A Very Merry Christmas!

It is hard to believe that Christmas has come and gone and 2008 is almost over, we often find ourselves wondering where the year has gone?! We had an amazing Christmas with our families this year!

Our Christmas celebrations started in Lamont on the 21st! It is always fun to start off our holidays there as it is our largest family and a lot of kids, so there is always a great energy in the air! We had a lot of laughs as Grandma Smith sang a song about her gifts of Christmas incorporating all of the grandkids and their birthdates into the 12 Days of Christmas! And of course more laughs as we did our White Elephant Christmas exchange!

The night before Christmas Eve found the Eddins Family opening gifts! We both enjoy taking our time and unwrapping our gifts and snuggling in with the puppies! Here is a picture of the dogs unwrapping their gifts! Oh the joys of new toys and cookies!!!

Christmas Eve morning found us at my Mom's house with Jason, Jen and the girls to do our annual Christmas celebration! The big hit with the girls was Pottery Barn sleeping bags, Celia's purple and Ruby's pink! They were too cute for words! Mike's surprise was a David Ortiz (Big Papi) signed baseball bat, for those of you who don't know who that is...he plays for the Red Sox! And this was my start to opening the first two pieces of a very big wall unit that will double as a "bar" for our basement! And of course there were presents for Baby Girl Eddins among them were two adorable outfits with lots of tulle, so I have a feeling that professional pictures will be done in them...stay tuned!

Christmas Eve found us hosting around 20 of our family members for our traditional soup dinner! We also celebrated by opening presents with my Harvey side as well, not the normal tradition, but it worked out fine for this year! We truly enjoy having everyone at our house and having everyone together at the same time, it doesn't happen often enough!

Christmas morning we arrived at Dad's bright and early to start in our Christmas tradition! It wasn't long before the girls were ready to open presents! It really helps open your eyes to the true meaning of Christmas when you get to watch it through little ones! They have such an innocence about them and truly get caught up in the spirit of it all, which only helps restore your excitement about the season!

Of course lots and lots of gifts were opened on Christmas morning, some for all of us! I got yet another piece of my wall unit, rugs for the kitchen and a lot of other great things! Mike got a Chad Greenway signed football helmet, a North Face jacket, boots, gloves and more! The family gift was ice skates to take up to the cabin! I can't wait to get mine out, probably winter '09! I am guessing Mike can't quite pick out his favorite gift from Christmas morning, but I sure know which one was mine. We received a bench, rocking chair, blanket and pillow for the nursery that moved me to tears! We can't wait to incorporate it into the decor!

Then on our way to Wayne and Elaine's it was for the afternoon! We feasted on ham, roast, stuffing, potatoes, corn, homemade bread, chex mix, monkey bread, date pinwheel cookies, and the list goes on! We opened lots of gifts and relaxed as it snowed outside! We got great stuff once again, including a fire-proof safe and money we will use to install our security system! Once again the baby got some great gifts...sleepers, bibs, a blanket, a rattle and some bath accessories!

We still have a few Christmas celebrations left, that we are looking forward to! We want to thank our families for making our Christmas so wonderful! The true gifts of Christmas are each and every one of you! We look forward to 2009 and all it will bring to us and can't wait to update the blog this time next year with a 7 month old! We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and we wish all of you a Happy New Year!

Sugar and Spice and all things nice...

That's what little GIRLS are made of! You read it right we are having a baby girl in May! We are both so excited! Mike had the inclination the whole time and it was my original gut instinct, I dreamt about her early on!

Our appointment today went very well! As you can imagine the nerves were running high this morning with anticipation! Our ultrasound technician was amazing and showed us every angle of the baby and then asked if we wanted to know and told us the great news! Mom and Baby are perfectly healthy and the baby has a very strong heartbeat of 154 beats a minute!

It is pretty amazing to reflect on the pictures from today, it is almost exactly 2 months since our last ultrasound, so there has obviously been quite a bit of growth and you can definitely see it in the pictures!

When looking at the ultrasound, the top one is of her profile, the second one is of her face...her right hand is up by her right eye! The bottom picture is of her body sprawled out, you can see her head on top and then her rib cage closer to the bottom right hand corner!

We feel so blessed and we can't wait to integrate this new baby girl into our family and introduce her to her wonderful cousins, Celia and Ruby who will show her the ropes!

Here Come the Holidays!

It has been a busy last couple of weeks for us as we prepare for the holidays! We have had a lot of Christmas shopping to do and I am proud to say we only have 4 more gifts to get and we are done! As you can see the tree is getting extremely full and we have quite a few more left to wrap! Sadly, we are going to need a bigger house to accomodate presents next year with a baby to buy for!

Today we went to church with family, we tried St. Mark's Lutheran and had a really nice time! The service today was the story of Advent, it was performed and told by their youth ministry kids and it was awesome! At one point I even had tears in my eyes listening to all of the little ones sing! After church we headed to CRCC to their Santa brunch and low and behold...there was Santa, Mrs. Claus and even a reindeer! It was really neat to see the kids light up and of course CRCC was decorated beautifully!

It was a relatively nice day today and we were really enjoying the weather, but it started to cool off in a hurry and it sounds like we are in for some bad weather...the biggest downfall to the season is the bitter cold weather and the icy roads! Even Baxter and Luca are preparing for the cold!

We look forward to updating the blog on Thursday to let everyone know the gender of Baby Eddins! Please send prayers and keep your fingers crossed that the baby cooperates and that the technician doesn't tell us one thing and SURPRISE! the exact opposite when we deliver!

17 Week Check-up

Today was our 17 week check up and all went well. If you are like us it is hard to believe that we are already 17 weeks along and at the very beginning of our 5th month of pregnancy! We met with Dr. Olson this morning and heard the babies heartbeat...154, a good strong heartbeat. I find myself struggling a little bit and craving confirmation that everything is okay because I am one of the very fortunate expectant mother's that feels really pretty good, so hearing the heartbeat is a great feeling of relief for me that everything is well with Baby Eddins! Today's appointment was a routine check-up, I was told I would have to get a flu shot, so other than that minor prick, all else was painless!

We are certainly looking forward to December 18th when we are able to find out the sex of the baby! Mike is pretty certain it is a girl, friends of ours are predicting a girl, Jason & Jen believe it is a boy, as well as a few other friends and I am completely on the fence, one minute I think it is a boy and the next I am certain it is a girl! I consulted one of those Chinese birth charts online and it said boy, so I then proceeded to check another link to see how consistent the charts are and the next one said girl! SO...needless to say, it is truly a 50/50 guess and we will be blessed either way the coin drops! We are both so anxious to get going on the nursery and I have been patient, if you can believe it, and haven't bought much of anything for the baby yet!

I would like to take a moment and wish my Grandpa Harvey a Happy 72nd Birthday! We hope you have a great day and love you very much!

Galena Getaway

This weekend we headed to Galena to celebrate our 2nd Anniversary! We had great company along with us our two great friends Monica and Brandon. We decided sometime earlier this year that we wanted to go to Galena to celebrate our anniversary and Brandon and Monica had the same idea, since they were married up there a year ago on the 10th of November, so we decided to do a joint trip!

We rented a 2 bedroom villa at Eagle Ridge and stayed Friday and Saturday evening. On Friday night we had dinner at Backstreet Grill, which is the restaurant that catered Monica and Brandon's wedding...YUM! Saturday morning the girls had spa treatments while the boys watched football and caught some ZZZ's! Saturday afternoon brought Hawkeye football for the guys and some shopping downtown Galena for the girls! Monica and I were able to get back to the bar and join the guys for the last quarter of the Iowa game and were happy we were able to see the Hawks squeak out that win against an undefeated Penn State! GO HAWKS! Later that evening we got cleaned up and went to dinner at One Eleven Main, a relatively new restaurant downtown, where lots of laughs took place!

On the way home today Mike and I were discussing how lucky we are to have 2 great years of marriage under our belts, to have a baby on the way, to have a great family and to have amazing friends. We want to thank Brandon and Monica for a great weekend, we look forward to carrying on the tradition! Happy Anniversary on the 10th, we wish you a lifetime of love and happiness!

Our 2nd Anniversary

It is so hard to believe that it was already two years ago that we were in Galena, IL getting married! It truly was the best day of our lives so far! We were surrounded by family and friends in a beautiful location vowing our love to one another, it couldn't have gotten any better than that! A special thank you to my brother and sister-in-law Jason and Jen for sharing their anniversary with us...Happy 8th Anniversary today, we love you both!

This year to celebrate we are going to spend the weekend of November 7th-9th in Galena at Eagle Ridge with two of our very best friends, Brandon & Monica Hahn, who also happened to get married in the Galena area on November 10th!

I would like to take a minute and recognize my husband, Mike. Thank you for the past two years. Thank you for being my companion, my partner and my best friend. You truly complete me, without you my life wouldn't be the same. Happy Anniversary! I love you!

Here are a few memories from that day!

A Blog is born...and other things!

It is official we too have jumped on the blogging bandwagon! Thanks to all of our friends for having their great sites we decided it was time for us to join in on the fun! There is a multitude of reasons to start a blog, but we figured what more fitting of a blog than to announce the fact that we are expecting!

We had an exciting Labor Day weekend this year and it started off with a positive pregnancy test! The past few months have been somewhat surreal with us trying to let the good news sink in. We were blessed with an ultrasound on Monday, October 27th and were told that Baby Eddins is doing well and very healthy! Our next ultrasound is on December 18th when we will be able to determine the baby's sex, we can't think of a better early Christmas present!

The pictures to the right are of the ultrasound, the first one is the baby on its back with his/her hands up by its face. The second one is the 3D ultrasound, which was totally amazing! It still gives us both goosebumps when we look at it! The bottom one is a view of the babies back and bum!

Keep checking back as we will have many updates as we go on this adventure together!