Pictures (in chronological order)

No time for captions....just enjoy!

It's been WAY TOO LONG!!!!

So I have been slacking on my blogging. I apologize. But I do have an excuse....I've had other things on my mind as you can imagine. Like the fact we're about to have a baby!!

So what has happened since my last post?? A lot! I don't want to drag on too long, but I'll fill you in on a few of the top things.

1. We got air conditioning installed in our house finally! And we are thankful we did seeing as Colorado just broke a record with 24 consecutive days above 90 degrees.

2. We took our birthing class at the hospital and both learned a ton. Chadwick especially was very interested in learning what this whole birth process is all about. He is gonna be a great dad!

3. We had 2 more baby showers. One was thrown by my co-workers and one by my sister. Everyone so was generous and we really enjoyed celebrating with friends and family. We truly are blessed.

4. This one just happened today...apparently our baby could be here any day! I have been measuring "big" at my last few doctor's appointments and was supposed to have an ultrasound next week on August 12th to check the size of the baby and what not. Well today at my 35 week appt., I measured at 39 weeks pregnant! Babies are born/full-term at 40 weeks! If these measurements are true, I only have 1 week left! Now it is not likely I will have the baby next week, but you just never know. It could be that our boy is just big. It could just be the way he is positioned. Or it could just be the way my body is built. Needless to say, the doctor's bumped my ultrasound up to this week, so we will be having one on Wednesday morning. So we should know on Wednesday what is really going on and what steps we need to take next. As you can imagine, I am SUPER anxious to find out what the deal is. Prayers are greatly appreciated! More to come on this once we know.

Lastly, I always get more and more questions to see the baby bump. Despite my story above about measuring big, I don't feel like I "look" huge. However, i do "feel" huge. I definitely have a pregnant waddle going on these days and my back and hips are hating me right now. Anyways, here's a few pics.

**I'm having issues getting my pictures to load. I'll try again later. Check back soon.**

The Last Trimester - Things are becoming REAL!!!

Wow! A lot had happened since my last post!!! Baby Shower! Birthday! New Carpet! Furniture put together! AND THE START OF THE 3rd TRIMESTER! Needless to say, I have a lot of photos to share that go along with all these things! Enjoy!

An updated prego pic of me! I am definitely starting to get VERY uncomfortable!
The 3rd trimester has officially begun. This baby could be here anytime in the next 10-14 weeks! AHHH! (12 weeks until my due date, but they say give or take 2 weeks).

Two weekends ago, my mom and dad threw me a baby shower in Cincinnati with all of my extended family! We had a great time, and I feel truly blessed that everyone was so generous with their gift giving! After spending a whole weekend there and having a party, i sadly only have 1 picture form the trip, but it's a good one. Above is my cute grandpa Charlie mowing his lawn. (Our little boy is going to have a middle name of Charles after this guy!)



The next big event was the installation of our new carpet thanks to the US Government and all the billions of dollars they just went into debt by giving us all money! However, I am grateful! We got the new carpet in our master bedroom and the baby's room and it is SO nice. This house is really starting to feel complete now! And, since the carpet is done, we were now able to set up all the baby furniture! Look at the pictures below...it's all starting to hi me that there will REALLY be a BABY sleeping in there soon. No decorations on the walls yet, but it's coming along.

A view of the room from the doorway. Crib on the back wall. Dresser and changing table on the front wall. Notice the lovely new carpet. Our animals love laying on it.

The crib with drawer beneath. I am going to use the drawer to store blankets and such. You can already see some of them in there.

The dresser with changing table on top. The cool part is that later on, we can take the changing table off and it can jsut be a dresser on its own.

Here's where the crazy pregnant side of me came out. For some reason i just HAD to put all of his clothes that we have in hsi dresser. There really is no point in doing this because I have to wash all these clothes before he can wear them. So why did i fold them all and put them in?!?! Who knows?!?! Ask my raging hormones!

Last picture for now is of the rocking chair/reading corner. I put the bookshelf next to the chair so that we have all of our books right there at night to read before bed! Now I just need to get more books to fill it up. We are thinking bout painting the bookshelf a light blue color, just to add something to the room. But Chadwick thinks he likes the light colored wood. Thoughts??
Oh, and, can you tell Jack likes his baby brother's new room!?!?

We also had a great time celebrating my 24th birthday. Chadwick made me a steak dinner on Thursday night and then we had some friends over Saturday for a BBQ! Thanks to everyone for all the generous gifts! I am used most of the money to buy a patio umbrella for the table on our back porch! and I am using the rest to go shopping!I have to be honest though, all this baby stuff is much more exciting than a birthday. Thus, tons of baby pics this post and none of my bday! Sorry!

That's it for now. Hopefully more to come soon!

Love,
Ashley

Baby Furniture!

Some of you have already seen what our baby furniture looks like, but for those who haven't, here it is. It looks just like in the picture. We also got the dresser and changing table that is back in the corner of the pic. It is so awesome and pretty in person. Thanks mom & dad willis for helping us get it!




We also just bought a glider/rocking chair for the room too. You can see it above. It looks a lot darker in the pic than it really is. Imagine more of a carmel tan color. But the chair is great. Super Comfy! And we could even use it as a regular furniture piece afterwards!

So now that we have all this furniture in our posession, we are just waiting for our new carpet to get installed so we can set it all up! Hopefully the carpet will be done in the next 2 weeks or so! I can't wait.

Wow, 2 blogs in 2 days. I'm proud of myself. Don't expect this to be the norm.

A Few Pics and Name Ideas

So some people have been asking to see pictures of me pregnant. While I don't have any that i am particularly fond of, I'll still share! To the right is Chadwick and I at our first baby shower we had in Texas. Above, is a picture from the same trip to Texas but now we are down at College Station for Lauren's graduation.

We have also pretty much settled on 2 baby names for our little one. Chadwick apparantly got bored at work the toher day and wanted to see how one of the names looked in big letters spelled out...here is what he came up with...

Name #1 for baby is Braxton. It's different, but we like it. How many people do you know with an 'X' in their name? Not many! The full name we are thinking here is Braxton Charles Shoults. Charles comes from my Grandpa on my mom's side, and Chadwick's Great Grandpa on his Dad's side.

Name #2 for baby is Owen Charles Shoults. But right now, Braxton is winning! However, I refuse to give him an official naem until I meet him. So we'll have to wait until September to see!

Ok, that is it for today. More later.

We are blogging!

So we trying to do this whole blogging thing again. Hopefully, we keep up with it better this time. But now we have more REASON to blog. As most of you know, we are expecting a BABY BOY at the beginning of September! So this is going to be a good place for us to document the pregnancy and then eventually the life of our little boy. I'll hopefully be able to post some good stuff starting here this coming long weekend. Until then, get excited!

Here's a teaser...it's a video of our first ultrasound when we found out it was a boy....

http://vimeo.com/879508