10/27/2007 - Halloween Tailgate

Happy Halloween!

At some point, I decided that if I was pregnant at Halloween then I wanted to dress up as "barefoot and pregnant". Well, it was too cold to go barefoot and I don't exactly look pregnant at this point, but we used that basic idea for the "theme" of our costumes.

These pictures were taken while tailgating at the TN/SC game this Saturday. Since we decided to tailgate in Knoxville instead of having a Halloween party, we just brought Halloween to the tailgate :) People kept coming over to see our "little jack russell". Yeah right. They really just wanted to see if our hair was real, since from a distance we looked pretty darn authentic and hey, we were in Tennessee :)

You can see the other tailgate pictures under "Photo Albums" on the right.

10/28/2007 - 16 Week Belly

At this point I really just look like I've put on a few extra pounds in the mid-section. Hopefully I will have a more distinguishable "baby bump" soon!

10/20/2007 - Locks of Love

Over the past two years, I have been growing my hair out to be long enough to donate 10" to Locks of Love (and still have a little bit left over!). Today was the day of the big haircut...

Exactly 10"...I can't afford to give them anymore!

Here we go!

Did I just make a huge mistake!?!

Nah. I love my new haircut and some child is going to get a nice chunck of hair! Plus, with the pre-natal vitamins that I'm taking, it's going to grow even faster than normal!

10/01/2007 - 12 Weeks

Introducing....................................




Baby Grau!

This is our 12 week ultrasound picture...it's the first one where we can actually tell it's a baby. And I may be a little biased, but to me it looks like the baby is waving and saying "Hi Mom!" :)

Here is a picture of Mandy at 12 weeks. She has agreed to play this game as long as it remains fun :)

So far, our doctor tells us that everything is progressing how he would expect. Mandy is feeling great and has not had any morning sickness (which after confirmation from the doctor, is a good thing). We love going to doctor's visits and hearing the heartbeat (we heard it for the first time at our very first visit at just 5 1/2 weeks!). Our next appointment is November 1.

08/18/2007 - The Big News

So, we've been in the house for two weeks now and we're finally starting to feel a little settled. We have the majority of the boxes unpacked and the furniture set up where we think it will go. We're just starting to think about the new furniture that we want (well at least one of us is :)) when we discover the big news. At around 4:00 this morning, Mandy took a pregnancy test that clearly displayed "Pregnant" and totally transformed our newly settled lives back into planning mode!

So instead of seeing pictures of a lovely decorated home (we'll get there one day) we have decided to continue the BLOG with baby/mommy/nursery updates. We don't plan on providing quite as many details as we did with the house building (some things just demand more privacy!) but with so many of our family members and friends living out of town, we decided this would be the best way to keep everyone updated.

Interesting tid bit: The picture up top was taken today!

08/01/2007 - Move In Day

Today was the first day that we were able to start moving stuff into the house. While the guys moved the heavy stuff, Mandy began lining the cabinets in preparation for unpacking dishes.



Here's a shot of the guys in action! A special thanks to Eric's dad, Josh Harper and Brandon Rodgers for helping out night after night, load after load!



Unfortunately, this is the view of the kitchen after only one evening of moving!

On Friday, Eric was nice enough to bring over a few furniture pieces (rather than leaving them for the movers on Monday) so that we would have somewhere to sit!

Here's a shot of the Grau men setting up our bed.

Mandy's mom came up the first weekend that we moved in and helped to get the kitchen set up. Daisy talked her into to taking a little TV break :)