The Hals Family World Adventures: 29 Weeks! Sneak Peek of Hannah, Daniel's 30th Birthday, Monahan Christmas, and Happy 2014!

Week 29 - December 26 - January 2nd

So...week 29 was another busy one. How am I feeling? Definitely still pregnant and more pregnant than ever, but overall really, I can't complain. Hannah is definitely growing and squirming and kicking and moving around like crazy and I love all the little (and big!) pokes and squirms.

Saturday we drove to Spartanburg and picked up my mom, had lunch with the Grandmothers at Jason's, and were then off to the ultrasound place to take a sneak peek at our Hannah! I was a bit thrown off at first because she definitely looked different than when we had last seen her (which I expected, but she had changed in different ways than I pictured?) and her hands were almost continuously blocking the view and she was pretty pouty (something about people asking her to move her hands and violating her privacy). But the longer we looked the more awesome it was to me. There were a few especially fun things we noticed - oh my goodness her fingers! They were so long and pretty! I was super excited - I've always had long fingers and never knew where I had gotten them until I was sitting at my Grandmother's (Sugarplum - my dad's mom) deathbed. I remember looking down at her hand and thinking oh my God, those are my hands at 87... it was incredibly eery and amazing at the same time. And maybe I'm wrong - but as I was laying there - I thought oh my God - she has our hands! Even during the ultrasound she was wiggly and seemed very interested in grabbing her feet and pulling them towards her mouth. The grandmother's seemed to really enjoy getting to see her and I spent hours over the next few days envisioning how the images would translate to our newborn. Our Hannah was healthy and beautiful!

our beautiful baby girl!

Not entirely sure what hand signal this is, but we were impressed!

Look at those fingers! So long!

Cutie! See her hand tucked under her chin?

This picture doesn't quite capture it but she was totally trying to nom on her foot. After the ultra sound Daniel said - I'm starting to understand why you say she's moving around in there!

United again! Enjoying a round or three of darts at one of our favorite haunts - Barley's in downtown Greenville as we celebrated Daniel's birthday!

Afterwards we dropped my mom off at dad's work, said hello to some of the Quality Food folks and also enjoyed filling my dad in on not only what Baby Hals' looked like, but also what her name would be! Fun!! From there Daniel and I were off to Greenville to meet Chris for some birthday fun and we spent the night enjoying a scrumptious dinner at the Lazy Goat and hours catching up over darts at our favorite - Barley's. Daniel's parents had also given us a night at the Hyatt downtown as part of his birthday present and we enjoyed our quiet time away from the five dogs, the central location, and the sweet sweet layout of our room (which had been upgraded to a suite when we checked in!)

Sunday my parents came over for Christmas time! My parents gave me the bedding I had picked out for Hannah and I was both excited to see it and relieved that it looked the way I thought it would! YAY! My sister had also sent gifts home from India and she gave me a beautiful scarf and a lovely outfit for Hannah - so sweet!

Bedding for Hannah's room! Chocolate brown and pink! LOVE IT!

beautiful gift from my sister, Pam, who is currently living in India. It was a beautiful embroidered cotton top with white pants

When we got back to Chapin we had a big birthday dinner for Daniel and they exchanged gifts too - all fun! He handled his turning 30 quite well! And we had a great time in Greenville Saturday night and all stayed up to midnight together to ring it in and celebrate it accordingly. We may not have been in Prague or the FL Keys or Vermont or Florence, Italy or an igloo in the Swiss Alps or diving with hammerheads in the Galapagos (yes, all of those were Daniel's various badass birthdays...I have outdone myself several times over), but we kept returning to this - we have loved our 20's, we have worked hard and played hard and traveled the world and each earned two degrees and furthered our careers and we really have tried to make the most of our lives thus far! We spent the past decade falling more and more in love with each other and we have a beautiful, healthy girl steadily growing and on the way! It's a pretty amazing place to be!

Other highlights of the week? I finally swam again (I still need to find my go-to gym in Maryland...since we moved I was busy with the pups and unpacking, prenatal yoga, the elliptical, and lots of trips to the parks...so I haven't been lazy, but haven't been to the pool either). And omg...mmmmm. It felt so good to swim. I was really relieved to still be able to put in a good 30-40 minutes. Am I slower? Yes. I feel like a manatee with the drag I have going on, but when I slipped into the water I felt like myself too! And that was awesome.

and...this sums up the craziness going on at the Hals this Christmas!

And last but not least, we rang in the New Year with dear friends! Happy 2014! We are officially in the year of Hannah! :) Yay! New Years always makes me reflective...I always can't help but to think about where I was the previous year...and two New Years ago we were in Innsbruck, Austria. (Which was aweosme!) It was on New Years Day starting 2012 that we had the first truly genuine, serious conversation about starting a family. We were nervous, we were hopeful, but we were also excited! The following year we spent New Years on the liveaboard in the Galapagos ringing in 2013 and the conversation intensified. Baby Hals had not come into existence yet and we were increasingly frustrated with our careers, the Florida climate, and how happy we were (not with each other, but with our jobs and every day lives) and we pledged to each other that 2013 would be a year of change for us.

Happy New Year! 2014!

And was it?! Yes. In 2013 we did things that in some ways I thought was unthinkable and in other ways were all the things that were part of making the big changes we talked about. I earned my masters, I left my job (which as much as it exhausted and frustrated me, I LOVED), I found out I was pregnant, Daniel left his job, we moved to Maryland, Daniel started a new job, we found somewhere to live and moved into our townhome, we found out Baby Hals was a healthy girl, we added Holly to our family, and we accepted an offer on our home just before Christmas (which has officially gone through and closed at this point!) LOTS of amazing, blessed changes! And my hope? That 2014 is a year full of time with our healthy, growing baby girl!