15 Weeks

1 week away from the 4 month mark!  We are so excited!  I'm feeling pretty good other than the hormonal headaches that the doctor warned me about.  Apparently hormones drop a little between now and week 20, causing a lot of women to have headaches.  Treating with Tylenol is not always a sure fix, so I'm thankful for ice packs!  And I'm thankful that our freezer got fixed today to keep me supplied with ice packs!  It's been broken for 3 weeks, and they had to order parts and wait for all the warranty stuff, and then fix it, we were glad to see that man pull up this morning!

Oh, and it is officially FALL!!!  I am LOVING the cooler temps, and the even chillier ones at night!  We are seeing a little yellowing on some the of trees, I always get so excited at this time of year.  Plus, the first signs of fall are in the stores, too!  Hello Honeycrisp apples & Pumpkin Spice creamer!  We saw pumpkins at Wally World yesterday too, looking forward to loading up on those pretty orange gourds this weekend:)

Target has some really fun wigs for Halloween this year.  We had a good laugh trying them on and taking pictures.  There were a lot of fun ones, but here are a few of my favorites!

Happy Fall Y'all!

Second Trimester!

So, I missed week 12.  My plan was to do every two weeks, but week 12 was chaos!  Jason's parents were down visiting, and his dad had a massive heart attack while here.  We are thankful that he is okay, and that he had such good doctors and paramedics that saved his life.  He had a major blockage, and had to have a stint put in.  The heart attack damaged 55% of his heart, but it is recoverable.  He started having major chest and arm pain in the middle of the night, so I called for help.  Thankfully, he actually had the heart attack in the ambulance, and they were able to save him.  God was looking out for him for sure.  But, all that to say, we were back and forth at the hospital in Wilmington every day, and by the time we would get home, I was totally wiped out.  The week before that, we had a scare with some bleeding.  We were really shaken, but beyond thankful that everything was fine with our precious babies.  The doctors think that since I've stretched out so quickly, that I may have popped a blood vessel or that my cervix got bruised, and caused some build up of blood in the bruise.  All foreign to me, but the most important words were that the babies are just fine!  We are praying that we won't have any more scares like that!  I am taking it easy, and when my body says stop, I do!

Anyways, here is the most recent chalkboard update.  I am actually over 14 weeks now, and will do another chalkboard in the next week or two.  

We did this one last week, and I am just getting it posted since we had our family down to celebrate Alaina's 18th birthday this weekend!  Ashley and Austin hung back a few extra days, and are still here with us while Matt is traveling for business.  Saturday night we rode into Beaufort and ate at the Dock House.  The weather was perfect, the view was amazing.  It's located right on the waterway, so we enjoyed views of yachts, sail boats, and a few kayaks.  The cool pre-autumn breeze was even a bit chilly, which to a woman carrying twins was refreshing!  We ate out on the upper deck, so we could see a ways down the water, and the lights across it where beautiful once it got dark.  We walked the boardwalk afterwards, and made a stop at the fudge factory for some yummy dessert.  It was a really fun time with everyone, and we all left uncomfortably happily stuffed.

Now that we are in our second trimester, we are no longer being seen by our infertility specialist, and we have moved to our regular ob-gyn.  We also get seen by a maternal-fetal medicine specialist for the high risk part of it (diabetes, twins).  Both appointments, we were really pleased with the doctors, and the staffs. Everyone was really nice, and we got another ultrasound at our maternal-fetal appointment yesterday.  Both little ones looked good, and were active, moving, kicking and punching.  In one picture, one of them had their arms behind it's head, lounging.  In another shot, it already looks like they may have Jason's pouty lips. It's so neat how they can see all of that with ultrasound.  We go back October 15 (less than a month!), and that's when we find out their sexes!  I'm so excited about that one.  We will be a little over 18 weeks by then.  They did all my organ function labs as well as a thyroid check, so that we will have a base line to go by, and right now, everything looks really good and normal:)  They will be monitoring my BP since it was a little higher than I normally run, and just making sure they stay on top of any early warning signs of preeclampsia.  I really feel like they have a good handle on things, and that God has placed us in the right offices.

In other news, we are less than a week away from the first day of fall!  We are feeling some cooler temps in the evenings and early mornings, and it's getting me so excited!  I can't wait to wear boots.  I keep holding off, but probably not for much longer.  To wrap up, I have to say how very thankful I am for my family and friends.  For my parents who rushed to be with us at a moment's notice when we didn't know what was happening with our scare and helped calm us down, and brought in a voice of reason, a daddy who makes his famous homemade vanilla milkshakes and a momma who dries my hair, for Alaina who stayed behind and took care of things at their house so they could be here with us.  For Ashley who has helped pick up the slack around the house this week because I've been so tired, by cleaning, doing laundry, and even making our bed, it was really nice to come home yesterday evening to a clean, peaceful house with candles lit, smelling like fall.  For the most wonderful friends who have been continually praying for us through everything, and calling/texting to check on me, and for a neighbor who came to sit with me when I was nervous in the days following our hospital visit, mowed our yard while we were back and forth visiting J's dad in the hospital, and has let us take up most of her freezer space since ours died.  Again.  In the midst of everything going on.  God has given us an amazing support system, and a bountiful supply of love.  We are so blessed.

These twins ain't wastin' time!

We found out that we were expecting early, only a little over 4 weeks pregnant!  And, from then on, these two have not wasted any time making their presence known!  I never thought I'd show SO early, but I guess with double everything, the rules don't apply!  At week 6, I already had a little pooch but didn't know there were two yet, I just chalked it up to the bloat everyone talks about...

At week 8, they had popped out and we knew there were two by then!  It made a little bit more sense that my stomach was forming a basketball shape...

But, even two weeks later, they were appearing even more!  I'm thinking I'm going to be pretty uncomfortable by the third trimester, whattya think?!

The first trimester has surprisingly gone by pretty quickly.  I'm 11 weeks, and am looking forward to the 2nd trimester coming soon!  We have another ultrasound Tuesday, and we are excited to get to see our little ones again, and hopefully a little more detail than our first ultrasounds when they were so teeny!  They will be the size of figs this week, seems funny to compare them to food, huh?  With the first trimester bringing me so much nausea, I think the lack of food that agrees with me has counteracted much weight gain.  You'd think with that belly, it would be at least 5 lbs by now;o)  My weight gain as of yesterday is 1.8 lbs!  Woohoo!  I'll be trying to post an updated picture with a few fun facts every two weeks.  It's a good picture journal to look back at, and for the babies to see one day.  

We're getting excited for summer winding down, and hopefully cooler temps soon!  We're coming up on my favorite time of the year..autumn and winter.  I have some cute second trimester fall weather clothes that I can't wait to wear.  Only 29 days until the first official day of autumn!

An Autumn Craft & Mantle

When I saw this sign and a tutorial over at Ella Claire, I knew I wanted one.  Mine is a little different, but the full tutorial can be found at the link, since I can't take credit for this beauty.  I used my Kreg Jig to butt 8 boards up together, and I measured the length to match the width, so I had a big square.  Then I saved and uploaded the template to www.blockposters.com (the template is from the tutorial, and she so graciously shares it for free!) to get the size I wanted.

 

See:)

 

 

Then I painted the whole thing with acrylic paint by Apple Barrel in Antique Parchment.

 

And then spot painted with some left over blue, it was by Valspar and the color was Vintage Blue.

Like this!

 

After that, it was a bunch of sanding, then I traced the template with a pencil to leave the indentions in the wood.  Then I painted it all.  For the word Pumpkins I used Folk Art Lipstick Red, and shadowed with Apple Barrel Golden Sunset.  Apples was done in Apple Barrel Melted Chocolate.  Hayrides was done with Folk Art Pure Orange.  The arrow was done with the Melted Chocolate and outlined with the Golden Sunset.  Then, I measured and lightly drew a border around it, and painted it with Folk Art Coffee Bean.  Then, I hand sanded very lightly just to rough up the letters and edges a bit.  The last step was that I decided to stain it a little bit, so I watered down the brown paint (a lot, it is supposed to be very watery), and used a sponge brush to wipe it on, and a paper towel to wipe it off. 

 

And voila!

 

Here it is all set up on my mantle for fall!  I am in love with the way it turned out, I also made a quick Autumn banner out of burlap and braided twine to string across the front.  I cut out some large letters using my Cricut to trace onto each piece with a black sharpie.  After I braided and braided the twine, I hot glued each piece to it, spacing them about 1 1/2 inches apart.  Easy and cute!

 

On the hearth, I added some candles, pumpkins, and pinecones. 

Remember those clearance lanterns from Big Lots, I painted them black, and hung them above the mantle from garden hooks from Lowe's.

Candle holders now holding pumpkins.  The lanterns worked there so well.

A vase of leaves completes the other side.

 

It's definitely my favorite Autumn mantle to date.  Oh, and notice our new accent wall around the fireplace.  We did that recently too.  It's a paint by Valspar called Hotel St. Francis Fawn.  It matches our couches very well.  We also painted the dining room the same color, so it kinda ties it together and breaks it up too, since the dining "room" is actually a space between the living room and kitchen/den area and not really a defined room.

 

I really like it, we added some extra long curtains to the sliding back door, and it gives it a more elegant look and fills the large space over the door with the 9 foot ceilings.  I love how Kojak photobombs a lot of my photos.  Oh well, he's a handsome boy, I guess he figures he should be seen.

 

 

Ok, now that you are all probably tired of looking at a million pictures, I'll wrap this one up.  I can't believe it's been over a month since my last post.  I took a much needed break, and we went on vacation, and about a million other things.  I will be back with vacation pictures, and some Christmas crafting very soon!  I love fall, and am a little sad it took me this long to get this post up.  I was down to the wire because, now all my fall stuf is put away, and most of my Christmas stuff is out, so I had to get this one in there before anything else, and before Thanksgiving in 3 days..can NOT believe that it is so soon.  Ok, for real.  This is the end now.

A Few Fall Favorites

1.  Butter London nail polish.  I've never tried it before, and I had a 3.50 off coupon for Ulta (which is the only store that carries it around here), so I picked up the normally 14.00 bottle in the color All Hail The Queen.  I'd seen it numerous times on pinterest, and really liked the color.  It lived up to it's hype.  It's so pretty for fall.  And I'm on day 5 with no chips, that's a record for me!  I really like this formula.

Here it is on my nails:

 2.  Dunkin Donuts!  It is so "fall friendly".  With all of their wonderful pumpkin drinks, apple cider, pumpkin muffins and donuts, and the new apple orchard donut (YUM), it is hard to stay away.  I've done good, but man, sometimes, ya just gotta.

3.  This pumpkin scones recipe from here.  It's supposed to be like Starbuck's.  I have not tried these at Starbuck's, so I don't know if they are.  But I can vouch that they are GOOD!  I made them one morning when my fam was here last weekend, and the leftovers gave me breakfasts for a few mornings.  This was a leftover, I didn't have any more of the spiced drizzle, so I just drizzled plain glaze over it, still amazing.  Paired it with some coffee (and pumpkin spice creamer), and it was perfection.  (Sorry about the fuzzy picture, low lighting and my iphone, but you can still tell how divine it looks.)

I'm so happy fall is here, and today actually feels like fall here at the beach!  Highs in the low 60's!  Just wish it was sticking around.