OB Update!

Well this morning I had my OB 1 Hour Glucose Test... its one of those things I just do not like doing.. lab work in general is kind of on the no fun list, but the Glucose Test takes a close first! To get the best results, you should really have the test done first thing in the morning so I made Hourly Care reservations for P and Henry and dropped them off right at 8 o'clock and b lined it to the Lab. Once I got checked in and was seen, I had five minutes to drink the "drink" and even the third time around it still tastes the same, like flat orange soda. But it wasn't horrible, just not tasty and thankfully, it has never made me sick. The worse part of the whole test is the hour waiting to get your blood work done.. luckily, I remembered my Kindle before I headed out the door this morning and I had it to read. Otherwise, it would have been very boring.. I can't even browse on my iPhone because I have no service period inside the lab area, ugh :/ At 930, my hour was up and I went back into the room and had all the necessary tubes of blood drawn. It has never bothered me or hurt to have blood work done.. thankfully I have good veins and they never have issues with getting blood from me! Now I just wait for the results... and hopefully no news is good news; and my doctor wont call because I passed the 1 Hour and therefore do not have to take the 3 Hour (I had to take it while pregnant with Henry and it is pure torture!). I'm crossing my fingers anyways :) I also need to go back to the Lab later this week to have my Rhogam shot administered. Every pregnancy I've had to do this since my blood type is O- and of course my babies are born blood type positive so then I have to get another shot after birth. Unfortunately the Lab only does those shots during the hours of 1 to 3 so I will have to make a return visit for that. Oh the joys of pregnancy!! :)

Pregnancy Ramblings

Seems like the mommy brain and pregnancy brain have packed quite a combo lately. I have millions of different thoughts running in my head and yet I still can't remember for the umpteenth time what I walked upstairs for! HA :) The life of a pregnant mama with two kiddos already! I thought I'd share some of my random thoughts floating through my mind:

• Sunday marks my 28th week of pregnancy and thus the beloved 3rd trimester! Back are the days of complete exhaustion and constant hunger... and on scarier note, this is it.. its all down hill from now.. the countdown is on!
• I have recently noticed that I have spider veins (at least that's what they look like to me) around the corner of my eyes... just lovely! Nothing adds to my look of I'm pregnant more than some skin discoloration.
• I've been really fascinated with Moms on Call lately... not only is a book with web seminars but its basically a way of life and its getting a lot of positive feedback and results. I follow several blogs where they have tried this and had success.. like 3 week old twins basically only waking once during the night for a feeding... I can totally dig that!!! I am seriously considering ordering the book soon and see what its all about. Its a lot of scheduling which doesn't bother me because I'm already OCD enough and with 2 kids plus a newborn we will HAVE to have order!
• I am still amazed how similar baby no. 3's ultrasound picture looks so similar to Henry's. They both have the big, round heads going on and I can't wait to see what Francis Scott looks like.. I always joke with Brandon that he will come out completely different than the other two... dark hair and dark eyes... but we shall see :)
• There has been a lot of noise in the house lately... Murray (the dog) seems to bark at everything and anything lately.. not to mention the noise the kids make playing and I make getting onto them about doing something they know they shouldn't be doing. But maybe all this excess noise is preparing Scott for what life we will really be like once he is out of the womb and he wont be phased by any of it (a mom can hope, right)!
• He is active little bugger already! The bigger I get and the more room he has, the more I feel him! He loves to kick and do flips (or so it feels like) and his favorite position seems to be resting his feet in my rib cage.
• Boy does time really fly!! I can't believe this pregnancy is already 2/3 of the way over with! We are down to 10 weeks (plus or minus) and I know once the Holidays kick in, time will just keep trucking by!
• Even though this is our third time around, I am still in complete awe of having a baby and feel completely blessed!!! :)
• One final thought... sciatic nerve pain and charlie horses are no fun!! Enough said :/

Countdowns

Well in case you were wondering... its only 98 days till Christmas!!! That seems like such a big number but it also is not that far around the corner. How did this year go by so fast?!? All I can say is thankfully I have been more on the ball this year with preparations for Christmas.. some of that is because baby boy will be here before Christmas (just shy of seven days before Christmas if he arrives on his due date) and there is just no way I need to be fretting about last minute shopping with a newborn in the picture and also some of the reasoning is this Christmas Brandon is home and we want to enjoy/savor/take in all that this season is about and has to offer.

So if there's only 98 till Christmas, then that means we are less than 90 days away from meeting the littlest addition to our family!!! Less than 12 weeks to go!!! I can't believe this pregnancy is two-thirds over with :/ We are ready to meet the little guy (I think, ha!). I know these next three months are going to zoom by and my due date will keep getting closer and closer! I am very excited and anxious to reach the finish line with a healthy, baby boy as the prize :)

ARMY Update

Well after ten LONG days of Air Assault School and a 12 mile ruck march that began at 3 in the morning and had to be finished in under 3 hours, Brandon graduated and earned his badge!! We are SO proud of him and his hard work!!! I know he is glad to be done with that and so are his feet, ha!!! The kids and I were able to attend the graduation on Post this past Thursday; and we were happy to be there and support him!! HOOAH!!!

9/11

Now I lay me down to sleep...one less terrorist this world does keep...with all my heart I give my thanks...to those in uniform regardless of rank...you serve our country and serve it well...with humble hearts your stories tell...so as I rest my weary eyes...while freedom rings our flag still flies...you give your all, do what you must...with God we live and God we trust.

I copied this off a Facebook feed I follow called the Army Wife Network and it seemed so fitting for today, for that day, everyday in between and for the days to come. May we never forget!!! God bless our country... Home of the FREE because of the BRAVE.. and God bless our amazing troops who have served and continue to serve our great nation!!! May we also never forget them and their great and sometimes ultimate sacrifice!!!

There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America. ~William J. Clinton

I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him. ~Abraham Lincoln

Better than honor and glory, and History's iron pen, Was the thought of duty done and the love of his fellow-men. ~Richard Watson Gilder

Football Season

Well this weekend seemed to kick football season into high gear... the NFL season kicked off on Thursday night and South Carolina played its second game of the season against Georgia on Saturday. I personally love football season.. its my most favorite sport to watch and once the football games begin it seems fall is not too much farther around the corner! In our house, we are personally South Carolina Gamecock fans but we watch just about all the games that come on TV especially if they're in the SEC; and as for NFL, we typically root for the Carolina Panthers and I like the Colts but we watch all of them as well. The hubs really likes football season and watching the games and the kids have come to realize that if there is a game on, they can pretty much guarantee we will be watching it, ha! Its just a great activity and I do not mind spending afternoons or evenings watching the games with my husband. Its something we savor as well as for next fall when football season begins, Brandon will already have departed for his next tour of duty and the game wont be the same without him here :/ Sure I will still keep up with some of the games and know who is who among the teams especially college football, but watching the games wont be as much of a priority or on in our house as often.. that is until the next season! We enjoyed this past Saturday at our good friends the St Johns' who hosted a football party that afternoon... we had great food and enjoyed good company as well as got to watch some amazing football games!!! The SEC did itself proud this weekend and the Gamecocks had another victory beating Georgia 45 to 42. South Carolina was able to stay in the poll and move up to #11. Looking forward to next weekend... Gamecocks playing at home against Navy.. let's hope for a good game and another win!!!

With football season in mind, I have found some cute ideas from the site Pinterest and I thought I'd share them with y'all:

Source: eighteen25.blogspot.com via Meredith on Pinterest

Source: google.com via Meredith on Pinterest

Source: secfootball.onlysec.com via Meredith on Pinterest

Source: southernliving.com via Meredith on Pinterest

Why I Blog

Its been almost two years since I first started blogging and I can't believe how much it has turned into. I originally began to blog to keep our family updated as much as possible with our crazy military life. Back then we had just moved to our second duty station here at Fort Campbell and I was several months pregnant with Henry. It was a great line of communication and it still is... its hard to keep up with everyone and keep everyone personally in the loop so my blog helps provide a place where our family can read up on what's going on with us. It also become a great tool to even keep Brandon in the loop while he was deployed from Jan 2010 till Jan 2011.. although I tried my best in emails and phone conversations.. the blog provided a fairly good feed of information, stats on the kiddos as well as pictures. During the deployment, the blog allowed me to report on what was going on with Brandon to our family as well. Even for me as the author and writer of the blog, it has served a great purpose in my life. I have never been much of a diary or journal keeper but I feel this blog is serving a similar purpose in my adult mommy and wife life! I can easily look back and see what was going on... such as how big Henry was at his 2 month check up or what P had learned in school that month. My blog has become a great outlet as well for random thoughts in my head and I enjoy writing the posts. I hope our family and friends have enjoyed it as well.. its something I hope to keep up for years to come especially with baby boy on the way in a few months and another deployment lurking in our future. So stay tuned!! :)

Weekend Recap

AH... it was such a nice long weekend and it has been awhile since Brandon has had four days off in a row that wasn't because of vacation... and the boy definitely needed a break from Air Assault School! Thursday night we kicked off our long weekend right with dinner at a local Mexican place, super YUM :) And then we went and checked out the Halloween Express store that just opened... although its quite early to start decorating for Halloween/Fall, it was nice to get in the spirit and get some ideas.. even P enjoyed looking at all the costumes and deciding which one she wanted to be this year. Friday morning we spent it around the house and then ate lunch and let Henry nap before heading out to run some errands. We got a lot checked off our to do list that afternoon. Peighton got her hair trim at one of the salons in the Mall and we enjoyed a cookie break and walked around some more. Brandon found a new putter at Dick's Sporting Goods and was pleased it was on sale! Then we trucked it over to Toys R Us where I had to pick up a birthday present for our little friend Tyler. Then it was off to Petsmart to pick up some dog food for Murray.. I even found him a new toy to play with which he destroyed in about 2 hours that evening. Next stop was Lowe's.. we needed to pick up two new air filters for the return vents as well as a new filter for our refrigerator. Finally, our errands were over with and we went back to the house and had pizza for dinner. Saturday morning Brandon went out to the golf range for a couple of hours while the munchkins and I stayed around the house. Then it was lunch and college football time. Henry got a nap in before we headed over to our friends, the St Johns, for Tyler's 2nd birthday party. It was a fabulous party and the kids had a lot of fun! The food was yummy and despite it being over 10o degrees that afternoon it went well :) Sunday we woke up to rain and enjoyed a mostly quiet day around the house. We did venture out to Logan's for a yummy lunch and browsed around the bookstore. We made pizza biscuits for dinner... even Henry liked them! Monday was another rainy day around here and it was much cooler.. only in the low 60's... it felt divine... much more like fall is just around the corner! We made a trip up to Walmart to pick up a few things and then had a tasty lunch at Zaxby's. However, most of our day was spent relaxing around the house. It was a nice mellow end to our weekend and before the start of another week. Thankful our little family had a nice long weekend to spend together!!! :)

Henry Update

So this is a few weeks late, but better than never. Last month, Henry turned 18 months old! He is officially a year and a half old :) He is getting so big, so fast! I can't believe it somedays and other days, he seems much older to me, ha! He had his 18 month old check up the Monday before we left for SC. Luckily, he did better this time around at the PEDS office. He is never a fan of that place.. I think he remembers what goes down there :/ Thankfully, he had only to get one shot and was a trooper about it. His stats are as followed...

Height: 35.75"

He is almost 3 feet tall... and off the charts for his height. When he stands next to P, he doesn't have much to go until he will be at her height :)

Weight: 29.5 lbs

Still on the same curve for his height, at 95th percentile.

Head: 49 centimeters

again still at the 95th percentile.. just means he has a bigger brain :)