Life as I Know It

Currently – January 2018

/ Cami Grace / Leave a comment

Happy January!  I hope you all are having a wonderful year so far.  We got to ring in the new year with friends and spent the night playing games and eating food!  Since then it’s been a slightly rough month since we have come down the a flu bug.  Thankfully we’re all starting to feel better but it really did a number on us!

Anyway, here’s what we’ve been up to this month.

Currently Watching

Live P.D. – I don’t exactly know how we found this show but it’s pretty cool.  It’s like the show COPS…but live.  Some episodes are pretty eventful and others not so much.

The Office – As we have time.

Currently Reading

The Purpose Driven Life – I was looking for a devotional to start the new year off with and this fell into that category.  So far I’m definitely not disappointed!

I’m also waiting for the audio book of Of Mess and Moxie, by Jen Hatmaker to become available through our library’s online program.  I like to listen to podcasts and audio books on my commute to and from work.

Currently Making/Baking

Apple Crescent Dumplings (recipe here).  I made these for Thanksgiving and have the ingredients to make them again.  They are pretty darn yummy!

Current Obsession

Kind Breakfast Bars.  I found out early on that Gryffin was senstive to dairy and since I’m still nursing dairy is out for me too.  These make a great dairy-free, on the go breakfast!  I have one every single morning with my one little cup of coffee. :)

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I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and are having a great January!

Hello 2018!

/ Cami Grace / Leave a comment

Wow!  What a crazy year 2017 was!  Not only did we have a baby but we also bought our first home!  There was so much packed into the last 12 months there’s just no way I can do a full recap.  With having a baby, working full time, and moving I wasn’t able to keep up with my blog very much (as you can tell), but here we are in 2018 and I’m back!

Looking ahead I’m excited to see what’s in store for the new year.  I’m most excited to watch Gryffin grow up and see more of his personality develop.  I’m also looking forward to working on some personal goals.  I have laid out quite the task for myself.  Instead of focusing on just one goal throughout the year, I am taking on my own version of The Happiness Project and plan to work on a different goal each month.

But before I jump into my New Year’s plan, here’s what you can expect from my blog.

~ Currently posts.  I have always enjoyed writing them and I also enjoy going back to read through them too.

~ Baby Posts.  I don’t want to overload the blog with baby posts, but at the very least I would like to finish up a few.  I will have a baby shower post coming soon and also my labor and delivery story.  I have Gryffin’s monthly updates written out that I never actually posted on my blog (let me know in the comments if you enjoy reading these).  He’s already 9 months so I basically would post them until we were all caught up.  You might find a “What’s In My Diaper (or work) Bag” and a bedtime/morning routine in there as well.

~ Monthly Goals.  I would like to do a recap at the end of each month regarding my monthly goals.  I will share what I did at the end of month and if I felt like I was successful or not.

So here’s my outline for 2018.  In addition to the list below I plan to also choose one book each month regarding the topic for that month.  This is just a rough draft, but I think it’s a good start!

~ January: Be – Rooted 

  1. Go through a devotional
  2. Start a prayer journal
  3. Go to church/listen to sermons every Sunday

~ February: Be – Loving 

  1. Celebrate Valentines Day & our (10 year!) anniversary
  2. Reestablish date night

~ March: Be – Organized

  1. Pick it up, put it back
  2. Set up guest room
  3. Organize laundry room
  4. Set up rec room

~ April: Be – Prepared

  1. Go to bed at 10:30 every night (at the latest!)
  2. Bedtime Routine
  3. Morning Routine

~ May: Be – Mindful 

  1. Live in the moment

~ June: Be – Fun  

  1. Laugh every day
  2. Find fun things to do

~ July: Be – Chic 

  1. Update Wardrobe
  2. Always look presentable (based on the Madame Chic books)
  3. Look in the mirror before leaving the house

~ August: Be – Me 

  1. Read for fun
  2. Enjoy a pamper day
  3. 30 day photography project (if I’m feeling up for this)

~ September: Be – Healthy 

  1. Healthy Recipes
  2. 30 days of Yoga

~ October: Be – Thoughtful 

  1. Go out of my way to help others

~ November: Be – Thankful 

  1. List of things I’m thankful for every day

~ December:  Be – Generous 

  1. Give of my time
  2. Donate

I do plan on giving myself extra grace because I am so busy and I need to make sure my priorities are straight, but it’s nice to have a variety of goals and something to look forward to.

I hope your year is off to a great start!  Feel free to share your goals and/or what you’re looking forward to this year!

Much love,

Cami

My Pregnancy – Filling in the Blanks

/ Cami Grace / Leave a comment

In case you missed it – my husband and I found out we were pregnant back in August of 2016 and had a beautiful baby boy March, 2017.  You can see our baby announcement here.  Since I hadn’t been keeping up with my blog, I’m now playing catch up.

For as much as I had planned on taking weekly baby bump shots, that did not happen.  That is something I definitely regret.  I did manage to take some though, so I will share some of my pregnancy story.

This was my first public bump picture.  It wasn’t until around week 17 – 18 when my baby belly finally popped.  The captions are what I posted on social media. :)

For those who have been curious, here’s my 18 week photo (technically 19 weeks tomorrow)! Boy or girl?!?! We find out on Thursday! :)

It’s a boy!!  This is the day we found out.  We were both SO happy that we were going to have a little boy!  My husband was over the moon!  My husband comes from a large family with a lot of girls, so we were both slightly surprised, but I had had a feeling deep down he was going to be a boy. ;)

It’s a boy!

We also made an announcement with our dog, Kahlua.  She was actually mopey most of my pregnancy.

Week 24!  This was taken on Christmas Eve.  By far the best and most memorable Christmas Eve yet!  I know it’s only going to get better!

Here’s a little Christmas Eve 24 week bump photo! I’ve been terrible at taking photos but try to take one every now and then. :) Random facts: I absolutely love baby kicks and movements 💕. I tend to feel him most at night and when I’m driving. My craving for spinach has now been replaced with hot Cheetos and ice cream (not together😉). I’ve been more tired this trimester than the first, but thankful that I no longer feel sick all the time. I definitely think this little guy is going to take after his daddy. 💙 We are so blessed and excited that this time next year we will be celebrating Christmas with our little one in our arms!

And now we jump into January.  I believe I was about 6 months pregnant here.

Then came my baby shower in February.  I must mention, I don’t typically enjoy baby showers.  I just really don’t do baby shower games…like, at all.  So I was a little nervous about mine, but it turned out awesome!  There were baby shower games, but they were super low key.  This was my outfit.  I will share more about the baby shower in a separate post, but here is what I wore.

Yep – my belly button definitely popped out!

This was also taken in February.  My friend and I were due just 1.5 weeks apart!  So of course we took some pictures together ;)

My pregnancy overall was a healthy one.  At the beginning I felt sick, but I never once threw up (thank you Jesus!), I had one day of extreme dizziness but thankfully that didn’t stick around either (again, thank you Jesus!).

I CRAVED spinach even before I even knew I was pregnant.  Honestly, that should have been my first clue.  Not just any spinach guys.  I wanted spinach from a can with a ton of apple cider vinegar poured over it lol.  This lasted pretty much until mid-second trimester.  Then my craving was replaced with hot cheetos.  There were also definitely a few spontaneous trips to Dairy Queen as well.

I was afraid I had miss carried at the beginning of 14 weeks, but I’m so incredibly thankful that was not the case.  Let me know if you want the whole story on that.  At the end of the pregnancy it did turn out there was a problem with the placenta, but I will get more into that in my labor and delivery story.  But in the end we were/are completely blessed with a beautiful and healthy baby boy. <3

This has been one crazy journey but I love it and wouldn’t want it any other way!

Much love.

~ Cami

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The Baby Announcement

/ Cami Grace / Leave a comment

Well, in case you missed the big news, we had a baby born this past March!  This was our “official” baby announcement!  It was October and I was about 15-ish weeks pregnant (they moved my due date a couple times) when we finally shared our exciting news.  Just two weeks prior we thought we miscarried, so I was pretty nervous to actually make the announcement, but we decided we were probably never going to feel ready so we went ahead with our public announcement.  We were completely blown away by the amount of love and support we received.  This baby was already loved so incredibly much!

If you missed how I told my husband I was pregnant, you can read about it here!

 

 

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Update and Life News!

/ Cami Grace / Leave a comment

It’s been well over a year since I last wrote a blog post…ouch!  Believe it or not, I tried to write a post multiple times since then, but for some reason I just couldn’t bring myself to post anything…until now.  It’s coming up on a year since our big news…I became pregnant!  So in honor of my one year anniversary of finding out we were going to have a little baby, I thought I would share our story with the world.

THE STORY

My husband and I back in February 2016 had just gotten back from a cruise vacation, which you can read about here if you haven’t already.  Nothing of real interest happened after that, we got settled back into our routines and were just living our lives.  Fast forward a few months and my husband and I were attending my company’s annual Indians baseball game in July.  I remember feeling funny that day and even though I had been starving earlier I just couldn’t bring myself to eat my hamburger.  It looked yummy, but gosh, I just couldn’t eat.

Oddly enough, someone from work asked me a couple days later if I was pregnant.  I laughed and told her that if I looked pregnant it had been because I was bloated.  I then went and sat back down at my desk and got to thinking…and thinking.  After some more thinking I then pulled up my calendar and got to counting, and counting, and recounting the days from the previous month.  I immediately called my sister when I got home so she could double check my counting capabilities.  After she finished counting and calculating she then told me “Ummmm, Cami, you better go get a pregnancy test”.

THE TEST

Trying not to freak out the whole 10 minute drive to Fred Meyer I finally arrived (why Fred Meyer?  Two words – “self checkout”).  I then had to call my sister back because who knew there were so many pregnancy test options?!?!  I went with the Clear Blue box that had 2 tests, you know, just in case the first one was wrong…or in case you accidentally drop it in the toilet or something.

I went home and of course I didn’t have to go to the bathroom regardless of all the water I drank.  So I drank, and drank, and drank some more and FINALLY I was ready.  The test said for best results wait until morning.  Psh, wait until morning?!  Yeah, right!  It also said it could take up to one minute, so I took my time washing my hands, making sure I had the biggest suds I’d ever seen.  I was afraid to look at the test too soon, but I accidentally took the tiniest peak just to see if it was done thinking…I immediately did a double take.  That was no minute you guys, it was MAYBE 20 seconds and it already had a result.  A very, very positive result.

Because of random symptoms and according to my calculation, I knew there was absolutely no point in taking the second test.  I stared at my reflection with a complete look of shock and then starting laughing and freaking out. “Oh my gosh, I’m pregnant!  I’m pregnant!  Oh my gosh…I’m pregnant”.

THE REVEAL

I was dying because my husband, Mikey, was still sleeping (he works graveyard) and I had to figure out how I was going to tell him.  Obviously this pregnancy hadn’t been super planned otherwise I probably would have had this figured out by now.

The day before just so happened to be my birthday and I had a couple gift bags still laying around so after doing some thinking, I emptied the smallest one I could find, put the test in, put all the tissue paper back in and set it on the dining room table.  I finally went to wake him up and got out of the room quickly before I just blurted out the news.

After some time he slowly ambled into the kitchen where I was trying to act as casual as humanly possible and said “oh hey, I got you a little gift too”.  He went to the bag, pulled out the tissue paper and I saw him freeze and said “wait, what?!”  He turned to look at me with a complete look of shock on his face.  “Are you serious?!”.  I had the biggest smile on my face and was nodding my head furiously.  We hugged, we laughed, we then stared at each other with dazed looks on our faces and took turns saying “oh my gosh, we’re going to have a baby”.

We then ate Posole for dinner, still occasionally blurting out “oh my gosh, we’re going to have a baby!”.

THE END

I had a healthy baby boy born on March 24, 2017.  We are incredibly blessed.  I will write out the labor/delivery story at some point.  But for now, this will have to do.

More to come!