She is here!

Charlotte Jeanne Kuhle finally arrived at 3:28 AM Thursday May 11th, 7 lb 8 oz and 20 inches long. Andy and I are doing well and on love cloud nine! We may be a little biased but we think she is the most beautiful baby in the world. Pictures are below and hopefully I will have the birth story posted soon, it was quite the wild ride!

Andy and I were both exhausted but I managed to capture these cute pics of father and daughter.

Just Waiting

Well the countdown is oficially one day left! If there is no baby by tomorrow on my due date I'm convinved that I will try the Skipolini pizza, the succcess stories are convincing enough and this pregnant woman is desperate enough to try anything! Here is the ad for all of you curious people who haven't heard of this famous pizza! "In the spring of 1981, a woman desperate to give birth after a trying pregnancy, wandered into Skipolini's Pizza in downtown Clayton. Jokingly, the woman demanded that the manager give her a pizza that would make her have the baby soon. Seeing her desperation, the manager concocted a pizza with just about every known topping in the restaurant. The masterpiece had thirteen different toppings including extra onions and extra garlic. The pizza was loaded with fresh vegetables and six types of meat. The creation weighed over four pounds and could have cured the hunger of several small countries. The results were amazing. The woman left the restaurant after eating the "Prego" pizza and went into labor that same evening. So began the amazing history of the first ever, the original, "Prego" pizza. After years of success, the "Prego" pizza has been growing in popularity. It has been recommended by doctors and OBGYN's everywhere. The pizza gives hope to pregnant mothers who are just ready to put a happy ending to a long nine months. The "Prego" pizza has been recognized by newspaper, magazine, radio, and television programming alike. In the early years, radio personality Dr. Don Rose first helped publicize the pizza on the radio station KFRC. The successes of the "Prego" pizza have been documented in the Contra Costa Times, Pizza Today magazine, Diablo Magazine, Gourmet Magazine, and many other local publications. The popularity of the "Prego" has also been enhanced by short clips aired on KTVU channel 2, Evening Magazine, CNN, and KPIX, channel 5 news." You can check out all the success stories on their website and judge for yourself! http://www.skipolinispizza.com/index.php We will keep you posted with baby news.

Ok peeps, this is it! Me with less than 2 weeks to go until my due date! Steve did an awesome job with the camera in getting me at a good downward angle, the effect was to produce a far more flattering image of myself than I could have ever hoped for!

Well we celebrated Andy's 31st birthday this weekend and I decided to make it a "Minute to Win It" party with ice cream sundaes at the end. It was a lot of fun and we were to thirlled to be surrounded by our friends and family! Below are some pictures from the party with several of the challenges. Everyone was a good sport and hopefully had fun as we all made fools of ourselves trying to complete these riduculous tasks in under a minute. We started out boys vs. girls and I wasn't keeping super close track but I believe the girls won in the end!

This one was called "Face the Cookie" where only using facial muscles you have to move a cookie starting at your forehead down to your mouth, it's quite amusing to watch the facial contortions!

In this one Steve was attempting to keep all 3 balloons in the air at once for 60 sec, it's a lot harder than it looks!

After watching the grown-ups play defying gravity the kids wanted to play as well!

In this challenge by only using your nose and petroleum jelly you had to move 5 cotton balls from one bowl to the next. Susan won this one but Ty gave it his all!

Last but not least is a shot of some of our guests and the birthday boy!

A shot of the simultaneous pregnant Melissa and myself at Melissa's baby shower. You would never guess she was only 10 days behind me in her due date!

The big House Hunt!

Well this week was the big week of house hunting. Andy was gracious enough to fly back there and look for the both of us. It was a bit nerve wracking for me as I am a bit of a control freak (people who know me are probably thinking, "understatement!") and really wished we could have done this together but I put my trust in Andy and in the spirit that we could be mutually guided though far apart to a home that would be the “right” place for us. The poor boy was so stressed, he looked at 13 houses on Thursday then looked again at our top picks Friday. What made it difficult is that the grand plan of video taping the houses fell through because the player didn’t work properly, so in the end only five of the houses he looked at really got through to me. Well luckily a new house popped up on the market Friday, one which we both liked, so according to pictures and talk we decided to apply for this one, hopefully we get it! There are some pictures below, I will let you be the judge of what you think. Bear in mind that east coast housing is completely different, you are lucky if you have a car port, no one has garages and all the homes were built in the 50's! You are also lucky if you get 2 full bathrooms. But man was it stressful for Andy, comments like “I just wish you could be here looking with me” to “I’m tired of trying to be in your head” were constant themes and when I asked about closet space on one of them I think that pushed him over the edge! Hopefully we will know by Tuesday if they approved us or not. Keep your fingers crossed!

BATHROOM

BATHROOM

BEDROOM

KITCHEN

LIVING ROOM

UPSTAIRS HALLWAY

FRONT OF HOUSE

SIDE OF HOUSE

CARPORT

Well Andy and I had out last big date befoe the baby comes. We went to San Francisco to the Museum of Modern Art to view the Rineke Dijkstra photography exhibit. She is an up and coming photographer who (and I quote the MOMA here), "In works of classical simplicity and remarkable psychological depth, Dutch artist Rineke Dijkstra presents a contemporary take on the genre of portraiture. Whether adolescents, soldiers, or new mothers, Dijkstra is fascinated by people in states of significant transition. Her sensitive pictures generate a monumental sense of presence, not only in how they record the details of an individual's physical appearance, but also in how they illuminate subtly shifting inner states." I couldn't say it any better and we quite enjoyed it. Here is a picture of a bull fighter just seconds after leaving the ring and the next is of a teenage girl at the beach. Source: http://www.sfmoma.org/exhib_events/exhibitions/438#ixzz1snscrb00 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

After the MOMA we then went to the Butterfly Restaurant and had a wonderful dinner and came home and watched a movie. All in all it was a wonderful day and I am sure a day we have taken for granted! Bottom line is we love each other and although we are so excited to be parents we know we will probably miss the days where we could just pick up and go whenever we felt like it!