Showers for baby girl

*Once again, I have fallen behind on the blog.  I wrote this about a month ago, but am just now posting.  My b! :)*

I'll be honest.  It's been hard being away from family during these past few years.  I am a homebody by nature.  I much prefer getting cozy on the couch to a night out on the town.  The same goes for where I live.  I would definitely prefer to live close to friends and family than set out on an adventure in a faraway place.

However, we have been so blessed by several different communities since we moved up to Massachusetts and they have really rallied around us as we get ready to welcome our baby girl in just a little over a month (whaaat??!!) - (*update - about 2 weeks! double whaaaa?!)   Warning:  LOTS of pictures to follow and please excuse the fact that I'm wearing the same outfit in pretty much all of them (hey...whatever fits!).

One of those communities is our church community.  Personal opinion alert:  we go to the best church in the city of Boston and probably a lot of other places too.  We LOVE our church and especially the people that make up our church.   Some lovely ladies from said church hosted the sweetest shower for myself and another girl who is expecting in December. *update - she had her baby and she's precious!)

 Jess and me (she just had her baby!)

 Our sweet hostesses

 A second wonderful community is the one we live in right here at the seminary.  I was afraid before we moved here that seminary was a place for nerdy people and that I wouldn't find any friends.  I'm really glad I was wrong because we've met some really great friends that have been such a wonderful support to us over these past two and a half years.  Some of these sweet friends threw us a shower for our baby girl!

Hostess gifts I was really proud of :)

 

 Hostess friends!

The third community we are thankful for is my school community.  I work at a satellite preschool, so I don't get to interact with the other teachers (other than my TA) on a regular basis.  However, my principal and the other preschool teachers and I get together regularly and they were so sweet to throw my a little shower.  I'm thankful for these sweet ladies!

We also had an amazing shower in Richmond over Thanksgiving, but I'll post about that in my Thanksgiving post...promise I'll get around to it soon!

Lately

In an effort to get caught up on the blog in the most efficient way possible, I've decided to do a "lately" post.  Here's some things we've been up to lately.  Also, I use the word lately loosely because some of these things date back to summer.  Oops!

- We had an awesome time with the kids from our church during our week of VBS (back in August).  I had never even volunteered for a VBS before and somehow found myself with the responsibility of planning the whole thing (whaa??).  God was very gracious to me and everything was so fun!  Here are some of our sweet kiddos.  I love them so much!

And a few of our fearless volunteers...  Thanks guys!  We couldn't have done it without you!

- Our friend, Ryan, from JMU stopped by for a visit.  We took him up to Rockport for a little New England sightseeing and some lobster.  We loved seeing you, Ryan!

- School started and I was blessed with the sweetest class to ever come through Pre-Kindergarten.  No, seriously.  Look at these sweet tiny people:

Could they be any cuter??  Nope, not possible.

- We moved!  We left our sweet little one bedroom and moved into a 2-bedroom apartment across campus.  It was a little sad to leave our first apartment as a married couple, but we are moving on to bigger and better things, literally.  And now our baby doesn't have to sleep in a closet...she will have her very own bedroom!

I'm not even sure who took this picture...it's not very exciting, but is evidence that moving occurred.

- We finally went to the Topsfield Fair!  This fair is a pretty big deal around here and we've had plans to go for the past 2 years, but have somehow never actually made it there.  Since this is potentially our last year here, I told Curt that we haaaad to go (yes, I whined).  We went with a couple friends from church and had a really fun time.

- Lastly, our baby girl continues to grow each day.  I feel very blessed and thankful to say that the pregnancy is still going very smoothly and I am enjoying feeling her move around all the time.  We have made very minimal progress on the nursery, but I'm hoping that will change in the coming weeks.  I have some fun plans for it though!  These belly pics are a little old...I'll try to update soon.  Right now I'm actually already in my 3rd trimester at 28 weeks.  Crazy!

21 weeks

 25 weeks

Ha..the 21 week pic actually looks bigger...aahh the power of a bad camera angle :)

Well, hello there! (Celebrating Our Two Year Anniversary)

Long time, no blog :(  I was looking back at some of my old blog posts and I sort of miss keeping up with this guy on a regular basis.  Here's hoping I can get back to a schedule of some sorts...

Welp, because of my lack of blogging we are gonna go wayyyy back to the end of July.  I realized I never posted about our two year anniversary.  We celebrated in a very low-key way this year because it was right before VBS for our church and frankly, we're poor :)

We stayed in and made ourselves a fancy-ish dinner.  It was nice to do a little cooking together, enjoy a relaxing meal at home, and talk about the ups and downs of the past year...what we've learned, how we've grown, what God has taught us.

Yummy appetizer: crostini with goat cheese, strawberries, and basil...topped with a balsamic glaze (thanks for the inspiration, Molly!)

 Dinner:  Chicken piccata with garlic mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus

My sweet guy...and yes, we did have sparkling juice (yay pregnancy!)

Teeny tiny belly at just 16 weeks

 Here's to many more years of love and laughter!!  We are looking forward to an exciting year three!

It's a...

 girl!!

We are so excited to be welcoming a sweet baby girl to our family.  Bring on all things pink and ruffley! :)

Pregnancy so far...

I've been so blessed to have a pretty normal pregnancy so far.  I felt very sick for the first few weeks, but now that has passed and I feel great!  Here are some things that are going on now...

- I wish I could say that I have a cute baby belly....but really it feels more like a beer belly than anything else.  It's not big enough to look like a baby bump....more like I ate too much for dinner or something...but it is growing!

- I have started to feel the baby move!  At first it was hard to distinguish, but now I can feel it more and more when I lay down to go to sleep and when I wake up in the morning.  It is the strangest feeling, but so cool too.

- Cravings:  sour candy, limes, lemons.  This is really funny to me because I used to LOVE sour things when I was a kid, but kind of grew out of it.  Now I can't get enough of them.

- Aversions:  avocado (so sad!), eggs...that's about it.

- My nephew (4-years-old) looked at me one night and said, "Cafrin, how did the baby get in your belly?"  Then he looked a little scared and he whispered, "Did you eat it?"  I died.

- I can tell I've been a little more emotional and moody lately.  Although, Curt probably bears the brunt of that (poor guy!).  I'm typically not a very emotional person, so this part can be draining.

- Now that I have more energy, I've been trying to keep up with running.  It is hard to get started, but after I go I feel a lot better.

- We were able to get a two-bedroom apartment on campus, so our baby doesn't have to sleep in the closet. Yay!  We move next week and I'm looking forward to decorating the nursery.

- We find out if we are having a boy or a girl on Monday!  We can't wait.  A lot of people have given us their opinions on whether or not we should find out, but we've decided it's what we want to do.  I feel like it will make it all that much more real and also help us narrow down some names.  Any early guesses as to what it will be???

Here's a couple teeny tiny beer belly pics...

               

              

  

You and me plus a baby makes three!

Yes, you read that correctly.  We are having a baby due on January 10th!  We couldn't be more excited about this new little life and we are still just trying to wrap our minds around the fact that our two-some will become a three-some in just a few short months.

Here's a video we took when we told Curt's parents and grandparents a few weeks ago.  More updates to come soon!




Mini-Kenney from Curt Kenney on Vimeo.

Schooool's out for summer!

**Disclaimer:  I started this post at the beginning of the summer and forgot to post it!  This is part of my effort to slowly bring back our blog...bear with me.

Sooo, things have been a little crazy around here.  Hence the zero blog posts I wrote from April until now.  But I am happy to say that now that school is out, I have a lot more free time.  Yay!  It was so exciting to have a relaxing Monday morning on the couch, sipping my coffee, and watching the Today show.  While it was sad to say goodbye to some of my sweet kids, I am really glad to have some down time.

Here's a picture from the last week of school.  I've done this shaving cream activity back when I taught 1st and 2nd grade, and it definitely did not disappoint my Pre-K'ers.  They LOVED it.  My assistant and I were laughing at how we couldn't believe how much joy could come from a $1.50 can of shaving cream.  It was so fun to watch them.

So...what are we up to this summer?  Curt will be taking a few classes and I will still be working part-time for our church and coordinating Vacation Bible School for the church in August.  Despite some extra responsibilities at church, I'm still looking forward to getting some rest, enjoying the amazing New England summer weather, and hanging out with friends.  We will also be going home for a few weeks in July.  Can't wait!!

Recently I talked to a dear friend of mine (also a teacher) and she told me her two goals for the summer:  1) get in shape and 2) pay her bills.  Now, I'm sure she'll accomplish a lot more than those two things this summer (because she's awesome), but it got me thinking...it's good to have goals.

Sooo what are my goals for the summer?  Good question!  Here are a few that I've come up with:
1)  read my Bible more
2)  read more books in general
3)  hang out with my husband and take advantage of our flexible summer schedules
4)  not stress out about VBS and trust that God will work through me and the volunteers
5)  go on walks with friends

That's all I can think of for now.... What are your goals for the summer??