Hello World!

Well, things are starting to feel more real! The midwife we are going through typically only does one ultrasound per pregnancy unless there specific reasons to get one, but she ordered a dating ultrasound to confirm my due date and I was happy to oblige and get a glimpse of our little blueberry (this has become our in-utero name for baby) before the normal 20 week ultrasound (Can you imagine only doing one ultrasound, Taara?? ;) ).

Our little one was really active when we started, doing somersaults and waving and kicking. Really cute! Then towards the end he/she settled down and went to sleep. Since I can't feel baby yet, it was really neat to see how active little one is in there. They gave me a due-date of September 21, 2013 which was just a few days after I was counting so my original guess was pretty accurate. This puts me at 12 weeks today! Baby blueberry is now the size of a lime.

Announcing...

In the Land of Blue Burqas

Here's the book that I just finished and it was well worth reading. We hear a lot about Afghanistan in the news but this was a really insightful read to learn more about their culture, religion, and land from the perspective of an American woman who lived among the people there for five years. I learned about this book on Carolyn McCulley's blog and there is a review there that you can read to learn more. I really enjoyed the book and would recommend it to you as well. I think I came away with a better understanding of Afghanistan and especially the women who live there. I personally don't know any of them, but reading the book leaves you with a desire to pray for these women and maybe someday I will have the pleasure of knowing some of them.

Birdland Ave.

Okay here was my outside project on the last few sunny days we had. Our drive-way is a U shape with a big hedge in between and we usually only use one half of it so I've been ignoring the clean-up of this portion of the drive. I can't see it from the house so I don't think about it every day, but it is the first thing you can see as you approach our house from the street, so it has been on my to-do list.

Here is a before photo and sorry its so dark! Basically what was going on is that on each side of the drive it was thick with hundreds of 3 ft tall ugly brown weeds. On the left side there are several birdhouses on polls surrounded by rhododendron bushes. So I went to town pulling up all the weeds and taking down the bird houses.

After the weeds were pulled: Bird houses still need to come down.

Here are a few of the rhodies. Most of them are taller than me, making me think that they've been there for a while. I'm not a huge fan of Rhododendrons since in my opinion they are a very ugly bush most of the year, but they do make up for it when they bloom in the spring. And they are our state flower so I suppose I should show some respect. At any rate, it would be a major endeavor to get rid of them so I think they are happily staying put.

I felt a little guilty pulling off the first birdhouse. I know the last owner of the house must've spent hours on these and they were obviously his passion. Each one is unique and some even have themes like a barn birdhouse and a nautical birdhouse, etc. But they are beginning to rot and fall apart and I don't think even the birds can call most of them a home anymore. So after pulling off a couple, I began to feel a little better about it and as more and more got cleaned up, well, let's just say it felt really good! There really are still tons more to go, but it was very rewarding to begin the clean-up that I've been dreaming about since I first saw our new home.

Anyone want a birdhouse?

Happy Valentine's Day!

Our Valentine has been gone this week but he's on his way home and hopefully will make it in time to celebrate the last few minutes of the holiday with us tonight. I've been telling Wolfie all day and while I don't think he gets it, I have no doubt that he's going to freak out when the person he lives for walks in the door tonight. :)

Happy Valentine's Day to all of you!

Bruges Photo Dump

Tonight I was hanging out with some younger single girls and reminiscing about the stuff I did when I was their age. Something I will never regret is taking the opportunity to visit Europe with my best girlfriends at that point in life--probably something that we will not have another chance to do in the same way all together. A couple of the other girls had also visited Bruges, Belgium while their family was stationed in Germany when they were younger so we talked about that happy little city a little and I thought it would be a good time to pull out a Bruges photo dump on the blog and remember the adventure there.

For commentary on this day in Bruges, you can read about it in this previous blog post.

My Handyman

Well, this window had to go. Most of the windows in our house are ancient...and thus do not help with keeping the house warm in the winter. Our hope is to replace all of them at some point in time but we are taking things one window at a time for now. We actually have a window in the bathroom where the  previous owner (who built the house in 1938) simply added the new shower (to replace a bathtub I'm assuming?) over half of the window. You really can't tell except that you can't open the window and one part of our shower sort of glows on sunny days. He even planted a big bush on the outside to cover up the evidence. So that one may be an interesting fix someday...

But anyway, back to the living room window which was the one replaced this time. With a couple days off last week, my handyman decided to tackle the side of the house that gets all the weather coming in from the west. The siding was beginning to rot where the aluminum window was allowing water to seep in, so he decided to nip the problem in the bud and replace the window and siding all at once.

Kinda scary having a big hole in the side of your house in February...but I'm really proud of Chris for figuring it all out (he had never done it before!!) and being brave enough to tackle the project.

And here is the brand new window (that opens now!! the last one didn't!) and fresh siding with new paint. Yay!!

And I figured I'd share the new pellet stove he installed while I'm talking about my handyman husband. We are loving it and it really makes such a difference in heating our home. I'm sure we will enjoy it to the fullest next winter!