It's a... BOY!

We had an ultrasound on Friday and found out the baby is a boy! We are SO excited to finally find out what the sex is!  Everything is going well and he is a healthy little boy.  He weighs a whole 7 ounces right now.  Now we need to pick out a name. I'm now 18 weeks along, so almost half way.  I'm feeling much better than I was in the first trimester thats for sure!  We spent the weekend in Branson celebrating our fifth anniversary that is next week and shopping for baby stuff.  It was great to get away for the weekend!

So, this is a very exciting day for us... we finally have one room completely remodeled/decorated room in our new house.  Very sad considering we've lived here for over 4 months!  I guess having a baby on the way is great motivation to get the house finished!  It also helps that Andy is at home now.  There were only a few minor wounds encountered in refinishing the basement and Duke only played in the paint tray once.  All the dogs do have white ears at the moment from rubbing against wet doors, haha.  Not too bad for us!  The biggest chore of the basement was removing the beautiful maroon carpet and staining the concrete, not a process I ever recommend!  And after the basement flooded about 5 times due to various reasons (which we believe are all under control) the room is now fully functional and turned out pretty great! Here is a before picture and a few after pictures:

Where to start?

So, Andy and I currently live outside of Kansas City in a small town called Raymore, MO.  We bought our first house which has been exciting but a small disaster, everything is slowly working out though.  This is a picture from the day we moved in (yes, it is April but snowing).  We have 5 acres and a barn with the house.  We are still busy updating, painting, and decorating the house but we are making good progress.  We are getting familiar with the area and like it a lot better than Louisiana so far.  We're still not convinced that its better than Arkansas, but it will be great for the next four years.  Andy had been working for a chemical testing company called Dionex but is now my handyman/painter/builder for the next two months until he starts to school, haha.  In September he will be starting to Cleveland Chiropractic College in Overland Park, KS.  It is a four year program and he hopes to get an extra certification to allow him to adjust a

nimals as well.  I graduated from LSU Veterinary School in May and am now practicing at Banfield, a small animal clinic here in town. I love what I do very much, its an exciting job that brings new cases and challenges every day.  I couldn't imagine doing anything else! On July 30th we will be celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary!  I can't believe we've been married that long and can't wait for the years to come. Anyone who knows us well knows we both love animals very much, which is quite apparent with the numerous pets we own.  We have four quarter horses: Shadow, Gypsy, Tonto, and Rigby that we love to ride on trails or occasionally show in western pleasure.  We have 3 dogs - two cocker spaniels: Duke and Leyla, and a rhodesian ridgeback: Kobe. To round up the menagerie: a Lamacha-Alpine cross goat named

 Penny Layne and two rotten barn cats: Gweneviere and Biscuit.  We love our animals and couldn't i

magine life without them.  They keep us laughing, entertained, and occasionally annoyed. Most of you know this by now, but the most exciting news in our life: we're patiently awaiting the arrival of our first child due on December 29th!  Here's a picture of the little growing bump (or "beer gut" as I refer to it) when I was 12 weeks along.  We have an ultrasound on July 24th to find out if its a boy or girl!  Hopefully the little parasite will cooperate for us!  If we got to choose Andy would pick a boy and I would pick a girl, so either way someone will be happy, haha.  We are beyond excited and can't wait for December to get here and meet the little baby!  So, this is our life in a nutshell and a little update of what has been going on in these past fews busy months for us.  I promise to do my best at keeping things updated!

Ultrasounds and Heartbeat

So people have been asking to see some of our ultrasound pictures so we got super creative (and a little bit corny) today and put together a slide show of the pictures with a little sound clip of the babies heartbeat.  (I had some small complications in the beginning so they followed me closely with ultrasounds, thats why there are so many.  Not to worry though, everything is fine!)