Reflection of 2009

I can hardly believe that today marks the end of yet another year. Time seems to go by so quickly nowadays and when I think back on it, so much has happened this year! I am going to appropriate this idea from another blog and fill you in on what happened month by month since I lacked in regular blogging this year ;)

January

Last year for New Year's Eve/Day, Nick reserved a hotel room for us downtown Omaha where we spent the night swimming and watching fireworks :) We then proceeded to go back to our room and watch Dog the Bounty Hunter until it was time for the fireworks to start!

I also started my last semester of college in January with 6 weeks in a seminar class at MOWest and them student teaching the rest of the time with Mrs. Hyatt. It was quite an experience!

February

February was marked with me anxiously awaiting my Praxis results to see if I would pass and offically get my teaching certificate after student teaching. The verdict was in and I passed all of my tests which was such a huge relief!

I took over the full responsibility of teaching all of my classes at Maysville, which brought on extreme exhaustion. Sadly I was already counting down the days to Spring Break and how many more lesson plans I had to make! I honestly thought that was the toughest part of student teaching (the lesson plan making).

Nick and I celebrated Valentine's Day together and I can't remember what I gave him or what I received!

March

March saw me still super busy student teaching along with the added pressure of applying for jobs here in Omaha. I was banking on my Special Education certification to help me get a job, however, was devestated after my first interview to find out that the Praxis certification that was accepted in MO, was NOT accepted in Nebraska, thusly resulting in me feeling as if I had wasted a whole semester in college taking the Special Ed classes.

My friend Kati was preparing for her wedding in June and I went to her bridal shower in March. It was a blast and really seemed to kick off the wedding season for us, although our weddings were still three months away :)

April

April ushered in a much needed break from student teaching! I remember feeling so relieved that last Friday before spring break knowing that I was going to get to spend a week with Nick where we weren't rushed doing wedding stuff and could just enjoy eachother's company!

Towards the end of April Martha and her sister, Teresa, had a bridal shower for me which was wonderful! Nick and I received so many lovely things and plus, it was great getting to see some of my family that I know wouldn't be able to make it to Omaha for the wedding.

May

May saw many changes in my life, but not as many as the following two month. On May 9th I officially was done with college and celebrated with Graduation and a Graduation party which Nick's parents came down all the way from Grand Island, Ne, for! I was beginning to get nervous about moving away from home after the wedding, and was trying to spend every minute I could with my family! Nick and I were working hard every chance we got to get wedding stuff straightened out, and were pretty much all but done with the preparations!

Mom and I spent some time garage saling together, which is a favorite past time of ours!

Nick and I seriously began tossing around the idea of getting a dog after the wedding, and after quite a while of looking for one in the papers and on the internet, I found a Husky breeder in Grant City, MO. We chose a black and white male and decided to pick him up about a week after we got back from our honeymoon in July. We didn't know then what we were getting ourselves into :)

June

Cue the wedding music! This month proved to be a busy one for the churches! My friend, Kati, got married the first Saturday of June and I got married the last, which worked out really good because we were both in eachother's weddings!

Kati and Jesse at their wedding :)

Nick and I take a moment at Kati's wedding to stop for a picture!

After nine months of vigorous planning and preparation, the month for our wedding was upon us. Thanks to Nick's grandma Rosie, we were able to use the larger and nicer room at our reception hall because it wasn't booked! Therefore, we had a kitchen and ended up getting to have a dinner and a much better set up! Ethan and I literally spent all day the day before our wedding decorating the room, tables, etc! It really turned out beautifully, and I couldn't have done it without him! Our wedding went off without a hitch, except Nick kept trying to put my ring on the wrong hand during the ceremony :) The reception was wonderful and everyone had a blast Polka-ing right up until midnight!

July

July began with us in Durango, Colorado, for our honeymoon!

Some beautiful mountains on our drive through Colorado.

Nick in front of the steam engine that pulled our train to Silverton, Colorado :)

Me in front of of Mesa Verde National Park :)

Then the weekend after we got back from our honeymoon we made a trip to Missouri to give my family their souveniers and to get our puppy, Akiba.

August

After applying for jobs in several different places, I finally landed one as a Pet Care Specialist at the Petshotel in the local PetsMart store! It was absolutely a dream come true because I got to play and work with dogs all day!

Nick and I were enjoying training our puppy and he began to catch on fast to the housebreaking and to other various tricks I was teaching him.

September

September began with a phonecall from my best friend, Martha, telling me that her boyfriend proposed to her and they are planning a wedding for later in November! She had been dating him for quite a while and they are expecting a baby, and are due in January!

Nick and I found ourselves on the road quite a bit and made a trip down to Missouri for my birthday. We began discussing wanting to have a family sooner than we originally thought, but were a bit apprehensive as we still wanted to have our "couples" time and were really enjoying married life :) For a few months we let the idea rest.

October

October 3rd brought our first snow of the season, and it was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy to early for our liking! Akiba absolutely loved the snow and didn't know what to think of it as first :)

Mom and Dad hosted a dinner for us at the June Conley Building in Maysville so that the rest of my family who couldn't make it to the wedding could meet Nick. Uncle James cooked the meats for us and everyone else brought a dish. We had lots of people there and I think it may have been a bit overwhelming for Nick :)

Nick and I made our annual trip to Vala's Pumpkin Patch to get our pumpkins for carving.

Nick's is on the left and mine is on the right ;)

This month Nick also celebrated his 29th birthday and I made him lasagna and garlic bread for dinner :)

November

This month ended up being incredibly busy for us! Nick took a week off of work to go back to Grand Island and deer hunt. At that time I made a trip back to Missouri and spent a week with my family. Mom and I enjoyed going to Kansas City and going junking and Christmas shopping :) Thankfully, Nick ended up getting a deer whose meat is sitting in our deepfreezer right now waiting to be ground!

A few weeks later we went back to Missouri again for Martha and Jason's wedding which was really nice.

This month Nick and I spent Thanksgiving with his family and his mom and I went shopping for some good deals on Black Friday :) We also began to talk seriously about having a baby the following year.

December

December 4th Nick and I got a positive pregnancy test!!!!!

Three tests can't be wrong!!!

We then announced it to my parents and grandparents when they came down for a visit the following weekend. They were thrilled and Mom and Grandma bawled :) Nick called his parents and told them over the phone, not wanting to make as big a deal about it to them as they are already grandparents.

December 19th we had our Christmas with his family in Grand Island which was a lot of fun. I spent the morning shopping with his Mom while he and his dad went out and walked some ground trying to stir up deer.

Then we headed to Missouri on Tuesday the 22nd for Christmas. A little earlier than we had planned leaving, but we were trying to beat a major snowstorm that ended up hitting Christmas Eve, and kept us at my folk's house until the Sunday after Christmas :) I am sure Nick was getting bored, especially because it wasn't his own family, but I frankly enjoyed all of that extra time with them!

Just sitting around in the frontroom at Gma's talking :)

The guys playing some late-night poker on Xmas Eve

Christmas morning and Lauren looks sleepy!

While in Missouri for Christmas Nick and I began talking seriously about getting rid of Akiba. As much as we loved him, he was costing us quite a bit of money for boarding anytime we wanted to go somewhere, and honestly, he was beginning to cause me more stress at home for reasons I am unsure of. So while in Missouri I made a posting on Facebook advertising him, and that very day a girl I went to college with said she was interested. Well to make a long story short she bought him and we dropped him off Sunday in St. Joe on our way home. Needless to say, it has been a huge stress relief for me since I am at home all of the time right now.

And now it is New Year's Eve and Nick and I are enjoying ourselves at home. We rented a couple movies and watched Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, and he's playing a Call of Duty game on our new Wii. Hopefully this next year is as good as this year was....and with a baby on the way I don't see how it wouldn't be! Until 2010, later :)

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!!!!!!

Well nearly another year has flown by as it's but a few days until Christmas! I find it amazing how quickly the holidays and birthdays seem to come up nowadays! I remember when I was little it seemed like it took foreverrrrr for Christmas and such to get here. But now it really creeps up on me!

Tonight Nick and I are having our Christmas together. We originally were going to exchange our gifts and such on Wednesday, but thanks to the unpredictable weather of the midwest we had to move it up to tonight as the weather man is calling for icing and snow on Wednesday, so we are heading to Maysville tomorrow after Nick gets off work. I was afraid that we weren't going to be able to make it to Missouri for Christmas because of the weather. However, Nick suggested going down a day earlier than planned so that's what we're doing :) It is so strange to think that this is the last Christmas that it will be just the two of us! I know it will be just as wonderful next year but am kinda sad to think that this is our first and last Christmas together as just the two of us (for a long time anyways!). I think that is just the hormones talking :)

This past weekend we went back to Grand Island to celebrate Christmas with Nick's family which was a lot of fun! We both got some nice things and I think everyone loved what we bought them! I have found that my niece, Jordyn, is warming up to me more quickly every time we see her! I am so glad and Mollie seems to think that she will want to be my helper when we have the baby and are back there which is neat :) Well I had better wrap it up for tonight. Have to finish some stuff around the house before leaving for Missouri tomorrow! Merry Christmas!!!!

Something to Blog About

So I'm finding out that I'm not very good at keeping up with blogging, and I think I have discovered the problem......I simply don't have enough exciting things going on in my life to justify writing every few days :P However, all of that is about to change and the blogging community is about to hear from me more frequently because as it so happens, I DO have some news that will give me some writing ammo for the next 9 months or so :)

In my last post I told you I would write again when I had some news, as so that bring me to this post today. Nick and I have been talking about wanting to have a family over the past few months, and we just recently decided to get serious about it ;) Well two weeks ago or so I began to suspect that I was pregnant (I won't go into detail about why :) ) and so a week ago this past Friday I woke up at 4:30 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep as that was the day I was planning on taking one of those pregnancy tests. So, after lying in bed for about 25 minutes I finally got up and snuck downstairs to take the test without waking up Nick.

Well it didn't take long for that second little pink line to show up in the result window and a feeling of disbelief came over me! I was so excited that I got online right then to see if it was possible to get a false positive result in my case and it wasn't!!! I didn't tell Nick that I had taken it yet as I wanted to take a second one and make sure before telling him! Well the second test concluded what the first had and so I called and told Nick; however, he wanted me to take one more because he just "wanted to make sure" :) So I got one of those digital ones that is supposed to read "Pregnant" or "Not Pregnant" and a very conclusive "Pregnant" read on the screen less than a minute into the test!

So needless to say he finally believed me and we now have an appointment made for January 4th for our first doctor visit. They apparently are going to do an ultrasound first and then I will see my doctor so we have an idea of when my due date will be. I am excited yet nervous because I am just afraid something is going to go wrong and then we will have gotten our hopes up for nothing. Anyhow, as for telling the family, Mom and Dad and Gma and Gpa were up here at our house yesterday to spend the day with us, and I gave them the news as an early Christmas present. I actually took a picture of the 3 positive pregnancy tests and put it in an adoreable fram that said "Grandkids" around the edges.

Needless to say they were super surprised and Mom was in disbelief most of the day :) I have been feeling extremely good except for being extra thirsty, emotional, and clumsy! I feel fortunate that I haven't had any morning sickness and haven't been excessively tired, and so hopefully that continues :) So that is my big news, and before this post gets unreadably long I will wrap it up!