Weeks 9 & 10 - Seattle, San Diego & visitors in Portland

Last weekend we drove up to Seattle to get together with Sean’s side of the family and let them know our baby news! We organized a breakfast with Sean’s mom, Wayne, his brother Denny and cousin Kate and her new husband Rob. At breakfast we showed everyone some pictures of our projects in the backyard and how they are coming along. Sean then mentioned that we had a deadline of April to get all of our stuff around the house done. I don’t think many of them picked up on the clue, but they did once we handed out our little announcements that our family is growing! Sean’s mom was beaming! She is so excited and happy. Everyone else is excited as well.

Unfortunately, Sean’s aunt and uncle Jay and Bernie and their family were unable to join us for breakfast. So Sean made sure to call and talk to them that night and let them know!

While we were up in Seattle, we also had a chance to hang out with a few of Sean’s friends. We met up with Matt Hagerman, the best man at our wedding, and his girlfriend Gemma for brunch before the UW football game. We then went over to CJ and HT’s place to watch the game and got to see Dustin while we were there too. So even though a lot of his friends were out of town, we did get to see those few and let them know our baby news. Dustin was super excited. He has a 4 year old little girl and therefore knows what we are about to experience and is very excited and happy for us. We've called a few of the others to let them know, and anyone we haven't told yet, will know when we see them for Halloween!

As for my friends, well, I told Jess and Gina the same week I told my mom. I couldn’t keep it a secret from my best girlfriends. However, I hadn’t really told anyone else yet. Since I am down in San Diego this week for work, I figured now is the time. I told my friend Keri while enjoying dinner with her and her little 8 month old boy Gabriel on Tuesday night. The crazy thing is that my pregnancy so far is very similar to what Keri had experienced. I didn’t know this until we discussed it at dinner, but the symptoms and non-symptoms that I have had so far are pretty much identical to what she had with her pregnancy with Gabriel.

Basically, I haven’t had much in the way of “feeling pregnant” other than:
• Feeling pretty tired after a full work day (sometimes it’s a struggle to even eat dinner without falling asleep at the table.)
• Occasionally feeling nauseous
• Going from zero to starving in minutes! (Readily available snacks are a must.)
• Feeling cold even when the temperature is decent outside (and freezing all day long in my air-conditioned building at work.)
• Lovely gas and bloating - by far my most attrative quality! (ugh!)
• Indecisiveness about what I want to eat. This is probably the worst thing! Most of the time fruit (especially really juicy fruit) always sounds good. Also dairy products and carbs generally taste good and lots and lots of water! I feel like I am always thirsty. But, the things that I don’t really care for are vegetables (especially salad, spinach & tomatoes) and certain types of meat, even eggs sometimes don’t really sound very good.

That’s pretty much it! I have been very lucky!

Tonight I will see my cousin Danielle who is driving down from Orange County to hang out with me. It will be a lot of fun to tell her in person. I am hoping she’ll take our little announcements back to the rest of my family. Made some other calls to friends today....everyone is super excited for us. I'll be sending email notes to others this week to keep everyone informed.

**This portion of this blog post was written after my return to Portland**

Sean and I are anti-Facebook posting about the pregnancy right now. We just don't see the point in sharing our news there quite yet. It's still early and I just don't feel like putting it out there for ALL those people. Just our closest friends and family are learning about it now.

Speaking of that....Sean's dad and Carolyn were the next in Sean's family to find out. Due to the fact that they live in Spokane and they were planning a trip to Portland at the end of September, we decided to wait and tell them in person. So, the day that I flew back from San Diego, we had our visitors arrive. It was fun to tell them too. I don't think that they were expecting it, but then again...they have been waiting for us to announce this since we got married. So I'm sure they were always hoping to hear the news.

That's about it for September! It has been an extremely busy month with lots of visitors and lots of traveling! I'm very happy that we were able to spend so much time with family this month and got to tell so many of them in person!