Fabulous Shower

Sunday was a day that we were showered with love by friends and family to get ready for Fulton's arrival. Look at these precious decorations and amazing table that they did. Mom made that door hanger with little buddy's name on it (She is very talented) and her and sister worked so hard on this cute diaper cake. I don't want to take it apart it's so stinkin cute, although I know his little bum will need those diapers very soon. Those cupcakes were delish!

Here are the sweet ladies that helped host this come and go baby shower for me. They are all such precious people in our lives and we were so blessed by all they did to make this a special day for us.

Me, Mom, and sister...nothing like putting big bertha in the middle of these 2 beautiful ladies!

For the record, I absolutely LOVE monogrammed stuff.. so much that I think I want to monogram Fulton's underwear one day. He got so much cute monogrammed stuff I just had to pinch myself (sister has been stockpiling this stuff for months). Mom also made him an adorable smocked bubble that he is going to look so handsome in!!

And Aunt Keri got him his first backpack.. I love it!! I am thinking about getting Matt a matching one for school.

I don't think I have shown what our bedding looks like, but my mom got it for us and made a quilt to match it... seriously, it is beautiful!! She bought extra fabric of the bedding and had been working on this secret project for a while. She also did some curtains. His room is finally starting to look like a real room.

Me and sister with the Monroe girls. Our families have been friends since before we were born... we love them!

And here are some other random shots of sweet people who came to celebrate the day. We are beyond blessed.. literally, I sat and looked at all this wonderful stuff that people have given us and I am just in awe. We don't deserve it, but we are so grateful for all these precious friends and family who are helping us get ready for this little fella to enter the world!!

30 Weeks!

It's finally here... we are on the home stretch and I am 30 weeks pregnant! Woohoo!! I haven't done one of these ole preggo posts, but since I know you are on the edge of your seat dying to know the details, I will share some fun facts with you.
How far along? 30 weeks

Size of baby? This week they say he is about 3 pounds and if you are into comparing that to vegetables, he is the size of a head of cabbage.

Maternity clothes? It varies day to day... I still wear a lot of regular shirts, but most shorts are maternity. I am still looking for that perfect maternity blue jean jumper with the school house on it for the first day of school.

Gender? It's a boy! Fulton Maddox

Movement? This little booger moves all the time. He likes to do karate chops in the middle of the night too.

Sleep? Oh sleep... it's a love/hate relationship. Lately, I have been getting up at 3 am and then sometimes I will go back to sleep about 6. This is going to be a problem when school starts back. Maybe I can get my 8th graders to start having nap time. We are up to 7 --hear that--7 pillows in the bed now. Matt says if I add anymore, he will have to sleep on the couch.

What I miss? Hmmm... what do I miss... not really anything too life altering that I miss. Probably just being able to sleep through the night without going to the potty every couple of hours like a five year old.

Cravings? Since the beginning I have loved fruit and dill pickle chips. I have been laying off the chips more lately due to the fact that I almost have a mini heart attack every time I get on that stinkin scale at the dr's office. You know what else I love?? a good strawberry slushi.

Symptoms? The ole back has been aching a little more lately... and I am super clumsy. Is this even a symptom? I don't know, but I drop things all the time. Good thing I am not trying to win us a championship on the balance beam.

What I am looking forward to? I have some showers coming up that are going to be so fun and I am really excited about. Also, this comfy, excruciatingly expensive, chair we bought for the nursery should be coming in soon. I will sit in that everyday so we get our money's worth.

Chicago

The Windy City! That is where we headed last week for our anniversary. It was an adventurous trip with lots to do in a few short days. Let me give you the quick and condensed version of our days in the big city. We arrived the first day and our plane landed at 8:30 am, so we had the whole day to play. We were set to see a show, Peter Pan, after lunch so we had a few hours to explore and figure out this whole city bus transportation stuff. Yikes... we got on our first bus and missed the stop so we kept riding it thinking it would turn around eventually.... not the case. This sweet man finally asked us if we needed help and told us to get off and walk across the street and wait for the bus coming the other way. Thankfully we had plenty of time because we got a nice tour of parts of the city that we probably shouldn't have been in. The show was great and afterwards we went to eat at Ed Debevicks... where they are extremely rude to you.. on purpose. It's quite the atmosphere!

The next day we were up bright and early and there you see me at that lovely bus stop again.. we were determined to get it right this time. We headed to Navy Pier and I guess you could call it somewhat of a big carnival on Lake Michigan. We took an architectural river boat cruise through the city and saw lots of amazing buildings that we probably wouldn't have seen otherwise. I will spare you the 75 pictures sweet boy took of all the buildings we passed, he loves some history. Matt even had a good conversation with some man in the park too.

We spent a little more time exploring Navy Pier, ate at Harry Carey's for lunch and then went to the beach. There was a beach on Lake Michigan about 2 blocks from our hotel. Matt put his feet in, said it was freezing, I sat on a stump instead. We had to hit up the Hershey store because they were giving away free samples (went back the next day too). I think I got a cavity just walking in that place.

That night it was time for the event Matt had been waiting for. He really wanted to go to a Cubs game, but they weren't in town, so we went to the White Sox game instead. See the bottom left picture of Matt glaring at me... it's because I was totally freaking out about riding this subway thing. Once we got on I swore that thing was going to fly off the tracks and we would die underground. Thankfully we made it. The Sox lost.. but it was a fun game. We even had some delicious hotdogs and nachos, dinner of champions right there.

The next day it was up and at 'em again (Matt kept me on a tight schedule) and we headed for the Shedd Aquarium. This was an enormous aquarium with lots of little creatures, big and small. Matt was so into it, as you can tell. I enjoyed it too... in between sitting on the benches and eating my poptarts. The view was beautiful outside the aquarium. In the right picture of the both of us, I know it looks like I have a twin in the water, but no worries.. it's just the whale swimming around.

After the aquarium we headed for some deep dish original Chicago pizza... this stuff is different, but good. We did a lot of yummy eating while we were there and decided to finish our last night with a fabulous meal at the Weber Grill Restaurant... and Weber Grill as in the thing you cook on in your backyard. Sometimes it takes me a minute to connect the dots... and when I finally saw the large grill on the side of the building I understood. We had a wonderful trip for our anniversary and Matt is already planning the next one so we can do everything we didn't get to do.

7 Years!

Today is our 7th wedding anniversary! Here's a sweet picture from back in the day when we were a lot younger (and thinner). What an amazing man God has blessed me with. He sure puts up a lot from me (and it's been taken up a notch lately with my precious mood swings). Matt is such a godly man with a servant's heart. I love this about him. He sees a need and he meets it. Matt has such a selfless heart and always challenges me to exemplify the fruits of the spirit on a daily basis. Here we are 7 years later with a little bun in the oven, about to start a new chapter in our lives. We are so undeserving of this blessing of each other and now a new life coming to our family. Thank you Lord for this marriage and the blessing of another day of life with each other!

The Fourth!

We spent a long weekend at the lake for the Fourth of July and it was fabulous! We had great weather, good company, and lots of delicious food! Saturday we stayed in the water literally almost all day because it was so hot. We got out late in the day to relax on the pier for a bit since we were all shriveled up.

Sister and me after a nice day in the sun.

Dad took us on a little sunset cruise and the weather was great. I am not supposed to ride in the fast boat because of the roughness, so we had to wait until late in the day when the waters were calm.

How pretty is this?!

Sunday and Monday we played again and Matt even entertained us with some jumps. This is his newest jump, his toe touch.

A little mini storm came up later that night and we were forced to get off the water, or dodge the lightning. I chose to go on up for the day. But the after storm sunset made for some good pics!

Our papa even came to see us... what a treat! And he was in a good mood... even better!

Since it was the fourth of July and all, I felt it was necessary for everyone to sing some patriotic songs and fly the flag for a bit. We had such a great weekend with family and friends!

Festivities

Last week was the big birthday... last one in the 20's to be exact. I sort of like to stretch these birthday things out for several days.. and that's just what I did this year. Early in the week I met some of my dear sweet teacher friends for lunch and a little mini celebration. I love these girls (and others who couldn't be there) and I am so blessed to have these believing women to work close with every day.

The next day Matt surprised me with a little early birthday dinner. This guy is like Chef Boyardee extreme. He is such a fabulous cook and I am so thankful for that because I am a stinky cook. And guess what else.. he loves to cook... even better huh?! He even put candles on the table. He is awesome!

The next day I woke up to this! He decorated the house and even made birthday signs out of construction paper. He was so proud of himself... let me tell you what else he was proud of. The fact that he used color coordinating tissue paper to match the gift bags. I love it!! I scored some good prizes!

Complete with a hand made card and all!! On another not so birthday related note, I am looking a little green in this picture... I had to get up early and go to the doctor that morning to take my glucose test.. hooray I passed and dove into the cake afterwards! Then it was off to dinner with the fam and that was quite the experience. I should just stick to the same ole normal places we eat, but we tried to venture out and it was on the verge of a disaster and when it was all said and done our whole meal, all 6 of us, was free.

And one more fabulous birthday celebration with the fam at the lake this weekend. They all stayed up and decorated again (they know how much I love this birthday thing) and even had a cake for me... and if you look real close you can see that there is an extra letter added to my name. Two e's in Kristen... we will give the credit to my mema for that one :) gotta love her! It was still delicious though.

Fathers And A Treasure Hunt

We spent some time with the fam after church yesterday celebrating Father's Day! We had a fabulous lunch at Beef O' Bradys.
Sister and I with pops. We made him take lots of pictures and thoroughly embarrassed him.

We made the boys sit with mom and keep her straight. Mom and Dad were a little pooped from their all night partying the night before at Mom's class reunion. They are such party animals.

Dad got some good stuff, new shirts, shorts, some tools, and an air compressor. Oh and a lunch spent with his favorite people... us. Happy Father's Day to a wonderful dad who is always giving of himself to others.

And there was a Dad-To-Be in the group... the hubs!! Sister never disappoints to recognize us as "almost parents." Matt is going to be such an awesome dad to little Fulton... I just can't wait!!

Later that afternoon in between lunch and a cupcake baking experiment with sister, which turned a little out of control with the icing, we met up with Drew and Whitney for some geocaching. Have you heard of this? I hadn't until our friends told us about it this weekend. In Whitney's words-- "It's a real live treasure hunt." Here's Matt and Drew doing a little map searching for clues for our first treasure.

Whitney found the first one. We were actually in an old cemetery, slightly creepy, but the treasure was found in that bush behind her. So you open it, you can take something or leave something in it, and you sign the log with the others saying you found it... and on to the next one. It's sort of addicting trying to find these things.

Here's the little hunters looking for one near Lover's Leap in Bluff Park.... this was a hard one. They rate these things by difficulty and the guys trekked all the way down this mountain, while Whitney and I sat on the rock on top, but they never found this one.

Good opportunity for a quick photo opp while we were there though.

All in all I think we found like 4 yesterday. We searched for one for like 30 minutes, after Drew and Whitney had looked for a long time the day before, and we finally found it. Please take that "we" lightly, we were at a park and honestly I sat on the bench most of the time. It was hot.. that was my excuse, that and the fact that I am carrying around a "little" extra weight these days!

Lake With Friends

Last weekend we had our sweet friends, the Nibletts, up to the lake for a day of fun. Cassidy was dying to ride the airhead tube and since there is a life growing inside of me this year I couldn't ride with her. Paige was a trooper and took one for the team and rode it. I was afraid we may not be friends when they came back, but I think they had fun.

And then we got the rest of the fam on too.

Matt and Amy Jordan came up for the day too and it was so hot all you could do was just stay in the water most of the day.

After lunch we had a little surprise birthday cake for the birthday boy. He loved it!

Matt showed Cassidy how to jump off the railing and she was so scared to do it at first and then we couldn't get her to stop. She is an adventurous little booger.

Sweet Tad and Paige, aren't they cute?!

And we went for a little boat ride too.

I can't really do the fast boat this year, unless it's really calm waters, so it's senior citizen pontoon rides for me all summer. It was a fun day with friends and family. And speaking of family, mom and dad were there, I just didn't seem to get a picture of them.

Matt's Big Day

Today was a big day for Matt.. the big birthday!! It's also Flag Day, so hopefully you said the pledge or sang the Star Spangled Banner a few times.

Matt had practice as usual this morning, but we had a little mini celebration when he got home and Chef Kristen actually made breakfast for him.

Matt is very good and will usually tell you exactly what he might want for his birthday and one of those things was another Columbia shirt.. so I found this AL one and he was pumped. He has already started counting down to the start of football season.

Here's the birthday boy admiring his new shoes. He desperately needed a new pair of these.. his stunk.. bad! The old ones are going in the trash. From here we went to the movies.. Matt's request. He LOVES going to the movies... me, not so much. It's because I can't stay awake. But he got me a big bag of popcorn and that kept my attention for a while.

Tonight we went to dinner with the fam. Matt had picked that he wanted to go to The Cajun Steamer and we got there and it was packed.. so we went to his second choice, J Alexanders. It was delish!

Poor dad was running on fumes after sitting with Grandma in the ER all night.. he was a trooper to still come. Thanks for dinner mom and dad!

And thankfully the birthday boy let me take a quick photo with him.

Sister and Steven got Matt these exact flip flops that he wanted and another special prize. Not pictured here is the fabulous bottle of spray sunscreen to go with them. Matt loves spray sunscreen and boy that fella can go through some bottles of that stuff.. so I think I will stock up now and give him some as stocking stuffers.

And he opened his gift from mom and dad in the parking lot... a reciprocating saw. Whatever that does. He was excited and now says his saw collection is complete. Thanks to the fam for celebrating with us! Fun day spent with the man I am in love with. Happy Birthday Matt!