Jen’s 28th Birthday!

It was a great birthday weekend, full of extreme relaxation and fun surprises.

It all started last Friday night (a week before her birthday) when Greg surprised Jen with one of the first of her birthday presents. Total surprise. He loves to do that kind of thing. =) This past Friday night, when he called to say he was on his way home, he had another surprise up his sleeve. He said, “start packing – we’re going away for the whole weekend!” So we packed up our stuff and headed up to Denver – one of our favorite places to get away. First stop, dinner at Landry’s. He had researched seafood places in Denver (since Jen has been craving seafood lately) and decided on Landry’s since it had the best ratings, and also because we had been wanting to go there for a long time now. Amazing food. Definitely will go back. After that, we headed to our room, where we had fun staying huddled in our room and shutting out the rest of the world for the next 2 days...... well...... sort of. Greg had yet another surprise up his sleeve for Saturday night. The only thing he would tell Jen is that “we had to be somewhere at 5:00 for dinner.” So, on Saturday, when we got to the restaurant, he had arranged for our friends David and Ali to surprise Jen and have dinner and celebrate with us! It was SO much fun. =) Sunday (yesterday) it was such a bummer to have to go home. However, we made a couple of stops on the way home that made it quite exciting! Jen got some new “fat clothes” (as she likes to call it) from Gap Maternity, and Noah got a HUGE sack-full of clothes from The Children’s Place outlet store in Castle Rock. We hit the mother lode for him that day with all the good sales they were having! We hope that store stays open for a very long time as we plan to hit it up quite a bit! Next week we’ll celebrate the rest of Jen’s birthday with her family. Since Greg hogged her all weekend, they want their turn too. =)

We’re now past the 30 week point! 7.5 months along and both Jen and Noah are getting bigger all the time! Here is the latest belly picture.

A Baby-centered Weekend

It’s been a great, but very busy weekend! Skipping over Friday (since we didn’t do anything for the baby) and moving on to Saturday, we spent a nice/lazy/relaxing morning and early afternoon at home. Later that afternoon, we had an early dinner with Mom and Dad Fulkerson, and after that, they took us to buy the glider rocker we’d been eyeing for the nursery! It was definitely SO exciting and we can’t wait to put it together and start using it. So now, with BIG thanks to both of our parents, we have our two major nursery pieces purchased – our crib and our rocker! Did we mention how exciting this is!?!? Now all’s we need is a baby shower to put the finishing touches on everything, and then a baby. =)

All day today, we had our childbirth prep (a.k.a. Lamaze) class. It was quite the information packed class with a lot of visuals and hands-on activities. As we looked around the room (we were one of 8 couples), we noticed that Jen was the smallest pregnant person in there by far, and there were even people in there that had about the same due date as her and they were ginormous! We kept thinking that people were probably looking at us and wondering, “why are THEY here? She’s probably not due for another 6 months or so!” But at the same time, she also prided herself in the fact that she was the only one who didn’t have to get up and use the bathroom like 10 times an hour. Yes, she has a bladder the size of an elephant, and being pregnant has not changed that either...... yet. ;) Let’s hope it doesn’t. Greg did a great job learning how to be Jen’s coach, and he learned a lot about how to help Jen get through the first stages of labor with relative ease. We did however, get insane giggles at one point during the class and almost had to excuse ourselves. Yes, we were taking things seriously, but how come the giggles always have to come at the most inappropriate of times? Anyhow, it was a great day, and it made us both nervous for delivery day AND more prepared and excited.

Noah is quite the active little guy...... actually, he always has been. Lately, he moves and moves and moves and moves and moves. We wonder if he ever sleeps! They say that babies are developing sleep patterns at this stage in pregnancy, so we’ve been trying to be quiet and calm at certain times, and loud and playful at times, hoping with all hope that that will help him make a pattern and stick to it – we just hope that he doesn’t come out thinking that it’s acceptable to continue to “play” at 3 am! ;) Actually, night time “play time” has become one of our favorite nightly rituals. We like to go to bed early, have Jen lay on her back, and watch him move all around in her belly and make it morph into different shapes. Quite often, we can figure out just where his little head is. =) We also hear that he is learning (and can recognize) our voices at this stage in pregnancy too. So Greg talks to him whenever he can since he hears Jen’s voice all day long.

That’s about it for now. Another belly picture to come soon!

Rocktober

Remember how we were hoping that life would slow down once we got done vacationing and everything? Well, it only seems to have gotten busier and busier. Usually around the holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas), our calendars are chock-full of events and things to do almost every night - but seriously? September and October too?

Here’s just a little bit of what’s been going on:

(By Jen) – My friend Ali made (and sent out) THE cutest baby shower invitations for my shower last week for all my non-affiliated church friends/family. She is so awesomely creative! I hope someday I can be as creative as her when it comes time for HER baby shower. I was going to take pictures of the invites and post them, but she already beat me to it and blogged and posted pictures on her site - and again, she is much better at picture taking than me, so click here to visit the post on her blog and see pictures! I KNOW you will love them! ----- Bunco is back in full swing again. We took a break over the summer, but we commenced to start again last month. It’s a lot of fun and I enjoy my night out with the girls SO much!

(By Greg) - Let the studying begin! I got my CFA books in the mail the last week of September and I have created a schedule to get through the 3100+ pages of reading by December 31st! Halfway through October, I am still on track. It’s nice when days are slow at work, because I can read on the job, which allows me more time to hang out with Jen during the evenings and stay caught up on my reading! ----- As some of you may know, the Rockies made it to the post-season again (Rocktober!) this year! My friend and I got tickets to Game 3 and we were extremely excited! The game was supposed to be on Saturday night, but it was freezing, there was drizzling rain, there was still snow on the ground, and the temperature was in the teens; therefore, they postponed the game until Sunday night at 8:00 PM MST! First pitch temperature was 31 degrees (the 2nd coldest game in Coors Field History) and we’re certain it was in the high-teens by the end of the game. The game didn’t get over until 12:15 AM, which means I didn’t get home and in bed until 1:45 AM! It was an awesome experience, and although it was freezing, I’d do it again in a heartbeat! Also, I got one of those cool looking “Rocktober” towels that you see the fans waving around during the games! =)

It was fun this past week...... we got to go with Brian and Becca to look at a potential first house for them! It’s the cutest little house and it’s even kinda close to us too! It brought back some fun memories of when we went and built our first house. =) ----- We went to a wedding this past weekend. A friend of Brian’s (who has become our friend too) got married on one of the nastiest days we’ve had this fall. It was a beautiful wedding though and we had a lot of fun. The weather didn’t seem to bother anyone. ----- Coming up next week, we have our first “Childbirth prep,” (a.k.a. “Lamaze class”) to attend. We’ve been told it’s both worth our time and not worth our time. But knowing how we like to be prepared for everything, we’re going. ;) Should be interesting! ----- In our spare time we keep buying things here and there for Noah. Some necessities, some fun things. His room is full of all kinds of fun stuff! This is all just too exciting!

SOLD!

Yay! We finally sold the Trailblazer! This was something we’ve been wanting to do since last summer, but for some reason never got around to doing it. So this summer, back in July, we posted an ad on Auto Trader and hadn’t had one single call on it...... until the week before last. It’s not like we were in any huge hurry to get it sold, but once you know you are ready for a new car and start looking at new ones to replace it, you kinda get excited and just want to get it off your hands, ya know? So we said our goodbyes last Tuesday morning – we are officially now back to being a 2-car family again. We don’t plan to get our next vehicle until spring/summer of 2010 because with winter raring its ugly head at us, we’d rather buy a car AFTER all the snow and ice has melted off the roads. ;)

It was a great car and we LOVED having it, but we’re sure we’ll love our NEW car even better! Gotta love that new car smell. =)

Now...... off to do our research on some of the vehicles we already have picked out...... can’t wait to reveal our final choice!!!!!

Name That Baby!

Well.... we have to admit, this was one of THE most difficult things we have ever had to do in our life. We really thought that since we had officially picked out a girl's name, that that was kinda a sign that that's what we were having. Plus, there were really NO boy names out there that we even remotely liked at all. We even said to ourselves, "well, if it turns out to be a boy, we'll just have to get ready for one of the biggest challenges ever!" Challenge extended - challenge accepted - challenge overcome. After having read many books, looked on many websites, consulting with friends and family, and staying awake many hours and agonizing over what to call our son, we finally came up with a name that we both love.

Meet Noah Alexander!

We chose this name for many reasons. The meaning of the name doesn’t really mean anything significant to us, but we figured that he DID need a short first name since his last name was so long. We also figured that he needed a "normal" first name since his last name isn't something you commonly hear every day. The only name we kept running back to was Noah - we had dreams about him being called that, jokingly called him that while picking out names, and even prayed for clear guidance for a name. Noah it is! We chose the middle name because that's Jen's Grandpa's middle name. We desperately wanted any name we picked out (for boy or girl, first or middle name) to have someone from the family's name in it. So after writing down both sides of the family (and definitely vetoing a few), Alexander seemed to be a perfect fit and flowed the best. Hopefully he will make his great-grandpa very proud! So...... in the future, when/if we get pregnant again, we hope it’s a girl only because we already have the name picked out and we won’t have to go through all this again. If not...... we get to go through this all over again! ;)

What a wonderful gift we have been given! We feel so blessed and really are in awe with the plan God has for our life together and the life of our son. Our lives have truly been enriched and blessed beyond measure lately, and we just can't put in to words all the emotion and excitement we are going through.

6.5 months along! Getting a little bit bigger now!

Random Pictures

So it snowed yesterday AND today here in Colorado, and yesterday wasn’t even Fall yet!!!! We sure weren’t very excited about it, but we know there are quite a few of you crazy people out there who “just absolutely love it!”

We haven’t really had anything TOO exciting to blog about lately, so we’ll just show you some of the random pictures we’ve taken within the month or so.

Referring back to our old post here about how badly our last name can be butchered, here is another example..... Greg’s birthday cake. This was written on the side of the box. Ha ha! NOW, can we change our last name to something else?


Jen bought these for Casey and Kobe because they were just TOO cute to pass up. She figures if humans can eat animal crackers, animals can eat people crackers! =)

What do you think of Greg’s new look?

Here friends, is what we like to call “The Ugliest Car in the World.” People ought to be ashamed to be seen in one of these. =) Can we get an amen?

Just can’t get enough of each other..... =)

Which of us is pregnant? Definitely more of these types of pics to come...... =)

Here we’re at Biaggi’s “rehearsal luncheon-ing.” So cute. =) All 3 of us. =)

Our Babymoon in California

We’re sure most of you already know what a babymoon is, but for those of you who don’t, here is the gist of it: it’s a pre-baby vacation for expecting parents – for the couple to have one last hurrah. Even though this technically won’t be our last vacation (seeing as how we’ve already planned a couple of vacations for next year), we still enjoyed every minute together without worrying/wondering one last time about what was happening back at home with the baby.

Without boring you with all the little details, here is a very quick rundown of our vacation. We had such a blast and didn’t want to come home. In fact, we even lightly approached the subject of finding jobs in the L.A. area! But we digress..... we flew in late last Friday afternoon. By the time we got there, we didn’t have time to do much except get our rental car, eat a bite of dinner, play a quick game, and head to bed. Saturday, we got up early, decided to skip having a posh breakfast in Beverly Hills so we could quickly get on the Pacific Coast Highway in our convertible to see as many of the sights as we could. We drove way up past Malibu, but wound up coming back and spending most of our time in Malibu. We had lunch at the famous Paradise Cove Café, and later that night, had dinner at our favorite (and also famous) In-N-Out! =) Sunday morning, we headed out to an orchard and went raspberry and apple picking. We picked so many raspberries that Grandpa made us some homemade jam to take home. It was divine! We also had some mini apple cider donuts that they make fresh right there. We felt like we were in heaven! After all that hard work, we picnicked later that afternoon out at a different orchard. We were having a grand old time until fire trucks started racing by, and as we looked up, we realized another fire was starting just over the hill from where we were. As we were packing up, it was getting bigger, and as we left the parking lot, ash rained down on the car. Obviously we made it out in time. ;) Monday was our day at Disneyland. We had THE best time at “the happiest place on earth” even though that day was a record high in the heat wave that they were having. We felt very blessed because it was apparently a slow day for Disney, so we got on pretty much every ride right away. We got there as the park opened and stayed for the fireworks show at the end of the night. Such a fun and magical day. Tuesday we spent the day in San Diego. We had never been there before, so we thought it would be fun to tour the city and see what it was all about. We definitely could see ourselves going back there again someday. Wednesday was our last day there. We slept in and then raced to Seal Beach for a couple of hours so we could one last time feel the sand between our toes and to see/hear/smell the ocean. It was definitely no fun to have to go home. =( As we like to say, “If you’re lucky enough to be at the beach, you’re lucky enough!”

Here are a few pics from our vaca. We won’t bore you with all 200+ of them!








As a fun side note..... we went on our first double date with Brian and Becca as married couples to a Sky Sox game (and dessert afterwards) the Wednesday before we left for California! It was an awful lot of fun in general, but what made it even MORE fun was that Greg got picked to go out onto the field in between innings and participate in those cheesy games they played - he had to catch water balloons in a bucket strapped to his head. LOL. He beat the person he was competing against, so he won our whole section free food. Needless to say, he ended up being everyone’s best friend that night! =)

Right now, we find ourselves in Estes Park Colorado, enjoying this 3-day weekend in a cozy cabin along the river. Beach last weekend, mountains this weekend. We live such a fun life, don’t you think? =)

And last but not least..... here is the latest picture of Jen at 22 weeks. Getting a little bigger each month! =) Almost 6 months along now – can you believe it?