Strawberry Pie and Other Tasty Treats

As promised, here is a picture of the strawberry pie we made from our pickin' at the berry farm. Yes, Mom, it seemed to come out a little juicy, but really not too bad (this is me referring to a previous discussion from Schub's bday last year where my mom told me there was no such thing as strawberry pie. She said there was strawberry rhubarb pie and strawberry chiffon pie, but surely strawberries were much too juicy to make just strawberry pie).

 In addition to the strawberry pie, I got a surprise tasty treat tonight!! We were just sitting down to dinner when Nacho started barking at the delivery man. We weren't expecting any packages and we certainly didn't expect a box that said "Cookies by Design."  We opened it up and found THESE amazing treats from my dear sweet St. Louis friend Samantha Katherine Murphy.

How cute are these cookies?!

THANK YOU SAM!! You are the sweetest (get it?? sweet? like cookies.) and I love you and miss you terribly. please please please can we see each other again soon!?

Lots of fun and no pictures to prove it

You'll just have to take my word for the fact that we had a really great weekend. I started out describing our weekend adventures in great articulate detail, but then I remembered that I have no pictures to go along with them and you (if you're like me) probably don't want to read that much - especially without any pictures.

Friday night we took it easy and hung out and watched some tv. Saturday we spent the day with our lovely friends Gavin and Esther. We headed back to Colonial Beach (little town we recently discovered with Nancy's Ice Cream) and walked on the beach, hung out in a cute little coffee shop, and perused an art gallery. Then we came back and made pizza, played a game, and hung out with Nacho.  Sunday we had a quick meeting after church, then went to lunch with the Bentz's & Franklins. As soon as we got back we hopped in the car with the neighbors to go strawberry picking at Westmoreland Berry Farm (we picked over 5 lbs of strawberries... what were we thinking?!? It was my fault really... Schub couldn't stop me).  Then we came back to the neighborhood and grilled out with them for dinner.  After dinner I promptly fell asleep on their couch. Last night after our soccer game we made strawberry pie. Maybe I will take a picture of it when I get home and post it, just for the sake of having a picture on the blog.

This weekend we are spending Memorial Day weekend in Charlotte and I CANNOT WAIT. I have been craving hang out time with the fam lately. AND Jeannie and Hunter are conveniently going to be in Fort Mill this weekend so we will get to see them and FINALLY meet little Sawyer!! It's going to be a great weekend.

20 weeks and we're having a...

GIRL!!!

We are super excited. The ultrasound was the most amazing thing ever. I think it made the whole pregnancy thing a lot more real and made us really really excited to meet her.  So without further ado... here are a few shots of our little GIRL!

 The last one is most definitely our favorite. This girl is going to be a total rock star.

We just love her little fingers and her little toes. It was so cool to watch her move around and stretch out her fingers and open and close her mouth and everything.

To answer the question that is surely going through your head, we do and don't have a name yet. Schub has settled on one and feels no need to explore other options. I also like the name very much, but feel more of a need to test it out for a couple weeks to make sure it sticks okay.  I mean, it is a BIG decision to decide a name! You are making a decision on behalf of someone else that will affect them for the rest of their life! How do you decide so quickly?!?  But don't worry... as much as we would like to keep the name a surprise, I'm sure as soon as I commit to it neither of us will be able to keep it in.

As of Thursday our baby girl was about 11oz. Thebump.com says she is about the size of a mango or cantelope.  So here I am at 20 weeks, and here is a mango so that you can picture a baby in my belly.

(I am still amazed at how incredibly large I am. Today at work someone walked by and said "woah! You're really getting big!" As if I needed a reminder. I guess those are the comments people warned me about.)

 

Best First Mother's Day EVER

Yesterday was such a great day. It was a great day in general, but it was a particularly great day because it was Mother's Day and this year I am a mother :-)  The day started out with a FABULOUS breakfast in bed.  Jason made me this stuffed french toast from the Pioneer Woman (no, he does not read PW, but I happen to have sent him this link a while ago telling him how delicious this looked. And it was.). Oh yes, and it was delicious. Definitely didn't use that syrup. It was rich enough already. And delicious.

I relaxed at home while Jason when to Sunday School, had a great time at church, and then we went out to Mexican for lunch (how could I be hungry for Mexican after a breakfast like that, you ask? Well, you see, I'm pregnant. I'm always hungry). When we got home we went on a long walk with some neighbors.  While on our walk, Ben started telling us about his favorite ice cream place in Colonial Beach.  Of course we couldn't just hear about it; we had to experience it for ourselves.  So the five of us and our two dogs piled in the minivan (woops... did I just admit that??) and headed down to Colonial Beach for some Nancy's Ice Cream.

Kobi gets his own cup of vanilla.

Nacho does not. He has a sensitive tummy.

It was a really wonderful day.

The other thing that made my first Mother's Day so wonderful was the little package I got in the mail from my sister Dana.  She found me the most perfect Mother's Day card. I literally could not have said it better myself.

Oh, but there's more.  I also got this little canvas bag which was closed tightly with red string. I let Schub do the honors of cutting the string to see what the Amazing Mysterio had to predict about our baby...

... And the verdict is...

Fabulous. We will be signing baby Schub up for bowling lessons as soon as he/she can walk!!  She also threw in a little bag of sour gummie worms because maybe she knew they were my favorite or maybe I was on the phone with her while she was at CVS and I told her to pick me up a bag of sour gummie worms :-) I didn't really expect her to do it and mail them all the way to KG. What a great sister.

And what a great husband and what great friends!  I seriously had the best day ever. Schub treated me like a queen and it was so relaxing. I'm excited to celebrate next year with a new little one in our family!

Spoke too soon...

So maybe I'm not quite over the hump yet... Hey, a girl can dream.

18 weeks and pregnancy update

Okay friends... I know I said this at 15 weeks too, but I seriously never realize I'm as big as I am until I take these pictures. I mean, SERIOUSLY. This is my FIRST baby and there's only ONE in there. I'm not quite sure why my stomach is SO large. But it is, and I suppose there's nothing I can do to stop it.  I begin to feel badly about myself when I look at pictures of other friends who are pregnant right now and I feel like a whale compared to them. I'm not lying; I had a friend put a picture of herself at 18 wks on facebook the other day and you couldn't tell she was pregnant.  She was skinnier at 18 weeks than I was at 0 weeks.  I'm going with the excuse that I'm so short so my baby belly has nowhere to go but OUT.

In other news, I think I'm finally over the hump. The puking hump, that is.  At 16 wks + a day or two I had a really bad day.  I threw up 6 times... 3 of them being at work (I hate puking at work)... and then that was it!  I mean, I called the doctor and they gave me some more meds to help with the nausea, but I haven't actually thrown up since. It's amazing. Baby Schubert just wanted to finish the first trimester with a bang. Way to go kid.

Also (Liz Rutter) my baby is now the size of a sweet potato. And I THINK I felt it kick once or twice.  We have a regular checkup at 19.5 wks (May 12), and at that appointment they give me a referral for an ultrasound.  I tried to be sneaky and just call the radiology office and already schedule my ultrasound, but they required a referral number. bummer. Guess we'll just have to wait til the full 20 weeks to find out what this little Schubert is!  I can't wait to give him/her a name!

Surprises inside

My wonderful husband once again picked out a most wonderful and early gift for us for our  anniversary.  In true Schub fashion, the hammock was set up and ready for me to enjoy when I got home from work - in the living room.

Nacho enjoyed it too. And after Schub took this picture he climbed in as well! I can't wait to put this thing to lots of good use! 

Oh, and it folds up to the size of a grapefruit, so we can take it with us whenever we use the last gift that Schub set up for me in the living room...

(this was our anniversary in 2008... when I attempted to come home from work and the door was locked and when I was finally allowed in, THIS is what I came home to)

I got a good one :-)

Modgnik

Well hello... long time no blog. Sorry about that. I have felt very busy lately. I don't know if I've really been what people consider busy, but I've felt like I have been.  To give you an idea, we went on this retreat 2 weeks ago and I just unpacked my bag yesterday. Maybe I meant to use the word lazy? 

Schub and I had the distinct pleasure of taking 6 kids from our youth group to Modgnik (it's kingdom spelled backwards... very clever, eh?).  It's a PCA camp that our region holds every year at Rockbridge, which is the Younglife camp up here in VA. Can I just say... I had tons of friends who did Younglife and had heard all about younglife camp and how fun it was... but I don't think I realized just what all these Younglife camps had to offer until now. I mean, the facilities... wow.  We had a great time.

Here is a ginormous zipline that starts at the top of that big dirt hill up there and comes all the way down into this lake. I estimated like 150 feet... Schub estimated about 500 feet. It was long. REALLY long.  Of 500 kids at Modgnik that weekend, there were only about 25 of them who braved the feezing temps of the lake to do the zipline. 3 of them were ours. They made us proud.

 

Phil and Josiah didn't do the zipline. But they came out of their cabins just to watch.

 

Neither did Steph or I.

These were the three brave souls who endured the water temperatures... TWICE (must have been fun).

Will and Susanna coming in...

And here's what Susanna looked like when she came out of the water. hahaha.

Here are me and my girls for the weekend.

The boys before getting on the giant super high drop swing thing that kind of reminded me of a free fall at an amusement park.

Up up up at the top!

And here they come back down!

And the girls.

Schub was on this trip too... he was just either taking the pictures or at the leaders meetings. What's that you say? Wasn't I a leader too? Well I'm pregnant. Don't you know that pregnant women are exempt from the leaders meetings? Besides, that would have confused all the other leaders who kept mistaking me for a high schooler all weekend.