Baby H: Weeks 21-24

Pregnancy became a whole new level of fun during weeks 21-24. :) I realized I was settling into that "honeymoon stage" of pregnancy everyone talks about. I was feeling great, finally looking pregnant (and not just like I'd eaten a second cheeseburger for lunch), and the overall concept of growing our child was becoming more real to me as his movement increased.

Week 21 brought with it Baylor Homecoming. Luke wanted so badly to go with me, but he was in a wedding that weekend. I was torn because I wanted to attend the wedding with him, but I just couldn't give up my last Baylor Homecoming without kiddos. I really wanted that sweet time with my college friends. There is just nothing like going back to Waco for homecoming!

{Bonfire}

{So glad I got to see my little sister and fellow Baylor alum, Claire, at homecoming!}

{At the homecoming parade}

{Homecoming game}

{Barrett got a couple of goodies at homecoming this year. I can't wait to see my little bear in his Baylor baby gear!}

I walked a TON that weekend - all over campus, to the football game, etc. - and on Saturday night I was shocked to see slightly swollen ankles for the first time. I'm not going to lie, I was freaked out, ha! But my ankles returned to normal the next day, so I wasn't too concerned.

During week 22, Luke started a new job. He's still in a similar role, just with a new company. This new job couldn't have come at a more perfect time. He's really liking the people he works with, his travel schedule, etc. God's timing is always perfect y'all!

We also were blessed to attend the wedding of my cousin Bryan, and his wife, Haley. Bryan is the cousin I'm closest in age to, so he's been more of the brother I never had than a cousin. He and Haley love the Lord deeply and this was evident in their lovely Brenham wedding. Plus, it was so nice to spend some time with my dad's side of the family at this wedding since it'd been a while since we'd last seen them.

{At B&H's wedding}

{Love these sillies}

I had a nice, quick visit with my doctor at 22 weeks and she said everything was looking great! At the end of 22 weeks, I had gained approximately 8 pounds with this pregnancy. I'm not being super strict on weight gain; Barrett and my body are telling me what I need. But I definitely like keeping track because a health pregnancy is very important to me (and baby!). So far, so good!

Week 23 was a busy one! On the actual day I turned 23 weeks, Barrett decided to give his momma a gift and kicked me about 6 times so hard that I could actually see and feel the kicks on the outside of my stomach! I didn't think it would overwhelm me so much, but my heart was so full that afternoon. Luke was out of town for work that day, so I tried to take a video of it, but our stubborn little boy wasn't having it. I told Luke that he just wanted to share his first big kicks with mom. :) But towards the end of the week once Luke returned home, Barrett did eventually give dad a couple of good punches to the hand.

That weekend, we bought baby furniture and bedding for Barrett's room. We found a really great deal at Baby's 1st Furniture on a crib, dresser, and bookshelf set. It was recently delivered to the store's warehouse and we picked it up this past weekend. Pictures to come! This is the nursery bedding we went with. I've recently fallen in love with Pottery Barn Kids. I love their quality of bedding and their colors/styles aren't too loud and crazy (there is some interesting baby bedding out there!). And as much as I fought and still fight against having a true "theme" for Barrett's room, I do love the animals on this bedding. Luke and I both love our dogs like they are our children and Luke was a big animal lover as a child (and still is). We have no doubt that Barrett is going to love all animals like his dad and will love learning animal words and sounds.

Week 23 wrapped up with a trip to the Nutcracker Market with my mom and our first fire in the fireplace of our new house. It was a busy week, for sure!

{Christmas-ness at the Nutcracker Market}

{I bought the sign on the left for Barrett's room at the Nutcracker Market for like $15! It was my best find, by far}

{First fire in the new house}

Week 24 slowed down a bit and I was grateful for this. I'd been working on my company's 2015 customer conference and this was consuming my mind at work. Leaves were falling all over the place and I busted out the Christmas decorations just a little ahead of Thanksgiving (I can't ever wait 100% until after Thanksgiving!). From a pregnancy perspective, I had a big boost of energy that week. I think I worked out at 3-4 times and felt great!

{Puppies in leaves are the cutest}

{Walking the bump around our fall neighborhood}

Baby H: Weeks 9-12

Week 9

At nine weeks, I had my first doctor appointment. Unfortunately, Luke had been out of town for work (remember here?) and we tried so hard to get him back to Houston for this appointment, but he ended up getting back either that night or early the next day (my preggo brain can't exactly remember). So, off I went to my first appointment! I wasn't really nervous or excited; I honestly had no idea what to expect. This was also my very first time to see any doctor in Houston, so there was a lot of general paperwork to be filled out and questions to answer. I didn't even end up meeting my Obgyn at this appointment; I saw her PA instead. Whitney (the PA) was super sweet and let me ask as many questions as I wanted. Once all of the initial steps (weighing in, family medical history forms, etc.) were out of the way, it was time to confirm my pregnancy.

{Baby H's first picture}

If I hadn't believed I was pregnant up until this point, I did now! Wow - I can't even fully put into words the overwhelming feeling that came over me once I saw that teeny tiny little thing on the screen for the first time. At 9 weeks, my baby wasn't just a little blob, but a little sour patch kid baby with a head, body, and little arms and legs that wiggled. I didn't quite cry, but I think my giggly laughter sort of sounded like it, ha! It was an unbelievably cool experience. I found out then that my official due date is March 11, 2015. Luke got back to Houston shortly after and it was so fun showing him the video of our wiggle worm I took during that first sonogram.

Week 10

That next weekend, Luke and I drove down to Corpus Christi. While there, our dear friend Jade, who also took our engagement pics, my bridal pics, and our wedding pics, met us in town for a quick photoshoot so that we'd have some fun pictures to share with the world once we let our little secret out. I'm SO glad we did this! I know it's vain, but I'm glad I got a few nice pictures of Luke and I before I got big and preggo. ;) They turned out great and I can't thank Jade enough for always capturing the best moments of our lives.

While in Corpus, I also did a super preggo thing and bought a pickadilly snow cone. Now - if you're from South Texas - this is not uncommon. But anyone else would have looked at me and been like, "Seriously, girl? A pickle snow cone with pickle chunks?? Where's the ice cream that goes with it??" Ha! Yes, pickles and ice cream may be an old joke during pregnancy, but this girl has always loved pickles and with summer wrapping up, this was a perfect treat. My child will definitely love pickles from day one!

Week 11

Week eleven was fairly chill. We were in escrow on our house and signing new papers left and right. We learned during this part of the house buying process that you really shouldn't make any large purchases. So instead of buying anything, Luke and I had a few dates nights that included dinner and a lot of browsing at furniture stores.

{Love these girls!}

That weekend, I rode with my friend and college roommate, Cat, up to her lake house in the hill country to meet up with the rest of our college roomies for a girls' weekend. It was a really nice getaway and a chance for all of us to catch up as the summer was winding down. This was also a really special weekend for me because it was the first time we were all together since I'd told them about Baby H. We've all been through so much together (sharing a house, Baylor football games, too many Tri Delta functions to count, engagements, weddings...the list goes on!) and it felt so good being able to share this next chapter of my life with them too. I can't wait for more husbands and babies to be added to this group! :)

Another highlight of week eleven was that at about this time, my morning sickness/gagging/overall bleh-ness began to subside. I know so many girls that deal with this for much longer, so you can guarantee I was counting my blessings!

Week 12

Week twelve started out a little rough, but honestly, I don't remember why (probably house stress!). What I do remember was having a package delivered to my office that totally cheered me up. My poor momma was dying to know if Baby H was a girl or boy and since she couldn't buy clothes for the baby yet, she bought maternity clothes for me and had them sent to my office. Subtle, mom. ;)

{Jolly is the best! Jolly = my mom's grandmother name}

And the weekend of week twelve, Luke and I drove up to Waco for the first football game in the new McLane stadium. Y'all - it's GORGEOUS! The new stadium was even more than I expected. It was a super hot day, which was a little miserable until about 7pm, but I survived. I just drank a ton of water and $5 lemonade (yikes!). We have season tickets and love our new seats! I'm so happy that we have season tickets with all of my best friends from college. It's a tradition I hope we continue every year.

Baylor ended up with their first win on the season and in the new stadium. It was really fun to be a part of such a monumental day in Baylor history. Oh, and guess who else showed up to the game?? Baby H's little bump made it's first appearance that weekend, which was also really cool. It sort of freaked me out, ha! But hey - it was bound to happen sooner than later. :)

Lately.

1) These fluffballs need a haircut!

2) Last Saturday, I went into the city to have brunch with two of my friends in the city.

3) That same Saturday, I strolled through SoHo to enjoy the lovely spring flowers...

4) ...and some coffee.

5) On Tuesday, I went back into the city to watch the Baylor Men's Basketball team play in the NIT semi-finals. They ended up winning the NIT Championship on Thursday. Sic 'Em Bears!!

6) Picked up another BU shirt. I'm a proud alum, what can I say?

7) Walked past the Empire State Building on my way back to the train.

8) Now Bentley won't get off my new shirt. We know where his loyalty lies.

9) A little sunshine on my Friday afternoon run. Can't wait for some great weather this weekend!

Sorry I've been a little MIA on the blog this week. There are 10 days left in the tax season and we're in a mad race for the finish. Hurry up April 15th! 

Have a lovely weekend. :)

Let me be perfectly Claire

This is Claire Marie, my little sister. She is #3 of the 4 Martisek women. Yesterday, she took off on a jet plane to the Netherlands and will be traveling all over Europe this semester for school. I'm so excited for this wonderful opportunity for Clarabell to spread her wings! I helped her start a blog a few days ago and if you'd like to follow a cute young blonde through Europe, you should definitely check it out. :)

Claire's travel blog: Let Me Be Perfectly Claire

Whirlwind Waco Weekend, Part 2

**To get caught up on the story of my weekend trip to Waco, click here.**

After our trip to Common Grounds, the girls and I went our different ways to dinner. I got dressed up and went to dinner with Kelsey's family and friends to celebrate her graduating from Baylor with her masters in accounting (my bridesmaid is a smarty pants!!). I was so happy her parents invited me to dinner with them because I hadn't seen the Marshall family in a long time. Plus, we ate at 135 Prime, an amazing steakhouse outside of Waco. So yum!! We toasted to Kelsey's success and even had a little graduation cake. Congrats Kelsey!!!

After dinner, the gang all met up again to grab a quick drink at Texas Roadhouse to celebrate Kristin's birthday. There were many celebrations this weekend! We had a great time doing a little more catching up and reminiscing about college. We can't ever seem to do enough of this. :)

That evening, Cat and I headed back over to Claire's house and got ready to spend our last night ever in 1006. Claire and her friend, Janet (who also lives at 1006), are studying abroad in Europe next fall and after they return, they will be moving into an apartment just the two of them. We were all a little sad about this since it means that we won't be able to go back to our old college house anymore, but we know that God's plans are better than our own and we know that everything is going to work out for the best of our little Clarabell. Speaking of, check out this hot mamma...

{She dressed up for us on our last night in the house; glasses, bath rob, and all! Someday she will make some man very happy, HA!}

The next morning we got up and went to breakfast with the whole gang to Cafe Cappuccino. "The gang" included: myself, Catherine, Christine, Kristin, James, and Claire. After talking over a few last-minute flight plans for the wedding, we all hugged and parted ways. Cat and I went back to Claire's house to pack up our stuff and hit the road. But of course, not before buying something from Bush's Chicken. Seriously, how much more food could we have possibly attempted to eat this weekend?!?! Most of the Bush's got throw away, but we just HAD to, ya know...:)

{Goodbye 1006!}

{Hello Bush's Chicken!}

Cat and I had a 3ish hour drive home, so most of the way we chatted about life and the upcoming wedding. Cat's little creative self is going to be playing a very fun role in the wedding and I'm so excited about having a little of her creativity displayed on our big day! About 45 minutes out of Houston, we decided to make a quick stop at a local farmers market. Ohmygoodness, this place was AMAZING! I'll let the pictures speak for themselves...

{Pottery}

{So many watermelons!}

{I love how colorful veggie are}

{Fresh fruit anyone?}

{More pottery and beautiful flowers}

{Pretty in pink}

My weekend concludes with getting to Cat's house, moving all of my stuff from her car into mine, and then another 3.5 hours of driving from Houston to Corpus Christi. I'm not going to lie, I wasn't the biggest fan of driving so much and was extremely tired once I got home, but the weekend was totally worth it. I had an amazing time with some of the best friends a girl could ask for. We definitely did as many "Waco things" as we possibly could and, if you haven't already noticed, ate WAY TOO MUCH food! 

I love what Baylor did for me; what it's given me. Friends, family, a home, a network, an incredible education, life skills, a greater appreciation for my family and Luke, the chance to live and work in New York, and a future firmly grounded in faith. I love going back to Waco because I love talking about and reliving old memories with my Baylor family. Thank you Lord for allowing me to be a part of something so incredible and ordained by You!!!

And that's the end of my whirlwind Waco weekend. I still think I'm a little sleep deprived from this weekend, but I'm hanging in there! Did you do anything fun this past weekend? If not, do you have anything fun planned for this upcoming weekend? I'll be running in the 2011 Beach to Bay Relay Marathon with a team from work on Saturday and then taking my bridal portraits this Sunday with the fabulous ladies of Journey Tree Studio. Another crazy/busy weekend ahead!!

Whirlwind Waco Weekend!

I can't even begin to put into words the amount of fun I had this weekend!!! On Friday after work I drove home really quick [as quick as 5 o'clock traffic allows], threw a bunch of clothes in a bag, and hit the road for Houston. A couple of weeks back, Catherine and I had decided that I would meet her in Houston and then she and I would take her car the rest of the way to Waco (for those of you who don't know who Cat is, she is one of my amazing roomies from college and will be one of the house party ladies in my wedding!). I was already delirious at this point due to an extremely long week at work, but I made it to Houston in 3.5 hours thanks to Taco Cabana, Celine Dion, and way too much coffee. Cat greeted me at her cute little house with another skinny vanilla latte for me, and we were off to Waco!

{Of course, we had to take a picture at Cat's favorite gas station on the way to Waco. This was at about 11:30 p.m. Goodness, our hair...}

We arrived in Waco at our old college house, now my little sister's college house, at 12:30 a.m. and crashed. I hardly remember walking up the stairs to bed and I don't know if I've ever slept so hard in my life. Pitiful, I know!

{We've all lived at "ten-oh-six" at one point or another. We love this house!}

We woke up Saturday morning and headed straight to Panera to meet up with Kristin and James. Panera was our favorite place to study when we were in college. Aww memories! While eating breakfast, we ran into my Tri Delta little and future bridesmaid, Kelsey! It was so fun to see her and her momma pre-graduation. Kelsey graduated this weekend from Baylor with her masters in accounting. I'm SO incredibly proud of her and excited she'll be working in Houston now! 

{Love Panera Hazelnut coffee!}

After breakfast, we stopped by Rack Room Shoes in the Central Texas Market Place because I needed a pair of black dress sandals. This was my favorite place to get a good deal on shoes of all kinds in college! I grabbed not only one, but two pair of dress sandals in black and teal. They were buy one, get one 1/2 off so I couldn't resist! After shoe shopping, Cat, Kristin, James, and myself picked up Claire and we all headed over to Bloom and Bee Swanky, an adorably vintage gift shop in downtown Waco. How had I never been to this gorgeous place?!

 {Artsy chandelier at Bloom and Bee}

This little shop is the kind of place that carries old photographs, picture frames, glass figurines, house decor, luggage, linens, etc. I bought a couple of vintage pieces to use as decor for the wedding and I'm super proud of myself for picking them out on my own. I'm not naturally very good at the whole artsy/vintage thing, but I'd like to think that I'm getting better due to the many artistic friends in my life. :)

After our adventure to Bloom and Bee, we decided to go for a little ride through campus. I had only been on the Baylor campus once since my graduation a year ago and was really excited to re-live student life, even if only for a few minutes. I made a special request and we stopped by my old stomping grounds, Castellaw Communications Center. I took all of my major courses in this building and it really felt like a second home while I was in college. Many late nights were spent studying in this building, which smelled like freshly printed newspaper all the time (since the school paper is printed in Castellaw). I walked in for just a couple of minutes while we were on campus and it smelt so wonderful, so familiar. 

{"The house that built me."}

After our trip around campus, poor James had had enough girl time. So we dropped him back off at his car and went to grab lunch. We decided to eat at Food For Thought, a local Baylor college student favorite. This hole-in-the-wall health food restaurant serves salads, nachos, burritos, smoothies, etc. Cat and I split the chicken nachos and they were so good! I had forgotten how much I love Food For Thought. After lunch we made a quick stop by the bookstore to pick up an alumni sticker for my new car.

{Food For Thought's chicken nachos}

{Alumni sticker on the new car--taken after I had already gotten back to CC}

You would think that at this point we had to be too stuffed to eat anything else all day. Nope, it gets worse. I don't know what our deal was, but apparently we had all missed our favorite college foods so much that we decided to subconsciously eat as much as possible in 36 hours. It's sickening, really, the amount of food we ate this weekend! Well, after FFT, we went on a little shopping spree to Ann Taylor Loft. I'm guessing the "30% your entire purchase all weekend" sale had something to do with motivating four very full women to try on clothes. We all walked away with something too! Got to love those ATL sales!! After shopping, we took Claire to 3 Spoons Yogurt, a new fro yo place in Waco that she had been wanting us to visit. We really had no room for fro yo (obviously!!), but we did it anyway and again, so good!

{I didn't get too much, but what I did get was gone in about 14 seconds!}

We FINALLY went back to Claire's house and all I wanted to do was take a nap. However, my sweet friends (Lord knows I wanted to hurt them...) did not let my napping last long. About 30 minutes later I was woken up and told that we were going to Common Grounds. Ohmygoodness. I had been wanting nothing but a cowboy coffee for weeks and now I was too full to even look at coffee! But we went and had a glorious time. I ended up ordering an Arnold Palmer (Luke's favorite) and buying a bag of coffee beans to take home.

{Our drinks}

{What a lovely place full of coffee-stained memories}

{CG to-go!}

Alright, so this blog post covers about the first 24 hours of my whirlwind weekend in Waco! But it's midnight and I'm falling asleep at my computer. I'll tell you about the rest of my weekend tomorrow. I also have so many wedding updates to share! But again, these must wait until tomorrow when I've gotten enough sleep to remember it all. 

Sweet dreams,

Sara