New Year. New Blessings. New Challenges.

It's a new year with new challenges, changes and blessings. I haven't written in a while because I have been busy with school and traveling the past couple of months.

Where to begin...

I'm pregnant. 20 weeks 3 days to be precise. We just found out on Monday that we will be welcoming a little boy into our family and we are all so extremely excited! Joey has been working hard on lists of names that we all like and we are hoping by the time the little human makes his entrance, we'll have a name chosen.

The first 12 weeks were very difficult, I was sick all of the time, both with nausea and colds. No matter how healthy I ate and kept up my exercise regimen I couldn't help but picking up colds from the supermarket and wherever else we went on the weekends. Thankfully, all that has passed and I have been feeling great. I've gained a total of 10lbs since date of conception, which to me, isn't that bad considering I'm halfway there.

Joe started playing football in October and has been enjoying it immensely. He practices two nights a week for 2 hours each night and has a game every Saturday. He asked us if he could continue playing through the winter months, so we've got 8 more games to go. He's really becoming a nice young man and getting stronger and stronger with each game. Last weekend he even recovered a fumble!

When I was 7 weeks pregnant, Paul found out that he would be getting laid off at work. It was mid-October and he was told his last day would be December 1. A little bit scary and not at all what we had envisioned. Luckily after a lot of hard work and searching, many interviews, he found an even better job than he had before. He started there last week and has loved every day so far. It's a great company and they seem to really take care of their employees.

Paul was off work for a month and a half, which allowed us to travel to California to see our families at both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Both visits were very nice but we were happy to be home, in our own beds and with our own routine. We really do love Arizona and are so happy that we moved here. It's hard to believe we've been here for a little over 2 years already. Amazing how quickly time goes.

School has been going well for me, I'm only going to be taking one class this semester. The last English class that I will need for my general education requirements. I chose to only take one class because the semester ends May 13 and I am due May 29. Didn't want to give myself too much stress come April-May. 

It's nap time...