30 Years Old & 34 Weeks

We packed up Friday and headed to the lake for a few days away. Friday we stopped in Spokane to visit with Todd's folks and have a little early birthday celebration before heading out to the lake. Saturday I road along with Todd, my dad and T's folks while they golfed at Twin Lakes Village. Saturday we had a big BBQ and celebrated my birthday out at the lake. Crazy to think of how many birthdays I have celebrated out there! A big thanks to Aunt Kitty and Uncle Bob for letting us come stay for a few days. Wish we could have stayed longer, I miss summer vacations and being able to stay out there for a week at a time. Sadly we only were able to stay the weekend, so we headed home to grab the pets from camp on Sunday. A few more lake photos to follow.


I still can't believe I am THIRTY! I can still remember turning 21 like it was yesterday. I certainly don't miss the hangover that I had when I turned 21 but crazy how the years have flown by. I am 34 weeks this week and starting to get a little antsy. Sleep at night is becoming slightly more challenging. So excited to meet our baby girl in 6ish weeks.


Last night we had a belated birthday celebrations with our good friends here in Wenatchee. We are really fortunate to have such a great group of friends here.

32 Weeks & Content

Have you ever had a feeling that you were right where you were supposed to be? I have eight weeks left before our baby girl arrives and I couldn't feel more like this is exactly where I am supposed to be in my life right now. Lately I have just had a sense of calm come over me and that everything feels like its falling right into place. I have a hard time describing it but, whatever this feeling is I LOVE it!

We don't have anything planned for the rest of the summer until baby arrives, I don't think that I have ever had this many free weekends in one summer. While nice, I will be the first to admit that I get a little stir crazy. My favorite thing to do it to make up projects for Todd to do, I am sure he loves it. I resorted to taking my own photo these days since the photographer has so many projects he is currently working on.

We are heading to the lake at the end of this week, I am looking forward to a few days away. I can't wait to take our kids to the lake some day, we spent a week there every summer as a kid and had an absolute blast. It will also be fun to celebrate my birthday with my family, its been a long time since we have been together and what better milestone than the big 3-0!

28 weeks

Almost 29 weeks, which means we only have 11 more weeks to go. Crazy to think 11 more Mondays of just Todd and I and the pets! To say we are excited really doesn't cover it. I am also not sure nesting covers the weird things I have been doing lately. If only I could be this motivated all the time. Things are getting cleaned that I am sure have never been cleaned before. Thanks to many of our good friends and family the nursery is getting stocked up with lots of cute clothes and books. People ask "so do you think your ready?", my answer is typically "well, ummm just about as ready as you could be despite the fact that we have no idea what we are doing!" The other question I am starting to get is how I am holding up in the heat. So far so good, knock on wood. Thank goodness for air conditioning. I did have a kankles scare a few weeks ago when I was in Seattle working for a few days. I went to take off my shoes and couldn't see my ankles and my toes looked even more like fat little smokies than they normally do. Other than that things have been really good. I even got out yesterday and played 18 holes of golf, I was pretty tired by the end.

I am a little behind on blogging, once I get the pics in order from my Seattle & Wenatchee showers I will post them. We are so grateful for our friends and family for all of the wonderful clothes and gifts, BGB (Baby Girl Benzel) is already so spoiled.

Baby Benzel's Nursery

My folks came over for the weekend to help us get the nursery ready for baby Benzel's arrival in August. They are expert painters and love a good DIY project. Friday night we hit up Home Depot to pick out paint colors. Three colors later we were heading home to get started. Friday they painted the ceiling and got started on prep work for the walls. Saturday they painted all day and then we put all the furniture together. Sunday we took care of some final touches and then finally put the room together.
A HUGE thank you to my folks for coming over and working away the entire time they were here. We couldn't have done it without them.

I'm Back!

I spent all last week in Arizona for a big event we had in Tucson. It was a fun but long week, 24 weeks pregnant and 16 hour days are tough. Todd picked me up at the airport on Saturday and was a little surprised how much my belly had grown in the week that I was gone. He said something like "Well you can really tell your pregnant now!" I had my six month check at the doctor yesterday, where did the last 6 months go? I can't believe I am getting close to being in the third trimester already. We also had childbirth class last night and we got to see the new labor and delivery section of the hospital. Its really starting to sink in that in a little over THREE months our little lady will be here. We are beyond excited!

This weekend my folks are heading over to help us get the babies room ready. Stay tuned for some before and after shots that I will post when we are finished.
My apologies for the quality of my photos, they are from my phone. We just located our camera so hopefully the pics will be improving. My photographer thinks these little photo sessions are for the birds.

22 weeks (well almost)

Look Ma, no kankles....YET! Here is a pic taken today at almost 22 weeks. Sorry about the quality, we seemed to have misplaced the camera this past weekend.

Busy Weekend

Thursday we headed up to Oak Harbor to join my family in celebrating the life of my Grandpa Pete. The service was Friday morning at the Catholic church he had been a member of for many years. It was filled with lots of great memories and stories of the wonderful man who was my Grandpa. The ceremony concluded with members of the US Army presenting my Grandma with the flag, I had never seen that done before and was a sobbing pregnant mess by the end. I will always remember him for the jokes he used to tell and growing up he always asked my sister and I the same question (jokingly of course). "Have you been getting into Grandma's ugly pills again?" He was always smiling and telling jokes. He had a love for warm Busch Lite and the Cougs. We will miss him dearly but know that he fought a tough battle with brain cancer and that he is in a better place now. After the service at the church family and friends gathered at my Grandma's house to continue celebrating his life. Everyone changed into their Coug gear which I loved because I know that is what he would have wanted.

Friday after the gatherings concluded we headed to the ferry and stopped in to see our friends Kyle & Jodi. They are due in three weeks with their first baby, and didn't find out if they are having a boy or a girl. I think we managed to talk babies for 4 hours straight! Jodi looks fabulous for being just three weeks away from her due date and it was such fun to catch up with great friends we hadn't seen in a while.

Saturday we headed over to Todd's sisters house in Redmond to pick up all of the fabulous hand me down items for Baby Girl Benzel. We packed up the car full of fun stuff like a crib, rocker and bin of clothes. We even had a few minutes to visit with them before they headed off to Great Wolf Lodge for the night. We headed home to Wenatchee in time to pick up the dogs from camp.

Sunday we headed to Moses Lake to play golf and have dinner with Todd's folks. It was Cynthia's birthday so we decided to brave the wind and squeeze in a round of golf. It was a chilly round of golf but was filled with lots of fun and laughs. We headed out for a quick dinner afterwards. (photo to follow).

We now have most of our nursery furniture, however most of it still needs to be assembled. Thanks to my folks who are coming over in a few weeks to help paint the nursery and assemble the furniture. I will post some before and after photos once we get things going.