Happy Easter!

We had a good Easter weekend! Saturday we drove around a little bit and went to the Easter in the Park celebration in Rolesville. Olivia got to meet the Easter Bunny and do an Easter Egg Hunt.



They also had a bounce house contraption there, and Olivia HAD to do it!



Sunday we stayed home and Grant's parents came to visit us. We did our Easter with Olivia first thing in the morning. She was pretty spoiled by the Easter Bunny this year!

Checking out her loot:

Laying out all her princesses to add Rapunzel to the group:

Trying on her new tiara:

Then, of course, we had to do our own Easter Egg Hunt for her!

Here she is playing dress up with her Easter hat and new tutu:

It was a good Easter and always good to see family (both weekends). We also were able to bring some donations up to some of the people that were hit by the tornadoes last weekend to try to help out. It wasn't much, but everything helps! We were so fortunate not to have much damage to our house (just one piece of siding).

Anyway, I am now officially caught up with my bloggin - take note - it doesn't happen often these days! ha ha!

My next blog will probably be next week when we find out what baby #2 will be. Make sure to vote and stay tuned!

Emma's Party and Easter in Huntersville

Last weekend (the weekend before Easter) we went to Huntersville to celebrate Emma's 1st Birthday! We also got to celebrate Easter a little early with the family! We spent Saturday with my family celebrating an early Easter with a nice meal and an Easter Egg hunt in my parent's very landscaped (i.e. tricky for egg hunting) back yard. This was Olivia's first real Easter Egg hunt and she did really well. She had a ton of fun running around (in her boots!) looking for eggs.

Cheesy!

Later, she got into the dress-up clothes and had fun trying EVERYTHING on!

Sunday we went to Chad and Becca's house for Emma's 1st Birthday party. It was just the family, but a lot of fun! Becca made a ladybug pinata for the kids to whack. Drew was definitely better at it than Olivia, but she got a couple whacks in, too! (So did Daddy!)

Then we did another Easter Egg Hunt in their yard with the kids.

Even Emma got into it!

We took a break to do some family photos:

We even caught the kids altogether (in between stuffing candy in their mouths!) I think Olivia is still chewing in this picture.

Then it was time for some ladybug cake. Emma really enjoyed all the red frosting!

After all of that, we got to hang out in the backyard for some fun. Olivia even got her first baseball lesson. She still needs a lot of work, but we'll get there!

Voting has Opened!

Please take a moment to vote for what you think our next little bundle of joy will be. I just created a poll on the right side of the blog. We will find out the sex of the baby at our sonogram on May 5th, so voting will close at midnight on May 4th.

BIG Girl!!!

Ok, so I have been working on this post for a couple weeks - just now getting around to actually finishing it and posting it. So sorry.

I wanted to first congratulate Olivia and being "officially potty trained!" She decided about 2 weeks ago that she finally wanted to wear underpants and we tried it on a Sunday and there was no looking back. She has done great! We sill have a couple accidents - but nothing bad - more that she doesn't quite make it in time. Overall, she has really been doing great. She goes overnight without any problems and we even made a trip to Huntersville last week (about 2 1/2-3 hours in the car) without a problem. We are so proud of her!

On the baby front, I am doing well. Still tired, but getting better. The morning sickness appears to finally be subsiding. My next appointment on May 5th for the sonogram to find out if the little one is a boy or a girl! I'll work on making another poll on the blog for you all to vote for what you think it will be. Yeah!

Now for the fun stuff - PICTURES! Here is Olivia from a couple weeks ago riding her little big wheel in the driveway. She still has trouble reaching the pedals, but we are working on it.

Here are some cute pictures of Olivia and Gracie from when we had them over for dinner the other week. We got the girls some Easter hats at Target.

Needless to say, when they get together, it gets messy! At lease this time it was contained in one place. They pulled ALL the toys from upstairs and downstairs and filled the tent with them!

Grant took Olivia to the Science Museum a couple weekends ago while I was doing my craft afternoon with my girls. Here they are checking out the animals and butterflies:

Here is a quick picture of me at 15 weeks pregnant. Starting to show a bit here. My tummy has definitely popped out a bunch more from this picture. I'll try to get another prego picture of me on here soon.

We also took Olivia to get her 2nd hair cut the other weekend. Her hair was getting pretty long and really just needed to be evened out and trimmed a little bit. Here is the before picture:

Here are a couple of after pictures. It looks really cute. She has some longer layers and now her curls show up really well when it is humid out (which is all the time now!)

Here are just a couple of cute pictures of Olivia hanging around the house:

That's about all right now. Other than this, we have been trying to fix up the house and get it cleaned up a bit. We need to make room for the new little one and we are thinking about putting our house up on the market later in the summer to move closer to Wake Forest and Grant's Clinic. So we finally cleaned out our Garage and working on moving the furniture out of the study/spare room to make room for baby - so we have to make room in the bonus room for the computer!

We also got a nice new washer and dryer last week. We currently also have a house guest of the 4-legged variety. Shelby, Sara and Randy's dog is staying with us for a week while they go down to Florida to visit Sara's family and her Grandmother who isn't doing that well.

Ready to do it all again???

So . . . are you all ready to do this all again? More like are "WE" ready to do it all again! We better be - because baby #2 is on the way! We are 13 1/2 weeks along as I am writing this and there is no stopping now! We will be due on September 27, 2011. (And yes to those mathematicians out this - this IS a New Year's Baby! - LOL).

Here is our first sonogram (at 9 weeks). I turned it sideways so the little one would be head up and drew a little sketch for those that are not so sonogram-savvy to show the orientation. The key is finding seeing the head and seeing the 4 little brighter white spots (sort of circular) below the head - 2 for hands and 2 for feet.

As far as I go, I have had the typical early pregnancy symptoms - morning sickness and exhaustion (especially being dragged around Disney for 8 days by a 2 1/2 year old! ha ha!). However, this time it all started earlier and has lasted longer! I am pretty sure I was done with the nausea by about 11 weeks with Olivia and here it is halfway through the 14th week and I was feeling icky this morning! But I think it is at least easing up a bit! With Olivia my next big symptom was migraines for a couple months - yep, already had my first yesterday! Hopefully that won't be as severe.

I did get to hear the heartbeat again this Monday at a checkup. It was in the 160's and sounded good!

I have also realized that you start showing a LOT earlier with the 2nd one. I wasn't really showing until at least 3 months - if not 4 with Olivia. With this one, I was starting to show at 8 weeks! Here is my 10-week belly shot - see what I mean:

We have already told our families and a lot of our closer friends - that we see on a regular basis. My boss and co-workers know (but not the owners in NJ yet). So once I heard the heartbeat again - to get some extra reassurance, I was ready to tell everyone and share our happy news on the blog.

Olivia knows and seems happy, though she doesn't entirely know what it all means. She knows that mama has a baby in her belly and that she used to be in my belly, too. But, since she has found out, she has been acting more like a baby and has really refused to potty train. uh oh! Looks like we'll need to come up with a new tactic for that. She wavers between wanting a little brother and a little sister and we really have no preference.

So, our Baby Nelson Blog will now be about Olivia and Baby #2. I'll keep you updated on how Olivia is doing and how I am doing with the new little one on the way.

Cinderella

I finally got a chance to scan in the picture of Olivia with Cinderella from the castle that they took and gave us a hard copy of in a nice (cardboard) fram with a picture of the castle. It came out pretty good. Here are the 2 princesses: