36 Week Update

Well I made it through the holiday weekend "away"... and by "away" I mean further from home (& our hospitals) than my dr. wanted me to travel. I know doctors are just being cautious, but at the same time it leaves this thought in the back of my head every moment while away of "what if it happens now". My 34 week appointment was about a week & 1/2 ago and at that time I was already 1.5 cm dilated, effacing, and soft, which I could tell made my dr. very nervous. Hence she was concerned with me traveling anywhere, even just an hour away.

Check out this Holly Jolly Big Belly.

I love Christmas, I really do, but this one I did not feel that I really enjoyed the way I was hoping. There seemed to be so much on my "to do" list over the past few weeks at both home and work that the days just flew by. But, now I am comfortably back in my home base and getting a little more ready every day for Weblet #2 to make its arrival. I can definitely tell that things are progressing... between the contractions & twinges, there is something going on. This week I had my 36 week appointment which is next next milestone to having weekly appointments and weekly checks on progress. Like I thought, I have been progressing... now at 4 cm, 95% effaced, and completely soft. However, this appointment got interesting when Weblet heart rate was only at 120. Typically it has been about 140ish. So in addition to the standard listening to the heart on the doppler thing, I had a quick ultrasound, and then was hooked up to the heart/contraction monitors for 30 min to make sure all was okay. As it turns out a little apple juice and this kids heart rate perks right up... I think it was sleeping.

This weekend is New Years and I am much looking forward to having no real plans and being able to spend sometime nesting for baby and hopefully relaxing a little bit too.

Happy Birthday Miss Adrian

In addition to celebrating Christmas over the weekend we made sure to celebrate Adrian's 2nd birthday!

Christmas

Picking out our Christmas TreeThis year we celebrated Christmas with the immediate Weber's on Christmas Eve morning. We always do a family photo... turned out pretty well.

Christmas Eve we all went to church and celebrated with the extended Rieck family.

Our last family photo as a family of 3!

This is one of my favorites from the night... Brad & Adrian love chasing each other and were having a blast. They were moving so fast I had a hard time catching the moment.

Christmas Day we celebrated with the extended Weber family. The kids had fun pushing around the baby strollers.

Our Christmas Tree all donned with gifts to celebrate Christmas with my parents. Our annual Christmas morning family photo.

Brad checking out his stocking.

Brad's new gift from G&G Huelsbeck. He was super excited about this one!

Breakfast with Santa

This year we attended Breakfast with Santa, which was put on by the Junior League of Minneapolis. Jerad, Amanda, and Callen also went with us. I was a little worried, but Brad did much better with Santa this year. He saw that the kids in front of us sat on Santa's lap and then they were given a stuffed animal. So with daddy's assistance, he to went up to Santa, sat on his lap, and received a stuffed puppy.

His buddy Callen on the other hand did not have such a good experience with the Jolly Ol' Man. I think it has to be that age. Being 1 years old it has to be a little scary for a parent to set you on some strange old man's lap. I am glad that Brad went first because as soon as he saw Callen crying, he too started to cry wondering why his buddy was upset. I have a feeling if Callen would have went first Brad would never have sat on Santa's lap.

Roughly 32 Weeks

32 Weeks pregnant with Weblet #1

33 weeks pregnant with Weblet #2

Thanksgiving

When there is a Packer game on TV on Thanksgiving... this is what you get....

Come on Jon, join the party. Just kidding.

Then what comes after Thanksgiving, but Black Friday. This years stores were opening even earlier and some even opened as early as 7:00pm on Thanksgiving. Although we are hard core shoppers, we decided to wait until midnight to start our adventure. It was productive and fun like always! I love getting to spend this time with my mom, aunts, and cousins.

Family Photos

Since we wanted to get some pictures done for Bradley's 2nd birthday, we also thought we should get an updated family photo before Weblet #2 arrives. They turned out great. I was also able to get a few maternity photos as well.

Happy Birthday Bradley

It's official Bradley man is 2! And this little boy is so lucky because he ended up having 3 different celebrations for his birthday.

The first with at home with Mom & Dad:

The second was a week later at G&G Weber's where we celebrated not only Brad's birthday but also Emma's 4th Birthday and Megan's 21st Birthday which are both on November 19th.

The third was with G&G Huelsbeck and the extended family on Thanksgiving.

Needless to say he now thinks he has a birth "month", not birth "day".

London Trip

Although 26 weeks pregnant, my doctor originally told me that it was a great time to travel so I scheduled my work trip to London along with Sarah, Kris and Stephanie (in our compliance area). However, the morning of departure I had an appointment and instead she was quite worried for my overseas travel. She checked to see if I was progressing at all and of course I was... so in preparation and just in case she and my level 2 doctor sent me with all my records and details.... just in case... let me repeat that... just in case I would go into labor while flying or overseas. Well although I was nervous, I made it to London safe and sound ~ Whew!

We arrived on midday Saturday, so once we got checked into the hotel the 4 of us walked over to the Tower of London, which was literally a 5 min walk. Well the somewhat frustrating thing about touring the Tower of London is that we had to do it at super warp speed.... London had just had their daylight savings change and when we purchased the tickets the man said we had 2 hours before it closed... however once we got in it was really only 1 hour because their tourist times changed with the seasonal change. Oh well, we were still able to see the crown jewels and I got some pretty neat pictures. We had a fun Saturday night after that with drinks, dinner, and more drinks with our CEO. One thing I came to realize pretty quickly on this trip is that folks in London eat dinner rather late in the evening (8:30-9:00) and like their happy hours. For this preggo it was rather hard as I am used to dinner at 5:30 and of course drinking was off the table. I still made the most of it and of course we had some pretty amazing eats throughout the week. As you notice... beer vs coffee... oh well it was still fun to hit up a few of the pubs.

Sunday was another day full of site seeing. One of our London colleagues, Denise, was our wonderful tour guide. We started with a walk over the Tower Bridge, down the river through some shoppes to the Tube, took the Tube to Bridge Street, walked to see Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. The coolest thing about Westminster (besides the fact that we were in the place where the Will & Kate were recently married) is that it was a Sunday so they were holding the Sunday service, which they don't typically let tourist in during. Well Denise said we were going to mass... when we got in there the mass was almost over but they were just about to start communion. During communion they first give out to the members on the other side of the arch, then they allow the public who are attending to come through the arch and get communion as well. The other 4 ladies were not interested, but growing up Catholic I thought this was such a special opportunity I just could not pass up. I joined the rest of the public and proceeded through the communion line. Pretty neat. After this we did more walking to check out Trafalgar Square and the market. Westminster Abbey

Tower of London

Picture of the Lloyds of London building at night.

Since we stayed right in the heart of "London" we were able to see so many, many things in a short period of time. The rest of the week consisted of business, with many different dinner meetings/events at night. It was a quick but super super busy week and pretty awesome for my first trip to London.

One more thing I forgot to mention was to my surprise... they actually had the Packers game on tv. Since it was the NFL's game of the week, the British stations pick that up as well. Although it did not come on until 6 hours later (time difference) so I was watching the 1st quarter at around 10:30/11:00 at night. Too late to watch the whole thing.

Oh lastly, did I mention that the 3rd night in our hotel the fire alarm went off at 12:30 am. I had just gone to sleep at 11:30 and was awoken by the blaring siren. Needless to say you never know if its the real thing, so I did my best to round up a few things then head outside... only problem was I could not find where I hid my passport in the room in my flustered/half woken state. Good thing it ended up to be just a false alarm. :)