Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all the mommas out there!!  Clearly this is my first Mother's Day as a mom myself and I think that gives the day a whole new meaning.  I have a new appreciation for motherhood now having a child myself.  There is nothing quite like the love you have for your child.  It is an amazing feeling to look at this adorable little boy and know that he is mine, a part of me.  It is equally amazing to watch him grow, develop, and begin to turn into a tiny little person all his own.  I am so very grateful to my mother for her unconditional love and guidance and I feel blessed to have such a lovely mother-in-law as well.

Matt surprised me with a morning at the spa last week as an early gift and it was simply amazing--a massage, facial, manicure, and pedicure made me feel like a new woman!  Today, we had a delicious brunch at a restaurant in nearby Louisville, spent the afternoon having a picnic in the park, and Matt prepared a tasty dinner.  The weather was absolutely perfect and it was wonderful to spend the day with my sweet boys.  I don't think my first Mother's Day could have been any better!

Looking Back.

It's hard to believe that another year has come and gone.  I realize that we're already 11 days into January and thus this post is a bit late, but better late than never.  The year 2012 was another big one for us, full of changes and more ups than downs.  It marked the end of Matt's service in the Army, the end of my first nursing job, learning to deal with Colorado wildfires, summer in St. Louis, a move north to the Boulder area and adjusting to apartment living, Matt starting his MBA program at CU, a new job for me at Avista, and probably the biggest event of all, being pregnant with Baby J.  It was a year full of change and excitement, and I suspect 2013 will bring us even more of both.

We had a wonderful Christmas back in St. Louis with our family and friends...it was a much needed visit for both of us.  Our New Year was rather uneventful: I rang in 2013 at work and poor Matt was under the weather with an awful head cold.  I usually try to make a few resolutions for the New Year but opted not to this year.  I never seem to follow through on my resolutions and instead have an overarching goal for the year (and many to come): embrace impending motherhood and be the best new mom I can be to my coming child.  I know that our world is going to be turned upside down come April and while I am incredibly excited there is also a bit of trepidation about becoming a first time parent with our major support system two and half states away.  Of course, I believe these feelings are completely normal for any first time parent and I am incredibly grateful that I have a husband as wonderful as Matt to begin this new adventure with.

Speaking of Baby J, today marks 28 weeks which is the beginning of the third trimester!  I truly cannot believe that we are just three months away from meeting this child.  The reality is starting to sink in as we begin to prepare for Baby J's arrival; we purchased the crib and set it up in our room last week!  Baby J is one active little babe and I feel him or her moving around constantly and it seems to be especially fun to kick me in the right side or under my ribs.  I have a feeling this kid may have inherited Matt's athleticism as he or she delivers some powerful kicks--it's pretty to crazy to be able to watch my shirt jump when baby kicks.  I am still feeling great and feeling truly blessed that this has been a relatively easy pregnancy thus far.  Here's to the last three months!!

Long Overdue.

I've been rather bad at blogging this last month so this post will most likely be a long one and picture heavy as a result.  Nothing too crazy has been going on here, work has been keeping me busy while school has done the same for Matt, Baby J is continuing to grow and look healthy (more on that of course!), and the Christmas spirit is in full swing in the Joseph household.

We had a lovely and relaxing Thanksgiving, just the two of us.  Matt prepared the turkey, dressing, and green bean casserole while I tackled the mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, gravy, and made two pecan pies and two pumpkin pies.  I must say, we did a great job for our first Thanksgiving on our own and the food was delicious!!  We spent the evening with some friends from Matt's class enjoying dessert (hence the excessive number of pies) and board games.

Matt's beautiful and tasty turkey!

We decorated our home for Christmas last weekend and went to the Denver Botanic Gardens to see their Blossoms of Light exhibit: over one million lights decorate the gardens to help you get in the holiday spirit!  Christmas is hands down my favorite time of year and I absolutely loved walking through all the lights!  Of course, we will still have to head to Tilles Park to see Winter Wonderland while we're in St. Louis but it was great to see Denver's light display.  Despite the fact that it was a bit chilly outside we decided to head to Little Man Ice Cream in the LoHi district...we didn't realize that it was an outdoor only establishment but the ice cream was well worth it and it was great to explore a new area of Denver.

The lights!

Matt really liked the blue and green combination.

Love the reflection off the pond.

So many lights!

Such a cute place to get ice cream...though
it's no Custard Station. ;)

We opted to get our Christmas tree from a tree lot this year (if you recall, last year we drove down to Pueblo and cut it down ourselves!) as we don't have space for a very large tree.  I believe we went with the second tree we looked at, definitely a record for the shortest time I've ever taken to choose my Christmas tree.  We just love our tree, it is absolutely beautiful and fits perfectly.  Normally, I wouldn't be decorating for Christmas quite so early but seeing as how we'll be heading back to St. Louis on the 20th, we wanted to enjoy our tree.  I've been ready for Christmas since before Thanksgiving but restrained myself from decorating or listening to Christmas music until the day after Thanksgiving.  I think part of all the excitement is the fact that we're going to be driving home this year to celebrate with our families.  While we loved spending our first married Christmas just the two of us out here in Colorado, there's nothing quite like being home for the holidays.  We are so excited to see all our family and friends in about a week and a half...it just can't come soon enough!!

Matt putting the finishing touches on the tree.

LOVE our tree! :)

J is for Joseph.

Representing good ole' Mizzou.

A slightly blurry Grinch...my favorite Christmas story.

And last but not least, an update on Baby J!  Our babe is growing well, we're over 23 weeks at this point, and looking healthy.  We had our 20 week doctor appointment the day before Thanksgiving and the ultrasound technician apparently could easily tell the sex of the baby...good thing we informed her prior to starting that we want it to be a surprise!  I've finally been feeling Baby move which is both amazing and strange.  Matt hasn't been able to feel it yet, but I suspect it won't be long before he can.  It seems like we have a pretty active child in there...he or she is often moving around!  I feel like my baby bump actually looks like a baby now, though people seem to think I'm on the smaller side for being a week shy of six months pregnant.   We haven't been keeping up with the weekly pictures like we had planned but here's a couple from a few weeks ago:

19 weeks.

20 weeks--halfway there!!

I'll have to take another picture this Friday to mark 24 weeks which is roughly six months!!  Matt and I joke that this baby is going to be here before we know it the way time is flying.  Our next appointment is in just over a week, can't wait to hear Baby J's heartbeat again. :)

Well, this post has gotten long enough, hope all is well with everyone and we'll be seeing some of you soon!!
Xoxo!

Cooper was a bit overwhelmed from all the Christmas decorating and excitement. :)

Growing.

Hard to believe that we're already five days into the month of November--where has time gone??  I hope everyone had a great Halloween.  Ours was a very low key night; we purchased a lot of candy in hopes of trick-or-treaters but didn't get a single kid!  So, we were left with way more candy than we need.  I guess next year we won't need to worry about having candy for the kiddos.  Nevertheless, we had fun carving our pumpkins and watching scary movies.  The Friday night before Halloween, Matt's MBA program had a party a bar in Boulder so we dressed up Tony Stark and Pepper Potts from Ironman (sadly we forgot to take any pictures!) and had fun celebrating with Matt's classmates.  I can't wait for next year when we'll have our Baby J to dress up! :)

My pumpkin is on the left, Matt's on the right.

Speaking of Baby J, we are now at about 18 weeks and 3 days.  I am still feeling great pregnancy wise though I've had a nasty cold/cough/sore throat since last Tuesday that I haven't been able to shake.  On top of feeling under the weather, work has been a bit busier lately and I had a tough last week patient load wise. Hopefully this week will be better!!  I feel like I'm finally starting to show bump-wise and I've actually purchased a few maternity items...such as the grey polka dot sweater I'm wearing in the picture below.  Our last OB appointment was on the 24th and baby's heart beat was nice and strong!  All of our tests have come back negative so we have a very slim chance of Down's, trisomy 18, or any neural tube defects.  We weren't worried about that to begin with, but it's nice to know that Baby J is healthy.  Our next appointment is the 21st and we'll be having another ultrasound done--I can't wait to see how much our little peanut has grown!!

There's a baby in there!!  And he or she is the size of a sweet
potato: 5.6 inches long and 6.7 ounces!

Memorial Day

Happy belated Memorial Day everyone, hope you all had a great long weekend!  While I realize that the actual holiday was Monday and today is Wednesday, we felt like we had an extra long weekend since I don't start work for the week until tonight.  We celebrated the holiday like most Americans do: beer, bbq, and friends.  Here in Old Colorado City there's an event called Territory Days that takes place every Memorial Day weekend.  For those of you in the Kirkwood area, it's basically like the Greentree Festival, but instead of being spread throughout a park it's crammed into three blocks of the main road which just happens to be a block from our house.  It's essentially a festival with live music and lots of vendors in tents selling food, jewelry, clothing, etc.  While it sounds all fine and dandy, it means that our neighborhood is overrun with people parking and walking to the festival.  Plenty of those people don't know how to park but they do make for good people watching.  Most people either hunker down for the weekend or get out of town.  We stuck it out. :)

Since we didn't plan to leave our house, we had a couple friends over some bbq at our place on Sunday.  Matt is quite the grill-master and made delicious burgers.  It was a great little get together with the couple of friends we have left in town.  Monday we joined our neighbors for the annual Memorial Day bbq/countdown to the end of Territory Days.  There was an abundance of great food and it was a nice chance to meet some more of the neighbors.  Matt was living here this time last year, but it was a first for me.  We really have been incredibly lucky to have spent our first year of marriage in such an awesome place.  This lovely home basically fell into our laps and it's just been wonderful.  I have to say, I'm going to be sad to move away from here and the great community we've become a part of.  I've lived in a number of different places and never had friendly neighbors but that certainly wasn't the case here.  Hopefully we'll have just as great an experience at the next place.  Speaking of which...

We have a new home to move into!  We spent the day yesterday apartment hunting in the area between Northern Denver and Boulder and after looking at a number of different complexes, we found one that we think will be great for us and we've got ourselves an apartment.  Moving to another house would have been ideal for us and the dog, but the cost of living up there is so much greater than it is here that a house really wasn't feasible.  Luckily, this complex is very dog friendly and near both a dog park and open spaces so Cooper will still get plenty of exercise.  It's great to have that big thing checked off the list.  Now, I just need to find a job! :)

Me and my girl Mallory.

Funnel Cake...the only reason I wanted to
venture into the crowd.

Matt manning the grill.

Hope all is well with everyone, we'll be seeing those of you in St. Louis in just under five weeks!! Xoxo! 

Spring is in the Air!

The weather this past week has been simply amazing.  We've gotten an early taste of spring and it seems that everyone is loving it.  Of course, this is Colorado where spring doesn't really start until May so I'm sure colder weather and snow still awaits us but we are taking advantage while we can!  Matt's been taking Cooper on trail runs a little more frequently--it's pretty impressive how much more in shape he is from last summer when we first moved out here.  He's also started playing fetch which is a new development for him.  I used to try to get him to play fetch with tennis balls back in St. Louis and he wasn't the slightest bit interested.  I think seeing all the dogs at the dog park chasing balls convinced him it was legit.  Matt brings an old lacrosse stick with us and it's a great way to really throw a ball out there.  We seemed to have a created a monster though, as Coop only focuses on Matt throwing the ball and chasing it and seems to be much less interested in socializing with the dogs.    

This past Thursday we headed up to Boulder for the evening to attend a reception for the new MBA students.  I think Matt got a lot of really helpful information from some current students and it was great for me to learn a little bit more about what he'll be doing these next two years.  I personally know nothing about the business world, but it sounds like it's going to be a great experience for Matt and that he'll get a lot out of the program.  It got us both that much more excited for what's to come!  

Friday was absolutely gorgeous and we took Cooper to the dog park in the morning followed with a trip to Wag n' Wash for a much needed bath.  The afternoon was spent on the front porch enjoying some margaritas.  It was awesome to be wearing shorts and a t-shirt in mid-March in Colorado.  From what I hear, it's been pretty warm in St. Louis too.  Of course we watched the Mizzou-Norfolk St. game, what a heartbreaker!!  We're over it now but oy, was that a tough one to watch!!

St. Patrick's Day was celebrated at Jack Quinn's downtown.  It's basically the only Irish bar in the city so it was a pretty popular locale.  The Springs seems to really love St. Patty's and has a big parade which last almost two and a half hours this year.  A good number of our friends have either moved on from here or were on leave before deploying so they're out of town which meant it was a smaller group of us, but we still had a blast.  :)

Cooper in his favorite spot.

Porch time.

Happy dog!

Tasty margaritas.

Silly Matt.

Sporting our green for St. Patty's!

Another gorgeous day.

The boys.

A Colorado Christmas

A very merry belated Christmas to everyone!!  We had a lovely first Christmas as a married couple here in Colorado and hope that everyone else had a great holiday too.  I can't lie, it was certainly different spending the holiday out here just the two of us as I'm used big family get togethers.  However, it was nice to start developing some of our own holiday traditions for our new family.

I was fortunate to have both Christmas Eve and Day off work and Matt has two weeks leave for Christmas so we were truly able to enjoy all of the holiday together.  A number of our friends out here traveled home but our good friends Nick and Sarah have all their family here in the Springs and they were kind enough to welcome us into their family.  They have an adorable little girl who turned one on Christmas Eve and Friday the 23rd we went to her family birthday party.  It was lots of fun to watch her with the cake and presents--I swear all kids that age are more interested in the wrappings and boxes than the gifts.  Christmas Eve night we had a lovely dinner with Nick and Sarah's families again and attended church with them as well.  It really was so nice of their entire family to welcome and include us, and we greatly appreciated it.

Christmas Day I was up bright and early, ready to open gifts!  Matt on the other hand, had to be encouraged to get out of bed. :)  We took our time opening presents and had my aunt's skiers french toast for brunch.  There were a number of fantastic gifts: I surprised Matt with a record player and he got me photography classes.  We spent the day relaxing and just enjoying the fact that it was Christmas.  It's hard to believe that Christmas has come and gone, it's always a little bittersweet once it's over.  Time to start looking forward to the next Christmas! :)

Lots of presents under the tree!!

Cooper enjoying one of his gifts.

I think he likes it :)

The aftermath.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!!

I cannot believe that we're just days away from Christmas...time has been flying by!!  Of course, it probably doesn't help that we've been so busy lately--I feel like that makes time seem to pass even faster.  Last week we saw Trans-Siberian Orchestra in concert for the second time.  Three years ago, Matt surprised me with a trip to Kansas City to see them play right before Christmas.  Last year he was in Iraq or I'm sure we would have gone to see them then too.  They put on an amazing show that is so much more than just music: there's lasers and lights, videos and fire, moving stage parts and musicians running around the venue.  My favorite part though might be that they really look like an 80s rock hair band...I just LOVE it!!  It's so fun to watch them whip their hair around while rocking out on the guitar in tuxedos.  If you ever get the chance to see them, we highly recommend it!  Here's a few pictures from the night...I didn't get many good ones since we were on the floor and there were big heads in front of me. :)

Waiting for the show to start!

Rocking out!

Part of the stage came down from the ceiling and the
musicians performed on it while it moved back up!

Matt also had his interview for grad school in Boulder last week...we made an overnight trip out of it this time.  He did very well in his interview (no surprise there!) and said he felt great about how it went.  Now, we're just waiting to hear if he's been accepted.  I believe we should know in early January, so keep your fingers crossed and of course we'll let everyone know when we find out.  We really liked Boulder, it's a great town with a nice feel to it.  We ate an early dinner and then walked around to a few different bars and just tried to get a better idea of the town since it was a whirlwind trip the first time.  Here's a couple pictures from the trip:

Not sure the building, but it sure looks festive!

Happy Holidays indeed!

Enjoying the town and celebrating a great interview!

This past week, we've been making cookies and wrapping presents, essentially just getting all ready for Christmas.  We've also been enjoying all the snow that we've gotten the last couple days!!  It snowed Sunday night and then again all night Wednesday night and most of the day Thursday.  We had to get out and enjoy the snow and a trip to Garden of the Gods was a perfect way to do just that.  Cooper loves the snow (must be the Husky in him) and he gets crazy excited whenever it snows.  Garden of the Gods is a beautiful place on a regular day, but with a fresh coat of snow it's transformed into a whole different magical place.  There's just something so wonderful about walking through such beautiful nature and watching the snow fall.  These pictures don't do it justice, but do give an idea of why we love Colorado so much:

And, since this post has gotten so long, I will simply wish you all a very Merry Christmas and leave you with what may be my favorite picture of Cooper. :)

Snow dog :)