Drum Roll......

   I didn't write a post about last week, earlier. I only put up pictures from my trip at the beginning of the month. Did that make you sad? I hope not. If you were sad, then hopefully this post makes up for the letdown. Let's start with a picture of me :D ....

.... and a baby! While my belly is still small enough that most of you wouldn't think anything of it, there is a little baby growing inside. It also has a heart beat that we got to watch yesterday! We were so thrilled to see that on the ultrasound.

    The doctor had the same mindset as us, or at least me. He came in so happy for us, fingers crossed, and said "Let's do this exam backwards. We all want to see that little baby!" While the ultrasound was going, Tim looks at me to tell me, "That's what your uterus looks like in black and white." I was so relieved we started with the ultrasound since last time I miscarried at 5 weeks.  I also was curious exactly how far along this pregnancy was. The best way to calculate a due date when conceiving right after miscarriage is through measurements on an ultrasound. Ovulation can happen early, regular timing, or even later than usual since the last "cycle" was really a miscarriage. According to the ultrasound, I'm 6 weeks pregnant and he/she will be due on March 17th. My brother Aaron is currently calling the baby his niephew since it could be his niece or  nephew.

    Tim is thrilled too! Believe me, he LOVES children. We found out we were pregnant on July 13th. I had originally wanted to wait out the entire week but the anticipation got to me. I took a test that morning while Tim was still asleep. The test read "Pregnant" so I quickly took it into the bedroom, sat on the bed, and asked Tim to read something for me. He didn't wake up right away but eventually did. Once it clicked, he made a sleepy "YAY!" Tim then proceeded to tease me that I didn't need to take a test since he already knew.

    The kids I watch were so excited and started asking about my baby shower. I haven't even really thought about that yet... I do bring them up though because the almost 4-year old girl was letting me know all of the important things that we need to get for the baby: a car carpet (in case it likes cars), a bed like a crib, toys, NO books (just big kid books), a rocking horse, bottles, binkies, toys, air hockey, a baby seat, a baby seat for the car, a baby table so it can eat, a couch, a tv, water (babies love water), clothes, a tub,toys, a baby bathroom (with a baby tub, baby toilet, and baby sink), pillows for the baby to sleep on, tub toys, blankets, a new house, and toys. I laughed with her many ideas, some practical and others not. She definitely was worried that we wouldn't get enough toys with how many times she brought it up!

    I loved Tim's grandpa's reaction that we got told about. After he had found out, he was at home talking to Abram and Rebecca. I'm so happy they sent us what he had to say about it all! "Yes, I noticed they touch each other a lot so I knew it was bound to happen." Oh, I happily laughed for awhile when I read that text :)

    So much about babies! But there you have it: I'm pregnant and our little one is due on March 17th! We're so happy and grateful :)

Kansas Videos

After this post is all of the pictures from my KS trip. This one right here has the videos that I took with Jessie.

There were so many fireflies! It's easier to see them near the end of the video. The beginning is entertaining though so please watch :)

Fireworks! This is different than the one I really wanted to upload. However, Blogger wouldn't let me even though I tried 3 times.

Kansas Pictures!

 I've decided to not take the time to completely organize these all on here. This is a combination of pictures that Jessie and I took. While I did not post all of the pictures, there are quite a few. If you want to see it bigger, just click on the picture, and hit the back button when you're done!

On a walk before fireworks started

There's a store in Olathe!!

Mine are the blue-ish color and Jessie's are pink. This was part of our Girls' Day!

Don't eat me, dear lion from the B.C. era! Nelson-Atkins Museum

Famous painting. Van Gogh's Olive Orchard

Our meal from playing Chopped. The meatballs and bowties were the other team. We made the yummy steak, pineapple thing.

They're building the stake center next to the Kansas City temple. Just as far from home as I was!

Beautiful view of the temple being built. I foresee this as a coveted picture spot (especially for weddings).

Jess and I picnicked outside of Liberty Jail.

A lot of the shops in Liberty still preserve the old parts to them. This little shop used to be a bank in Liberty! The little drawers are still in the vault too.

Liberty streets had the names of the streets on the sidewalk. My right hand is pointing at a water fountain that isn't in this picture. Maybe that's why it's named Water....

We drove past this and thought about Rapunzel. It's right next to a cornfield, go figure.

We played games on the 4th while waiting for the sun to set. Oh, that guy next to Jessie is Bao haha.

Susan and Brian (Thanks for letting me stay!!)

Bao wasn't patriotic enough with only blue and white. I put my flower clip on his shirt as a boutonniere (that is a strange word to spell) to help out.

Our puzzle!!!!

American Girl now has a hippie doll... She's part of the stories like Felicity, Samantha, and Molly.

Girls' Day at the mall

We decided to celebrate Jessie's birthday while I was there. It made sense to me!

Back to the museum - rare armor set since it's a matching knight and horse set still together PLUS the knight had a shield (not common of the time of that specific armor).

That is a real live, okay dead, mummy. I forget who it was....

Another famous painting! This one is by Monet.

This look is accomplished by different woods, not stains. Freaking awesome!

This was also in the museum... Can we do something like this and put it in a museum? I promise that it'll look just as amazing. Sorry, I don't appreciate modern art.

We took a wrong turn coming home from the museum and got to drive through a neighborhood of mansions!! Kansas City, you certainly are full of wonders.

Playing around while cooking our food for Chopped.

Kansas City temple grounds. This is where the other pictures were taken from.

Liberty Jail - 12 in thick wood, 12 in of rock, and 24 in of Limestone (that's 4 feet thick walls!)

Family and friends used to try to sneak food through these slots since Liberty Jail keepers fed them very poorly. They must have used a stick to help push it in. There was the same thing on the other side. I then started thinking about all the air coming through, no wonder they were often cold!

The front door into the jail which is really on the second level.

My view during the plane ride home. We were above the clouds during sunset at this point.

This is the entryway to our apartment when I got home. The usual green carpet was still covered in dust from the dust storm that week! The lines are from my luggage.

Changes

    Yeah.... So I didn't put pictures up... My bad! I did finally get all of the pictures from the trip though. I'll get them put up... soon :D
    House news: The same day that we turned in our 30 day notice to the apartment management, we got some news from the realtor selling the house for the bank (or really just being a middle man that knows very little). Apparently the bank wasn't really liking our offer but wouldn't say anything, but the ac unit was stolen off of the house. That is NOT cheap to replace! The bank also waited forever to rack up multiple offers and ask everyone to re-write offers. We pulled ours and decided to look at more houses. We went looking on Friday. Some were okay and some were back to the scary side. I even had to hold my breath in a couple that smelt really bad. We haven't decided if there's one or two that we want to put an offer in on or not. So more to come later!
    We've started to accumulate a few boxes and I'm trying to pack. Most that can be packed right now includes books: manga, drawing, textbooks, church, sketchings, and so forth. Since the blue house didn't work out, we'll be living with Mum and Pops (Benitez) for a short while starting next month. Everything will turn out the way that the need to in the right time. For now, we can save a little bit of money and have some extra motivation to get house hunting done!
    Swimming at work this summer has allowed me to get tan, but Tim tans so quickly that he's still darker even with only being outside for short times at work. I really don't mind though :) Tim's still at work (yay for the late shift) and I'm tired so goodnight blog-readers!

Kansas/House/Life

      I am back from Kansas! Coming back home was bitter sweet. I loved the weather and visiting Jessie but missed my dear Timothy very much. Jessie and I filled up our time in Kansas with many fun things: firework show, celebrating her birthday early, riding a carousel at the mall, playing lots of games with her family, visiting the Nelson-Atkins musuem, going to Liberty Jail, walking around the Kansas City temple being built (it's going to be GORGEOUS by the way), visiting my cousins, doing a home version of Chopped (a tv show I had never heard of before), and putting together a 1000 piece puzzle. One of my favorites was the museum since we only paid $5 for parking, didn't see all of the museum, and got to see works by Monet and Van Gogh. Tim wants to go to that museum now so we'll have to plan a future trip to Kansas when he can come too. Our puzzle was beautiful and we finished just in time, despite the fact that our box only contained 999 of the pieces... I'll put pictures up from the trip either on Facebook or on another post. Either way it'll happen later this week.
      Tim spent his days with video games, brothers, drawing, working, staying up really late, and texting me when possible. He also got to witness the huge dust storm that I've only seen some after effects of (one of which being my car which is filthy!). Tim was actually working when the dust storm hit, driving one of the delivery trucks. For some reason he did not pull over to the side of the road.... Boys... We are extremely, extremely grateful that he was kept safe while driving through the "wall of dust" that appeared, no other people or objects were harmed, and that the truck stayed on the road. I wish he hadn't drove through the storm but am still grateful that he's safe.
      So what about the week that I didn't blog about? Well, I finished up my public speaking class! Five weeks was extremely tolerable and easy (plus I did miss a whole week of class in the middle....). The Saturday before I left town, we had a fancy dinner party with our friends and a few others. Deana and I planned this get together and it turned out quite fun! We all dressed up like it was Prom again because many of us wives wanted another chance to do that. You can read more about it and see pictures on Deana's blog post right here.
      As I mentioned last time, we have put an offer in on a house and the bank is considering our offer over the other one that was put in. It is definitely a step in the right direction! The house is bank owned so the bank is taking its free time to decide what to do, which they are allowed to do. We still haven't heard any more from the bank or their realtor, which really doesn't surprise me since it took 1.5 weeks for them to decide to consider our offer. Right now it's definitely a waiting game. Today, Tim and I went ahead and gave the apartments our 30 days notice. While we don't know at all that the bank will accept our offer, we felt it was right to do. Our families have also offered to let us move in with them for a short time if need be. I plan on beginning to hunt for boxes and pack up some of the stuff that we won't need until we can move into a house.

hi

So, there's a lot to share about this past week... But I'm on vacation in Kansas and am enjoying it very very much [thank you Mommy and Daddy Blake]. Briefly: we put an offer on a house and the bank is currently considering it; so maybe another week or so and we'll know if the offer is good enough or not. In the meantime, have a fabulous week and Independence Day. I'll share more about both weeks after I get home!!!