1 Month, 18 weeks and 9 days.

1 month of marriage.  Can you believe how fast a month goes by? This may have been the quickest month yet.  We have had an absolute blast in our first month of wedded bliss, and it has been a great start to our life together.  Michael surprised me with cookies and ice cream from Tiff's Treats when he got home from work yesterday and then we we headed to Whole Foods where we bought food for our picnic on Town Lake.  We took Ava and she had a blast at the dog park.  Watching her have fun is one of our favorite things to do, although we always say that she would be the weird kid at school who goes off and plays by herself.  She's great with one other dog and will play all day long, but with a group of dogs she's not exactly Miss Social.  We walked over to watch the bats at Congress bridge, if you're ever in Austin it's a sight to see, and got there just in time to see it end, oh well...it was still a blast!

 Austin, the Beautiful.

 The bats flying out from under the bridge.

A Texas sunset. 

Us, a little sweaty and Ava trying to play with the other dogs.

18 weeks of pregnancy.  According to thebump.com our little one is the size of a sweet potato this week.  I have a bit of an issue with the fruit comparisons, but that's another story.  I have felt what I thought were possibly kicks (or possibly gas) a couple of times in the last 2 weeks, but on Sunday I definitely felt a kick and then again a few times yesterday.  It was the most amazing feeling and it seemed to always happen when Michael and I were talking about him/her.  Can you believe that the baby can already hear at this point? I can't...but I also quickly realized that I have a lot to learn when someone at my friend's baby shower this past weekend said not to jump up and down when you're pregnant, and I responded with "Really?"  In my defense there are some pretty normal things that your not supposed to do when you're pregnant, and I've heard all kinds of myths about things like "spicy foods" and "squats" that will trigger labor. This is all new to me! I have been really lucky to not get sick at all and don't really have much of a "bump" yet, so feeling the baby move is the first thing that's really making the pregnancy feel real! Hopefully the bump will come soon...as of now I can barely button my regular pants, but my hips seem to be expanding just as quickly as my stomach.

9 days until we find out if it's a boy or a girl! I'm trying not to think about this too much because I might just go insane with anxiousness. I'm not going to say what I think it is because I don't want to be the mother that starts off being wrong on her first chance at "mother's intuition," but the vote seems to be pretty evenly split between everyone (including us) in our family on whether it's a boy or girl.  I guess we will see soon enough.

A little about us...

If you know us you probably know most of this by now, but just to give everyone a little background Michael and I met in 2007 at Baylor University and have been together ever since.  I was about to graduate and he was a sophomore at Baylor...yes that's right I'm a "cougar" haha! I didn't date younger guys before and it was a little strange at first, but we got used to the jokes from our friends pretty quickly and our families didn't seem to be too weirded out by it, so it was smooth sailing from then on...at least as far as the age difference was concerned.  From the time I graduated in May 2007 to July 2010 when Michael moved to Round Rock we did the long distance relationship thing.  We were never more than an hour and a half away from each other so we saw each other nearly every weekend (except during lacrosse season of course) and we lived for our weekends together. However, being at different stages in our lives (Michael still in college and me beginning my career) brought challenges along the way. Somehow, some way, without too much stress, we always worked things out. Michael graduated in December 2009 and last summer Michael finalllly moved to Round Rock, just 5 minutes away from me and we have been pretty much inseparable ever since.

Michael has wanted to be a doctor pretty much from the day he was born and has worked so hard to achieve his goal.  Unsure of when he would get into medical school and where, we had put the idea of marriage off for the time being, although we had talked about wanting to spend the rest of our lives together and knew that we would get married when the timing was right.  Timing...something I have quickly learned that you have little or no control of, and just when you think you have an idea of how your life will unfold, all of your plans can get thrown out more quickly than you could possibly imagine.  It's not necessarily a bad thing, you just have to learn to roll with the punches and realize that God has a more beautiful and amazing life planned for you than you could ever try to plan on your own.

This April we found out that we are expecting a baby.  It couldn't have come as more of a shock. We were scared at first (and still are a little bit), but our families were so incredibly supportive and excited when we told them, and it put us at ease right away.  We played with the idea of getting married right away or waiting until next spring and when it came down to it we decided that we couldn't have gotten a bigger sign that we needed to hurry up and get married already! So...straight in to crazy wedding planning for a wedding that would take place in 5 weeks.

On June 18th, 2011 we finally got married. The day that we had talked about for so long and put off for so long was here before we knew it and it was the most perfect day we could have imagined whether we had 5 weeks or 5 years to plan it.  And now here we are...3 and a half weeks into marriage and a baby on the way.

Welcome to our unpredictable amazing life.