New baby, new smile, new house!

Things just won't settle down over here in the Dougherty household. We have been busy, busy, busy!

First of all, things are going well with the pregnancy. I've had a couple OB appointments that have gone well thus far, and we scheduled our appointment for next Friday to have another ultrasound to tell us the gender. We're beyond excited!! Woohoo!

Second, I got invisalign braces! They're not exactly invisible, as you can still basically see brackets on my teeth, but it's only for about 5 1/2 more months so I just smile a big 'ole smile and bear it! :) We got an unbelievable deal on them through the university, and we just couldn't pass up the opportunity. They're scheduled to come off at the exact time that the baby comes, so we'll see which one ends up coming first.

Third, we're moving! Again, we're getting an unbelievable rent on a three-bedroom home that we just couldn't pass up, so we're moving this Friday into a new (to us) place here in Iowa City. It's a little closer to the school, has a backyard with a deck, and most importantly, has three bedrooms! This is also a shameless plug for any of you who will be in town on Friday to come help us out if you find yourself bored to death and wondering if there is anything for you to do. Why, yes, there is! This is going to be our first house that we'll live in. No more apartments! Yay! (Did I also mention it has three bedrooms? Eek!) I promise to post pictures of our new place when we get all settled in!

Between all this excitement, Joseph's family has come into town for a reunion of sorts, so we've been spending time with them over the past week, which has been wonderful. I can't seem to find my camera right now, so I'll post pictures later, but we have really enjoyed being with his family.

Whew! Where has the summer gone? Joseph and I are hoping to get a couple of days where we can just lay around and enjoy the lazy days of summer before he goes back to school. I don't know if that will happen! At least we've been able to spend some great time with family and each other.

Stop the train!

On the trip out west Jake's movie of choice was Polar Express. He gets pretty animated while he watches it, as evidenced in the video clip. The part that he's watching is where the kid needs to stop the train to let another child on. This kid is hilarious!

Whew...what a drive!

We're back from our vacation! Although, to be honest, now I feel like I need a vacation to relax from our vacation! Pretty much, our last week and a half can be summed up by one word: driving! We drove and drove and then drove some more. Luckily, my son was a dream and we had lots of movies for him to watch.

Before we started all the driving, my family came to Iowa on their way out to Utah. We were planning on caravanning (sp?), but had a few car troubles that we needed to fix first, so we ended meeting up with them later in Denver. We crammed everyone into our little apartment, which was no small feat!

My mom and Jake made a fort then read stories in it! Jake was in seventh heaven.

When we got our car taken care of, we drove all day and met the rest of my family in Denver. We stayed in Denver overnight, then drove to Utah and got there late Friday night. On Saturday, we hit up the Stadium of Fire at the BYU football stadium and saw Carrie Underwood live in concert! It was AMAZING! We went with one of my best friends from college and her husband, as well as my brother and some of his friends.On our way out, some lady stopped one of my brother's friends and asked him if he wanted to go to a party. He obviously was a little wary at first, but when she said it was an after party with all the producers and performers of the show, and then he gave her tickets for all of us to get in, we didn't hesitate!! Apparently this lady's husband was part of putting together the show, but she didn't want to go so she just handed them to us! I know what you're all wondering, so let me just tell you that Carrie Underwood wasn't there...much to our dismay. But everyone else was, and we got free food and dancing! Although, mostly we just hit up the free food and left. I know, we're getting lame in our old age... But we did feel very VIPish.

The next week was spent driving to different parts of Utah seeing Dougherty, Dunford, and Witt family relatives. Jake especially loved being with his cousin Isaac. They liked to play air hockey together, and they were both surprisingly good! We also spent some time in southern Utah seeing some of the amazing national parks down there.
I think Jake liked riding the buses around the parks more than anything. Every time a bus would come, his face lit up and he would start yelling, "BUS!! BUS!!" You can imagine his misery if that bus was not the one we wanted to take at the time and it left without us on it...Luckily, his tears stopped immediately as soon as we stepped on the right bus. Also, I should note that Jake has started picking his nose whenever we take pictures. Please say this is just a phase...After all this excitement, we drove back to Iowa and arrived a few days ago. Whew! We're back, and I need a break!! But we had a great time and loved being able to see lots of people that we rarely get to visit with.

No, THIS is exhaustion.

Just got back from camp yesterday. Slept 14 hours and woke up still tired. Fell asleep during sunday school today (sorry Tawnya). Everything went well...I think... It's sort of a blur. Good news is I'm alive. I'm going to take a nap. Goodnight.

The REAL reason for my exhaustion

Don't get me wrong, girls camp has been incredibly exhausting, but it really gets compounded when you're 12 weeks pregnant! It looks like the cats out of the bag here in Iowa City, so I thought I'd officially make the announcement to all you faithful readers that I am in fact pregnant, and we are very excited!

Joseph, Jake and I all went in for the first ultrasound yesterday. It's always a surreal experience to hear the heartbeat and then see that little tiny fetus inside you. Jake was terrified when we first walked in, but that was normal. He's pretty wary of doctors in general. The technician said things looked good, but we won't know for sure until blood work comes back.

Other than the fact that I am tired all the time, I am feeling wonderful! During the first trimester with Jake I threw up at least once a day, usually more, but this time I haven't thrown up at all. In fact, I vividly remember thinking that I would never get pregnant again after Jake because it was so miserable. Whoops... But really, this time it's a breeze. It really is a gift from above, because I don't know how in the world I could plan Girls Camp if I was as sick as I was with Jake.

The official due date is Dec. 28, so we could have a Christmas baby on our hands! Although, I'm not keeping my fingers crossed since Jake was 5 days late. Hopefully it will come sometime over that break, though, so I can have a husband for at least a few days to help out.

So, there you have it! I'm going to be the mother of two. I've already had a few anxiety attacks over that prospect, but I'm getting used to the idea.

(Note: Don't expect pregnancy pictures from me. I do not care to relive how huge I get during this whole process...Also, along that same note, please, if I ever ask how I look, lie and tell me I look great, haha!)

Exhaustion

I'm sorry for the lack of pictures lately. I'm just gonna be straight up honest: I'm too exhausted to take any. Life has been insane recently. Part of it has to do with this new toddler bed nonsense. Joseph and I had been getting 5 am wake up calls from Jake...which led us to put his crib back up, much to Jake's dismay. However, most of the exhaustion has to do with the planning and getting all the details together for Girls Camp (which I am in charge of again this year).

I literally have spent hundreds of hours this past month alone working on different things, trying to get them together. You'd think that after doing this once already and having more of a staff to help you would make things a little less hectic, but there's always so much to do, most of which I couldn't forsee. Writing firesides, devotionals, getting crafts ready, making gifts, writing and responding to ten million emails every day, phone calls, picking up and dropping off orders, meetings, organizing service projects, the list just goes on and on and on. But with all this hard work, I'm really starting to get excited. This year I've really felt guided and I know that the theme this year, "Daughter of a King," is really what the girls need to experience.

Jake has been surprisingly patient with all my planning. Maybe it has to do with the fact that because I've been a little preoccupied, I've let him watch Polar Express more times in the past week than I care to admit. Well, either way, girls camp starts in a week, so it will be over soon and I can go back to being a real person again. Until then, wish me luck!

Toddler bed shinanigans

Joseph and I recently discussed the idea of Jake moving into a toddler bed now that he's two. We figured the transition would be easier if we just converted the crib that he already has into a bed by taking off the rail. When we woke up yesterday, we decided that it would be the day to test our theory! We let Jake help us change his crib into a "big boy bed" and he was so excited!

We decided to do a trial run of the "new" bed during nap time. It was less than successful. Jake had no problems wanting to be in his bed, but as soon as we left the room we could hear him get out and start to play with the toys in his bedroom! After about an hour of trying to get him to stay in his crib, Joseph decided to just put the rail back up. Apparently Jake was too excited to fall asleep and his toys were just a little too tempting...

Not to be deterred, last night we tried again. And he did it! He fell asleep, no problems at all. Joseph and I were just beaming with the idea of our baby sleeping in a toddler bed. We were such proud parents! We kept exchanging little smiles throughout the evening that seemed to say, "We did it right!"

And then, before we finally went to bed, we walked into Jake's room to check on him. I started laughing out loud. There was Jake, laying on the floor!! And not only was he on the floor, but his bed was covered with books and balls. No wonder he was on the floor, there was no room for him on his bed with all the junk he had gotten while Joseph and I were under the impression that he was sound asleep. We're not sure if he fell off his bed or if, really, he had chosen to sleep there instead because his bed was too covered. Either way, we're starting to rethink this toddler bed thing!