Pure Joy

At the end of January, Chris and I found out that we have another Gifford baby on the way. We are both so excited. When we found out that I was pregnant with Siege we were excited, but we were also terrified. This time- no fear really, just pure joy. We are thrilled to be expanding our family to four (plus Nadi of course) and glad that Siege will get to grow up with a sibling so close in age. They will be just about 2 years apart. This time we are keeping the mystery alive and we're NOT going to find out the sex of the new baby so we are just calling he/she: baby Gifford. Should make for an extra exciting delivery. I am now 10 weeks and I've been pretty lucky, besides the occasional lazy spell I get here and there I've felt pretty good (knock on wood). Two kids means twice as much love. According to Chris, expanding your family by 1 is like playing Zelda and adding another heart to your life line. Seriously. He said that. Only my husband would compare his life to the game of Zelda.

This past week we've been getting our backyard ready for BBQ season.

We've been picking weeds, pulling dead plants, and planting new ones. I also started a little vegetable garden in one of our planters. I planted tomatoes, peppers, onions, cilantro, strawberries, cucumbers, carrots, radish and probably a few more that I can't remember. About half are just seeds and the other half are baby plants. This is my first time doing any sort of vegetable garden so I'm not expecting very much. At our last MOPS meeting we had a speaker talk to us about the importance of gardening with your children and how most kids think that food comes from the grocery store vs the ground, so I'm giving it a whirl. Who knows- maybe I'll get a tomato or two. One of Siege's favorite things is digging up our dirt, so we should have some fun out there together.

March is going to be a pretty busy month for us. We've signed Siege up for swimming lessons and a parachute play class at the YMCA. I'm hoping these activities will get some of his wild energy out. We went to our first parachute play time class today and he loved it. They have this parachute (you know like the ones you played with on field day in elementary school) and the adults would create waves and Siege would run underneath and try to get to the other side before it fell. He was laughing so hard. Then the kids would toss balls on the parachute and sit in the middle of the parachute while the adults spun them around. I'm tempted to buy one. They could make some pretty fun play dates. We start our swim lessons on Tuesday evenings. He loves the water so I'm hoping it will be a success.

Chris has turned into a Cross Fit guru. He absolutely loves it. So much so, that his hands look like this when he comes home

and then he returns the next day for more punishment. I cannot believe how much stronger he's gotten. He went from a 5 year hiatus from exercise to building pull up bar contraptions for our house. Needless to say, he's transforming into this athletic beast while I'll be transforming into a giant hippo. He always makes me feel special though. Like when we took this pregnancy picture at 9 weeks

and says, "Suck it in, this is supposed to be a before picture!" He really did say that. But he also really does make me feel like a beautiful woman.

For Spring Break we are headed to San Antonio, Texas! We are going with our really close friends who have a little girl Siege's age. Chris and I have never been and from what we've been looking at online and what other people have told me, it's a really cool city. Our friends are from Texas and have already planned the itinerary for the week. We are going to do Sea World and the Zoo, the Riverwalk and the Alamo, the Mercado, and we're even taking a day trip to Austin. I can't wait!