We are all still doing very well, anxiously awaiting the arrival of our new bundle of joy.  We got some awesome pictures made!  Check them out on the gallery!

Just wanted to let you know that we’ve registered at Target and Babies “R” Us.  We didn’t register for very many toys and clothes, so don’t feel bound to the registries. 

Baby Boy West is really getting active now — even Justin is able to feel him moving around and doing somersaults!  We took a few more pictures tonight and put them in the gallery, so go ahead and peruse them at your will.  We’re at 25 weeks and counting!

We’ve worked hard on the nursery.  We painted it blue, then sponge painted the bottom portion with a light purple and put up a white chair rail.  We have a few touch ups, but we’re pretty much done and ready to move everything in!  I’ve finally uploaded pics of the nursery and our theme to the gallery, along with the much-requested pictures of my growing bump.  Enjoy! 

Our foreign exchange student, Nuno, left on June 18th to head back to Brazil. But before he left, he uploaded his two favorite videos to YouTube… enjoy!

Kat’s Flying Lesson:

Jake Sneezing in Excitement:

Yes, it’s a boy, and according to our latest ultrasound this morning, Amy is 18-weeks and 5-days along with a new due date of November 8th! We’ll probably confirm the due date during the monthly check-up tomorrow morning. To our surprise, the sonographer also threw in a 3D shot! Here it is:

We have also uploaded the rest of our 2D ultrasound pictures to our gallery. 

Now that we know it is a boy, we will have many preparations to begin! One of the biggest changes will be the conversion of our foreign exchange student’s room (who we will be saying good-bye to after this weekend) to a nursery! We look forward to the new changes!

We finally finished our deck that we started on March 15th! We worked through snow and 80+ degree heat within a week! With the help of my Uncle, we finished all of the decking and had half of the railings up and the runner boards for the steps all in one weekend! Then after some weather delays (and motivational issues), we finally got around to finishing the deck on Mother’s Day, May 13th (so it’s actually been finished for a while and we just got around to taking the final pictures)! You can check out our pictures of the progress HERE in our gallery! We will officially break in the new deck with a party later this month!

So, you all know that I’m pregnant, and you’ve seen the first glimpses of the little miracle growing inside me.  But what’s happened since?  At almost 18 weeks I’m starting to get a little ‘bump’ on my belly and can no longer fit into my size 10 pants that I worked so hard to get down to (from size 18 a year and a half ago).  I’m really still a little small for maternity clothes, but I had no shorts to wear for the summer.  So, who cares if they are a little loose around the stomach? I look cute in them, anyway.  At least in maternity wear I look more like I’m pregnant rather than like I’m just gaining some weight in my midsection.  I have my next ultrasound next week and we’ll find out the gender.

I am still working at the farm, but I cut down to half days starting this month.  Now I work from 12-5 and I don’t do any real heavy lifting.  I now have my mornings free to walk the dogs and check my email (which I hadn’t done in over a week until this morning). 

Speaking of our critters, they are all doing well.  They are all 3 fast asleep, lying in the sunbeam near my feet.  For all of you who know Jake, he is doing really well.  We started walking him daily, and his endurance is slowly starting to build.  He certainly is getting more and more energy.  Storm is as cute as ever and a bundle of energy (except when she finds a morning sunbeam).

Our foreign exchange student, Nuno, will be leaving us to go back home to Brazil June 18th.  We will certainly miss him as he’s been a vital part of this family for the past 9 months.  I know he has some pictures of his adventures in the US in our gallery if you want to see them.  The next 2 weeks will go by too quickly!

Amy and I are now officially preparing for parenthood! Amy is currently 10 weeks and 3 days pregnant. We had an early ultrasound today in order to make sure the baby and everything are ok and we were told that everything looks completely normal and the baby has a healthy heart rate of 167 beats per minute! Watching the ultrasound was incredible! I didn’t know what to expect to be able to see this early in the term, and was impressed to see the baby already kicking its legs like crazy! Here is our take home shot!

Here we can see the head on the right, the arm buds, and both feet! You can also barely see the amniotic sack. Our next ultrasound will be around 18 weeks, so 2 more months from now and it will be quite interesting to see how much the little one grows in the coming weeks! Oh, and the due date is November 11th!

I have installed some new software for our blog. This was mainly done because we were getting spammers trying to post comments under our old software and that software didn’t have the proper tools in place to prevent it. So I’m trying out Wordpress with hopes that I won’t get any more spam posts in my inbox.

Let me know what you think by posting a comment to this post if you like!

Josh officially completed Marine Corps boot camp on 12 January 2007 with the rank of Private First Class (PFC)! I have uploaded quite a few pictures on our gallery that show his final training (a 4 mile motivational run) and ceremonies. Josh is currently on leave for 10 days, but gets an extra 7 days at home while he works at the Marine Corps recruiting office where he was recruited as his temporary duty station.

Once Josh finishes his time home, he will head back to San Diego for 3 more weeks of intense training. Then we believe he will be shipped directly to Pensacola, FL for 18 weeks of MOS training for Aviation Mechanics.

We are all very proud of Josh and are enjoying visiting with him while he is at home!

One of the things Josh’s drill instructors recommended is to shoot an AK-47 while they are on leave. They said this because they need to know their enemy’s weapons in order to know what they are capable of and in case they need to pick up their enemy’s weapon and use it in battle. I just happened to have a good friend that owns an AK-47 and an AR-15. So we went to the nearby shooting range this past Saturday and let Josh get used to an AK-47 for the first time! We had a lot of fun shooting targets 50 yards away!

We wish Josh all the best during his next training stages in the US Marine Corps.