The finding out!!!

First of all thank you so much for all your well wishes and congratulations on our announcement. It means so much to us that you all share in our joy! We love you all!

Now let's back track a little bit. Since I haven't yet blogged about this pregnancy or about telling our families or anything like that I want to catch up on all of it. Ben and I came to know about the baby on the 21st of June. We were very excited but decided to keep this pregnancy a secret longer than we had with aiden. As most everyone knows Aiden was our "unexpected blessing" and because he was so unexpected our family got crying and confused and frustrated calls announcing that "blessing". So with this one I wanted to wait a little bit, I wanted to come up with cool ways to announce and I wanted to wait till I had seen my doctor before we started spreading the news.

JUNE 21st

JUNE 21st

JUNE 21st

Man I think I already look tired and haggard in these pictures!

On June 24th I saw my Dr. for the initial OB visit where they drew 19 vials of my blood and did an exam and then I went back on July 1st to go over results from my lab work and to meet with my Dr. and head nurse and set up my OB schedule for the upcoming month. Everything looked great. We went on vacation with my family over the 4th of july week and I hadn't planned to tell them about the pregnancy yet but realized quickly that it was going to be hard to hide. During this pregnancy I have been much more nauseas and sick then I ever was while pregnant with aiden. Plus the headaches and the never ending exhaustion. It's just hard to hide. So a moment presented itself during our family worship on sunday of our trip that Ben and I felt was the "right" moment to share our news. Everyone was together, we were talking, reminiscing and praying over the changes both good and bad that have happened within our family in the past couple of years and I felt moved to share our joy with our family! So we told my dad's side of the family on July 4th. By the way all credit for capturing this moment goes to my aunt kim. What amazing talent to be ready with your camera for an announcement you don't know is coming and then simultaneously capture almost every single person in the room's expression. Amazing! Thank you.

JULY 4th...making announcement

JULY 4th...Some of my family's reactions

JULY 4th...Some of my family's reactions

JULY 4th...Some of my family's reactions

JULY 4th...Some of my family's reactions

I am so grateful to have all these pictures. My family's joy and happiness over our news is priceless to me! Love it.

Then on July 12th, I went to the OB for my 1st sonogram. Again everything looked great and the baby was teensy tiny but we got to see the little bean with it's heartbeat and all.

Baby's 1st picture. July 12th

I like how they put an arrow and wrote baby!!! cause that little bean doesn't resemble a baby.

So at this point I was trying to figure out when I was going to make phone calls to the rest of the family when the opportunity for me to see the majority of my mom's side of the family at one time presented itself. On July 16th we all got together at my parents house to celebrate my cousin blake's birthday, to swim and hang out. Everyone was present except for my papaw and eloise and my uncle van so I used this opportunity to share our news with them by making cupcakes with my due date on them. They guessed pretty quickly what our "news" was.

JULY 16th. Cupcakes I made.

JULY 16th. Telling the fam.

JULY 16th. Telling the fam.

JULY 16th. Telling the fam.

JULY 16th. Telling the fam.

JULY 16th. Telling the fam.

Aiden wasn't real sure what everyone was so excited about but he enjoyed eating the cupcakes regardless.

So then my whole family knew it was time to tell Ben's family...I didn't think we would get to actually tell any of ben's family in person (since they all live far away) so I ordered aiden the "big brother to bee" shirt offline and had my talented aunt kim took aiden's picture in it.

BIG BROTHER TO BEE. Love it.

Then I made the post card announcement that I posted on the blog to tell his family.

We were able to schedule a time for ben's dad and stepmom to come over on July 24th and I printed out the announcement card and put it in a frame that aiden gave to them. Then we called and emailed the announcement card to ben's mom and stepdad to share the news with them. So as of July 25th all of our family had been let in on our upcoming arrival but I still wanted to keep it from complete public knowledge, although a few of my best girlfriends knew also, until I saw my Dr. one more time this past week. I saw my Dr. for another exam and sonogram on July 29th and again everything was perfect so that's when the news became public knowledge!

JULY 29th. Baby's 2nd picture.

Looking more like a baby! The baby's heart rate was 172 bpm and the baby had all it's vital organs.

Now I am SOOOO glad this cat is out of the bag because I am NOT good at keeping secrets. Especially this one. I have been so sick and so tired and just so blah that I have not been blogging like I like to. I have been canceling on people left and right cause all I feel like doing is staying at my house and doing nothing. So it's a big relief. PLUS I started my blog when I was about 8 weeks pregnant with aiden and wrote everything about my pregnancy and I want to have that for this baby too. I am already 10.5 weeks pregnant and contrary to what the announcement says my due date was moved up at my last appointment to FEB 25th. I would much prefer february over march just because aiden's birthday is in march but I learned with aiden that due dates don't mean much. Aiden was 3 weeks early so we will see!

So far everything is going great with the pregnancy, other than the normal pregnancy symptoms/ sickness that I could do without. I am very happy with my new OB doctor here in arlington. As you can see I have already seen him several times so he could get to know me and my history and I have loved how attentive he has been. I was nervous about that aspect just because I did love my Dr.'s in orlando so much but so far I am incredibly pleased.

So that's it. That's all the "finding out"! Ben and I are so incredibly excited about this next phase in our lives and what our family as a foursome is going to look like.