Babymoon in Waynesville, NC

Deric and I were fortunate to go on a quick getaway to Waynesville, NC last weekend.  It was wonderful to take one last trip before I'm too huge to feel like doing much of anything!  As you can see we had beautiful weather!

Deric has done a great job figuring out the new camera that we got for each other around Christmas time and captured some beautiful pics like this one of the Smoky Mountains on our trip!

We had planned on traveling the Blue Ridge Parkway as the main activity for our weekend getaway, but it was closed due to ice in tunnels once we arrived.  So...we decided to go on quite the adventure to do some elk watching in the Cataloochee Valley!  To our surprise, after the 13 mile trek up and down a narrow and curvy mountain road (which ended my month streak of no throwing up), we ended up actually seeing a big herd of elk shown in this pic resting in the shade of some trees! 

It must have been lunch time for this elk!

Showing off my baby bump at the end of 24 weeks by a beautiful mountain stream!

We had fun exploring this beautiful old home site, from 1903, and posed for a quick pic together!

Here's the house that we explored, built in 1903.  It was huge!!

In the upstairs rooms of this house, old newspapers lined the walls.  Deric had fun picking out the craziest ads.  He particularly loved this one!  For all of us women, we now have the cure well for just being a woman! 

23 weeks!

Today marks week 23 of our pregnancy.  I can't believe our baby girl will be here in hopefully 17 more weeks.  I actually got pictures of my growing belly on day one of this new week.  Hopefully I'll continue to remember to take a picture every week the rest of the pregnancy.  I can't believe how much our little one has grown!

22 going on 23 weeks!

I can't believe on Wednesday we'll be at 23 weeks!  I've been a bit behind on updating the blog so this post will be a bit long. 

Let's see what's happened the last 4 weeks?  Well for one thing, the Swanson's have been BUSY hence the major delay in posting.  I'm wondering if I'll be able to keep up this lightning pace as I move further into the pregnancy.  I definitely don't move as fast as I used to these days. 

Deric and I have been busy the last few weeks finishing up projects around the house.  He's been wonderful at tackling his "honey do" list with fervor.  The upstairs railing has finally been rebuilt for safety purposes and painted white to match the downstairs railing and side rail that we painted forever ago. He repainted the bottom railing because it needed to some major touching up as well as the walls and this house almost looks brand new!  We had our carpets cleaned a few days ago which has just added to the newness of the house.  Deric even finished staining the bench he built for our dining room table and it looks just like one you'd buy at the store!  I think my nesting is already kicking into high gear!  Poor Deric!  He's been so gracious though and is working hard to get our house put together just right for myself and our baby girl. 

While Deric's been working hard on little/big unfinished house projects, I've been working hard on my sewing projects for the nursery.  I finally finished baby girl's raggy quilt and I must say, I'm proud of how it turned out considering the fact that I've never really sewn anything more than a simple throw pillow, bag, and Christmas stocking when I was in middle school.  Here's a few pics so you can see what I've been working on.

Baby Girl's Raggy Quilt

Up close view of the raggy edges which give it that girly look!

Another up close view

Also, I've started working on the nursery curtains.  I finally decided on a fabric called Sugar Baby Splash that I found at Calico Corners and I lucked out because it went on sale a few weeks ago.  I've already sewn both panels and added a lining.  All that's left is the top pocket that the curtain rod will go inside.  Here's a pic of the fabric that we went with.  I think the colors on the quilt and the curtains match perfectly!



Sugar Baby Splash fabric that the curtains will be made out of

I also plan on incorporating this fabric into the crib skirt, some throw "owl" pillows, and covering a lamp shade in it so hopefully it will all coordinate well.  As soon as I make more progress on my projects, I'll post pictures!



21 going on 22 weeks

I haven't been the best about taking pictures of my growing belly every week like I had hoped to but here's a picture from a few weeks ago.  It's amazing how fast our little girl is growing!  Today I had a regular check up with my OB and they picked up her heart beat right away which tells me she's growing.  At previous appointments, the nurses had to search around for a few seconds to find her.  Also, the beginning of this week, I started to feel her moving pretty clearly.  She feels like little butterflies just flying around in my belly or at some points like little firecrackers exploding.  I've noticed the frequency of her movements just the past few days so she's a growing girl!  My next appointment will be the first week in March and that will be the fun routine glucose test to make sure that I don't have gestational diabetes.  I remember when they told me I would have this done and it seemed so far away;  I can't believe I'm doing this at my next appointment and will be through with this trimester in just a few weeks! 

I think those are the major updates for now!  I'll try to be better about not waiting 4 weeks to write my next post.  Hopefully I'll have pics of finished curtains to post soon!

~Ashley