New Car

Last Thursday I placed an ad on craigslist and sent out an email to most of my family and friends advertising that my 2005 Scion XA was for sale. I had several inquiries and by Friday afternoon the car was sold! I was really happy that I sold the car to a really nice couple from the north suburbs. I know that they will take care of the car and use it for many years to come. (It made me sad to think of the car being scrapped by a dealership.) The Scion was probably the best car I've had. It was very reliable and great on gas. I literally never had a problem with it. I was sad to see it go, but I know we need something bigger in starting our family. While we could have gotten a car seat in there, there would be no room for anything else. So I sold the car and continued my hunt for a bigger vehicle.

My Blueberry - bye bye

We looked at several cars before making the decision to purchase the Dodge Journey. I was REALLY sold on the Ford Edge and it is a really nice car that I would recommend to anyone. But, the price was more than I wanted to spend. We also test drove a Chrysler Pacifica, which we did not like. We looked at just about every other "crossover" vehicle out there. The Journey seemed to have everything we were looking for - It is a very safe car, has a ton of storage room and a lot of special features that will be great for a growing family. It is a 4 door car. Above the glovebox is a chill compartment to keep things cold. In the back bench seat the left and right seats convert to booster seats automatically. There are storage bins on the floors that serve as coolers as well. The back hatch has a TON of storage space with a hidden storage compartment below the main trunk area. There are luggage racks for traveling and standard features like cruise control. There is an auxillary jack for playing an iPod, etc and it comes with one year of SIRIUS radio. The car comes with a lifetime warranty on the engine and transmission and other great warranties on everything else. It was a good price and fit in out budget. Overall we are happy with the purchase so far.

Baby Smith 15 weeks

We are now at 18 weeks. My last Dr's appointment was at 17 weeks and all was well. We had a chance to listen to the baby's heartbeat which was beating away at 156 beats per minute. It's been nice knowing that we are no longer high-risk. I was hoping for a big energy-surge during the second trimester, but I seem to have remained pretty tired. Other than that, I am feeling really good though. Later this week we have an ultrasound scheduled and we MIGHT be able to find out if we are expecting a boy or a girl!

It has been fun to daydream about the possibility of either. We have talked about ideas for the nursery, names and all the things we might do in the future. Still, it will be exciting once we know who's growing in there - a boy or a girl.

Here are a couple of pictures of me at 15 weeks. I am sure there will be more to come soon!

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!

Baby Smith - Coming Soon!

We are finally expecting a baby! We've already told all of our friends and family and even posted it on facebook, so I might as well put it on the blog and make it official. As I am nearing the end of the first trimester, things are going well. Besides being very sleepy and having a lot of nausia, everything has been great. We met with our specialist doctor several times and have already had 2 ultrasounds. Because everything is looking good, we have now been released to go back to my regular OB doctor.

Baby Smith is due on December 23, 2009 - it should be an interesting Christmas! My next doctor's appointment will be on June 3rd. We should be able to find out the baby's sex at the beginning of August or maybe even the end of July. We have decided that we definitely want to find out if it's a boy or a girl. We have lots of ideas already for decorating the nursery.

For now, we are just enjoying these last 6 months before the baby is here. We know our lives will never be the same. We have plans to take care of some projects around the house this summer - mainly landscaping and hoping to finish the basement. Then by the fall we will be able to get working on the baby's room.

For anyone who has tried to have a baby, you know it is all about the timing. I knew I wasn't suppose to take a pregnancy test until the Wednesday after Easter, but I thought it would be really cool to find out I was pregnant on Easter, so I cheated and took my first test then. We were thrilled when we saw the VERY faint positive line on the test. I kept taking tests each day, and as you can see, the positive line kept getting darker. Good news for us!

6 weeks - our first ultrasound was at 6 weeks. The baby is that little white dot inside of the black circle. Just about the size of a grain of rice - maybe a little smaller. At this appointment we found out that we would be having one baby (because my numbers had been multiplying so rapidly, there was a thought that I might have been having more than one) but they are sure now that it is just one. At 6 weeks the baby's heartbeat was at 107 which was great news.

8 weeks - Our second ultrasound was at 8 weeks. It was amazing to see how much the baby grew in just 2 weeks time! Now it is just about an inch long. You can see the very obvious shape of the head, rump and legs in this picture. At this checkup we learned the baby's heartbeat was at 166 - more good news! The Dr. told us it was a keeper and we could go ahead and share the news with everyone.

The baby is still growing and even bigger yet. I'm not really showing yet and haven't gained any weight (Thank you Lord.) but I am happy to be finishing up the first trimester. Second trimester starts on June 10th. We will try to keep the blog updated and let everyone know how things are progressing! We are very excited for Christmas this year - even if there is a chance we may still be stuck in the hospital!

We love nice weather

Monday, May 18th we were lucky to enjoy some beautiful weather. My sister Lisa stopped by to help us put out and clean our deck furniture and put out our new grill. Here you can see Den cooking our lunch on the new grill - hot dogs, onions and mac and cheese. Mmmm. :) We spent the entire day outside and enjoyed every minute of the wonderful weather.

Bam Bam

Rusty Noodleman

Belfry

And even Iris came out to catch some rays.

Anniversary Weekend

May, 19th was our 3rd anniversary. We decided to do something special for our anniversary since we don't have any big trips planned for this year. We went downtown and stayed at the newly remodeled Four Seasons Ritz Carlton. Everything was great. When we checked in, they upgraded our room. The service was impeccable and our stay was very comfortable. We went out during the day and when we came back, they surprised us with a complimentary bottle of champagne and chocolate covered strawberries. If you are ever looking to splurge on a weekend away, I would definitely recommend the Ritz.

Even the elevators have elegant chandaliers.

Den waiting for me in the spa waiting area.

Our room

Super comfy bed - really makes me want to get a King size bed.

The view from our room - you can see the lake out there between the buildings. A few people were out sailing since it was a fairly nice day.

When we came back from shopping at Water Tower, they had this waiting for us. Mmmm.

Since I couldn't have any alcohol, Den sprung me some ginger ale from the mini bar. It looks kind of the same.

Den's lunch - so maybe a burger isn't worth $20, but they tried to make up for it with a fancy appearance and yummy homemade ketchup.

My lunch = a veggie panini (which I really didn't care for - too much egg) and some carrot ginger soup (too spicy)

Later on I ordered a bowl of chicken noodle soup from room service. I was just expecting a little bowl of soup. When this entire cart arrived, I was pretty surprised.

Dad & Diana's Wedding

April 4, 2009
Peace Lutheran Church
New Lenox, IL

Dad and Diana tied the knot on April 4th! Here are some pictures from the event. We were blessed with a beautiful day. It was in the mid 50's and sunny all day! The following day we actually had snow! The ceremony was beautiful and the reception was lots of fun.

The bride and groom! Looking good!

Me & Lisa getting ready to greet people and pass out programs.

Here we are again.

The church - before the ceremony. Liz and Linda (and Sue) are sitting up front prepared to do their readings.

The beginning of the ceremony. Dad's looking good and ready to get married!

Dad & Diana with their Maids of Honor (Bonnie and Jan) and their Best Men (Mike and Bryan)

You may now kiss the bride!

Presenting Mr. & Mrs. Larry & Diana Brewer

The receiving line - Dad and Diana greeting Peyton.

Patty must have said something funny - Dad is cracking up!

Mark & Dennis waiting in the receiving line.

Me & Lisa (again)

Diana & Dad with Grandma Brewer

Lisa & Doug

After the wedding - everyone is taking pictures.

Dennis and Me

...and in case you wanted to see the back of my head....

Aren't we cute?

Me and Lisa with Dad

Diana & Dad with her sister's family

Me & Lisa ...yes...again....

Doug & Lisa at the reception

Dennis and I at the reception