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!

Our Baby

Fooled you, huh! Thought baby kuhle was here already! Not so, it is our other baby, our dog Molly! Andy's favorite baby shower gift was the Baby Ergo carrier and so he wanted to try it out with "our baby" Molly! I think Molly actually enjoyed it!

As promised, "The Freak Out!"

OK, I believe that I am entitled to at least one or two good pregnancy freak out moments, so far there has only been one so Andy should count himself lucky...right? Well, let me first give a disclaimer that I have a wonderful, loving, awesomely intuitive and communicative husband who loves me no matter what! But this all started after several hard days at work. I had been bringing up lately that work was getting harder and especially this night (it was a Monday night and we were doing Family Home Evening together) coming off of a couple hard days of work I brought it up again. The way we do our FHE by the way is a song, prayer, then business, then the lesson, prayer, then a dessert. Well, feeling a little stressed I started to go though the "business" part of our FHE. Well, essentially it turned into an escalation of what Andy was or was not doing to help out around the house and everything that was left to me to get done. For example, finding an apartment to live in in DC, renting out our house, finding out how the army will move us, all the home improvements that still needed to be done to help our place be rented out, and everything and the kitchen sink was dragged in as I got more and more frantic and my voice escalated more and more. Then to top it off I brought in wanting to stop work soon, to which Andy stated, "Well, you should keep working if there is no medical reason for you to stop." That just about did it for me and I went off on all the above mentioned "to do's" that Andy was not helping me do and the icing on the cake was that the baby's dresser was not finished as promised! So once my tirade was over and I was in tears Andy very meekly and calmly said, "I get the sense that you're feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment..." I looked at him in disbelief and yelled/cried, "Yes, of course I am!" Well, we patched the night up as best we could and it was off to work again for me for the next couple days. Then as I pulled in after work I noticed that the dresser was completely done! Apparently Andy had stayed up all night to get it done for me despite being busy in his rotations as this was the only thing he felt he could do for me to make me feel better. I felt like a bit of a heel and apologized about my "freak out" moment and we were back to marital bliss!

The Aftermath

Once we got all the gifts home it looked like Babys'r'Us exploded in the nursery! Andy and I were a little overwhelmed with everyone's generosity. We are so grateful to everyone who helped get us and our baby girl off to a good start, we are twice blessed to have loving friends and loving family!

Baby Shower!

I am determined to become a blogger! I let it slip there for a while but now that I actually have a little more time on my hands I am back with a vengence! Below are spme pics from the baby shower which was utterly fantastic! Tammy did a wonderful job with the decorations and theme and I am so sorry if you missed my Aunt's cake because it was beyond delicious! So to give a brief recap, yes we are pregnant with our first child, a baby girl. She is our little miracle and we can't wait to meet her! I am oficially 36 weeks and due May 8th. I've only had one pregnancy "freak out" moment which I will talk about in another post but for now just know we are getting ready for our little girl in addition to getting ready for a big move across country to the DC area as Andy starts his residency in June! Lots of changes for the Kuhle family but we are ready to take life in stride.