It's a....

GIRL!!! 

Here are her beautiful pictures from the ultrasound:

Sweet little hands!

Feet

She apparently she likes to sit with her ankles crossed - you can kind of tell in this picture. 

It's a Girl!! No extra parts were seen...

Waving hello!

Love this 3D picture of her. All curled up in there. 

I was so nervous and anxious to get to this ultrasound. The appointment was at 4:20 and the day seemed forever long! Then we had to wait about 30 minute after the appt time before we were able to go back. We were in the room for a total of about 40 minutes looking at our sweet daughter. She was being pretty stubborn and wasn't wanting to reveal her gender. So the ultrasound tech kept poking and shaking my belly to get her to move. She would measure a few things, then try to look, and measure a few more things, then try again. This went on for about 20 minutes until we finally got to see her! Doctor came in afterwards to take a look and confirm the sex of out baby. He said it was a girl, that he didn't see any boy parts in there. He also checked the brain, spine, neck, lips, etc and everything is perfect and healthy. Baby is growing right on schedule too. She weighs 6 ounces right now. It's crazy to go back and look at our last picture and see how much she has grown. Anyway, we are very excited to have a little girl. My parents have 2 grandsons and my in-laws have one grandson, so we will be bringing the first granddaughter in for both sides of the family, which is pretty cool. I can't wait to get a name picked out and get started on decorating the nursery and probably buying cute little outfits for her to wear when she graces us with her presence in 5 short months!

On a random note, a customer came in to my work today and looked at me and said, "You are carrying around some extra baggage there, huh?" This is the first time anyone has said anything to me about being pregnant that didn't know already. So I guess it is becoming obvious that I am pregnant! It was pretty exciting actually to have someone say something to me about it. It didn't bother me at all! 

I made some sugar cookies with pink frosting for us to take to our jobs. I thought it would be a fun way to share the news with our co-workers. 

It's pretty crazy to think that I am going to be a Mom soon. I remember being a little girl myself and here I am about to have one of my own. My parents did a great job raising me, I can only hope I will do a great job raising my little girl as well. I love you Mom & Dad!!! 

Seeing my baby girl and finding out the gender has made the reality settle in a lot more. I am really looking forward to being a Mom even if it is a little scary to think about at times. 

Well, it is really late and I must get to bed, so here is a picture of my 17 week "It's A Girl" belly! I'm pretty sure it is getting bigger! And I can still feel her moving in there. I am really excited for Brian to be able to see and feel her too. Hopefully that will happen in the next week or so!

Sorry I know I don't look the best. Again, I just took a shower. I meant to take the picture before my shower, but I forgot! :) I forget a lot of things lately...

Baby girl,

I am so excited to meet you in May. Today begins the 5th month which means I only have 5 months to go! It goes by so quickly. Your Daddy and I are so excited and looking forward to having a little girl in the house. I bet you will be a Daddy's girl too. Keep growing and moving around in there! Love you so much already baby girl. And don't worry, we will have a name for you soon!

Love, Mommy

Thankful

Well it has been a busy but great past week. I went and visited my family last weekend which was wonderful. It had been a couple months since I had been able to get up there and see them. I sure did miss them! I actually was able to see everyone in my extended family while there too which was awesome. My Mom and I tackled Affair of the Heart on Saturday - which was rather disappointing. A lot of the booths we wanted to visit again (since the last one) weren't there anymore, and there just wasn't as much good stuff to see. Maybe this is a good thing - less money spent. I had a good time walking around with my Mom though and we both found cute scarves to purchase! It was so nice to spend time with family last weekend. I know we are only a couple hours away, but I miss them so much and wish I could see them more often! Oh! and my Dad gave me a glider rocking chair for when the baby comes! So we now have a piece of baby furniture in the house. The fabric on it though is not the best, so my mother-in-law is going to help me recover it!

For Thanksgiving, we got together with Brian's parents and his sister and family. I ate lots (probably too much because my belly felt really tight and full for a while!) of good food! It was so nice to spend some time with all of them as well because it had been a little while since I had seen them. My sister-in-law brought my a couple bags of her maternity clothes for me to borrow since I am outgrowing all of my clothes and haven't really bought anything recently.

The cousins on my Mom's side of the family drew names earlier in the year and we were supposed to make a homemade ornament for them and send by Thanksgiving. It worked out that Nancy and I both drew each other's names and I just got my ornament in the mail yesterday. I love it!!! Here is a picture. She did such a great job!

Here is what I made her. I painted an ornament and then made a standing decoration out of a washcloth! It was fun getting to be crafty. This is the first one of many I made, so they actually got better than this one in the picture, but you get the idea. On the latter ones I used real buttons rather than the pom poms and I used an orange pipe cleaner for the nose instead of just painting on on there and felt works much better than ribbon for the scarf! 

Getting to make these ornaments has made me really want to be crafty now. There are a few things on my list that I plan to make and hopefully make time to do them before Christmas as gifts! :)

I have also begun the de-cluttering of the room that will soon be made into a nursery. There are a few pieces of furniture that we have to get rid of or find another place in the house for it and go through the closets and organize all that stuff that we have stored in there. We have this fairly big entertainment center in there that I planned to get rid of, but my Aunt Debbie gave me a great idea! She said I should paint it and then hang a curtain on the open areas, and buy cute little baskets to store the baby's things in there and there are a few drawers I could use for clothes. I told Brian about this and we both think it is a good idea, so we may see what we can do with it and hope that we enough room to have that, the crib, and changing table and everything in there. We shall see!! Only a couple more days until we find out if we are having a boy or girl!!! I am SO anxious. Then begins the baby names, nursery themes/colors, and lots of other fun things! I have started to kind of feel the baby moving around in there which is really awesome but also really weird, in a good way though. My sister-in-law described it best I think, it's like a fish swimming around in there. It does feel like a little wave in my belly. I am looking forward to when I can feel it more and when Brian can see and feel it as well. I can't believe it is going by so fast - already almost 17 weeks. 

Here is a random picture Brian took of my view of the ever growing belly!

Yes I think it is getting pretty big real fast! Even my boss noticed on Friday that it looked slightly bigger than it was just a couple days before. :)

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!! I will post Tuesday with the exciting news! Feel free to predict or guess what it could be...

Growing...

15 week picture:

If you look at my belly on the above picture, you can see a little white line, that is the difference from last week to this week. 

It may not look like I grew that much, but I sure feel it! My belly seems a little heavier and I noticed last night that it seemed to be sticking out a lot further than I remember just the day before. I always get slight cramping and my stomach itches a lot right before it grows - and I experienced these again over the weekend. Anyway, I was showing Brian last night how I thought it was bigger and he said he could tell. Then this morning, I was talking with my co-worker, Clarissa, about how I thought it looked bigger and she said she could tell too! Later that morning my boss was having a teller meeting with all of us. So we are just standing around in the drive thru and in the middle of the meeting she stops and looks at me and says that my stomach looked bigger, that she had just noticed that! Clarissa and I thought it was pretty funny since we just had a discussion about it that morning. And again, later that day, another co-worker looked at me and said the same thing. So I guess it is becoming more obvious now!! 

I have felt pretty good overall - I have been getting quite a few headaches lately though. Which is probably a combination of pregnancy and allergies. My allergies always flare up when the temperature won't make up its mind. I still feel tired some, but not near as much as before. I am able to actually stay awake most of the evening without falling sleep on the couch!

I go and see my OB Thursday to hear the heartbeat and all that normal testing stuff. Still anxiously awaiting November 29th when we get to see our little one again and find out if we need to be picking out a boy or a girl name! I can hardly wait!!! 

On another note, I got a manicure with a good friend of mine (Mary Rachel) on Friday afternoon and it was awesome. We got the deluxe manicure, so they massaged your hands and did the hot towel - so relaxing! Afterwards we had some extra time, so we went to New York & Co and then Bath & Body Works where I spent more money! They had their hand soaps 4 for $10! Love when they go on sell. But it was a such a good time! Next on the list is a pedicure...

I think I am going to start crafting things more often too. There are a few projects I have seen read about on other blogs and it has inspired me. Now if I could only get someone to tutor me on how to use this Pintrest website everyone is crazy about...

And to make the time to do all these things. I really need to scrapbook as well....

So much to do and so little time to do it! Time goes by way too fast. 

Well I guess that is all for now. 

one more thing...

Baby (and I for that matter) experienced our first real earthquake on Saturday! Brian and I finished watching some football and I think we were just watching the news or something when we heard this loud noise and then the TV and everything started rocking back and forth and rattling. I felt like I was swaying on a boat or something. Very unsettling - and it felt like it went on forever! At the time, I did not like it too much, but afterwards it was kind of cool. But that doesn't mean I want to experience it more! 

Which I just did again...I was typing my blog and Brian is playing a new video game and we both heard this noise and sure enough, things starting rattling some. Not near as bad as the one Saturday night and it only lasted for a few seconds. But got to feel an aftershock I guess.

Crazy Oklahoma!! 

Week 14

So today I began my 14th week of pregnancy! Here are a couple pictures of the belly I took earlier...

14 weeks

I took this looking down on my belly. Brian made fun of my lack of picture taking skills, but I still thought it was kind of fun...haha!

I have still been feeling pretty good lately. The only day as of late that I had some nausea was when I ate chili for dinner. Not a good idea apparently. I did eat tacos the other night and they didn't bother me! Maybe I can venture out and eat some real mexican food with chips and salsa soon. I sure do miss my spicy foods. But overall, it is so wonderful to have more energy (and did I mention that Brian is enjoying it as well, that I am not falling asleep right after work and just being a vegetable all night!). I actually was able to play some ping pong last night with Brian too - It was a good time. I whooped up! ;)

Last week at work my sides starting to hurt. Come to find out my dress pants (mind you the only dress pants that I could still get in to) were just getting too tight for comfort. After I unbuttoned my pants, I felt so much better! This fact left me with zero work pants. So this past weekend I ventured out to find pants that actually fit because I have to have dress pants for work! I just went to Goodwill and a few consignment shops. I figure why spend a bunch of money on pants that I may not be able to wear for very long. Anyway, I was finally able to find a pair at a resale shop. I got them for $13 and they are New York and Company brand. They feel like pajama pants (soft cotton), have a fancy cuff at the bottom to look like nice dress pants, and wait for it...they are stretchy! NO buttons or zippers! They just pull right on up. Love them!! Pretty sure I will be wearing these pants everyday to work. Don't worry I will wash them frequently. :)

Something else is that I am getting paranoid about getting sick with the flu or a stomach bug or whatever. I just do not want to be sick while pregnant if I can avoid it. But it is kind of hard when people come to work sick and throwing up and when people are coughing all over everything (not covering their mouths) or just coughing on their hand and then touching something on my desk. I will be stocking up on hand sanitizer and making frequent visits to the bathroom to wash my hands. I also will be cleaning my teller station more often because of this. Let's hope I can keep the germs away!

We went camping on Halloween weekend down in Sulphur. It was fun and somewhat relaxing, but boy was it cold! Friday night was just miserable. I had multiple layers on and we had a ton of blankets and I was still shivering all night. And of course I had to pee in the middle of the night, so I had to trek all the way to the bathroom, teeth chattering and all, and then try to get warmed back up. But camping is always a fun adventure and it was good to get away for a couple days. Here is a picture of us on one of our walks!

Dear baby,

I cannot wait to see you again in just a few short weeks and find out if you are a boy or girl. Keep growing baby Hostetler. Looking forward to the day I hold you in my arms!

pictures!

Well today marks a new step in my pregnancy journey. I began my second trimester!

I can tell my energy is increasing rapidly. I have been more motivated to clean around the house and go for walks and play with my dog and many other things I have not felt like doing much of these past few months. I actually made a hearty and healthy dinner tonight (pork chops, potatoes, and green beans), which I am sure my husband appreciated due to the lack of motivation to cook dinners lately! :) I went grocery shopping last night and was able to make it through without wanting to fall over and go to sleep or just sit down for a while. Our cabinets have been getting pretty slim because of this. Anyway, I am really looking forward to this renewed energy!! Hopefully I can get back on a regular exercise routine now that I will have motivation to do so.

My nausea has gotten better these past few days as well. However, I felt awful this morning! I didn't feel nauseous when I first got up or even when I got to work. Well, I bought this new cereal at Aldi (Cranberry Crunch - which I love cranberry cereal!!) and had a bowl of it this morning a little while after I got to work. Not too long after eating that bowl of yummy goodness I starting feeling very sick. I didn't really want to move or anything or else I feared I would throw up all over my desk! Thankfully, after eating a delicious Gala apple and resting during my lunch break, I felt much better! It is so weird how nausea can just come and go at random times...

I have really enjoyed my pregnancy so far. Not only am I enjoying what I am experiencing at the moment (yes even the sickness and random pains that I have!), but looking forward to the next thing too. We get to have our next ultrasound Nov 29th and at this appointment we will get to find out whether it is a boy or girl! Yes, we are going to find out. I want to be able to prepare and go buy fun and cute things that are gender specific!

And now here are a few pictures of my belly.

9 weeks

10 weeks

12 weeks

I didn't realize until just now that I wore the same shirt for the last two pictures - oh well! And sorry that last one looks so terrible. I just took a shower. As you can see I already have a little pouch going on - it's fun! But I only gained 3 pounds in my first trimester! :) I will probably take belly pictures every couple weeks or so just to see how much and how fast it grows.