Springtime is here!

The weather has been SO beautiful the last few weeks! I was looking on facebook today and saw some people's posts from Pennsylvania who woke up to snow today! I'm so thankful we live in Statesboro where it's so warm a majority of the year. My allergies have been super bad this year from all the pollen, but I just can't resist being outside in this wonderful weather!

The ovulation kit worked great; however, no news to report. My cycle started Monday and surprisingly I wasn't too sad about it. Of course I was a little, but I think it helped a lot to get a better idea of what my body was doing. It started exactly around when I expected it to because I knew exactly when I had ovulated this time. We are just going to continue to use one every month until we get pregnant. In the mean time, I have plenty of things going on to keep me busy.

We are leaving for our cruise in 1 1/2 weeks! We'll be driving down to Fort Lauderdale next Friday April 1st and our boat leaves on Saturday! We are taking Princess Cruises this time because we found a great deal. Our boat is going to the Cayman Islands, Cozumel, Roaton, Honduras, and the Bahamas. Our last cruise went to the Eastern Caribbean so we're excited to see the Western side this time. I've been busy working on sewing projects for the cruise: altering a few tanks tops, dresses, and sewing a bathing suit skirt.

This is the bathing suit skirt. It looks weird in this picture but its really cute on! I couldn't try it on with the suit because Michelle has it right now. I'm sure I'll have plenty of pictures from the cruise!

I've also been taking full advantage of this beautiful weather and started a garden! I'm SO excited about growing things this year! We have these three little circles of dirt in our driveway that are close to our house, get full sun most of the day, and are perfect for vegetables. Well, one is square. :)

I think when the house was built there were trees there, so they laid the concrete around the trees. Well those are long gone now, and I've had these three dirt holes in my driveway just sitting there for 2 years accumulating weeds. So, I planted spinach, carrots, green peppers, and sunflowers in them.

Sunflowers

A few days later. Growing so fast!

Carrots, spinach, and green peppers. Not much to look at right now. There are tiny sprouts but you can't really see them here.

Carrots and spinach. Hopefully soon these will be full of growth!

I've also started seeds inside to see how well they would do. I have broccoli, green peppers, cantaloupe, parsley, and basil. Everything so far has sprouted but the parsley. The parsley is taking forever!

Tons of broccoli sprouts

Big pot: cantaloupe, medium pot: basil, small pot: broccoli

Little green pepper sprouts

Green pepper

I planted some basil, parsley, and cilantro outside and they are sprouting too! I also have a tomato plant outside. Brice is going to build a box for me so I can plant my green bean seeds this weekend. I'll probably put the cantaloupe on the other side of the box. It's so exciting to walk outside everyday and see new growth! I can't wait until they get bigger and I start to see fruit and vegetables growing!

Tomato and herbs

Tomato plant

Cilantro sprouts

Basil sprouts

I've also been preparing for when I stay home with Braxton. I start watching him in a few weeks so I've been looking around for great deals on baby stuff. I found a changing table at a yard sale for $7!

She was asking for $10, so I offered $5 because the bottom shelf is broken. Then she went to $7 and I said ok. The shelf is very easily fixable with some wood glue. She said one of her kids tried to climb underneath it and they broke it. Overall the entire thing was in very good shape and very sturdy. We went to another yard sale and saw the same exact one in a different color for $35! So, great yard sale deal and now I have a cute changing table for Braxton! We are also getting a crib from our church building that the church no longer uses. That way it will be easier to just have something here instead of Michelle having to worry about dragging the pack n play around. It'll be great when we have kids too because we'll already have everything we need for just $7! The changing table came with a pad but no cover so I made a cover for it.

So I've been pretty busy the last few weeks. I cleaned out the flower beds in the front yard on Friday but didn't get to finish. I picked the first very hot day to do major yard work and got very sunburnt and worn out. Now I have a bunch of leaf piles all around the yard the need to be picked up. I'll probably finish all of that this weekend and enjoy this awesome weather!

Braxton's Birthday!

Braxton Nathaniel is finally here! He was born on Wednesday, March 2nd at 3:48am. 8 lbs 10 oz and 20.5 inches long! Such a beautiful baby!

Michelle's labor was wonderful and went very fast! She woke up at midnight with labor pains and Zach called me on their way to the birth center. They got there around 2:30am and I was there about 2:40am. Then she had Braxton about an hour later! Praise God she had a short labor and Braxton came quickly! I cried my eyes out when he was born. He's so perfect!

It was so empowering to watch a natural birth at the birth center. It's amazing how God created our bodies to endure labor and birth without medication. Michelle made it look so easy! Lord willing I'll be able to have my baby naturally at the birth center. I'm excited to go through it and experience it. I really hope that I am able to and don't have any complications with pregnancy or labor. It goes through my mind sometimes because it's been so hard to get pregnant. I sometimes think that pregnancy and labor with come with complications too. I've been praying for a long time that God will give us children and that I'll have a healthy pregnancy and delivery without any problems.

Speaking of, we are using an OPK (ovulation predictor kit) this month. I'm not really sure why we've never used one before. It makes complete sense to use it if you're trying to get pregnant. I thought about it before, but for some reason we just never really used it. We talked last night about how it probably should have been one of the first things we did to try to get pregnant. If I ovulate every month the way I've ovulated this month, we have been WAY off in "guessing" my ovulation day. We've been thinking it was around day 16, but according to the OPK it's been around 19-20. So we've just been completely missing it the past few years! Surprisingly, this is actually the first month we've seen it visually that I'm about to ov. We've just sort of been "not preventing" but also not really doing much to figure out my actual day of ov. I tried charting, but I was horrible at keeping up with it and gave up quickly. The OPK is SO much easier and doesn't feel too cumbersome on our lives. It's much less work and more accurate. We'll try this for the next few months and see what happens!