6 months!

On the first day back at school, I was officially 6 months pregnant, with three months left to go.  Figuring it was a big event, being on the first day of school and all, I had a picture taken:

There are many things that I love about being pregnant (and many things that I don't, but we will forget that list).  One of the things that I love is feeling Davis kick while I am lying down or sitting down.  It is so fun to feel like I have a little friend who is saying hi to me all day long!  He is an active one, so it looks like we will have our hands full!

Oh Canada!

So we took a family reunion trip to Victoria, BC.  It was fabulous!  My mom found a little cabin in the middle of the woods (you should have seen the switchbacks to try and get there.  4-wheel drive was needed in the driest conditions!) that basically had its own little piece of ocean connected to it.

Seriously.  This is the view out our deck.  Amazing!

We did several fun things while we were there, but honestly, the best was just being together.  Here is what we did most nights:

Yep.  Just hung out on the deck, playing games, reading books, and talking with each other.  During the day, the kids would play in the pool, while we sat around and watched them.

Or watched the inside of our eyelids.  That was okay too.

When we weren't hanging around in paradise, we would go into Victoria and play.  One day, our adventure of the day was going to a place called "Ice Cream Mountain" and having ice cream.  One day, our adventure was to go to Butchart Gardens and look at flowers.

I could put a million more photographs in, and they would all be just as breathtaking.

Mom worked hard to get a ship to go Whale Watching in Victoria for two pregnant ladies and four little kids.  She finally found this one, which agreed to do it.  It was a great adventure!

Orcas.  Yep.

Anyway, it was a fabulous vacation, much enjoyed by all.  Chris and I missed a couple of days of school while we were gone, so it was a little tough to go back to school right after being in heaven!  But we adjusted and all is well!

Oh, and we took some family pictures while we were there.  Here is the link, if you are interested!

The nursery!

One of my summer projects was to get all the furniture moved out of our guest room, and get furniture moved in to make it a nursery.  And the project is completed!  We got the furniture at Deseret Industries.  It is GREAT and sturdy furniture for an awesome price!  We also got the bedding/crib set at Buy, Buy, Baby, which is a great place to go for everything baby.  It is owned by Bed, Bath, and Beyond and set up a lot like those stores.  The instructions that came with the crib said that assembly requires "two people."  What it really meant was "one person who knows what they are doing and one person to hold things," it turns out.  We had those two people!  Putting together the nursery was actually tons of fun!  Here is the finished product . . .

20 weeks!

I am HALFWAY there!  I reached the 20 week mark a week ago tomorrow!  And, today, we went in for the "BIG ULTRASOUND" to see how it is all going!

Good news--everything is going sooooo well!  He is perfect in every way!

Here are some pictures of Davis:

 Here he is, smiling for us!  We also saw him sucking his thumb.  So darling!

 Still a boy!

 You can see his face and his arm in this picture

A pretty good picture of the right leg.

We found out that the reason that I haven't felt much kicking from Davis is that my placenta is kind of blocking it.  They promised that it would come when he gets a little bigger, and it is no reason to worry!  He is now almost a pound--15 ounces!

Here I am on the day that I became 20 weeks pregnant:

We are pretty excited!

A FABULOUS trip!

I went to Boston last week with a bunch of other History teachers from my school.  Boston is a great place, full of tons of historical sites.  Here are some highlights (in no particular order):

 Coming into Plimoth Plantation.  We had a lot of fun exploring there!

 The rebuilt Mayflower II

 With the Patriot and British soldier at the North Bridge, where Lexington and Concord started

 Henry David Thoreau's statue reading an iPad.  We think we are funny.  We actually went to Walden Pond with him.  My mom says I need to get a grip on reality.  I know he is dead, but it was really a reenactor.

 The U.S.S. Constitution, which is the oldest working ship in America

I had the opportunity to weave, which I have never done.  I now understand why my mother wants to have a loom.  It is a very cool thing to do!

Why we love the summer

Because we can take an afternoon and go on a bike ride up the Provo Canyon!  Life is good!  You can definitely see a baby bump there--I can't hide it any more!

The news everyone has been waiting for . . .

We went in for the gender check ultrasound today.  We found out that we are not having a monkey, or a crocodile.  We are not having a lizard or an elephant.  Here are some pictures . . .

That's right . . . it's a BOY!!  We are soooo excited!  Chris says that his seed has prevailed. . . he is thrilled.  Chris's mom wonders if she will ever be able to buy dresses for a granddaughter.  But she is still pretty excited.  Chris also claims that he saw the "goods" before the ultrasound tech did, which she swears is not the case.

So, the name of our son will be Davis Christopher Rusch.  We are thrilled, and even started looking at little boy nursery goods before we even got home.  Don't you think he is cute?