It's a GIRL!

Here are Baby Brown #2's first pictures. She was rather cooperative and the tech was pretty confident in the gender ... of course there is always a chance they are wrong :) I think the best part was seeing her moving her arms around and at one point she let out a giant yawn.

Guess we'll need to buy some pink sleepers ...

Anticipating Tuesday

Baby Brown has his or hers halfway point ultrasound on Tuesday morning. I must say I'm probably slightly more excited about this ultrasound than I was about Cole's. With Cole we were just excited to see first pictures of our baby. This time around I've already had an ultrasound of this child and seen him or her kicking away. What I'm really anticipating is finding out whether this baby is a boy or a girl. We found out what we were having with Cole too, but since he was our first, we were super thrilled either way. This time we already have a boy. Of course we will once again be overjoyed with either outcome, but it will be exciting to know if its a girl because then we'll have one of each (which would be wonderful). If its a boy, I can hardly wait to start pulling out all of Cole's old clothes to sort through them for his new sibling and reminisce about when his brother was so tiny.

Of course I'll post Baby Brown's first pictures next week and let you know the results :)

Baby Brown: The Sequel

As promised, here is a belly shot of Baby Brown #2 ... finally :)

November 2009 -17 weeks

And just for comparison sake ... here is a picture of Cole at 17 weeks ... just in case you were wondering :)

October 2007 - 17 weeks

So far I feel really good as long as a can catch a regular nap during the day. Everything appears to be fine and the baby seems healthy. I have my next ultrasound December 8th and we should hopefully know the baby's gender at that time.

Cole of course, is living life as usual. He knows plenty of words but uses them sparingly including shapes and colours. He also loves to sing and sway to music. He's generally a happy kid except when teething flares up. Who knew 2 year molars could take so many months to come in?! I think we'll all be much happier when they finally show up!

Happy Halloween

This year Grandma Koudys is spending Halloween with us. In a few days Dave and I leave for our annual District Prayer Retreat - so Grandma will be spending a few days with her adorable Grandson as Mommy and Daddy get some time together.

Our church holds a Pumpkin Patch Party every year, and once again we took Cole. This year he was a sock monkey. He didn't mind the costume other than the hat. We were able to get him to wear his toque and sneak the monkey head on top without him noticing. Here are a few pictures to show you how adorable he was along with the pumpkins mom and I carved and the traditional Halloween cookies.

Oh ... and FYI ... I (Erin) went to Pumpkin Patch as a pregnant lady. That's right ... Baby Brown #2 is on its way and due May 3rd, 2010. I'm almost 14 weeks and I've already out grown most of my clothes and my belly button has already popped. I'll be trying to post some belly shots in the future as well as update the blog a little more frequently than once every 2 months. Come on second trimester energy!

Welcome Fall

Fall is here.

The leaves on the trees are already yellow and falling on our drive to the church.

In some ways I'm sad the summer has already left us. The kiddie pool is packed away and the strong winds are back. On the other hand, I've missed my sweaters and I like the thought of the big pot of soup simmering in the crockpot for dinner. Sipping on a cup of tea is a nice way to spend the afternoon.

See you in another 9 months summer.

The Shed

Now that the basement is pretty much done, we need somewhere to put all the things we had lying around down there. We were able to get this shed for half price at Walmart. It was the display model so it meant some taking apart to get it home. Cole thinks its great. He loves to pick out rocks from the gravel and play in the inch of dirt used to pack in our wooden boarder. I see a sandbox in this boy's future!

Where Did August Go?

So apparently August has come and gone and I neglected to post a single thing. In fact I hardly took any pictures at all.

Cole has been a mixture of busy activity and a teething moody toddler (he got all his eyeteeth this month) ... not exactly the best photo opt.

So here are a few pictures I did manage to snap. Hopefully September will be a better blogging month :)

Look what I found on Daddy's nightstand

A real mouthful ... of teeth that is

Up to something

Books are my favourite thing

Relaxing ... watching a movie

The Story of The Pool

For the first time since we moved here we have actually had an extended amount of summer. This is probably why we were unable to find a hard plastic kiddie pool anywhere in the city (trust me we looked everywhere that might remotely sell one). So we opted for the inflatable variety (which wasn't much in the way of variety either - but at least obtainable). Of course they were abundant in May when I first saw them, but that's what you get when you live in a small northern town. As one of my friends from up here put it ... she's already shopping for winter coats for her kids :)

Anyway ... Cole seems to like the new pool. The water was still a bit on the chilly side. He looks brave in all these pictures, but the odd time he slipped and ended on his back side he got quite the thrill ... or rather chill. He spent the whole time standing and chasing his toys around the pool - literally. That's right he'd grab one and throw in behind him and he walked around the edge only to come full circle back to the same toys and repeat the vicious cycle all over again.

Here are a few pictures of our munchkin and his new pool:

A Rainy Afternoon ...

Love this picture!

Snuggles

Paint, Trim & Carpet

Over the past year we've continued to work on finishing the basement to our 2 bedroom, 889 sq. ft. home. It was only last June that my dad was here helping us get started on the mudding and taping.

In the past 12 months we've managed to finish the mudding and sanding, had the ceilings spackled, primed and painted the walls, painted and mounted trim and doors, finished the electrical work and now had the carpet installed.

We're by no means finished yet. There are a few more pieces of trim to mount, some more caulking to do, another coat of paint to put on the trim, all the ledges need to be done and shelves put in the closets. Oh and the bathroom ... let's not even go there! Another project ... another time!!

But after a lot of elbow grease, money and help from wonderful friends, we finally have usuable space to house our guest room, office and rec/play room. What a feeling of accomplishment!!

Family

As you can see, its been quite some time since I've updated the blog. The past month and a half have gone by like a whirl wind.

Back in May we travelled to Niagara to visit my (Erin's) family for just over 2 weeks. Unfortunately, after only being back for a week, my Grampa suffered a stroke and passed away a few days later. So we once again packed and boarded a plane back to Ontario.

My Grampa's funeral was the first time my cousins and I had all been together in many years. It had also been a while since my brother and I spent any time together. So here are a few pictures as evidence of our reuniting for years to come.

When we got home from our second trip out east, it was time to work frantically on our basement. This time in preparation for the carpet to be installed just days later. I'll put up pictures of this in another post.

Of course the carpet was purposely timed just before Dave's sister Grace, husband Shawn, and our nephews Spencer and Timothy were to arrive and stay with us for the weekend. It was the first time Cole had ever met his only 2 cousins. We had a great visit and the newly (almost) finished basement got its first visitors.

Cole's New Chair

Our church was doing a fundraiser today to raise support for a missions trip to Mexico. They were selling new and used Children's items and we found this fabulous Ikea chair for Cole. It's just perfect for watching Baby Einstein as you can see.

Our Little Boy

Where did our little baby go?!