Ever changing updates!

Happy winter to all-- it sounds like it's creeping up on everyone, and it is certainly in full force up here in Alaska! Welcome dark sky, welcome snow, but no welcome to the ice storm.
That's right, we have been in the middle of an ice storm the past few days. I don't think it's as intense as a few I have seen in Iowa, but it does the trick for making every surface outside as slippery as can possibly be... not so good for the preggo trying to walk down the ice rink driveway. I learned my lesson a week ago when I went down the driveway too quickly and while trying to avoid tripping over Finn, started falling immediately. I was putting on a ridiculous display trying not to fall on my belly, or my back, or my head, or who knows how else I could have fallen at that point... After spinning my wheels for a few seconds I was able to just slide down to my knees. So close to saving it but the ice won this time. Yesterday, it was a struggle to get to work and many people (hubby included) were unable to get out. A friend and coworker of mine has a van with nice studded tires so her husband and she came to get me and we made our way to work, only to find out we were closing early. No complaints here!
I cannot believe how quickly the holidays have gotten here, but I'm very happy about it! In a way though, it sends me spinning into this unnecessary cycle of worry because Thanksgiving is here, then on to Christmas and Christmas parties, and then it's New Years, and then Kate has a baby and then it's already practically February and when we get there I'll be weeks away from having a baby... and we have done NOTHING to prepare. I realize there is time, but my point is all of these events make time pass quite quickly and pretty soon it will be hard to catch up!
I am definitely in the mode of holiday cheer, however. This weekend Eric was nice enough to humor me and so we went to Target together in search for festive decorations. He got into it pretty quickly though and we ended up going home and while I made chex mix and listened to Christmas tunes, Eric and David hung Christmas lights outside (SO excited to have those this year!) and then Eric made a wreath for our front door. He wired berries and little frosted pine cones and made a really nice looking wreath. Haussner clan came over after that and we made rolls for Thanksgiving. There's a chance I already ate my portion, but good news is we made a ton! Well I actually had nothing to do with the making, I was the taste tester. Anyway, a very festive day and it felt really nice.
Baby boy is kicking, he must know I was just about to mention him.
So on that topic, here we are at 22 weeks! Pretty amazing really, at the beginning the time went so slowly, and now I feel like it has picked up and doesn't plan to slow down. I won't complain because I'm loving all of the changes. (Well, not the ever increasing numbers on the scale, but it's all fine and normal) I have been feeling baby kicks and squirms for weeks now, and I just can never have enough. Last week for about 3 days though, I stopped feeling him as much. Maybe a few squirms here and there but really not much at all. Turns out he must have been resting through a growth spurt because during the weekend, he was more active and stronger than ever. He just barely stopped moving! Morning, day, night, none stop kicks and movements. It. Was. Wonderful.
I have been doing a lot of thinking about the nursery that has nothing in it yet, and trying to work out a plan of attack in that department. I'm finding it's just hard to get started though with so much going on. I think if we just pick out the big items, the rest will fall in place over time.
We had our second ultrasound a few weeks ago at about 19 weeks. I will post some pictures later on this evening, but everything looked great! He is most definitely a boy, and looks healthy in every way-- we are SO thankful!
His name is all picked out and he fits naturally into daily conversation, we are getting very excited to meet this one. Along with it comes all of the normal fears of becoming a new Mom however, so that stage is the one I'm currently experiencing. It's a LOT of change that we are in for, change that we are excited and ready for, but it is easy to worry about and fun to anticipate.
I hope everyone is staying warm and having a very wonderful holiday season! Happy eating! :)

Things are changing

We are constantly surrounded by change, and I am being reminded of that in every way, every day. We have had a beautiful, beautiful fall this year (which I am SO happy about) and the Alaskan winter is quickly approaching. Each day the sun rises a few minutes later, sets a few minutes earlier, and the dark is extremely dark since the snow has not fallen yet. We can walk through the park in the evening and it's hard to see other people or see the dogs. This will all change when the snow falls and things seem much lighter. But it's certainly a change to adjust to! I keep having to remind myself that I need to wear my coat (which has sprung a leak and sprays down all over the place) and that I need to get moving a tad earlier to scrape the frost off my car. I will also need to remember to carry a headlamp or some light source with me in case I end up out and about wandering in the dark!
I kind of like this in between stage, because the weather is cool and there are periods of dark, but the sun still shines for us in the afternoons and the leaves are still falling and making the fall stick around a bit longer. I wait all year for fall, so I'm not quite ready to let go.
Other changes are upon us too! I am now approaching 18 weeks pregnant, so getting close to half way. Changes this week are a larger belly that is becoming more noticably pregnant to people who don't know what my belly looked like before... Also my wardrobe is shrinking as all my pants are inches away from closing around me, and my shirts are getting a tad shorter in front. I'm still making it work for as long as possible, so we will see what changes the belly takes on in the next few weeks and a shopping trip may be in order. Also new this week, I can feel our little boy moving! It isn't regular and won't be for a while, but I can feel him a little in the evenings and sometimes when I sit at my desk at work. Just a few pokes and squiggles here and there. It's so fun I wish I could feel it all day long! Soon enough, I'll feel them more and as he grows so much bigger each week I should get more obvious kicks in the next few weeks. I cannot wait to feel what an actual kick feels like. My appetite has also changed in a big way! Until this point, I have gone through fairly common bursts with a weird appetite. Food didn't sound good for weeks, then it started to a couple of months ago and my appetite was just fairly normal, and now I can tell we are growing because I am hungry ALL of the time. I have to bring tons of snacks with me, eat mini meals, just so I don't starve during the day. Chances are I wouldn't starve, but this little one is telling me it's time to eat :) I love a man with an appetite to match Mama's!
It is sounding as though there may be a birth at the birth center today/tonight and I am on call so I'm thrilled about that! I have been hoping for another baby or two before going home to Iowa in a few weeks. I am heading home for a short trip to go to Kate's baby shower, meet my new and adorable nephew Truett, and see the fam, the girls etc! I talked to Sydney and Macy on the phone today, it has been way too long since we have talked on the phone. Sydney sounds practically like an adult with a sweet little voice, and Macy is sounding so much older! I have never heard her talk this much. She had all kinds of things to say to me, and kept throwing my name "To" in there which I just love to hear. Although I'm not excited about my flight itinerary and a few very long days of travel, I cannot wait to get to Iowa and see them!
I have the day off today, and I'm excited for that so I'm off to switch laundry, and of course, have a snack...

A busy fall!

Hello! Wow, there has been a lot going on around here! After getting back from our friends' wedding in Iowa in early September, we started a constant stream of activity. Eric's mom Ruth was up here when we got back, waiting for the arrival of Bekah's new baby Jonah. We all thought that Bek would go early and that it wouldn't be a long wait... however, it was almost 2 more weeks after returning before he decided to make his grand entrance. We spent the week waiting with anticipation, and starting some large house projects. Eric and David, with the help from Ted and a few neighbors, completely remodeled our deck! It looks so much nicer. The wood was rotting and there was a big hole where we had cut the hot tub out, and now it is a clean, lovely looking deck. They did great work. My high school friend Molly came to visit me a couple of weeks ago and stayed for a week which was great, great fun. It felt fun to have a vacation here in town, and it is always so fun to spend time with her. It was just like old times. As soon as she took off to head back to MA, Eric's dad Mike got here! That was one day after Bekah had Jonah at the birth center where I work. He was a good little baby and came in the morning so after a really nice water birth, everyone was able to hang out in the birth center, have breakfast, etc. That was a fun mix of family fun and work! Also during that week, we had an ultrasound which was amazing. We had such a wonderful time watching this little babe on the screen, as active as can be. The first thing we noticed was something sticking up, which led the ultrasound tech to believe that this baby is very likely a little BOY! So that was exciting. We loved watching him move around, wave his hands and roll around. Everything looked perfect and healthy and we feel very lucky for that! The place we had the ultrasound done was great because they gave us a DVD of the whole scan so we can continue to watch him move around, and also a few still pictures that I'll show here. We looked on the regular screen as well as in 3D and 4D. He is still so skinny that 3D was a little freaky looking, but still amazing.

Well I'm now 14 weeks, so I'm oficially in the second trimester! Feels good to be here and we're really excited for all of the changes that come soon, like feeling the little one.

Ruth and Mike are both still here, so the activity and house projects have not stopped. There are new lights going up, new floor for the kitchen and laundry room has been purchased so we will do that at some point, shelving is up in our laundry room and closet (hoping to make it a pantry!) and it's always GREAT to see the changes take place. I love house projects!

Eric has been traveling for work the past week, off and on. He leaves for 2 days, and then is home for one, and then took off again. First he went to a village called Nondalton, and now he is in Ketchikan until tomorrow. The nice bit about being in Ketchikan (other than the fact that it is supposed to be a very interesting town!) is that he at least has cell phone reception. So we can hear that he has landed, what he's up to, and that he hasn't been eaten by bears. This provides much more comfort than his other trips :)

That brings us to now and I have no other news to report at the moment! But I'm sure I'll have more to say very soon.

For now...

A lovely sounding heartbeat

So today felt like a fairly normal day, though numerous really great things happened that collectively made it a great day.
To start, I went into work today and asked one of the midwives, Barb, to listen for heart tones on the little one we call "Emby" (like emby the embryo). We have seen the cardiac activity plenty of times on ultrasound, but we haven't been able to hear it yet. Today we wanted to either hear or see it before leaving for Iowa. I don't want to do too many ultrasounds, so we were really hoping to hear the heartbeat... and we did! What a wonderful little sound! I hear other people's babe's heartbeats all the time, but it was pretty wild hearing our own. Eric wasn't there to I taped it on my phone and sent it to him right away which he was able to hear at work.
So that was a good moment.
The other lovely things were Eric surprising me by taking the afternoon off of work to come home and help do laundry and things that I wanted to get done before leaving. He folded so many loads of clean laundry, and made my evening much easier! I still have to put away the other half and start to pack, but I don't know how I would have gotten it all done and it was such a nice surprise. He also brought me lunch at work (always wonderful!) and then we took the dogs to the park tonight while the sun peaked through and that too felt really great. We didn't take a very long walk, but a good loop for the pups and they had a lot of fun. About 6 days ago Finny was walking around putting no weight on one of his back legs and we weren't sure why, but we tried to let him rest for the week. He was putting weight on it the next day, but just to be careful we took it easy all week, though it was clear he wanted to get out. So tonight, he was a very happy boy and looked completely like himself sniffing and leaping around with great youthful energy. A woman stopped and asked about him and said she could tell he was the happy pup, he had that look about him! So that brings us to now...
I am going to go pack, and for some reason it still doesn't feel like we're about to go back home! Usually it feels very real but it snuck up on us this time, so it seems crazy that we leave tomorrow night. Hope everyone had a nice Monday!
Please send positive energy towards my friend Josh Koeppel who got hit today while riding his moped. He is doing ok luckily, hoping he feels back to normal very soon!

This time I mean it!

I'm back! This time for good I hope. I never feel the pressure to write, but I really enjoy doing it, and I love the idea of people sharing stories with each other so it bothers me when so much time goes between posts on here. I must say however, that I don't have too many interesting stories to share, but that doesn't mean that I won't at some point!

So much has changed since the last time I wrote... I was just looking at my last entry (April, yikes!) where I mentioned that there were 50 more days until the wedding. I remember looking forward to the day with so much excitement and anticipation, and we are now a few months past it looking back on a truely perfect day. I wish we could do it again, just to enjoy the feeling for a while longer, spend more time with so many friends and family in one very beautiful and happy location, and have more time to talk to everyone. It went so wonderfully, the simplicity of it, it was exactly what we wanted. We had the greatest pair of photographers, Jodi and Rodney Gehman, and they captured the day and evening in exactly the way we had hoped, we have such wonderful memories to hold on to. And a wonderful start to marriage since then! We got back to Alaska and got back to work, with a quick trip to Homer, AK in between for a weekend away together. We camped on the spit one night, went to a cabin for the second night, and just bummed around town eating good food and looking around. It felt wonderful to go somewhere different up here! We spend the majority of our free time in Anchorage, and one of our goals continues to be to get out of Anchorage a bit more. Last weekend we didn't quite get out of Anchorage, but we at least made it above it! We went with a couple of friends and the dogs up to Arctic Valley, just a 20 minute drive up a mountain where blueberries are supposed to be plentiful. Well the truth is, they're not... but it was fun and beautiful anyway. We went on the more quiet side of the hill that gets less sunlight, which is probably a good indication that it isn't as great for berry picking. Both the lack of sunlight and the fact that everyone else was on the other side were pretty good hints, but we enjoyed the quiet, and the good deal of sun that we did end up getting. What we did end up picking were crow berries, which are small and a bit tart, but I really like them. Finn had such a great time running around freely on the hill, and learning to eat berries, it was really relaxing for all of us and will probably jump start a series of small trips that we will soon take. A larger trip we'll be taking next week-- is to IOWA! We are taking off on Tuesday night and will arrive Wednesday. Our good friends Erin and Justin are getting married on the 4th, and the rest of the time will be spent with wedding celebrations, visiting family and friends, and hopefully getting some actual sun and summer weather, even if just for a few days. We are all really excited to get back. I shouldn't smash on summer here... While it hasn't been the greatest in the last few weeks, this week has finally risen to the occasion and been very beautiful and warm, filled with sunlight. Before that, we had reached the record for days of measurable rain in a row, at a whopping 30 days. So you can imagine why a little bit of summer is a very exciting thought.

When we get back from Iowa, we will be just days away from Eric's sister Bekah giving birth to their second child, and first son. We are very excited about this! Eric's parents will be up staying with us for a while, and my lovely friend Molly will be up on the 13th of the month to spend some time with us. We are hoping to come up with some fun activities while she's here both in town, and elsewhere in AK. Maybe a trip to Seward is in order.

For this weekend, we're going to the State Fair, as well as deep cleaning the house, both of which sound like VERY exciting activities to me!

Other big news that most already know... We are expecting in March! It was a big surprise but one that we are very excited about, and we're already enjoying the ride. More to come on that later as we get more to tell! We had the first visit (though at work every day is like a visit), and everything is going great. I had a very busy week at the birth center last week, with 4 in one week, and 3 right in a row. I was like the walking dead after that string of births, but it was a very special few days and a lot of fun for me. Eric got to do a bit of traveling, he flew out to Ekwok for a wetland deliniation and he enjoyed that for the most part! He also attended a class in town where he spent a few days learning about deliniations, so he has had a lot of information to share with me since then on our regular walks at the dog park (one of his class days took place there)

I think that is about it! I'll be checking in more regularly I hope, with maybe slightly exciting things to report but probably not so many changes at once! We shall see :)

Happy Friday!

I'm doing better! Writing without 4 months going between. It's a busy day with births all around, meaning it's not too busy for me since I'm working in the office today rather than the birth center and all of our patients had to be moved since providers are in the births.
Just a quick sidenote-- 50 DAYS until the wedding! I absolutely cannot believe it. Thanks to Rachel (with Sydney's help) and Mom as well, things are getting done very quickly! Details are overwhelming us.
I feel like there are a lot of things that really need to be taken care of right now, but it's hard to know where to start!
I realized it has been 6 months since Kate's wedding (hard to believe!) which is the longest I've been away since moving to Alaska, so I am incredibly excited to get home and see family and friends. We will be back in Iowa for a few days in September as well for a friend's wedding, so there is much to look forward to! I'm hoping Rachel will have that baby early so I can be there :)
I thought maybe I had a lot to report, or something interesting to say, but sadly it turns out I don't. I'm very tired today, so have a wonderful weekend!

Woops...

Hello all! I'm sure anyone who may have been reading this blog, which may be no one at all? has probably stopped by now... I would like to say that I can't believe I haven't written since Thanksgiving, but I kind of CAN believe it. I love the idea of blogging every few days, but no matter how hard I try, and even if I have things to say it never seems to play out that way. I hardly have time to think, don't you know that feeling?
Work and day to day business is great-- the sun and warmer weather has made an appearance, and I am absolutely LOVING the increase in daylight every day! It's so thrilling :) And I can almost feel the energy riding in as well. Soon I hope to not be tired at 10pm, because with the daylight gaining on us I can accomplish so many more things after work!
The most exciting news... 64ish days until the wedding!! I cannot say that time has really flown. If I could I would have made the past few months and these upcoming weeks as well go a bit quicker. I know, I know, you're not supposed to wish away the days like that and believe me day to day I don't. But as a whole, I'm getting very excited for the wedding and wishing it could be right now. We only have 8 weeks to go, and about 7 until we go home. I always round down a few days just for fun :) Overall people have made this very easy for us, Mom and Rachel have been doing quite a bit for us, but now we are down to details which does in fact, prove to be a bit stressful. I think we have done well at not letting details get to us too much, but we're getting down to the wire and it feels like there is much to be done!
I hope you are all well and happy, and getting some sunshine as well. How refreshing!
Other exciting news in my life: TWO new nieces or nephews on the way! One from my lovely sis Rachel, and one from Eric's sis Bekah. I am so excited for this. Sometimes I laugh when I think how surrounded my life is with pregnancy. It feels like every person I know is pregnant. Of course this isn't the case, but almost! Congratulations to my beautiful cousin Laurel and her husband David, on their new arrival Noah... sisters, my friend Lily (whose little girl should be here any time!) friends from high school, and of course at work. Many many women at work who are pregnant. :)
I'm off for the weekend hoping for some outdoors and sun, although I'm sure there will be at least one or two births to attend this weekend. I am getting very anxious for the training to be done, I hope that with a few more births I can make my way to the schedule so I'm not on call for births all the time. I LOVE them, but never knowing when I might be at work gets interesting.
I'll try to post more often, until then...