Mark the Date/Need Advice

So, we get to find out on March 21st what we are having! Less than a month away! We are very excited and anxious to find out what we will be having. We already have a girl name picked out, but the boy name is under negotiation...Wish us luck on that front, we have very different boy name tastes. So far Ben and I are both leaning more towards it being a boy based on how sick I have been and how fast the heartbeat is. My doctor says I am in for an interesting pregnancy once I can start to feel the baby, because it's already REALLY wiggly!!!! Peanut hardly holds still for a moment for the ultrasound we have already had and every time they try to find the heartbeat. It's going to be interesting to see if Peanut will still wiggle around that much once I can feel it. :) For my friends out there who have had kids, what did you do to avoid stretch marks?? I am starting to show just a little bit, and I would like to avoid stretch marks if I can. Any suggestions??

Exciting News!!!!!!!

Well, I put this on facebook, but in case you didn't see it:

Roses are red

Violets are blue

I love my hubby,

And our unborn baby too!

That's right! I am pregnant! We are very excited, this has been a long time coming for us, and we are thrilled! I am due on my birthday, August 9th. We will find out the gender in March, it's getting close! So far I think we have a pretty even split between boy and girl votes. I have been extremely sick, in January I lost 14 lbs in 3 weeks, so they put me on some anti-nausea medicine, which has helped. I am hoping I am on the tail end of being sick though, I am about 15 weeks along, which is close to the "no sick" zone! Cross your fingers that it holds true for me, I am ready to actually EAT! :) We told our families as a Christmas present, but in different ways.

My family:

I made a "baby on board" sign and taped it to my shirt over my stomach. And then I zipped my coat over my shirt. We were at my family's house for Christmas Eve and so when we got there I asked my mom if she wanted to see my new shirt. She gave me kind of a funny look and said yes, so I unzipped my coat and showed her my shirt. She said, "Really???" and starting screaming and hugging us. The commotion brought my little sisters into the kitchen and they asked what was going on. I told them that mom really liked my new shirt and showed them the sign. They had similar reactions to my mom. Then, my sister ran into the bedroom where my dad was taking a nap yelling, "Dad, come see Megan's new shirt, come see Megan's new shirt!" He was understandably confused... :) He was also very excited for us and took some pictures, which I will find and post later on. It was a great Christmas Eve present!

Ben's family:

Since we were going to be at Ben's house for Christmas morning we thought it would be fun to give something to his mom to open as a present. We found a cute bib that said, "Grandma said I could" in big letters and we wrapped it and put it under the tree. It was hard to act normal because we had to wait for her turn to open a gift before we could give it to her! She opened it and said, "Oh, my heck!" I think it kind of took a minute for everyone to process exactly what it meant, but it was hilarious, all three of Ben's sisters looked over at me at the exact same time after they saw what it was, it made me laugh! They are all very excited since this is the first grandkid in their family! Thanks goes to my sister in law Kayla who posted the news right away, and then took it back off when I told her I wasn't quite ready to tell the world yet! I was only 7 weeks at the time and wanted to make sure this baby was here to stay!

So, there's the update! I will try to post more now that I actually have something exciting to post about!!!

Flowers!

Ben sent these to my work for Valentine's Day! I LOVE Tulips, they are for sure my favorite flower. They just look fresh and cheerful. Plus, since they were my wedding flowers, I think about our wedding day every time I see Tulips. Thank you, Honey!

Happy Valentine's Day

Dear Ben,

Happy Valentine's Day! I want you to know how much I love you! You are an incredible husband to me, you treat me so well! I can't believe how happy you make me. Last night when we talked for a couple hours reminiscing about our courtship and the early days of our marriage was so much fun! It was fun to go back and look at the beginnings of our relationship, from the first encounter when I had just come back from running and was all sweaty and gross, to our first date when I was so nervous that I missed your first "move", to the first time you brought up marriage and I thought you were going to dump me, to our wedding day, I feel so deeply in love with you! It's fun to look back, but I wouldn't trade where we are now. I love being your wife! I love our relationship and how well we work together. Thank you for truly being my knight in shining armor! You have made my life so full and rich, I have never been treated so well! Thank you for spoiling me rotten, thank you for knowing how to handle my craziness, thank you for loving me. Happy Valentine's Day, honey, I love you for eternity!

Love,

Your Wife

I thought I would post

So Megan always posts on here and I never do so I thought I would. I just wanted to say how amazing she is. She always says on here how great I am but never how much she does. She is kind, loving, and always thinks of others first. Thanks babe for being the girl of my dreams and for loving me enough to be my wife. I love you and I always will.

Who Am I??

So, I am sure that a lot of you have heard that the Zodiac signs have changed. This makes me VERY sad! I loved being a Leo! I will admit, while I don't believe in or actively follow my sign, I have read a lot about the signs and their meanings and I think it is interesting. I think it is fun to learn about. Not something I would base my whole life off of, but fun to read and see what signs are compatible, etc. Now I feel as though all of my research is for nothing! I have always read a lot of stuff on Leos, NEVER on Cancers (my new sign) and it makes me sad! Is it weird that I am kind of mourning my loss of Leo? I just don't fit my new sign, at all! I am not shy, I am not a home body, I don't dislike crowds and groups of people. I am still declaring myself a Leo-I don't care what the new research says! I was born under the impression of being a Leo and I am sticking to it! I love people, I love the spot light, I am feisty and have a temper, I am a LEO! LEO LEO LEO! Any one else have a slight crisis of identity with their sign changing? (And even if not, I would appreciate some support to show that I am not crazy!)

Sick Day

I took a sick day from work today cause I really needed it. Feel like poop! This is my first sick day in about 8-10 months so I don't feel too guilty making my employees run my store on a Monday without me. However, I don't think I took the full advantage of my day off from work-I did laundry, dishes, and made a grocery list/menu for the week. I also cleaned the bathrooms and vacuumed all while I feel like poop. I think I need to enjoy my sick day more next time by not doing all those productive things! What is your favorite thing to do on a sick day? (Besides eat chicken noodle soup!) Wish me luck, I took a day off from life yesterday too-had myself a nice pajama day! Here's to the rest of the week being nice to me!!

Happy New Year

Here's to hoping that you keep all of your New Year's Resolutions! (Especially the ones you didn't keep in 2010...)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I know that I am not going to get a chance to post a Merry Christmas wish later on, so I am doing it today! I am going straight from work tomorrow to my house for Christmas Eve and then we are driving an hour home that night so that we can be at Ben's parent's house early Christmas morning. Whew! Good thing it's a holiday that practically encourages naps after presents and breakfast! :) I am also very excited for my busy season at work to wind down, I am exhausted! It will be nice to go back to my regular hours at the store too. Well, I want to wish all of you a MERRY CHRISTMAS! I hope that your Christmas mornings are full of excitment and fun and I hope you have all been nice this year! Our love to you and enjoy your Christmases!!

Books!!

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes that most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed below.

I have bolded the ones that I have read all the way through. I have read 59 of these bad boys! And some of them I have read over and over, one of my all time favorite books ever is on this list! (#21). Well, that was my self esteem boost for the day. I feel so good about myself now! Plus, I think this post ties in nicely with my background. :)

1. Pride and Prejudice-Jane Austen
2. Lord of the Rings -J.R.R. Tolkein
3. Jane Eyre-Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series-J.K. Rowling
5. To Kill A Mockingbird-Harper Lee
6. The Bible (Old Testament, New Testament)
7. Wuthering Heights-Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four-George Orwell
9.His Dark Materials-Philip Pullman (Own it, but haven't gotten to it yet)
10. Great Expectations-Charles Dickens
11. Little Women-Louise May Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles-Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22-Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca-Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit-JRR Tolkien
17.Birdshong-Sebastian Faulk
18. Catcher in the Rye-JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler's Wife-Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch-George Eliot
21. Gone With the Wind-Margaret Mitchell (Over and Over! I LOVE this book!!!!)
22. The Great Gatsby- F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House-Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace-Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy-Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited-Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment-Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath-John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland-Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows-Kenneth Grahame
31.Anna Karenina-Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield-Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia-CS Lewis
34. Emma-Jane Austen
35. Persuasion-Jane Austen
36. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe-CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner-Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin-Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha-Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh-A.A. Milne
41. Animal Farm-George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code-Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude-Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney-John Irving
45. The Woman in White-Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables-LM Montgomery
47. Far From the Madding Crowd-Thomas Hardy
48. The Hnadmaid's Tale-Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies-William Golding
50. Atonement-Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi-Yann Martel
52. Dune-Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm-Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility-Jane Austen
55. A Suitable boy-Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind-Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale of Two Cities-Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World-Aldous Huxley (I would read this one, but my hubby read it and HATED it!)
59. The Curious Incident of the God in the Night-time-Mark Haddon
60. Love in the Time of Cholera-Gabriel Garcia MArquez
61. Of Mice and MEn-John Steinbeck
62. Lolita-Vladmir Nabokov
63. The Secret History-Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely bones-Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo-Alexandre Dumas (LOVE this book!)
66. On The Road-Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure-Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones's Diary-Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children-Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick-Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist-Charles Dickens
72. Dracula-Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden-Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes from a Small Island-Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses-James Joyce
76. The Inferno-Dante
77. Swallows and Amazons-Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal-Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair-William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession-AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol-Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas-David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple-Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day-Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary-Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance-Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web-E.B. White
88. The Five People You Meet in Heaven-Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection-Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness-Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince-Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory-Iain Banks
94. Watership Down-Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces-John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice-Nevile Shute
97. The Three Musketeers-Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet-William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and Chocolate Factory-Roald Dahl (I have read, multiple times, EVERYTHING by this author!)
100. Les Miserables-Victor Hugo (This book is another of my favorites!!)