It's not an Alien!

We went and got an ultrasound this morning and found out that we are going to have a little boy. WE are soooooo excited! Russell and I had a feeling that it would be a boy and that feeling was right. I think it will finally start to feel real now. As far as pregnancy goes I think I have had an easy one. So it really hasn't sunk in that there is something growing inside of me. Seeing the ultrasound pictures and our little boys legs, arms, heart and so much more makes it sooooo real now. I am in week 20 right now and I still haven't felt any movement. The Dr. said it could be any time now. I think that will make it feel complete. I am going to really start talking to our little boy and see if that will get him to move. We did get some more pictures, so I will put those on this weekend. I hope everyone has a happy Friday!

Girls Weekend in Orlando

Well, as promised here are pictures from my exciting weekend with Sarah and Kyndall in Orlando. Let me tell you a little bit about Sarah and Kyndall before we get started on the weekend. These two girls and I have been friends since our Freshman year in High School. We were in choir together and did theater stuff together. We have done birthdays togethers and made it through college in different towns getting even closer than when we were in High school. Within the last 2 and a half years we have been in each others weddings. I am going to be the first to have a baby and they are going to be here for me. I hope that when we all have kids they will like each other as much as their moms like each other. We have been through so much together. I love these girls like they are my family. That's just a little bit about the friendship that we have. So this was a great weekend with two of my best friends! Now let's start with the pictures. I took about 160 and I narrowed it down to about 24 of my favorites. That was a hard task!

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Well, I flew in on Friday night and then we went back to Kyndall's apartment. We talked and caught up, talked about what we were going to do the next day and just played. I got their about 10:30 so we went to bed pretty late that night. We got up the next morning and decided that a day of girlie things was just what we needed. We did a little shopping, ate a girlie lunch, watched a chick flick and my favorite part was the pedicure! My feet love to get pampered. Here are a few pictures of our day.

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This is a picture of us taking advantage of the fact that I am pregnant. This was my first time to park in a future mommy spot and I just wanted to document it. I know I am silly!

Here are Kyndall and Sarah relaxing and getting pampered.
Here are our pretty feet!

Kyndall, Sarah, and me!

We went to dinner Saturday night at the Brio Tuscan Grill. It was yummy! They have the cutest little desserts there. They are just enough after a night of italian food. We went home and went to bed because we were tired. We knew that we needed the sleep so we could enjoy our day on Sunday. Kyndall said that we couldn't come to Orlando and not go to Disney World. So we took her up on that and spent the entire day on Sunday at the Magic Kingdom pretending we were 5 years old all over again. It was soooooo much fun. That is what the rest of the pictures are. Enjoy them!

Here is before we left for Disney picture. Notice how pretty and wide eyed we are!

Here are Sarah and I waiting for the tram to take us up to get the park.

This is Cinderella's Castle. Isn't it amazing? This made me so excited!
Adventureland was our first stop in the park. We rode Aladdin's Magic Carpet ride, took a Jungle Cruise, went through the Pirates of Caribbean ride (which was really cool and none of the pictures turned out) and I think that was it.
This is us on our Magic Carpet ride. We were soaring, tumbling and free wheeling!
They do a parade everyday with all of the characters. I got to see the person that I always wanted to be when I grew up. Yeah, I wanted to be Mary Poppins. I loved everything about her. I am pretty sure I smiled like a big goofy idiot when I saw her. I might have even jumped up and down a little with excitement!
After the parade we went and rode It's a Small World. Cheesy I know, but we wanted the full experience.

We rode the carousel!

We rode the Mad Hatter's Teacups. I loved this ride!

Sarah spinning around and around in the teacup.

One of the first things I asked Kyndall was if we could do was get our picture taken with a Disney princess. She laughed at me and then told me that would be possible. I am pretty sure that was the one thing I was looking forward to the most about the whole day. We were the only 25 year olds in line surrounded by little kids and their parents. I really didn't care. I was soooooo excited!

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Here we are with Princess Arora from Sleeping Beauty!

Cinderella
Belle
Yeah, I smiled like an idiot in all three pictures. I love my Disney princesses!
Cinderella's Castle at night.
The temperature was a little abnormal for Florida sinced it was in the 40's that night. This is us being cold and tired waiting on the most amazing fireworks show of my life!

Best fireworks I have ever seen!

Kyndall's puppy, Rufus, spent the day at the Disney kennel. He did such a good job and he was so excited to see his mommy when we came to pick him up.
This is us after the entire day. We look a little less bright eyed and bushy-tailed than we did in our before picture. Needless to say we were tired and our feet hurt, but we had soooo much fun! It was definately worth it.
I loved my weekend with these girls and can't wait for the next time I see them. They are saving up their vacation days to come see me and baby in June! Another big life moment shared together! I love you girls and I had a great weekend!

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Coming soon (Thursday) to this blog...pictures of a little boy or little girl. What do you think it will be? My sister in law thinks it will be a girl. I think it will be a boy. Wait until Thursday to see who it right! I can't wait to share the good news! Pray that baby will cooperate! Have a great week!

Russell's Birthday

On January 4th Russell celebrated his 27th birthday. I had every intention of blogging about it sooner than now, but things happen. Atleast I am getting to it now. He had to work on his birthday which is no fun, but I think he had an ok day. He got home from school and I told him we had dinner reservations for 6 and he couldn't wear jeans. When I said that his first question was, "Am I going to like this?" Like I was going to plan something on his birthday that he wouldn't like. Well, we got ready to go and I let him open one of his presents before we left. It went with a present he was getting himself later. So if he didn't like it he could take it back and trade it in. Here he is opening his present.

We left and went to dinner. I took him to Boi Na Braza. It is a Brazilian steak house. They have a full salad bar with all kinds of things on it and that's where all of the side dishes are as well. You have a card on your table that looks like a stop sign. The green side means GO give me lots of meat and the red sign means NO THANK YOU not right now. There are guys that walk around with huge skewers of meat and ask you if you want some. I think there were like 15 different kinds of meat. It was really good and Russell was very happy with my surprise dinner plans. This is a picture of us after dinner. I really thought Russell was going to have to roll me out of there. I probably ate more in that one sitting of dinner than I had eaten in one sitting since I got pregnant.
Now we are back at the apartment and Russell is opening his presents. We were both soooo full that birthday cake was not an option. I really took a chance with his birthday presents I got him such a great christmas present that I had no good ideas for his birthday.
He was a little bit more excited about the watch than the belt.

This was his present that he bought himself with his Christmas and birthday money. He was very excited about it. It really does have such a great picture. I will not lie about that.
After we put his new toy together we did birthday cake, I mean cupcakes. I put 7 candles in 2 cupcakes to symbolize 27. I thought 27 candles might be a fire hazard.

He was a little disapointed in not getting them all in one blow. They were sparkler candles. They didn't sparkle very well though. Oh well!
Well, that sums up his birthday. I think he had a good one. Maybe he will let you know something else about it when he proofs my writing. I have a Dr. appointment on Friday and then we find out next Thursday if we are having a boy or a girl. I am soooooooooo excited about that. I can't wait to know. I am also headed down to Orlando this weekend to see my good friends Kyndall and Sarah. It is going to be a great girls weekend! I hope everyone has a great week and weekend. I will hopefully post next week. Bye for now!

Fireworks, New Camera pictures and a Thank you!

Well, let me start off with the THANK YOU first! For those of you who haven't noticed my new blog header, take a look. After I put up my blog header that I made, a good friend offered to do one for me that I would LOVE. She was right! I sent her a picture and I LOVE the header. A big thank you to Kaela. Sorry, it took so long to get that out there girl! I appreciate the header and I love it!

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Now onto a few pictures. We went and spent our New Years out at camp. We had a great time. I have a setting on my camera for fireworks and I new if I didn't try it out that night I wouldn't get to try it out until July 4th. That is a long time away. I thought it worked pretty well. Here are just a few pictures.

I just love fireworks! They are one of my favorite things!

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Now onto the part of the blog where I show you some of the first pictures I took with my new camera.

This is on the candle setting. I thought it was pretty cool!
Russell and I were taking pictures of each other taking a picture with our new toys. Yeah, we are nerds!
This is taken with a cool setting that uses the available light instead of having to use the flash. That way you can take pictures of people sleeping. I told you in one of my previous posts that my Dad slept most of the afternoon on Christmas. Here is the proof!
Russell wanted me to take a picture of him and his i-phone again. I thought it was cool that it picked up the colors on the screen. Have I told you I love my new camera.
This one I was trying the self portrait mode. Mom and I actually got this great shot the first time. It normally takes us about three tries! Way to go mom! Well, that does it for now. Hope everyone has a great week.

Christmas with the Deans

**Warning** Another long post **Warning**

Well, as promised here is the run down of Christmas with the Deans. We invited my mom and dad over on Christmas day because Luke and Katie were in Connecticut with her parents and Bekah and her family weren't coming until later. So, I invited them to come here and I fixed sour cream chicken enchiladas and some guacamole. It was a fabulous lunch. I made a cake for dessert, but I will talk about that in a little bit. Here is my table that I worked so hard to make pretty. I worried about a center piece for about a week. This was my first time to host a Christmas event. I think it turned out well!

Not the best picture, but the only one I caught of all of us!

Since Russell and I had already opened presents from each other it was time to open presents from my parents and Luke and Katie. Here is my mom opening some house shoes from Luke and Katie. They looked super comfortable.

Here is my dad opening up a present from us. There is a story behind this present and here it is. This summer we went to church with my parents and my dad was sooooo fidgety so I was looking in my purse to see what I had and I found my gorilla pod and handed it to him. The gorilla pod is a tripod for my camera that will attach to almost anything and take pictures. It is really cool. Anyways, Dad played with it through the whole service. He was highly entertained. So, I decided that I would get him his own new church toy. He liked it!
Russell with a golf calendar with a picture of a hole a day.
This is the cake I made for dessert. It was my first three layer cake and I made it all from scratch. I wish I had more time to bake.

Christmas with my parents went great! We had a wonderful time. After eating and presents dad napped for the rest of the afternoon and mom and I just chatted. Russell watched some TV and played with his new toy. We spent the rest of the week at home and on Friday left to go back to Tyler. My sister and her family had come into town and so we met them for lunch before we went to my parents house. Here is a picture of Barry (my brother in law) with his two cute kids!
Here are Caleb and Hannah being super cute. Caleb asked if I would take a picture of them and this is what they did. Aren't they sooooo sweet.
Here is Hannah and Bekah and my Aunts house. We were having Christmas with just my dad's immediate family. It was a good time!
This was on Saturday when we were at my parents house getting ready to open more presents. Hannah of course did not want to cooperate with the picture. I can't get any pictures of the kids with me, because they never want to take a picture at the time.
Caleb and Poppy hanging out. Isn't this such a sweet picture.

If you look in Hannah's hand she is holding some lip gloss. She said that is was only for girls and not for any boys. So when asked by Uncle Russell if he could have some lip gloss, this was one of the looks he was given.
Here is Caleb opening his presents from us. We got him three Dr. Seuss books. Since he is in Kindergarten he is beginning to read on his own. He was able to read the titles of the books and was really excited. He is so smart.
Hannah opening a present.

Hannah has been on a Barbie Island Princess kick. I think she watches it maybe 5 times a week. Anyways, she got a Barbie for Christmas. We were able to find a dress-up dress that matched her Barbie's exactly so that is what she is opening right now. I can't even tell you how excited she was. She asked if she could wear it for Halloween next week and she also asked if she could wear it on her Barbie birthday. Her birthday is in November so that wasn't going to happen.

Doesn't she look cute? She walked out of the living room and came back in a few minutes later and announced that she was the prettiest one in the living room. We really got a big kick out of that.
And the last picture is of my mom and dad. They are really cute too!

Well, that about wraps up Christmas with the Deans. We had a wonderful time during our Christmas Break. This is our last Christmas with just the two of us and it was wonderful. I can't even begin to imagine what's in store for next Christmas. Russell and I start back to school tomorrow with kids. I had a workday today and it was not bad at all. I can't believe I am officially halfway though my first year as a teacher. It has gone really fast. Friday is Russell's birthday so I am sure I will have more to say later! Have a great week!