Happily Ever After II: The Sequel!

As of last Wednesday, Ben and I are officially an old married couple.  We figure that after a whole year of marriage, we can now look at newly married couples and fondly remember when.    Both of us spent the day at work but since I got off a couple hours earlier than he did, I took the opportunity to attempt making a pie, something he had been talking about for a few weeks.  Ironically, this made me about forty-five minutes late picking him up.  He joked that I did it on purpose so that he would have time to buy me flowers after work, to make it look like he was more on top of it.  I have a very good man.

In addition to flowers, chocolate, and a card, Ben decided that, since we had escaped without having our honeymoon car decorated (with the exception of a handful of sticky notes on the back windshield -- thanks, Sam & Sarah) that we should make up for it on the anniversary.

I asked him to make sure to make the '1 year ago' part obvious, since my looks implied either post-marriage or a long-postponed shotgun wedding. ;)

After having celebrated with take-out and a not-so-stale-as-we-thought-it-would-be cake top, I decided to go through our pictures and share the year in retrospect:

August 2012 - Married 1 year

July (or maybe 1st of August) 2012 - All dressed for the reunion with Ben's family that we're so sorry to have missed (love you guys!!!)

April 2012 - Hiking trip to Zion's Canyon, just after graduation.

Probably February 2012? In our first little apartment together.

December 2011 - decorating our first Christmas tree together.

August 2011, the day it all started.

It really doesn't feel like that was a whole year ago, but we've both been saying since our second or even first week of marriage,  that it feels like we've always been together.  Time is funny like that, I guess.  So, a year of monthly rent, crazy work schedules, car repairs, homework, transient morning sickness, and "look, Caitlin, look!  We always look at pictures of space nebulas before we eat pie!" later, we're still enjoying happily ever after.

Happy birthday, Mom!

So last week, I asked my mom what she would like for her birthday.  She kind of smiled at me and said, "you know what I want from you."  Therefore, without further delay (I apologize that it's been a few days already), here it is:

Ben took a picture of the screen in the office.  It turned out being much more difficult to get a picture of the print-out they gave us.

A little face...!

This was taken at our 20-week mark, on Tuesday.  I teased Ben that she already looks like him.  Note: I say 'she' because both today and the day we got the ultrasound have been 'she' days.  Way back when we were deciding whether or not to find out the sex, we made a compromise.  I didn't want to find out, but Ben didn't want to refer to our unborn child as 'it,' so we alternate every other day.  Tomorrow, the baby will be 'he.'

Everyone has been asking us about names.  The truth is that we have narrowed our list down to a few names that we really like and will probably use, but we're not ready to reveal them yet.  Since we are due on Christmas day, we're all about surprises - name, sex, and all.  In the meantime, our families have given us some wonderful alternatives to call the baby in the meantime.

My brother came up with Thunder Rawlings Horse (girl) or Salsita Hussein III (boy).  My sister-in-law and I discovered that Experience is a family name on both sides.  We're not really sure whether it was used as a boy or a girl name, so we can use Experience on either day.  Some of our favorites came from my 5-year-old cousin.  For a girl, he came up with Little Miss Daydreamer, and for a boy he came up with Little Miss Giggles and (when his dad pointed out that he didn't know any boys that were called little-miss-anything) John Deere.

According to my nursing textbooks, she is now about 10 inches long from crown to heel and the ultrasound tech told us that she weighs about 12 ounces.  And, for anyone who cares to know, I'm getting pretty big myself and I'm glad to finally be looking pregnant as opposed to just looking like I've gained weight.

I don't think either of us has ever thought so much about Christmastime so early in the year.  Ben has already  said several times that it seems like December will never come and sometimes I feel that way too, but I think I have it a little easier.  I can feel her moving every day now.

And so this is our shout-out to you, Mom.  Happy birthday, from all three of us.

Two arms