Goodbye Sara, We will miss you!

Yesterday we lost a great friend, Sara Sullivan. She was a beloved wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend. We were stationed with the Sullivans in Korea. Sara's husband Brady and Brad were good friends and Sara was always cooking a meal for Brad or taking care of him in other small ways since I couldn't be there with him. Getting to know her as I spent time in Korea was a joy as she was an enthusiastic tour guide of this foreign land and always up for a new adventure. She hosted us in her home many times and had the most giving heart. Sara was the picture of life, and a light in the lives of all who knew her. Her and Brady's faith both before and through this trial is an example to all.

Brady, Sara, Brad and I on a trip to the DMZ

Early this year Brady and Sara learned she was pregnant. A short while later Sara was diagnosed with breast cancer. Through their faith she continued to defy the odds and delivered Baby Chloe. Not even two weeks after Chloe was born Sara started having seizures and went back to the hospital. Yesterday she went to be with the Lord. Their journey is on their blog at http://bandssullivan.blogspot.com/

Sara, Chloe, and Brady

We know that Sara is now pain free and wrapped in the arms of our Lord, but please continue to pray for Brady and Chloe as they start this next chapter of their lives without Sara.

Nursery

First of all I just have to say that my husband is a stud! He has worked so hard putting together this nursery so our little boy will have a great place all of his own. I took some pictures which didn't turn out super great due to the light pouring into the windows but you can get the idea.

This is the crib. We picked out another one online originally but it was WAY on back order. When we went to pick up the other pieces that came in we saw this on the catalog and liked it even better than the original one we had picked out. It is hard to tell, again with the bad lighting, but there is detail woodwork that kind of looks like wainscoting on the front and back piece. Also this is one of those life time cribs that changes into a toddler bed, a day bed, and then finally into a full size bed. Who knows how long the furniture will last in the hands of the military movers but hypothetically he could take this to college with him!

You can just barely see the bedding in these pics. I will do another post on that later because it is super cute. The little bench seat in the corner was a wedding gift and repurposed perfectly into the nursery. You can also see in the pic below the AWESOME painting job that Brad did a couple of weekends ago. He painted the bottom a warm darker tan and the top a much lighter shade of the same tan. Then he cut and put up the white chair rail all around the room. I was SO impressed. He is such a wonderful husband because when I have decorating ideas like adding chair rail to a room he indulges me and it comes out looking more wonderful than I could have imagined!

This is the chest of drawers. And yes we already have a toy airplane to decorate the room!!

More pics of the great painting job Brad did. We are also debating using this picture in the room. We will see how it all comes together.... I also want to get a glider to put in the corner right here so that I will have a nice comfy place to rock the baby.

I am so excited about how everything is coming together. Brad has worked really hard on everything and we have most of the major stuff done. Now it is just pulling all the details together over the next few months and we will have a perfect little nursery!

18 weeks!

I am 18 weeks today and I am getting a bit thicker even though I still haven't "popped" out. Here is a belly pic we took yesterday... pay no attention to the nice hair do, we were doing yard work all day. I will have to remember to fix my hair next time we take a pic. A girl I work with has almost the exact same due date as me and I got to see her when I was up at our Headquarters last week. She has the cutest little baby bump! I am sure I will get there soon...

The baby is 5 1/2 inches now from crown to rump and weighs about 7 oz. My favorite website says that he is about the size of a bell pepper. I am still wearing all of my same clothes but I am starting to notice them being a bit tighter now. Since I was pretty sick through the beginning of my pregnancy (and sometimes still!) I hadn't gained much total weight at my last doctors appointment. My next appointment is next Monday so we will see how I do then. I have a feeling I have made up some of that ground! It is hard to believe that I am 4 1/2 months through this already.

Butterflies and Bubbles

So I am officially feeling the baby move now!! It is exciting to finally have some indication that the baby is in there other than throwing up! Since I am almost 18 weeks and still not showing it is also reassuring to know that everything is all right in there and the baby is growing.

I have read a lot about what this is supposed to feel like and most say it feels like butterflies or gas bubbles. I don't really think it feels too much like either but I don't have anything better to describe the feeling. It is just something kind of moving low in your stomach.

I mostly feel the baby when I am sitting and it seems to become most active when I am eating. I first started to feel it last weekend. Brad and I were out and about and stopped to get Sonic for lunch. I told Brad I could feel the baby moving and he said "Yeah he is saying quit dropping those tater tots on my head!!" We thought it was pretty funny. I feel the baby every once in a while if I am laying down or standing but I almost always feel him when I am eating now. It is a pretty cool experience!

Baby Furniture!

We have been searching hard for furniture that is cute, a good value, and that we are able to get shipped to Sumter. As you can imagine there is not a plethora of places to shop for baby furniture around here so the internet has been my best friend on this search. It really is challenging to find something that isn't too expensive but also looks nice. Not only that but it seems that as soon as I find a crib I like then they don't have the matching dresser or they are our of it in the color I want. It has been a bit frustrating!!

We finally found something we both like. We ordered it online at JC Penny and got it shipped straight to the Sumter store. How convenient!!

They don't have a pic of the crib online but this is the dresser and chest of drawers that we ordered.

Everything is in the color "coffee." The crib has yet to come in so once we get it and get everything together I will post more pics.

Laboring on Labor Day

I mentioned in my last post that we tackled some landscaping over the holiday weekend. What an adventure!! It all started when Brad's dad decided he wanted to mow the lawn to help out... What a guy!

Well after the lawn mowing we discovered that we had a lawn pest problem so we went to trusty ol' google and found that our lawn was infested with Two Striped Spittle Bugs... a common South Carolina lawn pest. So that spurred a trip to Lowe's for Father and Son to get something to rid the lawn of the spittle bugs.

Next thing I know I am getting a call from Brad wanting us to meet them back up at Lowe's to look at the new shipment of bushes that just came in. We have had a couple of landscaping projects in mind but haven't gotten around to them with everything else going on. So off to Lowe's we went.

Long story short... Here are the before and after pics. HGTV eat your heart out!

Before:

After:

We planted some Indian Hawthorns as a back drop, a crepe myrtle, two butterfly bushes, and 22 tufts of decorative Liropa grass as a border. Then Brad and his dad wired in the landscape lighting so that we have two spotlights shining on the tree and 6 path lights that illuminate the flagstone wall. We also dug out around the wall where the lights go and planted some magic carpet thyme as ground cover. What a day! Thanks for all the help Maw and Paw!!

The next day we were all a little tired of landscaping but I decided that I was going to figure out what we anted to do with the front bed which had also needed some work. I had been keeping my potted plants in this bed so that while I travel they will get watered. I lifted out the potted plant and got a little surprise... A SNAKE!!! It was just a little baby but I wanted nothing to do with it! I called Brad and he got the rake and was moving the pine straw trying to find it when he stumbled upon Mama. A full grown mama cotton mouth snake. In our flower bed. Brad's Dad was the brave one who killed the Mama and then Brad found the baby and made sure it was gone too. Glad that issue is taken care of! Since the flower bed was now thoroughly torn apart the guys put in all the bushes for that bed and even got adventurous and installed a better sprinkler set up for the bed. Wow! Good work!

Sorry... No before pics on this but the only thing there previously were the 4 green bushes.

Here you can see one of the two elevated sprinklers they installed in each corner.

Holiday Weekend

It was a special treat for us to not only have a long weekend last weekend but also have Brad's parents come visit us. We packed SO much stuff into so little time! Brad got to have a 4 day weekend and I had a 3 day weekend and we were all just thankful to have the extra time to spend together.

We started our adventure on Friday when we all went to my appointment to get the sonogram. It was a nice place and they had enough viewing room for everyone to get to be in the room for the fun. The sonogram lady was asian and although she spoke good english is was very accented. She kept us laughing the whole time because we went to find out the gender and so when she looked for the boy parts she kept calling it the light bulb. She would say "Do you see the light bulb?" "Look! It's shining!" and then at one point she said "It is shining like a star in the night sky!" Pretty funny. After the ultra sound we took this family photo to comemorate the occasion. We spent the evening in Charlotte going to stores we don't get to go to much living in Sumter. We shopped for baby furniture at a few places and of course we went to Best Buy!

On Saturday we had a FULL day planned. We started off by making a trek over to Myrtle Beach. Both of Brad's parents spent many summers there in their childhood and then took Brad and his sisters back there when they were young. It held lots of memories for them and was great to visit. We took off our shoes and took a nice stroll along the beach. We saw tons of shells and picked up a nice collection to send back for our little neice Jordan. Hopefully she will enjoy this little piece of South Carolina!

After the beach we headed out on another journey to Charleston. We stopped for lunch on the way then got to stop a farm store so I could get some fresh SC peaches. The one thing I have craved during pregnancy is peaches. I could eat 5 every day! We bought 6 pounds (enough to last a couple of days) and got into the city. We parked downtown and walked around a bit. Brad's parents treated us to a carraige tour of Charleston. It was the highlight of the trip! We had a great time seeing all of the historic homes and learning more about the history of this very dynamic city. After the tour we headed over to a local favorite, Hyman's Seafood for dinner. No I did not eat seafood, I had the vegetable plate. Everyone else enjoyed a smorgasboard of seafood treats and we left stuffed!!

Sunday Brad's dad decided he wanted to help Brad out and mow the lawn for him (What a guy!!) That was the beginning of a two day long landscaping adventure. We noticed that our grass hasn't been as nice this year as it was last and so after seeing a lot of bugs in the yard and with a little help from google we found out that our yard was infested with two striped spittle bugs. Who knew?? Apparently this is a fairly common SC lawn pest. I just think the name is kinda funny. That spurred a trip to Lowes (this always means trouble) and a trip home with not only pset killer but a new tree for the back. Since Lowes had just restocked the plants and we needed to fix up the beds we went on a lndscaping craze and really did some nice stuff. More to come on that later but for now just enjoy the pics of Brad and his Paw getting dirty.

We were exhausted after everything but really enjoyed spending the time with Brad's parents. We were so thankful for all the help they gave us around the house and in the yard. The only bad part is that I am already ready for another long weekend!