Lots to be Thankful for this Thanksgiving

On Wednesday, I had my oh so fun glucose test.  I had to drink some not so delicious lemon-lime drink and sit around the doctor's office for two hours.  I was thankful when it was over and happy to know that I passed.

After the glucose test and scarfing down some McAlister's I headed to Hobby Lobby.  Baby Richling officially has a name!! I bought the letters of his name to hang over the crib.  We are keeping the name under wraps until he is here, but I'm relieved that we finally decided.  Now we just have to be careful not to call him by name in front of other people!

This Thanksgiving we went to Horton and celebrated with both of our families.  We spent Thursday stuffing ourselves, Friday shopping ridiculously early in the morning, and the rest of the weekend overeating.

Revealing the Gender to Our Family

Since we found out the gender on Thursday, we didn't have to wait long to announce it to our families.  Friday evening we told both of our families.  First we stopped at my parents' house and announced our new to my parents.  We shared our news with blue frosting filled cupcakes.  My mom was very surprised as she thought it was a girl.  Eric and Haley missed out as they weren't around.

We headed to the Richling's next.  My sister-in-law, Jaime captured this photo of everybody's reaction.  (Please ignore my lovely husbands attire.  He was digging out "treasures" out of his closet at his parents house and insisted on sporting that gem of a hat.)

After sharing our exciting news with our family, I posted this photo on Facebook :)

We're Having a . . .

Finding out the gender of our child was a long debated topic for Riley and I.  Riley wanted to find out the gender and I wanted it to remain unknown until the birth.  I wanted it to be a surprise and felt that the sock monkey nursery idea was gender neutral enough.  Riley argued that he didn't want to wait and I finally gave in to the pressure from him along with other family members.

To be honest, I'm glad that we decided to find out.  I realized how excited I really was, when we had to reschedule the sonogram appointment due to heart issues (story of my life!).  The sonogram was suppose to be this past Tuesday, but I spent the prior weekend (my birthday!) wearing a heart monitor because of rapid heart palpitations.  I had an appointment at the Heart and Vascular Center in Topeka the same Tuesday as the scheduled sonogram.  So anyway, the sonogram got pushed back to Thursday.

The second that the sono lady got started, our little one bared it all...

Yay!

Riley thought it was going to be a girl, but wanted a boy.  Needless to say, he couldn't stop smiling after we saw boy parts.

I thought it was going to be a boy.  I'm not really sure what I wanted... part of me wanted a girl to dress up and do girly things with...part of me wanted a boy because I felt that the sock monkey theme goes a bit better with a boy and I think boys are easier.

Here are a few more sono photos of Baby Boy Richling:

The Name

Coming up with a name for our little bundle of joy has been one of the most difficult tasks that we have had.  As a teacher, the names become more limited each year that I teach.  I don't want to name our child the name of a previous student.  It doesn't even have anything to do with the student, it's just that I think of the student when I hear the name.  Obviously some names have negative feelings if s/he was a difficult student, but I'm even turned off about using names of my best students.

Riley rarely suggests names and when he does he is frustrated by my constant veto because about 99% of the time he suggest as name of a previous student.  He is also vetoing my names as he claims that I am "just putting letters together to make up names that aren't really even names."  Like every other parent, I want my child's name to be unique without being weird.  I'm sure that not everybody will like the name that we choose, but that's okay.

We have a girl name that we agree on, but the boy name is still a struggle.  At this point I am glad that we have decided to find out the gender of our baby.  If we are having a girl, this whole name issue can end.  However, if it is a boy.... we are in for a several more months of name disagreements.

No matter what name we decide on and when we make our decision, we are choosing to keep it a secret until the birth.  Since I agreed to find out the sex, Riley has agreed to keep the name a secret.  However, the way that we are going right now, if it's a boy we will need all the time we can get to decide on a name.

We have a sonogram scheduled for the end of the month.  We are both very excited and anxious to see if we will be welcoming a boy or a girl to our family!

We're Having a Baby - Making it Public

Once we finally hit the 12 week mark, we decided to publicly announce that we are expecting.  Social media is of course the method to spread news these days.  Our closest family and friends already knew but there were lots of others that we still were anxiously awaiting to tell.

We decided to announce it on Facebook and this is how I did it :

The Summer of Weddings

The summer of 2014 has been named the summer of weddings for Riley and I.

My cousin Nathan was married at the beginning of the summer, but we were unable to attend.  Riley's cousin Jaycea wed at the beginning of June and we unfortunately were not able to attend this one either as we both had bachelor and bachelorette parties for other weddings.

Riley's classmate, Brent, who is also the grandson of my former boss, Mary Ann, got married at the end of May.  Brent married Kayla and they both went to Horton High School like Riley and I.  It was an outside wedding and we had a wonderful time.

June 20 was my friend, Annette's big day.  I was honored to be a bridesmaid in her wedding as she married Dan in Manhattan on a beautiful Friday afternoon.

My high school friend, Kendelle was married to Andy on July 12.  I was able to stand up with Kendelle as her matron of honor and couldn't have been more honored.

Our final wedding of the summer was Riley's best friend, Jacob.  Jacob and Maddy's wedding was the perfect wedding to end the summer with.  I was happy to have Riley's family in attendance with me as Riley was busy with his role as the best man.

A Job Change ... and The Beginning of a Master's Degree

I spent this past school year teaching 6th, 7th, and 8th grade math in the mornings and K-4 PE in the afternoons.  As much as I love teaching math and PE, I've accepted a job teaching preschool at Riley County.  I've taught summer preschool there the past three summers and will now teach year round.

I'm very excited to make this big change.  I'll also be starting my Master's Degree in Early Childhood Education, so things probably won't slow down too much!

We're Having a Baby - Telling Our Family

Even before finding out that we were expecting, I was searching for neat ways to tell our family.  Pinterest is filled with ideas and it is expected that you announce in a creative way.  I struggled for a while deciding on when to tell our families.  I feared the possibility of telling too early and then having the unspeakable happen.  Riley and I decided that we would want our close family and friends to know around the 8 week mark and just ask them to keep it quiet until we reached the 12-13 week mark when we would make it public.

My family had planned to spent July 4th at my parents house with a pool party.  Riley and I arrived there July 3rd and I handed each of my parents a card in an envelope.  My mom read it right away, screamed, and ran over to hug me.  All the while, my dad was still reading the card so we got a good laugh about that.  Haley came home shortly after and my mom shared the news with her.  We told Eric the next day when he arrived.

Riley's family had planned to go to Junction City for the fourth of July so we chose that weekend to announce as everybody would be around.  We thought it would be a simple task, but it turned out to be so much more than that!  For some reason, we couldn't get everyone together at the same time to announce the news.  It turned out that we ended up announcing it very late at night after Riley spent time convincing people not to go to bed because we had a "holiday card" to give everyone.  It was a bit of a disaster, but oh well.

This is the card we gave family to announce our news:

We're Having A Baby - Telling Riley

Today I went in to the doctor's office and got a blood test and officially confirmed that we are having a baby!  I initially wanted to wait until Sunday to tell Riley because it is Father's Day.  I really wanted to wait as I thought it would be really memorable, but I was too excited and couldn't wait to tell Riley.

This evening Riley was downstairs cleaning guns and I called him upstairs.  I had to laugh a little as he came upstairs saying "This better be good." out of annoyance of me asking him to come upstairs.

As he walked into the room he saw me sitting on the end of the bed with a card and baby sock monkey.  Immediately a huge smile came across his face.  Inside the card I had written,"The only thing better than having you as my husband is our children having you was their dad.  You're gonna be a DADDY!"  I, of course, teared up and he asked, "Are you serious?"

Riley came up with the idea of doing a sock monkey room for our someday baby quite a while ago.  I was just impressed that he actually cared, so of course I had to go along with it.  Plus I think it's pretty cute too!

On a funny side note.... I had been complaining to Riley earlier the previous week about having cramps.  He made some silly comment about how "he had a feeling" that I was pregnant and referenced the Black Eyed Peas song I Gotta Feeling.  Once I shared the news with Riley today, I hit the play button on my phone to play the song.  We both had a good laugh about it :)

1st Anniversary

This past weekend Riley and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary.  It's hard to believe that we've been married a whole year.  

 

We ate at Taco Bell for lunch which was perfect.  When Riley and I celebrated our five year dating anniversary, he took me to Taco Bell.  The day he proposed, we also ate at Taco Bell.  It only seemed fitting that we keep the tradition going.

We ate dinner at Longhorn's followed by cutting into our wedding cake.  I was nervous about the cake being dried out and gross, but it was really moist and yummy.  Grandma Mary's cake did not disappoint.