Kenny Chesney Concert

On June 13th I went to the Kenny Chesney concert at Soldier Field with my BFF Christen and Christen's sister-in-law, niece and mother-in-law. We had a lot of fun! It was a long day and a little chilly outside. We were there for about 10 hours total. The concert started off with Lady Antebellum, then Miranda Lambert, then Montgomery Gentry, then Sugarland, and then Kenny Chesney. The stadium was PACKED!!!

Soldier Field packed full of fans! We got lucky and it didn't rain!

Christen and me!

The two singers from Sugarland got inside of these huge plastic balls and crawled across the crowd. It was pretty amusing!

You can see on the TV screen, Kenney Chesney made his entrance floating in a chair above the crowd in the middle of the field and eventually landed on the stage where we were sitting.

Jumping the gun

After getting our last ultrasound, I couldn't help but do a little shopping for the baby. Now we still have no idea if it's a boy or a girl...so I bought one outfit for each. (Don't worry I kept the receipts!) I promised Dennis, no more shopping until after we find out! :)

Here we have a super cute rhino t-shirt with plaid shorts...I thought it would be perfect for a little guy since dad also has a rhino shirt and plaid shorts!

And I couldn't pass up this dress! (No I don't have a matching one!) The dress is actually a sleeveless dress. I bought this cute red sweater with the bow on it to go with it. (Even if it is a boy, I might secretly save this dress in case we have a girl in the future. It's just sooo cute!)

:)

Around the house

We have been working on a lot of projects around the house, but the biggest project has been sorting through the tons of random boxes in the basement and crawlspace. While we've come up with some junk and garbage, we have also sifted through old memories of art projects, girl scout uniforms, childhood toys, science projects, and tons of other things. Our basement is 1/2 basement and 1/2 crawlspace. We are working on putting all of our storage items in plastic bins and organizing them into the crawlspace so that we can get everything off of the basement floor for now. We've spent many nights and weekends down there and while it is work, it is also kind of fun.

Say hello to my little friend! - I found Littlefoot and his entire wardrobe!

New carpeting in the crawlspace. This was a PROJECT! We had to take everything (tons of holiday decorations) out of the crawlspace, roll out the carpet, and then put everything back in. This is just one small corner of the crawlspace with about half of our Christmas decorations stacked up!

In other news, BamBam finally had his ultrasound! You can see in this picture where they had to shave his fur off of his abdomen for the ultrasound. He behaved really well and we got a good report. He does have kidney stones, but they are not in any need of being operated on. We drove all the way to Northbrook for this test, but it was definitely worth it. The Dr's there were great and we can finally put BamBam's kidney problems behind us! YAY!

Here are my boys looking out the window of the truck on the way to get their haircut. They crack me up!

Dennis did an awesome job of building me this garden. He dug out all of the sod in this 20 foot x 5 foot area, cut the timbers to make a box and filled it with dirt. We planted corn, tomatos, green peppers, jalapenos, basil, green onions, broccoli, cantelope, watermelon and cucumbers. Our plants are much bigger now...this was in May!

Another look at the veggie garden.

I also got my flower garden going. Here are some pictures of the beautiful hydraengas that my Grandma bought me and the beautiful calla lillies that my mom bought me. Thanks ladies! They are wonderful!

Earlier in the month Dennis went on a little shopping spree at Lowes and came home with a new lawnmower and a new grill! We really needed the lawnmower. Our yard is big and the old one was not self-propelled and it was REALLY old. We were using a hand-me-down grill for the past several years and have been talking about getting a new one for a while. We really like it! Den has made some excellent dinners! This picture is from one of the best days ever. Very relaxing and peaceful.

While we still aren't sure how we feel about living in Beecher, we do love our home and especially our back yard. We've got a great view and it's really relaxing to sit outside in the evening and just unwind.

Baby Smith at 12 weeks

I am a little behind on blogging! Although we are now 14 weeks pregnant, I thought I would share some pictures from 12 weeks.

On June 12, Dennis and I went to Rush Hospital downtown. We were referred there for a potential problem that was going to put us in the "high risk" category with the possibility for some very close monitoring and technical procedures. Fortunately we received the best possible news ever....my lab work was repeated and as it turns out we have nothing to worry about! We will be staying with my regular OB here locally and it appears that we have a very normal pregnancy going on.

The Dr's at Rush were great though. They definitely "knew their stuff" and answered a lot of questions for us. Since we made the trip all the way down there, they also did an ultrasound. As you can see, this ultrasound shows a MUCH bigger baby! It was pretty neat. We watched the baby on the monitor and he/she was moving around like crazy! He/She was waving their arms and legs, rolling around, flipping back and forth and even sucking and spitting fluid. On this visit the baby's heartbeat was at 169 and sounding great.

Now I am a little over 14 weeks. Today actually marks a small milestone. I have been pregnant for 100 days...and have 180 to go! Everything is going really well. I have a lot of my energy back and no longer feel constantly sick. Sometimes I really don't feel like I'm pregnant at all. While I still haven't gained any weight, my belly is rounding out a bit and I've done a little shopping for maternity pants/shorts. After getting our good news at Rush, we went back to meet with my doctor at 13 weeks. She used the dopplar to hear the heartbeat again, which was at 173 that day. It was really nice that Dennis was able to come to the appointment with me. He has actually been to all of my appointments except for one so far! Having a good report, we aren't scheduled for another Dr's appointment until 17 weeks.

We have decided to find out the sex of the baby and as long as the baby is cooperating, we should know in about 6 more weeks. We are really excited to find out and start planning the nursery and officially start to shop!

Here is the baby at 12 weeks - laying on his/her back with their head to the right. You can't really see the legs in this picture, but you can see the body and arms. The baby was moving around so much, it was hard to get a still photo. What a cute nose!

Here's me at 12 weeks.

And a side shot....Dennis is quite the photographer... :)

It's hard to believe that 6 months from now, we will have a baby in our house and an extra face in our family pictures!

On a side note, I just HAD to post this picture. Can you believe this park job? While we were at Rush, this jerk hit my car! We didn't realize that the car was hit until we got home. We couldn't get in on the driver's side because of how this other car parked and we had to crawl in over the passenger side. I mean this person isn't even close to getting in-between the lines! Anyway, when we got home we discovered a big dent in my driver's door. It isn't on the body line so we think we will be able to easily pop it out. It just made me laugh to think that someone thought it was OK to park like this though! I had to take a picture on my cell phone!