Week 30: January 2nd - January 8th, 2014
Thirty weeks in! Seven weeks til Hannah is fully cooked enough that my doctors wouldn't stress if I went into labor and ten-ish weeks until my little girl is "due" to make her grand appearance! Woohoo! Hard not to be excited!
With the exception of feeling exhausted, I am doing quite well. While visiting everyone in SC we are sleeping in a queen (we have a king at home) and something about having less space (when I take up increasingly more space) seems to mean that I'm just really not sleeping very well. I am really hoping it will get better when I get back home, but I am fearing that this is the beginning of the nope, you're-just-too-pregnant-to-sleep-well-phase.
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| Woohoo! Closing documents to sell our house! This is a very happy envelope! |
There have been two big events this week. On Friday the closing documents arrived and we zipped out to have them signed and notarized and quickly overnighted them back to the company. Then, on Wednesday afternoon I checked our bank account and yep - we sold our house in Florida!!! YAY! I can't think about the ways in which it is sad to leave our beautiful beautiful house, (I already did that and cried over it months ago), but as we paid our mortgage and Maryland-level rent ($$$) we were increasingly ready to sell our house - and it needed to happen asap and before Hannah got here (and really, a month or two before she got here so we would have a little more money to buy all the various items you need to contain, soothe, and care for a little one!)
On that note, I still chuckle whenever I think about the observation our friend Arthur made just a few years ago when they were expecting their little one - he said "you know what I've decided? Baby's just need a lot of containers! A container to ride in the car, a container to play in, a container to swing in, a container to sleep in, a container to cary the baby around the house in"... and he was so right! I cannot help but to think about our "to buy" list in terms of all the different baby containers we need. Haha.
Oh! And the other really exciting thing about selling our house?!! We are DEBT FREE! I hadn't even thought of it that way, but Daniel pointed it out the day we got the closing documents and my goodness what an amazing feeling! When we bought the house we had been aggressively whittling down our debt but we still owed some money on my Honda (which we ended up paying off early!) and even though I had full scholarships to Furman when I moved out of SC I violated the Teaching Fellows agreement and had to repay that portion. We have since paid both, and for several years our only debt was our mortgage. (Coincidentally the increase in travel coincided with the lack of debt). But whenever we talked about trying to move overseas or wanting to move somewhere else within the USA the thing that was hanging over our heads was...our mortgage. (It wasn't an unreasonable amount, but not a responsibility we could discount either). So...even though in some ways we are about to be more "settled" or "tied down" than ever before (I mean, we are having a baby), we are simultaneously more free as well! Hard not to be excited (and not to dream of the possibilities just a little bit!) Will we buy a house here? We don't know. Right now I am enjoying the lack of debt and the freedom and we have agreed to table the decision until we can evaluate our lives once Hannah is here! Debt free is a really amazing feeling!!! So so grateful!
We also met up with JR & Maria, friends from Clemson, and finally got to meet their beautiful daughter Alex! We enjoyed a delicious dinner and really enjoyed catching up with them (it had been way too long!) Another perk of staying in SC for a longer stretch this time!
The other big and awesome event of week 30 was my baby shower! Daniel's mom, Pam, did an AMAZING job with it - it was so so beautiful and sweet! Pam's sister, Carol, was also sweet enough to come into town a few days ahead to help get everything together. And the day of Emily and Mark were also incredibly helpful too - I feel so indebted and humbled and grateful to everyone! The shower was held at the clubhouse at Emily's apartment complex. And then to top it all off, I was also so touched by the fact that people actually took time out of their busy weekend to attend the shower (it was a mix of neighbors, some of Pam's very thoughtful friends, family who had driven in from out of town, some of our friends who still live in the area, and my two besties from college who drove in all the way from Nashville and Virginia Beach!) It was a really exciting and fun afternoon and I left the shower overwhelmed by how loved I felt and how many people already care about our little Hannah!
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| Pam made this beautiful wreath! |
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| So sweet! Doesn't everything just look beautiful!?! Pam did such an amazing job dreaming everything up! |
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| Enjoying a few sweets with Aunt Carol |
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| 30 weeks! |
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| 30 weeks! |
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| Pam and two of her dear friends Sandy and Bernadette |
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| Aunt Carol, Mary, and Merle (two of the lovely ladies who live in the Hals' neighborhood) |
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| Carolyn, Beth, and Natasha! Furman Besties reunite! :) I SO love these girls! |
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| Daniel is steadily working in the pink :) |
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| Emily - bartender/hostess extraordinaire |
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| Me & Kat - the newly engaged one! SUPER excited for her and that she was able to make it! Kat went to high school with Daniel and were all friends at Clemson |
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| Emily & Mark |
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| Three generations of Hals right here! |
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| We got such sweet and thoughtful gifts! |
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| Daniel trying the pink on for size :) |
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| One of two beautiful blankets Aunt Carol made for us (evidently Daniel had one like this when he was little too!) |
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| From the Mannis' and our future tiger! (The Mannis' are the Hals' neighbors that we used to visit at Clemson tailgates - Mr. Mannis is an engineering grad from Clemson - they've always given us the best Clemson gifts!) |
It was so amazing to catch up with Carolyn and Natasha and we stayed up til two am talking and sharing stories and catching up - I still can't believe they drove all that way just for Saturday! I really have the best of friends! Daniel and I got up early on Sunday and took a very packed suburban to the airport to pick up a rental minivan for our trip home. Between us, two dogs, the regular travel stuff, Christmas, Daniel's birthday, and a baby shower - we filled the mini van to the brim! It was crazy, but we all had space and drove up to Maryland in a packed out, but comfy Dodge Caravan. The drive was not our best or worst, so we will totally take it!
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| Snoozing with my puppy on the long drive back to Maryland! I would be mad that Daniel snuck this picture, but I think we're pretty cute too! |
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| Welcome to Maryland! (So many of the roads into Maryland don't have this sign! This was the first time we've actually seen a welcome sign when driving in!) Officially Home! |
I spent Monday revisiting my OB for a quick checkup (still thumbs up for me and Hannah!), restocking the fridge (it was a BIG trip to Wegmans, the local grocery store) and getting us set up for the week. I was EXHAUSTED. Between sleeping terribly for two weeks in SC, staying up with my friends after my baby shower, and oh yeah, being 30+ weeks pregnant, I was really and truly wiped out. But the great news? I am back to sleeping a lot better (it's still pregnant sleep, but much better pregnant sleep!) in my own amazing king size bed. Mmmm. Home sweet home!
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