My First Mother's Day

I know I'm way behind here, but I wanted to make sure I documented this special day! I've been wanting to find a day for us to take Emma to the zoo for a few months so I was pretty psyched when Jonathan told me what he had planned for us.

We had a relaxing morning together at home before heading to the zoo around lunchtime. Emma obviously wasn't super interested in anything in particular, but it was still fun to walk around and see everything with her! We had just enough time to see everything and share an ice cream before heading home just as an afternoon thunderstorm rolled in.

We spent the rainy remainder of the day relaxing at home together. I honestly couldn't have asked for a better way to celebrate my first Mother's Day. Doing things as a family like this, going to the zoo, I just felt so grateful all day long. So grateful to be celebrating Mother's Day as a mother myself. So grateful to God for giving me this gift and sending this beautiful, joyful baby girl into our world. So grateful for the incredible man I'm raising that little love with. Just so grateful.

"Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body."    - Elizabeth Stone

Life Lately

Well, hello. I had really high hopes pregnancy would make me a better blogger with so much I want to share and document but seeing how I haven't been here since announcing Baby Snyder oh, 6 weeks ago, that isn't how it's going. I just haven't had it in me to actually take the time to do some writing. We've been keeping busy and time is just flying by! Since we're so close to the 20 week mark at this point, I'll just plan on sharing a mega-update at that point! I also plan to share the story of how we found out we were pregnant because I always enjoy reading posts like that from others, so stay tuned.

In the meantime though, life lately has been full of so much joy. We've had all sorts of fun, gotten good news and there have been so many moments I never want to forget.

+ We spent the first weekend of February in Boca Raton celebrating our friends' wedding and had such a good time. It was one of those weekend getaways you don't realize how much you needed until you are there. The wedding was perfect and so much fun and we got to spend the whole weekend with friends that we don't see as much as we'd like to.

+ Last week, my brother texted me a picture of a house and said "Hey neighbor." The house just happens to be 1.6 miles from us (I mapped it immediately) and he's moving there at the end of the month. I have been jumping for joy ever since. We haven't lived this close to each other since college and I am so grateful we'll have him and his sweet girlfriend so close to us now.

+ Waking up on Sunday mornings with Abby and Taylor cat sprawled across the foot of the bed. So many snuggles.

+ Speaking of Abby, she is growing like crazy. She's probably tripled her weight since we brought her  home in December and at 30ish pounds, she still only about halfway to her full weight. This growth hasn't stopped her from allowing us to pick her up like a human though and I don't think she'll ever stop acting like a tiny puppy. She is full of energy and her and Taylor cat play together all the time although it could just be Taylor trying to get away from her that we think is them playing. Who knows. She certainly has added some chaos and life to our very quiet, clean home which is only helping to prepare us for our little one who'll be making an appearance in just five months.

We did start puppy training class last week and while I'm sure she'll always be wildly playful, we are working on gaining a little control over the chaos. She's catching on quickly and I'll be really satisfied when she isn't jumping up all over our guests and doesn't take me for a walk when I'm trying to walk her. She is the goofiest and sweetest thing and we regularly tell each other how happy we are with the decision to bring her into our lives. She's also like the only thing I've been taking photos of lately so here you go :)

+ Last Saturday, we brought Abby to the Winter Park Farmers' market. The weather outside was absolutely gorgeous and it was the perfect way to kick off Valentine's weekend with some quality time together. As we wandered around Winter Park and stopped to make friends with other puppies and people, multiple people commented on my pregnancy and it totally took me by surprise. It was the first time any strangers had noticed my growing bump and it caught me completely off guard but made my oh so happy.

+ We ventured out last weekend to look at nursery furniture and ended up starting our baby registry. I wish I had taken pictures of this adventure because this is a day I never want to forget. I would imagine a lot of husband's aren't keen on the idea of spending their Saturday at Buy Buy Baby registering for burp cloths and trying to decide on crib sheets but Jonathan was such a joy to be with that day. I couldn't even get the words, "Oh, we need one of these..." before I would here the beep of the scanner before I even got a chance to tell him which one. You couldn't miss the absolute pride and excitement he is feeling as we selected items for our baby girl. I don't ever want to forget him calling me over to the crib mattresses with way too much excitement so the store employee could explain all the options to us. I don't ever want to forget him going through the rack of Dr. Seuss books deciding which ones our sweet girl just needs to have in her nursery. I don't ever want to forget him shouting out "the baby bonjourno!" (Baby Bjorn) when we made it to the baby carrier section. Whenever we've ever talked about babies, he makes sure to tell me we're getting a baby bonjourno and how he's going to carry our little one around using it. He knows I laugh every single time he calls it that and this time in the middle of Buy Buy Baby was no different. As a side note: I had other carriers in mind from the get-go and when he saw the price tag, he too decided we would go with another option. I'm sure he'll always call it a baby bonjourno though and that makes me giggle even now.

I was already on cloud 9 the whole day as it felt completely surreal to me to be choosing the things that would soothe, hold, carry our sweet baby girl but witnessing Jonathan's apparent joy and pride just put the whole day completely over the top for me. I can't even think of how overwhelmed and proud I will be seeing him as a daddy. I literally cry just thinking about it.

+ I made baked ziti for dinner on Valentine's Day but more importantly, I made my own spaghetti sauce for the very first time. I tell myself every time I go to make anything Italian for dinner that next time, I am going to attempt my own sauce but then every time, I get intimidated and/or lazy and buy a jar at the store. I figured Valentine's Day was a good day to tackle this goal and I did it! It could use a few tweaks next time but I was really happy with how it turned out!

The last few months have flown by and I really can't believe we're almost halfway through our pregnancy already! We have our next ultrasound on March 3 and since we haven't had one since January 13 -- I am literally counting down the days until we get to see our sweet girl again. After that, I'll share a full blown pregnancy update with you all. In the meantime, we're tackling little projects around the house and soaking in all the joy of this special time in our lives.

Baby Girl Snyder: The First 12 Weeks

Well, our happy news is out and I can't even tell you how good it feels. In case somehow you missed it, we're pregnant and I am still completely overwhelmed with joy. Since finding out in mid-November, I've prayed more prayers than I can count for a healthy child and at our 12 week ultrasound this past Wednesday, our prayers were answered abundantly when we saw a healthy, bouncy baby in there and even learned we are having a girl! 

We had actually been pretty open with close family and friends about the pregnancy already, but getting to tell those people it's a girl and then getting to share our news with the rest of our world felt pretty incredible. The outpouring of love and excitement from our family and friends has been the cherry on top of this sweet, sweet time in our life together.

I can sum up the first 12 weeks of pregnancy pretty simply for you by saying I've spent just about every day of the last 3 months trying to figure out the earliest I could get back in bed. I could have never prepared myself for the complete and utter exhaustion that is the first trimester. Whew! It is seriously no joke. 

My first trimester happened to span the busiest time of the year with Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's, which is normally when I'm buzzing around decorating, baking, shopping, wrapping. I definitely wasn't on top of my game which is totally okay because I was busy growing a healthy little babe. I still did everything I wanted to do it just included a lot more whining and procrastinating. I remember being near tears the week before Christmas trying to knock out the rest of our shopping list and just being so incredibly tired by the end of the day and having to talk myself into going to one. more. store. It was pretty pathetic but my coping skills were non-existant at that point. 

This also explains why I went completely missing from this little blog of mine. I had such high hopes everyday of being productive. I would take out chicken or something to make for dinner. I would pack a gym bag and bring it to work with me. I would think of a possible blog post topic and get excited to write that night. By the time I left work at 4:30 each day, though, I couldn't even entertain the idea of doing any of that. 

All of this to say that I cannot complain a bit because I haven't suffered even a little bit from the worst of the pregnancy symptoms. Aside from exhaustion and major discomfort in my expanding chest, I haven't experienced any sickness at all. This is an incredible blessing and I am so thankful because I know others who spent their first trimester sick all day every day. I've been incredibly lucky, that's for sure!

This 12th week of pregnancy has been so special. Here are some of the highlights for me:

- I got the call from our doctor about an hour before Jonathan was to pick me up for the ultrasound. They told me they had the results from our blood test and asked if I wanted to know the gender. I'd originally hoped they would wait until we were both there later that afternoon to tell us, but this actually worked out better because I could be the one to tell my sweet husband the news. She told me it was a girl and I proceeded to cry happy tears and try to control my urge to call Jonathan immediately. I decided it would be perfect to wait until after the ultrasound to tell him the gender once we knew everything was okay with the baby. Holding on to that secret for the 2 hours between the call and our ultrasound nearly killed me. I don't know how people do creative gender reveals for their spouse - there's no way I could've held it in any longer. That 2 hours of torture was totally worth it though, because we were both already so psyched walking out of the ultrasound. I grabbed his hand and told him now I could share a little surprise with him - that it's a girl! Standing outside of the doctor's office with so much happy news to celebrate is something I will never ever forget. 

- The ultrasound technician had a hard time getting a really good shot of our baby girl because she was moving around so much. I couldn't' have cared less about getting a photo - I was completely mesmerized by her bouncing around and waving her hands in the air. My eyes fixated on her most perfect little button nose and picture or no picture - I knew nothing would ever be the same. We did end up getting a few decent ultrasound photos after all which was just a bonus!

- I met up with my parents on Saturday so my mom and I could have some quality time and she came bearing all sorts of little gifts for our girl. Going through these teeny, adorable little items and picturing our own little bundle of love in them just felt completely surreal. 

I know what you're probably thinking and it's whether or not that adorable sweatshirt comes in big girl sizes. I asked my momma the same thing. It's my absolute favorite. 

This sweet baby is the best dream come true for us and we are incredibly grateful for all that is to come. Thank you for sharing in our joy and excitement! 

Second trimester -- more energy and soon enough a sweet baby bump -- here we go! 

When there's so much you want to do so you don't do any of it.

Hello hello! I'm hopeful that someday I will have a consistent posting schedule but I have officially accepted that it's not going to happen right now. I'm okay with it. I have good intentions every day after work to go to boot camp, come home and cook dinner, then do any of the millions of things I want to get accomplished, including blogging. Instead, I come home from boot camp,  maybe cook dinner and feel so overwhelmed with everything I want to do that I end up doing nothing productive at all.

I'm suffering from a major lack of focus lately. I'm all over the place when I just need to decide to do one thing at a time really well. This past week was a little different because Jonathan's sisters are in town and so are our sweet nieces and nephew which means I don't feel bad at all about skipping out on our evening to do list for all of this happiness lately:

It's been quite a week! We even went out on a Wednesday night which is pretty rare for us. That photo up there is from our dinner on Wednesday at Prato in Winter Park. It was somehow my first time there even though it's been open for a few years now and it was amazing. The shrimp ravioli, the pizza, the drinks and especially the company -- perfection. We go through phases where we are in such a routine on the weeknights that we forget we are a young married couple who should go out in the middle of the week every now and then and have a little fun. Sometimes we need a night like that to remind ourselves that fun and spontaneity don't have to be reserved for the weekends.

Oh and that sweet angel baby up there is our newest niece, Ella. I'm feeling pretty lucky lately to be an aunt to so many beautiful children. It's the sweetest thing.

Switching gears, I'm writing this on Saturday morning and I'm parked in Starbucks because this seems to be the only way I stay focused long enough to crank out a few quality blog posts. It feels good to be here not worried about the stuff I wanted to do around the house today.

Speaking of our house, our laundry room got quite the makeover last week and I am over-the-moon excited about it. I never thought I'd use the words laundry and excitement in the same sentence but right now I absolutely am. Adulthood, you are funny to me. I have a few more finishing touches to make but hopefully I can show you all the beauty and joy that is our new laundry room later this week.

Happy Monday to all of you. Here's to a week of more focus and more fun.

Easter 2015 Snapshots

Hello there and happy Monday!

I've basically been out of commission the last few days thanks to a nasty cold but the upside is that I had a chance to upload the photos from Easter brunch which I normally may not have gotten to until next month.

This was our second year in a row hosting Easter brunch and like I said last week, it was perfect!

There are times I think I've completely lost my mind when I'm prepping for a celebration at our house. I tend to overcommit to things in general and this year, we planned to set up an Easter egg hunt for oh, nearly 10 children. On top of that, I wanted to make each of our nieces/nephews a little Easter basket. Add to that all the baking and cleaning and crafting in the days and weeks leading up to hosting 40 people on Easter and you can imagine I got a little stressed out.

With that being said, I wouldn't have it any other way. The kids loved their baskets, watching them run around the back yard searching for eggs was awesome and seeing all of our favorite people laugh and celebrate together is so perfectly special to us. So yes, could we make things easier on ourselves in the future? Absolutely. Will we? Probably not. Because it just brings me too much joy to see everything come together.

Here are some snapshots from that amazing day.

I quite like how hosting Easter brunch has become our thing. Quality time with family, delicious brunch food & drinks -- all in the name of celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. What more could we ask for in a celebration?

A Few Things on Friday

Hello friends and happy April!

I've been a busy little bees this week prepping for Easter brunch and it feels good to take a break and pop in for a few things this Good Friday. I hope you had a wonderful week!

This is our second year hosting and we’re expecting about 30 guests – it’s going to be amazing. This means any free time this week is being spent baking, cleaning, putting together baskets for all the kids, shopping for food/fixings for the bloody mary & mimosa bar and prepping plastic eggs for the Easter egg hunt. It’s all coming together quite perfectly and will be so worth it when we’re basking in all the love and joy in our home on Sunday.

The thing I love about Friday posts is that I can just list out some random things I feel like sharing which is good because I'm pretty sure that is all I'm capable of at this point in the week.

(one) I completed Erin's #1800MinuteChallenge on Tuesday and it felt pretty awesome. I actually finished at 1,811 minutes and it's cool to think how throughout the challenge I kept forgetting about the possibility of winning a cash prize if I completed the challenge. I was more focused on keeping myself accountable to get my 30/day of exercise in and while winning some cash to top it off would be great, I'm just really excited and proud of myself for finally getting into and sticking with a fitness routine. Yay!

(two) Jonathan has been slammed with work the last few weeks so I've been trying to get as much of the Easter prep done as I can myself without adding to his list of things to do. The other night though, he took a break and sat down to fill 100+ plastic eggs with candy for the Easter egg hunt we're setting up for all the kids on Sunday. This is great because I was starting to wonder when I'd have a chance to do it and he was so sweet chatting with me about where we'd hide the eggs and all. It was nice to watch him relax and step away from work for a bit.

(three) After seeing a handful of blogs raving about acai bowls, I decided I had to see what all the fuss was about so this morning, I traded in my usual egg white omelet and tried to put one of these together. I'd say it was a success and absolutely delicious. I probably could have added more frozen fruit to the blender because I think my mixture could have been a little thicker. Let me tell you though, this was a delightful way to start my day. It's cold, crunchy, fruity and left me feeling full and energized through lunch. The best part? I don't think you can really go wrong here with ingredients. Obviously you need the acai smoothie pack, granola and frozen fruit but the possibilities are endless for toppings and other add-ins. I'll share how much and what ingredients I used for my bowl next week but if you haven't gotten in on this goodness yet, you should probably give it a try.

(four) After blogging on and off for years, I am in the process of getting a custom blog design for the first time ever. I've always tried my best to design my blog to the best of my abilities but this year I realized that just wasn't good enough anymore. I want a space here I am proud of so Sarah is working on something for me and I can't wait to see it!

(five) In just a few hours, my sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephews will show up on our doorstep and I can't wait to hug them! They're driving down from Buffalo and last night when I got in bed, I got this text from my sister.

Alyssa is my eight-year-old niece and a few years ago when I was up for a visit, my sister and I took her to Build-a-Bear for a girls day. She named her bear Alena and every time I spoke to Alyssa after that, she would give me updates on Alena and whatnot. It's been a while since we've even talked about her teddy bear but I thought it was the cutest thing that she worried I would be upset if she didn't bring it down with her. I love that little girl!

And that concludes all the thoughts I can form into words today. I have a bit more baking to do before the fun starts later. I hope you all have a happy Easter and enjoy time with family and friends!

Celebrating all the Things

Happy New Year!

It’s been months since I made an appearance here and I miss it, I really do. This year, I want to be better about writing and get back to blogging like I used to. You may even notice I'm changing up my design here to celebrate my return. It's a work in progress of course, but I'm excited.

The last few months have been so busy for us – full of weddings, trips, family gatherings and to be honest, we’ve also experienced some major heartbreak in our lives. I’ll catch you up on all of this eventually.

The holiday season has been full of absolute joy and fun for us – we hosted several holiday get togethers with friends, we were able to spend time on Christmas with both families, we hosted a huge New Year’s bash at our house and on Saturday, we celebrated our 1 year wedding anniversary. I feel like we’ve been in a constant state of celebrating and it’s been pretty fantastic.

We were lucky enough to have our niece and nephew in town for Christmas this year, so we slept over at my in-laws house on Christmas Eve so we could wake up with the kids in the morning. It was pretty fun playing Santa and setting up all the gifts, not to mention getting to see the look on their faces in the morning. We opened gifts in the morning and headed to my do gifts and dinner with my siblings and parents in the afternoon. I worried a bit that we would feel stressed or rushed since my parents live an hour and a half from us, but everything worked out perfectly. It felt like a nice long day and I was so glad we made the effort to split the day between families.

We made the decision a few months ago to host a NYE party at our house to make up for not even seeing midnight last year. Don't get me wrong, last year was PERFECT. It was 2 days before our wedding so I wasn't about to get crazy anyway and we had my niece and nephews from Buffalo staying at our house. We watched Turbo with the kids and had a big sleepover in our bedroom -- I wouldn't change a thing about NYE 2014. 

With that being said, I was pretty psyched to go all out this year. I spent so much time on Pinterest getting inspiration for decor and whatnot. I even designed the invitation we mailed out to about 40 of our friends and family. We never expected this, but the RSVPs rolled in and next thing we knew, we were expecting about 50 guests! 

We hired a bartender, Jonathan bought loads of fireworks, we solicited help from friends for food and drinks and asked my mom to make her famous baked ziti for all these people. Thank goodness for everyone's help because I think we pulled it off quite perfectly. 

 
Last but certainly not least, we celebrated our 1 year wedding anniversary yesterday. It's crazy to me how fast our first year went by and how much happened in such a short time! It's been pretty hectic lately with the holidays and prepping (then the super fun clean up) from our NYE party, so we kept things pretty simple which was just what we needed.

After a morning of snuggling, mimosas and catching a few more Friends episodes (Thank you Netflix, thank you!), we did a few things around the house and ran some errands together. We went to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants and spent the evening talking about marriage and our relationship. We talked about the early months of our relationship and all the fun things we've done together. When we got home, we opened a bottle of champagne and sat down to read all the advice our guests left for us at our wedding -- it was perfect and so much fun to read what everyone had to say to us. It was the most perfect anniversary celebration.

Sadly, it's back to work for me today. I haven't worked since Tuesday of last week and it's been glorious, but I guess this party had to end eventually. With that being said, in less than 2 weeks we'll be in Cancun for a long weekend to celebrate my friend's wedding. In the meantime, we'll be getting use out of our NutriBullet and getting back in the gym because while the last few months have been fun, they have not been the healthiest.

I hope the holiday season was full of joy for you! I'm excited to be back and in the next few days, I'm looking forward to sharing our resolutions for 2015 and talk a little more about our first year of marriage.