12 weeks and counting

Wondering what we've been up to? Well, pretty much the same old thing. Work, church, getting more excited about our little blessing that is on his/her way. All the normal stuff. :) I know some of you have been anxiously awaiting an update on Baby Harrelson, so here goes:

As of last Friday we are officially 13 weeks (I've had this post in the works for a while now), only 27 to go! lol! I had my 2nd doctor's appointment on the 3rd of November. Everything was good, we listened to the heartbeat, I got weighed and that was about it. We are right on track so they haven't adjusted our due date yet. It's still on for May 14th. Our next appointment is the first week in December.

How have I been feeling? I have been really good. I'm getting some of my energy back which is great for me and my to-do list. Most of the nausea is gone, I only really notice it in the mornings now and usually when I don't take my vitamins with breakfast. I really can't complain, I've been blessed so far with little morning sickness. I've gained 5 lbs. so far (since before I was pregnant) and Mom and I had to go shopping for more pants and shirts this weekend. Some things still fit, but some don't. No official maternity clothes yet, just looser shirts and pants.

For more pics, you can go here. Enjoy! Thanks for all your prayers for us too. We appreciate them.

PS - All these pics are self portraits except the one at 10.5 weeks. It's hard to look natural in these!

All the details

So by now everyone's probably seen our big news we announced earlier today. :) Let me just say, we are just overwhelmed with all the prayers, blessings, and congrats we've recieved. We are so blessed to have such a great family and friends surrounding us right now. We are thankful for each of you.

Since everyone has been asking (well not everyone, but a lot of you), here are some of the important details.

How far along are you? I am 8 weeks and 3 days today. The baby is measuring at 8 weeks 4 days, so we are both right where we should be.

When did we find out? We've known for about 3 weeks now. We told are family, who were so excited some didn't even believe us. I always wanted to do something special to let Randy & our families know, but we were so excited that we just called to let them know. The hard part was keeping it a secret for the past 3 weeks.

We had our first doctor's appointment today and all is good. My due date is May 14th, which I hear a certain little girl in OK is especially excited about.

I haven't been that sick, so far. Nausea and fatigue have been my main challenges. Thankfully, the nausea hasn't been enough to keep me down or away from work. I'm learning more and more how to keep it at bay.

Am I showing yet? Not really. I feel like it. My dress pants no longer fit, but my jeans still do. It is more like I had too much to eat than an actual baby bump.

I think that's all. If I forgot something, just let me know.

Oh and a HUGE shout out to Brooke, my inspiration for our announcement post. She just announced her pregnancy a few weeks ago with the same rhyme and I just loved it! Thanks Brooke for letting me use it!

Guess what????

Rachel & Randy sitting in a tree


K-I-S-S-I-N-G


First comes LOVE


Then comes marriage


Then comes.....wait for it.....





Rachel with a baby carriage!!!

Sonia's 50th Birthday Surprise

I've had this blog in progress for weeks now, just now getting around to posting it. Sorry for the long blog hiatus. Things have been kind of busy around here. Hopefully I'll be able to post a what's been going on blog soon!

My wonderful mother-in-love turned 50 this month! So we decided to celebrate it with her. If you know Randy - you know he loves surprises. He will wrap my Christmas presents and hide them from me a month in advance (if he remembers to shop that early). He has even hid them in plain sight and I didn't have a clue. Anyways, back to the birthday, I talked with him about how we could surprise her for her birthday. After lots of plans, canceled plans, new plans, we finally had one. We would drive out on Friday afternoon to surprise her and spend her birthday with her on Saturday. Kristi and Andrew couldn't go, but graciously decided to let sweet Bella go with us. Yes, that's right, Randy & I took Bella with us on a 5.5 hr drive - without her parents. Let's just say, she loves her "Wachel" and "Wandy." :)

We headed out on Friday afternoon - in the rain. I think it rained over half of the drive there. Needless to say, baby girl didn't get a very long nap. She was so good though. We kept the "nacks" handy and made a few stops and all was good (once we found her pillow and figured out she wanted her paci). We got to Sonia and Bruce's about 7 and rang the doorbell. She was so surprised! She had an idea Randy & I were coming, but no clue about Bella! It was so cool to surprise her that way. Thanks K & A for sending Bella with us for the weekend!

Saturday we loaded up and took Bella to a park that was decorated for September 11th with an American flag for everyone who died on September 11th, 2001. We got some great pics.


Sonia & Bella looking at the ducks

Memorial for the Fallen

Mim & Bella

Bella

Rachel & Bella

Mim & Bella

The Flags for the Fallen

Randy & Bella

Rachel & Bella

Bella running

Randy & Bella

Bella


On Sunday we got to go visit Randy's Grandmother, Aunt, Uncle & Cousin. Here are some family pics we got while there. And we celebrated Sonia's birthday again while there.

Randy, Uncle Steve, Bruce & Austin

Aunt Sharla, Grandma, Sonia & Bella

Randy, Austin, Grandma, Sharla, Me, Sonia, Steve, Bella & Bruce
(I was taking the picture, and had it on auto timer. When I got it set, they told me to squeeze into this 6-inch space on the couch. That's why I look like I'm sticking out in front. :) )

A good one

Sonia's cake

Sonia - I hope you had a great birthday weekend. We so enjoyed surprising you! Thank you for being such a great mom to Randy and a wonderful mother-in-law to me. We love you so much. Happy Birthday!

Randy's New Toy

Any of you who know Randy very well, know that he loves airplanes and flying. He has wanted to get a remote control airplane for a while now. A few months ago he found a inexpensive way to build a plane of his own. He finally finished it this week and took it out to fly.

These aren't from his first flight, but I worked from home on Wednesday so I got to see him in all his glory. Let me just say, he is in HEAVEN!!

Pennington Trip

This past weekend, Randy and I headed to Pennington with 3 other couples to spend the weekend with friends. Mark's family has a vacation house on several acres that they let people use for get togethers. Randy, me, Jacob and Laura headed out after work on Friday with the car fully loaded. After a 3+ hour drive, we finally arrived. We of course had to stay up late catching up. The next morning we got up early (way too early for a Saturday morning) and went fishing in one of the ponds. A few fish were caught but the best moment happened after Brian caught a perch. He had reeled it in and we thought we was going to take it off the hook. All of the sudden he started jumping around and swinging his pole wildly in the air. Then he starts swatting at something with a stick. His fish was still on the hook at the end of his line flying around with every swat he took. Poor fish got the bad end of this pole, literally. Finally all the dancing stopped and Brian says, "Um, guys. Not sure what happened, but my fish is dead." Randy responded with, "That's because you slammed him on the ground so many times!" Come to find out, Brian thought a hornet was after him and was trying to get swat it away. It was actually a large bumblebee. Sorry Brian! Randy and I did get a good laugh out of it though.

That afternoon the girls got to be crafty and paint our own aprons. See the month before I had the idea of us making aprons for all us girls and found them on sale super cheap at Hobby Lobby. So I loaded up all my paints, stamps, and brushes and we got busy being creative. The hardest part was deciding what to actually put on our aprons. Janelle got us started with designing the cutest cupcake for hers. I had to copy, because it was just too cute not too! Laura decided to put a crumb monster on hers, and Shonda set out painting plaid on hers. They were beginning to take shape! In the midst of it, we had the ideas to put Jeremiah's (Shonda & Mark's 9 month old) feet and hand prints on Shonda's apron. Thus the collage of pictures below:
This was a 4 person job with little Jeremiah at the center. He was such a good sport!

Here are the finished products. I love them all!

All the girls - Janelle, Me, Shonda, and Laura - unknowingly we lined up by height and by anniversaries. We're geeks! :)

After a great dinner we headed down to the pond for more fishing. The guys did find a "lawn-cycle" that they had fun with while we were painting and Jacob has it documented on his blog here.
Some views of the pond and the Franklin family.

The highlight of my evening happened just at dusk. Mark and Randy had caught some small pan fish to use as bait. Mark had one on his hook and had thrown it out toward the middle of the pond. He decided to head back to the house to let Shonda have a chance to fish since Jeremiah's nap fell during the morning excursion. I ended up holding his pole since he left it in the water. Shonda joined us and we were talking. All of the sudden I felt a tug on my pole and my cork went under. I started reeling it in and then saw the fish jump out of the water. I could tell it was big and Randy kept telling me to hold the tip of the pole up. I kept saying I was trying to, but the fish was pulling against it. I got it up to the dock and Randy pulled it in. Here's proof:
Randy is starting to get jealous of me - it seems that everytime we fish together, I catch the bigger fish. All I can say is thanks for all the fishing lessons Dad!

The whole gang - me and Randy, Laura and Jacob, Janelle Jonathan and Brian, and Shonda Jeremiah and Mark. Thanks for a fun weekend! We need to do it again soon!

-Side note: Randy has been friends with Brian since middle school and Jacob since high school. They are two of his closest friends. I've known Laura & Janelle since Randy & I started dating. We live far apart and lives are crazy busy but whenever we get together we have so much fun. This was really the first time Randy & I had hung out with Mark & Shonda, but I'm looking forward to getting to know them better too!

Randy's 26th Birthday

Randy turned 26 this weekend. It was his weekend to work, so I was planning on getting his present and cake/brownies ready on Saturday while he was working. Well, he woke up on Saturday morning with a horrible migraine. So bad he had to call in and stay home from work. I was glad I was going to get all day to spend with him, (he got home from NM on Tues and was heading to Tyler on Monday, so this was great!), but I had to rethink my plans for his surprise.

See I decided to get him a tent for his birthday. However, if any of you have been shopping with Randy, you know he has a hard time deciding what he really wants. :) And he is very particular about certain things - tents being one of them. His mom wanted to go in on it with me, so she sent me the gift card and I was going to find a small kiddie tent to wrap the gift card up with. That way he would have something to open on his birthday, but still get to go pick out exactly which tent he wanted. The thing was I hadn't found the kiddie tent yet, so wasn't sure how I was going to go get it, wrap it and make his brownies with him at the apartment. Birthdays have always been a big deal for me and my family and I want them to be special in our family now as well. So after a shower (I think best in the shower! lol!), I decided to see if he would be willing to be blindfolded and go with me on a trip. I figured I could blindfold him, take him to the store and then give him the gift card once we got there. He agreed, after much persuasion that I wasn't going to embarrass him (intentionally).

So I found his sunglasses and he helped me to rig them with paper so he couldn't see out them. We loaded up in the car and off we went.

Randy patiently smiling for me so I could blog about this later.


Randy telling me I'm a dork for taking a picture at the red light.


Taking a pic of the card once we got in the store.

Randy is really hard to surprise. I don't know how many times I hand him a wrapped gift with no distinct shape or weight and he has guessed what is in the box. So once we pulled into the parking garage at the mall, he had an idea where we were. I did confuse him a bit though when I went a different way to get there. :)


Randy as he took off his blindfold/sunglasses. I think he was surprised!


Looking at the tents.

We didn't end up getting the tent here, so no pics of that. I didn't take my camera in to the other store, as I didn't want to embarrass Randy there too.

We did find him a tent and it was a bargain! We haven't set it up yet, but when we do, I'll make sure to post pics. I also got him a camp cook set and some utensils for camping.

Here are his birthday brownies. I learned my lesson after his first birthday after we got married. Unless you have enough time to let the cake cool properly before you ice it, stick with brownies. If you are wondering what I am talking about, try this post.








Randy + Fire = Heaven (for him!)




The only pic I got of us on his birthday.




Eyeing up the competition.


Look at that form!

Love you Randy! Hope your birthday was great. Can't wait to see what is in store for the year to come!