Painting and more painting

 The last time Jason and I painted the house we painted the 25 foot walls in our foyer. After that adventure, we swore that we would never paint high ceilings again....well here we go. We painted the upstairs this past weekend and the 25 foot ceilings going up the stairs. We were going to have someone do it, but they wanted a ridiculous price, so we just decided to do it ourselves, and we are glad we did. Although it wasn't fun we saved a lot of money and it looks so much better than the nasty chalky contractor paint that we had. Last time we did the foyer I had paint in my hair for about 3 weeks. I successfully made it through this job with no paint in my hair, which was pretty exciting. We've painted so much, I should be getting better at this.

Flash hates it when we paint. He sits at the bottom of the stairs ad pouts because he wants attention.

 All done!

Master's Degree

Finally, after almost 3 years of working full-time and going to school in the evening, I finished my Master's Degree. Good timing since now we have a kid on the way. I am not walking in graduation since we are so busy these days. I graduated from University of Maryland with a Master's of Education in Instructional Technology. This semester I finished my thesis capstone, which was an electronic thesis/classroom implementation of a technology grant I got for iPads and the impact of iPad applications on K-5 music theory and composing. The project was really successful and the iPads were such a great tool for my kids. I am very excited to have this completed!

Decorating for Christmas

 Last weekend we got all of our Christmas decorations up. We still haven't done the outside of the house, but the inside is pretty much complete. I decided to change some things up this year and do a different color from last year so I made new wreaths and new swags going up the stairs since we decided to do black, white, and red.

 The tree.

Flash... Very excited for Christmas. He's ready for Dakota to come visit.

Thanksgiving

This year we went to my parent's house for Thanksgiving. We had a great time and we didn't hit any traffic either, which was a miracle. I was very productive too and got all of my Christmas shopping done. We had a very relaxing and quiet weekend with awesome food and family.

Obviously Flash has targeted my dad as the "sucker" who will always give him yummy food, so Flash is right next to my dad surveying the situation and quality controlling the turkey.

 Making sure everything looks okay. I think it passed inspection.

 Yummy Thanksgiving feast.

We had to get a few family pictures of the 3 of us since next year there will be 4!

Had to get a belly picture too. This is 14 1/2 weeks. Some of my belly is probably turkey and stuffing too though:)

My parent's backyard is probably Flash's favorite place because there is so much space to run and play. He had a blast playing frisbee and rolling in the grass.

Tired...finally!

Another Thanksgiving weekend tradition is the UVA VA Tech game. We had all of the neighbors over to watch the game. Of course my dad decided that Flash needed a seat beside him on the couch to watch the game. No wonder Flash loves it there!

13 week ultrasound

We went to the high risk clinic for my ultrasound pictures and the 1st trimester screening tests this week. I think that this is the first time that Jason and I have gotten really really excited about baby T. We were always excited but very cautious and worrying a little about how things were going. Also, at my first ultrasound, the baby was a teeny little blob. It is hard to believe that you're actually having a baby when you see that and nothing has really changed. This time it looked like a real baby! We were so excited and we also got to see the baby move. Apparently we have a very very active baby. Baby T was rolling around, moving it's arms and legs, and flailing about. Already baby T is not wanting to cooperate while taking photos. When they got the picture the way they wanted it, baby would roll around. So I had to keep coughing to move the baby back around to get pictures.
I am feeling good and starting to take my first belly pictures. I am starting to get a little belly. First trimester is done and we will find out what the baby is on December 28th. We are so excited!!!!!

 Profile: We have decided that the baby already has by turned up nose:)

 Hand and arm

Baby belly!

12 week appointment

We went for our 12 week appointment and everything is looking good. I got to hear the heartbeat which was 162 and strong. So far they say everything is going very well. I go back in a week for an ultrasound and my 1st trimester screening.

Hurricane Sandy

We survived Hurricane Sandy and we were very lucky that we didn't have a lot of damage. I missed 2 days of school because of the storm and luckily Jason already had off of work for one of those days, so I wasn't by myself in the storm. We had a lot of flooding (even through our bedroom window!) and consistent 80MPH winds. Our house didn't have any damage but there were lots of trees taken down near us, many people lost their roof and siding and a few of the townhouses had their bay windows taken off the front of their house. We just lost the door to our shed. Otherwise we were pretty good. We went out after the storm to check everything out.

Shots from the neighborhood.

 This is the typically very small Monocacy River in Frederick. It flooded to a 35 foot storm surge and flooded over interstate 15. The usually 25 foot wide river flooded to about 10-15 acres wide!