The waiting game

Well, today is September 12th and for those of you who may not know it is also our due date.  Still no baby, though.  For most of my pregnancy I actually expected that I would go past my due date before Emily was born because that's common for a first child.  Last week, however, my doctor said she didn't think I'd make it to my due date because of how far I've already progressed on my own, so I got my hopes up.  But here I am on my due date with no baby and no signs that she'll be coming anytime soon.  We'll see how much longer Emily decides to stay in there.  We're very excited to meet her!
In other news, it's been a lot of fun being back here in Houston.  Last week my sister, Fleming, and my mom threw me a baby shower.  We invited people that I haven't seen in a really long time so it was fun having a little reunion.  We spent all day the day before cooking, decorating, and getting everything together and it turned out really cute!

prepping

Jeff helped out too :)

all the food (we had lots of leftovers!)

cute dessert!

Fleming made us a cute diaper cake

great to see old friends!

my cousin, Keri, came down from Dallas to join in on the festivities (sorry we didn't have the baby while you were here!)

favors

Thank you to Fleming (and Jeff) and my mom for putting together such a great party and thanks to everyone who came!  We had a great time! Now we just need Emily to get here so the celebrating can continue!

our new home

For the next couple of months, Grant and I (and baby Emily) will be living in my parents' garage apartment while we prepare for the baby to come, get settled in the area, and begin searching for our own place.  Since we won't be here long, we left a lot of our stuff in boxes.  We came into the apartment with it partly furnished, so we were still able to add a lot of our own little touches to make it feel like our own place.  It's small, but works perfectly for our needs, and we really like the way it's turned out!


Entrance:

Living Room:

Kitchen:

Bedroom (and nursery):

fun headband holder that my mom and I made (thanks to Amanda for the idea)

poor Grant has to use the "hobbit closet"

Bathroom:

We like our little place and are excited to spend the next few months here.  It's our 2nd home together, but it will be little Emily's 1st home!

(make sure to read the previous post about our last few weeks in provo... we have so much to catch up on that I decided to split up the blog posts!)

On to the next chapter

Sorry for the lack of blog posts in the past few months... things have been pretty crazy for our little family.  We spent much of our summer packing up our home in Provo, preparing for our move to Houston.  Now we're finally here and we're counting down the days until our little one arrives.
Provo has been very good to us for the past several years.  Grant and I were both able to study at and graduate from Brigham Young University.  Grant was able to teach missionaries at the MTC and I taught second graders at Westside Elementary.  And Provo is also where we were able to meet each other and fall in love :)  We've made great friends that we know we'll have forever and made lots of memories that we'll cherish.  For all of these reasons (and many more) we are very grateful for all of our time spent in the beautiful Provo, Utah.  Here are some pictures of our last few weeks:

After several years and countless intramural teams, Grant was finally able to win a shirt this summer... TWICE!  The first one came from coed kickball during the spring term, and just a few weeks ago his softball team became champs.  The team was thrown together last minute and most of the members didn't know each other.  They only won 1 game during the regular season, but came together and meshed so well during the tournament that they made it all the way to the end!

We had heard this was the best snow cone place in Provo and it definitely didn't disappoint!  I only wish we had discovered it earlier in this super hot summer!

Last cafe rio :(

Grant's birthday!

He got a new BYU blanket

and we went to Brick Oven one last time for a birthday dinner

Grant didn't end up walking in his graduation ceremony, but we did take some pictures to document the occasion!

Our final to-do list, preparing for the move

The morning of the move was very bittersweet.  We were excited to be moving close to family and starting the next chapter, but it was very hard leaving all of our friends, our first apartment together, and the security and familiarity of our college town.  It was a great 5 years for me (and 4 for Grant) that we will always remember and hold dear.  We don't know when we'll be there again but we're looking forward to it someday!

The move wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, especially considering the fact that I was 8 months pregnant at the time!  It went by pretty fast and I was fairly comfortable.  The only complaint was that my legs and feet swelled up like balloons!  It was pretty embarrassing!  But it's been so nice being able to swim and spend time in real air conditioning since we got here to Houston.  I never realized how wonderful swimming is for a pregnant woman, but now that I know I'll definitely be spending lots of time in the pool before the baby comes.  I'm 37 weeks today, so I'm technically full term and baby could come anytime.  Only 3 weeks until the actual due date... CRAZY!!

Baby Shower

Today we had our baby shower for our baby girl.  We've been planning it for weeks, so we were really excited when it finally got here!  My old roommates and I worked together on all of the decorating and food and it all came together so perfectly!  We all agreed that it was the cutest baby shower we'd ever been to :)

The cookies and milk were all delicious and definitely filled us up!  It was a co-ed baby shower, so we had lots of fun games that everyone enjoyed!

We had so much fun, but the festivities definitely wore us out (not to mention all of the cookies and milk that added to our sleepiness).

Thanks to everyone who helped make the day a success!  It was the best baby shower we could've asked for!

champs

I've finally made it.  Intramural champ.  Granted, it's in the ever fierce league of kickball, but hey, I finally got a shirt (the reward for winning an intramural tournament).  I've come close in some of the other sports in the past (like softball, volleyball, frisbee, soccer, and football to name a few). So even if the shirt comes from being champs in a childhood game, I'll take it.

While daddy is off becoming an intramural champ, here is a picture of our little champ growing in Katie's tummy.  She's getting stronger every day!  And bigger!  This is the most recent picture at 26 weeks.

And I can't end this entry of champs without showing what Katie has been doing (besides growing a person inside of her.)  She is the champ of making wreaths.  Here is her newest creation for the 4th of July.

Super cute, huh!