New Pictures

Here are the newest pictures of Megan (and Ally). This is at 27 weeks and 5 days. Enjoy!!

Mark your calendars!

I just wanted to let everyone (well all of the ladies) know that you should be getting baby shower invitations soon. In case we missed anybody when making our guest list, if you are reading this, you are welcome to come! It will be held Saturday, October 25 at 2pm at our church (Sussex County Bible Church). If you need directions or the address, let me know (I believe my mom is putting the address in the invitations for people to Mapquest it or use GPS). Also, if you were accidentally missed and don't get an invitation, please leave a comment or let me know if you plan on coming so that I can RSVP for you. Hope to see everybody there!

Getting ready for Ally!

Well, I have had a busy couple of weeks. I've been clearing out the house to get ready for a flea market day to make money and room in our house. I've been spending a lot of time especially in what will be Ally's room. We are not going to paint the walls until it gets closer (just in case, by some slim chance, we would sell our house), but we're getting everything else ready. My parents got us a crib over the weekend. Our stroller and car seat came on Monday. It turned out to be a different color than it looked online and I love it!!! It's a pretty light and dark teal color combination. And tonight friends of ours brought us a glider and ottoman that they were getting rid of. We are very fortunate to have such great people helping us out! So, I thought I'd send a picture of how her room is looking. Hope you enjoy!

Appt

Hello everyone, Megan is busy getting the house ready for Ally so she hasn't updated our blog with any news so I will do it. We went to the dr. yesterday and were there for about 2 minutes. The dr. said everything is great and he would see us in 4 weeks. Seems like a waste of a drive down there to me but hey, what do I know? There is one thing Megan is not looking forward to and that is she has to have blood work done in a couple weeks to check for gestational diabetes. She hates having blood taken so she is dreading this already. Other than that everything is going well except how much of a mess my house is right now. Lol Megan is getting a bunch of stuff ready to attempt to sell at a flea market to make room for our addition coming in about 3 months. Hopefully she does well because we need the room and we need the money. Well, there isn't much else to say so I'll see ya later. Please leave comments as you all have been slacking lately!!!!!

Pics from Atlanta and Boca Raton

HOME SWEET HOME

Well, we are home again and this time it's for awhile. After a trip to Florida and seeing my brother Nathan in Atlanta, we are home and back to the real world. YUCK!!!!! Lol, anyway, we have a dr's appt on Wednesday so we will update the baby situation after that. Everything is going well with the baby so far and Megan is 26 weeks along today. Megan will probably put pictures up from the trip in the next day or so. We didn't take many so don't be expecting too much. Well, hope to hear from you all.

Home...for now

Well, we finally got home last night. We get to enjoy 2 days of sleeping in our own beds before it is back off on another trip tomorrow. I always have fun on our NYC trips, but I have to say, I think this was the best one yet. We got to our hotel in New Jersey around lunch time on Wednesday. After checking in to our room, we headed into the city and straight to the Bronx Zoo. On Wednesdays their admission is by donation instead of a set price (perfect for those of us on a budget!). Well, we got our tickets online because we thought everybody would still have to have a ticket. We were wrong; everybody just went right in and it was packed because people were getting in for free. Anyway, it was still great. I had no idea how big it would be. My favorite was the Madagascar exhibit. I love that movie and that is the reason I wanted to visit this zoo. It had everything from the movie: the lemurs, the foosa, etc. We had a lot of fun.

After the zoo, we went to Union Square (the best shopping place). We checked out the sales at Filene's Basement and DSW, got dinner at Chipotle Mexican Grill (a mistake for me...too spicy even though I like Mexican food!), and walked around. We went to Murray's Bagels to get some bagels for our breakfasts. Rachael Ray recommended this place because of the good bagels and they make them right there. Finally, we got to Babies 'R Us to set up our registry. That was a lot of fun. 3 floors of baby stuff!!!!! I was a little disappointed at the lack of purple and we had to put more pink than I wanted, but the stuff was still cute. They had a whole section of cute baby girl Yankees outfits (which are probably only available at that store so you probably won't be able to get those). We decided to skip Trader Joe's because we already had a lot to carry and knew we wouldn't really be needing any grocery items anyway. After a long day, we went back to the hotel where I crashed from all of the walking. On Thursday, we woke up early and went right in to the city to ride the Staten Island Ferry. There are 4 waterfalls around South Street Seaport that some artist did, plus the views from the ferry are nice to begin with. It was a very relaxing start to our day. We got to see all of the falls, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and even the Hyatt where we normally stay. We then thought we'd walk to South Street Seaport, not realizing it was quite a walk and really hot. After changing our minds, we went back to the subway to go to Little Italy. It was time for lunch at Lombardi's. I've been wanting to try good New York pizza for a long time and what a better place than Rachael Ray's recommended place that happens to be the first pizzeria in America? Dave got a calzone because he hates pizza and said it was really good. As far as the pizza, probably the best I've ever had!!!!! I loved it! I'm not usually a thin crust person, but the homemade sauce, fresh mozzarella, fresh basil, and crunchy pepperonis cooked in a coal oven just made it perfect. How do you finish off a good Italian lunch? With a good Italian dessert. We went to Ferrara's bakery and got cannolis, well I got a chocolate cannoli...yum! And after eating a delicious lunch, you have to follow up with shopping. Chelsea Market was pretty neat and we were wishing we had a place like that near us to buy all of the fresh produce at such good prices! We settled for a fresh, homemade strawberry lemonade and blueberry lemonade. Next, we went to Modell's (hoping to find the maternity shirt for me that says "Future Yankee Fan" with an arrow pointing down), but had no luck and we guess it is only available online. We looked at the Baby Depot right nearby and saw a lot of cute things there also. Then we went to the Manhattan Mall. We were a little disappointed as there wasn't much there, but I definitely will be visiting Steve and Barry's after the baby for a shopping spree. Everything in the store was $8.98! In case you haven't heard, that's the store that carries Sarah Jessica Parker's line of clothing, but I still wasn't expecting everything to be so cheap: shoes, dress pants, bags, accessories, EVERYTHING! It was finally time to go back to the hotel where we relaxed and enjoyed the pool for a bit.

Friday we slept in a little bit and went into the city around lunch. We ate at Big Nick's Burger and Pizza Joint (Food Network recommended). Dave tried their burgers and I tried their pizza (hey, I love pizza and Dave hates it, I have to enjoy it when I can). I was able to get my pizza on a whole wheat crust which I liked more than regular crust. The prices were reasonable too (my slice of pizza was about the price of Grotto's and my slice was about 3 times the size of theirs). The food was really good and we were not disappointed, but it just couldn't compare to Lombardi's. Since we usually aren't in the city over the summer, we went to do the rowboats in Central Park. That was fun and relaxing (for me, Dave did all the work). Central Park isn't far from 2nd Avenue, so we had to go put our name in for Serendipity3. It was only a 45-60 minute wait (by far the shortest wait we'd ever heard of...usually its 2-5 hours). During our 45 minutes we walked to Bloomingdale's and did some window shopping and got back to Serendipity 45 minutes later and our table was ready. Nothing beats their frrrrozen hot chocolate. This time Dave tried their strawberry (he usually gets their peanut butter) and said it was good too. Now, I have a special purse that I use when we go to the city because it is big enough to hold our camera and everything we need. This trip it was also holding a bottle of water and snacks for me. The problem is, it has round straps and after 3 days, I was developing a permanent bruise on my shoulder. Dave had gotten sneakers our first day, so I decided I wanted a new purse (now I was risking my life mentioning this to Dave because I am always saying I am in need of a new purse and he just doesn't understand...all you ladies that love shoes can relate, I'm just like that with purses instead of shoes), but I think he really knew it was hurting and didn't argue (he may have rolled his eyes lol). So we stop at a few guys selling purses on the street. One guy wanted $45 for a clearly fake Coach bag so we walked away. A few other guys had some that looked real, but wanted too much money. A Century 21 visit was in order. Outside of Century 21, we found a guy that went down to $35 for a real Coach bag (at least looked very real). Century 21 had a Nine West that was okay for $20, but I figured why pay that much and settle for something I wasn't crazy about. Back outside, in the rain, we got the one I wanted. I was finally happy so we could leave the city and enjoy the pool at our hotel again. Saturday was our lazy day. We slept in and relaxed until after lunch time. We then explored Secaucus, NJ, got lunch, went to their Baby Depot and set up a registry, then had an early dinner at Olive Garden. We went back to the hotel to change and get ready for the highlight of the trip: Grease on Broadway! It was a little different than the movie, which I was expecting because it was a musical before the movie, but it was AWESOME!!!! I think I looked like a dork with a big smile on my face the whole time. The actors were great singers and seeing Taylor Hicks was really cool too, especially when he pulled out his harmonica and played it at the end of a song. Even Dave said he had fun. The only bad thing is, now I'm going to want to go see shows like that all the time, but it's out of the budget lol.

Sunday meant the end of our vacation :( , but not before we went to Mo's New York Grill for lunch. If you aren't familiar with the Yankees, he is their star closing pitcher with an awesome restaurant. We were supposed to come home that evening, but had to go to upstate New York for a funeral, which explains why we didn't get home until last night. Tomorrow evening it's off to Atlanta to see Dave's brother and then to Florida until the end of the month so today is an unpacking, laundry, straightening up, errands, and re-packing day lol. Wow this is exhausting, but it's worth it!

NYC!!!!

Well, it is time to get ready for another trip. :) We leave tomorrow for NYC. I think this will be the first I've gone over the summer (except to Yankee Stadium for a game). We got engaged on a New York City trip and have gone every year since then. We usually go on Dave's days off between Christmas and New Year's. This year, Dave has Christmas off so we'd lose a day in New York, plus we'll have a newborn baby. So, we're going now. This will also be our longest trip. Usually, we are just there for 2-3 days. This trip is 5 days. We've got it full of things to do. I'm excited to see the Madagascar exhibit at the Bronx Zoo tomorrow. Plus, we'll be setting up our baby registry at Babies 'R Us and possibly Baby Depot. I have a lot of fun walking around those stores to begin with so I'm sure with the huge NYC stores it will be even more fun. Of course, we'll be making a stop at Trader Joe's, Serendipity 3, and Filene's Basement and other's that are a must in New York. We also always check out a few of Rachael Ray's picks to eat. This time we're going to get some bagels at Murray's Bagels and some good, New York style pizza at Lombardi's, which is the first pizzeria in America. We haven't been disappointed by her picks yet so I'm sure we won't be this time either. We'll also be doing the Staten Island Ferry and South Street Seaport. Of course, Saturday night will be spent enjoying a Broadway musical. :) As far as how our last doctor's appointment went, everything looked good. Surprisingly, my blood pressure was good. I've never had problems with it, but all the stress I had been under with finances and the doctor's office trying to over-charge us, etc. had me worried that it would be high. The doctor I saw at this last appointment will no longer be seeing the pregnancy patients so I'll have one of the other two doctors. That's fine with me because I've only seen the other two so far anyway. I was still able to look at the scale and not get too scared of the number I saw lol. Ally's kicks are getting harder too. She's been kicking pretty hard for the past couple of weeks. So hard that if my arm is resting on my stomach, it makes my whole arm flinch. So I was thinking that we should be able to see it, but every time I looked, I was too late. Last week I was laying on the couch reading a book so my eyes were looking towards my stomach. All of the sudden I felt a hard kick and could see a little bulge kick out of my stomach. It was really cool to see. A few seconds later Dave was watching and he could see it too. Well, I guess that's it. We'll have pics after we get back of another adventure with Ally and maybe you can look for our registry in the next couple of days! Have a great week everybody!

None

Well, I just thought I would write a little bit before our Dr's appt today and I'll let Megan write later how it went. I am able to feel Ally kicking more consistently now. I never get to feel the big kicks but I feel small kicks when I am patient. If you know me then you know patience doesn't come naturally for me (3 letters, ADD). LOL Anyway, it is really cool to feel Ally moving around in there. Ok, I have a question for you all. Can someone tell me how we are supposed to keep Megan's stress level down when she is dealing with rude billing people at the dr's office and insurance companies that make billions of dollars yet don't want to pay a few dollars of our bill? RIDICULOUS I tell you!!!!! Anyway, since I haven't said much about softball I will update that since the season is now over. We didn't have the best first season but we had a lot of fun. We played 19 regular season games and only won 4. We ended up in the bottom of 3 divisions for our end of the season tournament. In the tournament we came up one win short of getting a trophy. We had a pretty good season considering it was only our first year and pretty much my whole team had never played softball before. Hopefully next year will be better. Well, I don't have much else to say so we will update after the appt. C-ya

Dave's winning again

Hello! So, Dave is beating me at posts again so I figured I'd try to get another post in. Not really much to say, but I can't let him beat me! :) I keep forgetting to update after our first ultrasound. I posted that they had changed my due date. I was kind of upset about that and when I was talking to my mom she mentioned they probably said that just because Ally is so small because I was so sick. I decided that was going to be what I thought and kept thinking of my due date as December 8th. Anyway, at our July appointment Dave asked about the due date being changed and the doctor said that they usually just give extra time in case they are wrong, but that if I am pretty sure of my dates that it would probably be closer to the 8th than the 17th. That made me feel better. So, July has been busy and our August is going to be just as busy. This is the first year that we did not go away for our anniversary. We are doing a little mini vacation to NYC mid-August. We chose NYC instead of our usual Mexico trip because it will be cheaper and we won't be able to get to NYC between Christmas and New Year's (another tradition). So, we've been picking out a lot of things we'd like to do that we don't have time for when we only go for two days. I also looked up the addresses for the Baby Depot and Babies 'R Us (they'll be so much bigger in New York!!). Dave had to have one surprise for me. I knew it was to go see a show (I've always wanted to see a Broadway show), but didn't know what it was. For our anniversary, he filled me in.....we're going to see Grease on Broadway!!!!! That's the one show I really, really, really wanted to see. I can't wait. It's funny because I think my scrapbook has been full even more this year than in the past. Ally will have so many adventures from before she was even born! Talk to you later!

New Pic

Nothing new to tell but I am posting a new picture of Megan at 21 weeks. This was just taken a
few minutes ago. C-ya

Anniversary

Ok, I want to take this space to tell my wife, Megan, how much I love her and how thankful I am to God for allowing me to be married to her for 3 years now. Today is our anniversary and it just keeps getting sweeter and sweeter as time goes by. Thank you Megan for being the best wife ever and for loving me unconditionally for the past 3+ years. I love you soooooooooo much and am so happy to be spending my life on this earth with you. Sorry to change the subject but we had our second ultrasound on Monday. Dawn (the ultrasound woman) said everything looks very good and Ally is still moving around a lot in there. She likes to stretch out her legs when we are looking at her. I think she is doing exercises so she's ready to play on my softball team when she's old enough. By the way, we have been getting NO comments so get back to commenting and we will update again soon. Take care

Home Run Derby and Parade pics

Cardboard Testimonies

Our pastor posted this on his blog and I thought it was really cool.

Home Run Derby

WOW!!!! What an awesome time we had at the Home Run Derby. If any of you watched it on tv, you know we saw a record broken. It was soooo cool to see so many great players, young and old, all together warming up in one place. I wish a Yankee (Giambi or A-Rod) had participated in the Derby but it was still fun even though there wasn't a Yankee in it. Watching Josh Hamilton smash home run after home run way out in the bleachers and upper deck was so awesome and the crowd went nuts chanting his name and the whole place felt like it was shaking. It was definitely the perfect event to close out the last year at Yankee Stadium. On Tuesday, we went back into the city and watched the Red Carpet Parade down 6th Ave. We were able to get a front row standing spot so everyone went within a few feet of us. We saw most of the All Stars plus Hall of Fame greats such as Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Reggie Jackson, Joe Morgan, Ozzie Smith, Rollie Fingers, Cal Ripken, Mike Schmidt, and the list goes on and on. I got pictures of most all of them except the Red Sox players because I refused to take pictures of them. I may put a slide show on here or maybe a link to one somewhere else. Anyway, we had such a great time and thank the Lord for allowing us to be able to go and experience it.

King's Fest

Hey everyone! Well, we just got back from King's Fest in Virginia. It was great as always. Well, kind of lonely for me as I sat watching and envying everybody on the roller coasters, but the concerts were fun. I had to keep telling myself that we are going to try to go back to Cedar Point next year to get me through the times I missed out on coasters. For those of you that don't know us to well, ever since we have been married, it has been tradition for us to go to King's Fest. We leave for Paramount's King's Dominion on Wednesday, set up our campsite, and then enjoy 3 days at the amusement park and the evenings are spent with concerts. It's a great value really considering we pay less than what you would pay to get into an amusement park for 2 days, we get 3 days and concerts. We saw Barlow Girl, Casting Crowns, Stellar Kart, Hawk Nelson, David Crowder Band, TobyMac, Kutless, and Newsboys. Many of these bands we have seen at least 2 or 3 times already, but they are so much fun to watch, that we still love it. David Crowder and TobyMac I think are the best to watch. There were several other bands, but we pick and choose who we want to see and ride the rides during the shows we don't really care for. Anyway, it was good that we were able to have friends (Rob and Kate) go with us because otherwise, poor Dave would have had to stand in lines by himself to ride anything. The camping part was really good. I didn't have any problems, in fact, I was a little chilly at night. The only problem was walking around the park. By the end of the night, my back was usually killing me so much that I was walking really pokey (and if you know me, I'm usually dragging people along and walking fast). By Saturday night, Dave had to carry me piggy-back across part of the parking lot to the shuttle because my back hurt so bad. But, after sleeping last night and just a day of travel today, my back is much better. So now, I'm doing laundry to get ready to go to the Home Run Derby tomorrow. I can't wait!!!! So, to change the subject, we are going back to get another ultrasound next week. They need better pictures of the umbilical cord. It didn't sound like anything to be concerned about, they just didn't get good pictures, so I'm excited to get to see Ally again. :) We'll update later this week after NYC!!!! P.S. For some reason, the slide show only shows the captions if you scroll the mouse over the picture.

Trip

Hey everyone, we are leaving today for King's Fest so that means there won't be any posts on here for a few days. We have a dr's appt. this morning before we leave so we will update you on how that goes when we get back. I may take the computer just in case but I don't think there will be anywhere to use it where we are going. So off we go to ride a bunch of rides, well I will, Megan can't (sorry honey), camp and eat good food, and watch and listen to a lot of great Christian music. Talk to you all in a few days.

Don't Know

I hate having to put something in the title. I don't ever know what to put, that's why I put don't know this time because I don't. Anyway, I am posting a picture of the pregnant girl at the beach. Technically the first time the baby made it to the beach!!! Ok, also some news. The name of the baby will be Ally for now until we reveal the real name when she is born. Ally is not her name but the name we chose to call her for now. So we would appreciate her being called Ally and not Gertrude or any of the other names we have heard. Lol

More News!

Well, Dave got to post the exciting news about our ultrasound because I had posted it on our facebook. It was only fair that he got to post it here. Again, he's beating me at posts though so I thought I'd post today and hopefully he doesn't get too upset that I'm sharing his exciting news. I've been feeling the baby for several weeks now, but most of the time it was just a little here and there so I knew until I told Dave, he wouldn't get to me in time to feel it. She definitely has Dave's energy and can't stay still...she's moving all the time. :) So, today, we were both working around the house and I just sat down to rest after doing some cleaning when she started moving all around. I called to Dave who was working in another room and he came out. Of course since she kept moving it took a few minutes of me making him move his hands all around and all the sudden he looked up with a big grin on his face and said something like "That's cool!" He was able to feel her moving!! The bad news is that the ultrasound tech changed my due date. She said I am only 16 weeks and moved our due date back more than a week to December 17th. Some ladies from our church told me they do that all the time and that it might even get moved back and forth, so that helped me feel better, but oh well. On another note, we hope everyone has a happy 4th tomorrow! So many exciting things happening with the baby and then next week is King's Fest followed by the Home Run Derby/NYC. I can't wait!

We are having.......

Hello, we had our ultrasound yesterday morning and all went very well. Our baby is very active in there and moving all around. The woman performing the ultrasound was very helpful and didn't seem to mind answering all my dumb questions. I know it seems hard to believe that I would ask dumb questions but trust me, I was loaded with them. LOL Anyway, we were in there a lot longer than I expected to be and the ultrasound was very thorough. After a lot of pictures were taken and a lot of pressing on Megan's tummy, the dr said we were having a GIRL!!!!! I asked if she based that on not seeing anything or if she was able to know and she said she knows it's a girl and pointed out the girl parts. Of course we know it could end up being wrong but we trust the woman and could tell she is very knowledged at what she does. Sooo, I know you are wondering if I am disappointed at having a girl. Not at all!!!! I know I can still play sports with a daughter and there are plenty of cute Yankees outfits to keep her supporting our team. I am, however, not looking forward to that first guy who asks her on a date. (Hmmm, maybe I can keep that from happening) lol Megan was very happy to be able to find out the sex and is excited to start planning ahead now that she knows. I am posting 1 ultrasound picture but we have a few more for anyone who would like to see them.

Talk to you again soon.