Bathroom Remodel

I never liked our guest bathroom, particularly the glass shower doors. I don't know how you could ever bathe a kid in that tub since half of it is always blocked off by doors, so we decided to take advantage of the fact that we have more time & money now than we'll have in another 10 weeks or so.

We hired Chris, the brother of our friend, Craig, to do the remodel and he did a great job. It's 99% done; the soap dish and corner shelf just need a little more time to get stuck to the tile (and then he has to come back to caulk).

It is intended to be a "kid" bathroom but it still needs a few more fun accessories. But then, since it's only been about 2 hours since Chris left, I guess there will be plenty of time for that!

Hello Third Trimester

Today is the start of my 27th week of pregnancy which makes this the beginning of the third trimester. (If you want to get technical, I was really two-thirds of the way through a few days ago, but who's counting...)
As organized as I can be and as much fun as I have with things like scrapbooking, you'd think I'd be keeping close tabs on the belly. Not so much. But I thought today we should take a picture, so here it is. Don't expect to see this side of me often.
We met baby Eli and baby Lucy today. They are very cute and very little. They are both just around 5 pounds, so maybe if you add them together you might get what our baby will look like in three months.

Congratulations to Melody and Dennis and their families!

Happy New Year!

2010 is here and in 99 days (give or take) Baby Brueckmann will be here too. What an exciting year it will be!
We rang in the new year by enjoying a crab boil with friends. You know you're getting older when you share your New Year's Eve with a 5 year old, a 3 year old, a 2 year old, and a 1 year old. Oh yeah, and you're pregnant and trying to stay awake at 10:45 pm. It was a fun night nonetheless!



I've included some pictures from our crab feast. We ate 8 pounds of king crab legs, about 3 pounds of shrimp, plus potatoes, corn, and bread. It was yummy!

And last but not a least, a huge congratulations to my good friends Melody & Dennis whose twin babies were born yesterday. Apparently they didn't want to wait until 2010 to join the world, which of course, as everyone points out, is a great tax benefit. I'm looking forward to meeting Elijah (Eli) and Lucy soon and watching them play with our baby someday too. CONGRATULATIONS!!

Christmas Recap

We had a good Christmas this year and it's been fun to think about how different next Christmas will be. Baby Brueckmann already got a little taste of Christmas though (no, I don't mean all the food I ate yesterday) - as he received a few Christmas gifts.
One notable gift is his first Cardinals shirt - I knew it wouldn't take long for us to receive that -- but I didn't expect it to have so much attitude. :) He also received an outfit, an afghan made by Grandma Lesinger, and a quilt made by Great Grandma Nagel many years ago.
We have a week off until we return to work on January 4 and it looks like it will be a busy week. Our Christmas continues with a trip to Indianapolis in the morning. We'll try not to be jealous when all the Emsleys are sporting their Jamaican tans! Other plans this week include catching up with friends from out-of-town and registering at Babies 'R Us. Last week we finished the nursery and I'll eventually post pictures of that.

2009 Christmas Baking

Today, my mom and I continued our annual tradition of spending an entire day baking cookies. By the end, we were both whining about back pain and ready to be done. But before that we had fun and we did get a lot of cookies made. This year's new recipe (Peanut Butter Cup Cookies) was a flop, but we made 6 favorites as well.

7 hours yielded 7 different batches of cookies/bars/brownies, a ton of cookies, and probably about a trillion calories. We did good by only sampling a few so far, but the holiday season is just getting started!

And the gender is...

BOY!

Now if you are one of the many people who was waiting until December 1, you now know that we told you a little white lie. This is week 20 of my pregnancy so we anticipating telling our families on Thanksgiving. However, we ended up off schedule and our "big" ultrasound was actually November 10. So for the past two weeks, we've been keeping the secret, or at least trying to. I have had a few close encounters and one time I did slip and say "he".

Comments for you to avoid:
"Are you happy (or disappointed) it's a boy?" We're happy it's a baby and thrilled to now know exactly what we're having.
"Sometimes ultrasound technicians make mistakes..." This baby is definitely a boy and we have good photographic proof. We'll avoid posting that specific body part though.

By the way, welcome to the blog! I've been thinking about starting one for awhile and now I have someone to talk about besides myself. Check back!