Nope - not today!!!

Brad did not get his wish of having a Leap Day Baby but he will get the Leap Year Baby. My dr's appt went okay today. I am 3 cm and still 60% effaced. She is still head down and in position. Any day now as I am now 7 days from my due date. I am hoping that she will come early or on time and not decide she really likes it in there and wait it out until they force her out.

Anyway, Happy Leap Day to all those whose birthday was today!!!

Big Belly Pics

Okay, so are you wondering what is happening with the baby??? We are doing fine. Nope, she is not her yet and yup, I am getting much bigger. I thought I would grace this lovely blog with some updated pictures. I did forget to take some pictures so it is a pretty big leap from Week 31 and Week 32 to Week 37 and Week 38. What can you do when you are this preggo and your hubby is never around??? I thought I would start holding my belly for some reason, I think my thought was the week 37 shirt is a non maternity shirt so it doesn't fit real well for this sort of shot.Anyway, I did not think that missing those weeks would really make that big of a difference but as Brad told me last night, "You got a big ole' belly lady". For those who are wondering if my belly button has dissapeared, the answer is yes. I will not be posting the pictures of it because I think it is just gross and weird looking. I just hope it goes back to normal after she pops out.

I had a dr's appt last Wed, 2/20, and found out that I was 2 cms dilated, 60% efaced and she is at -2. My next appointment is tomorrow morning so we will see if I have made any progress. I hope that I have because I have been having Braxton Hicks contractions pretty regularly. But who knows. I will have a Leap Day update because Brad really want's her to make her debut tommorrow. I don't think that will happen but we will see.

She has a room!!

So here are some pictures of the nursery as we have worked on getting it ready for the little one's arrival. This is before we started clearing things into the attic.
Can you find the little rascal in this picture??? The dogs love their resting place in this room. We will see how this will work after kiddo comes. Once we got the room cleared out we brought up the dresser that was my grandmothers for all her little clothes. Then we built the crib that Grandma and Grandpa Staha bought for us (rather for their granddaughter). Yes, I know that she is going to have a hard time sleeping there with all that stuff in the crib with her. I will have to find a place for it once we get the changing table put together and get her clothes in the dresser.

Here is Brad putting together the changing table. In the background, you can see everything piled into the crib to give us some working room. And yes, that is a TV on the dresser. No, it will not stay in the room for her to watch, but this room will serve as our guest room so we left it in here for them. It will eventually go into the office once we get a place to put it in that room.

Here is the changing table all put together. I have to find some storage baskets to put on the shelves to hold all the stuff. I found some great ones online, but we can't have them shipped for some reason so I have to look on the island for some that will work.

More pictures to come of the bedding set and the rest of her nursery. I will also post pics of the stroller and play yard.

Brad's 1st Underway

Brad recently went on his first at-sea ride on the USS Columbus (as in, Ohio; Brad's regular boat is the USS Columbia, as in South Carolina/Missouri/Illinois). His boat wanted him to get some experience on a working boat while his submarine is in the shipyard being fixed up. The USS Columbus has recently come out of the shipyard receiving the same upgrades as Brad's boat is receiving right now. He went along for a two week ride so that he could get his engineering qualifications completed. Here are some pictures of the day he left and then when he came back.Here we are early in the morning dropping Brad off at the pier. The big black thing with the yellow crane in front is the sail of the submarine. Luckily my sister had just come in to visit us so I did not have to go through this for the first time alone while eight months pregnant and very emotional. Here she is with her brother-in-law before he went in to the big briney deep. You can see more of the sail in the background. After we dropped him off, Missy and I went off to see Hawaii and do touristy things. We headed back to Pearl Harbor in the afternoon to see his boat actually leave for the underway.
Here is the boat from the other side of the harbor. It is kind of hard to see but the submarine is in the middle of the picture with what looks to be a crane coming out of the sail. The sail is the big black thing that sticks out of the water when the boat is surfaced. It is the place that the periscope comes out and also it is the place that people come out to look out when they are on the surface. Missy and I went over to Hickam Air Force Base to the officer's club to watch the boat actually leave the harbor. I can't tell you how magnificant of a sight this really is. The anticipation is killer because the boat was delayed and there was not really a good place to see since they were doing construction. But when they actually pulled by it was a pretty awesome sight. There was a police escort because it is pretty hard to see in the water. The police also did not want us taking any pictures so this was as close as I could get. There were a few sailors standing up in the sail waving to us. No, Brad was not one of them. He did get to be one of them on a trip back into the harbor during the deployment but I was not there to capture the sight.
Here is a little closer on once the boat had passed. It was such a sight against the sunset. There were a few other wives that were out there with us as we watched them leave. Not as many as I thought there would be but this was a short underway.
We watched them for a long while. The two boats on the side of the submarine are the police escorts. I am not sure how far out they escorted the submarine because we left once we could not see the boat anymore.

We both survived the time apart. Since my sister was in town, it was a little easier because I did not come home to an empty house right away. We had lots of activities planned to keep my mind off of separation. After a few days, my sister left and I still had some activities planned to keep me busy. I also recovered from her visit by just chilling out on the couch. By the time I started to miss Brad, he sent me an email. We were able to communicate via email quite a bit. I had sent some letters that I had prewritten him to help him get through the time, but I did not expect any communication back from him so this was a nice surprise. He also was able to call me one evening while they were surfaced. We only had a few more days left apart when I received another call from him. He was back in port for a few hours if I wanted to come see him. Heck yeah, I hopped in the car and headed down. FYI - this is definately not the norm, so please don't expect that this is the kind of communication I will receive in future outings. I was actually prepared not to hear from him at all for the time he was away. We will see how much communication we get to have on future trips. Anyway, the time flew by and before I knew it he was back in port ready to be picked up. Well, so I thought. Here is the boat at the pier. This is a little better picture where you can see the whole submarine. Okay you can only see the very top part of it, but there are not many people that get to see the whole boat unless it is in the shipyard drydock like Brad's boat is. We actually got to see the USS Columbia in its entirity but unfortunately they would not let me take pictures of it. There is a whole lot of boat that you are not really seeing. You are just seeing the roof top to compare to a multi-story building. I picked Brad up from his first underway and we finally got home around 9pm. I am very happy to have him home for now. He will not be going out again until after the baby comes. The next time will be harder but we will survive and learn to cherish the time we have when Brad is at home.

Vow Renewal Pictures

We finally received the pictures from our Anniversary Vow Renewal Ceremony. Here we are at Waialae Beach Park, a free place that is pretty remote and hidden from the general public. We did not have any crowds of people to worry about getting in our pictures.

This is the minister who performed our ceremony.

This is the minister and his wife singing a Hawaiian song for us as an added bonus to our ceremony.

Here we are receiving the Hawaiian blessing.

We then took some cool pictures of the two of us on the beach. The water is really cold, if you were wondering. It is about 11:00 in the morning, too.


This is my favorite family picture so far. I wanted to capture this moment forever.