the corner. Because of Clara's birth defects we will be having a level 2 ultrasound this time so we can check out this baby more closely. As far as we know this baby doesn't have any higher chance of a birth defect like Clara's, but they want to check him/her out more closely just to be sure. That appointment is scheduled for October 12th and we do plan to find out the gender again. I'm too impatient to wait until Spring!

Clara is almost 11 months old now, which I can hardly believe. She is walking all over the apartment holding onto furniture and getting into everything! We expect her to be walking on her own by the time her birthday rolls around. She's getting closer every day it seems. She has eight teeth, and judging by the amount of finger chewing that has been happening for the past several weeks, more teeth are coming soon. She loves to dance to music and wrestle with her daddy. Recently she has become more snuggly, which I love. She'll come up to me and give me a hug, or snuggle her stuffed animals, and one of my favorites is when she lays on a pillow and says "ohhhhhh." So cute! She seems to learn something new every day. We are definitely loving being her parents.

As for the house that we mentioned several months ago, that has been a rollercoaster in and of itself! It's way too long of a story for me to tell here, not to mention I probably wouldn't remember most of it anyway, but the good news is we expect to be closing sometime next week! We are super excited to get in there and start cleaning and painting and getting settled. It's going to be so nice to have more space, and to have a yard and a garage and...oh, I'm so excited! We'll keep you posted on that.

Beyond those things I'm not sure what else to report. With me spending most of the summer feeling sick we didn't get to do many of the fun summer things I had hoped to do this year. And if we do indeed close on the house next week the month of October is going to be crazy busy. I'll try to post some pictures sometime soon, but for now I can't find our camera.

Praying you all are well!

Daddy Daughter Weekend!

Hanging out with Daddy is tiring! It's been a long weekend and there's
so many new things to do that I don't like to slow down to sleep. But
the car got the best of me and out I went.

Our family is growing!

Jeremy and I are expecting another baby! I had my first appointment today and everything looked great. I'm due mid-March so I'm about 7 1/2 weeks right now. We hadn't planned to have babies 17 months apart, but we're definitely excited. Judging by the way Clara responds to her new little cousin, Zion, I think she'll be thrilled to have a baby brother or sister!

I'm definitely not feeling well right now so we've kicked into survival mode, which means I probably won't be blogging a whole lot for the next several weeks. I'm praying the Lord allows this yuckiness to pass quickly, but I know it's for a good cause.

Thanks for your prayers for our new little bean!

Weekly Shopping

Have you noticed I've strayed a bit from the weekly $45 grocery budget recently? I've decided maybe I can vary my weekly budget to stock up on great deals, as long as I still stay within the monthly budget. So today I went to Rainbow and only spent $15.59. It was double coupon day so I scored some awesome deals. Both packs of shredded cheese and both frozen yogurt parfaits were FREE! The baby wash was $.50 and the shaving cream was $.59. I love double coupon day! I spent $15.59 and saved $23.06.

Baby Zion!

My sister (Brook) and her husband just got back home with their new baby, Zion Christopher! We got to see him last night at a little celebration dinner at my parents' house. He is the sweetest sweetie you ever did see!

Nana will take as many grandkids as she can get!

Cousins meeting each other. Clara doesn't really understand "gentle" but she did quite well with Zion, as if maybe she could sense the need to be gentle with him.

Don't you just want to eat him up?