February 2011 – James and Kona

Feb 27, 2011

Trip to Bloomington

Kona and I went north to Normal today to meet her mom, Aunt Linda, Aunt Debbie, and Grandma for lunch at Avanti’s Italian Restaurant for lunch. Linda brought her granddaughter Nilah with her, who is 1.5 years old, but really tall and very adorable.

After eating, Kona wanted to do some running around town and buy some stuff, so I showed her what I had planned for the day to make sure that we could work in my plans as well.

Plans for the afternoon in Bloomington.

She wasn’t able to figure it out without explanation, which means that the code, which I worked up to keep it a surprise in case she found the paper ahead of time, did it’s job.

Note from Kona: it was a crazy code that included the name, the different ratings for the movie, the movie times, and locations!! Even with the explanation, I still had to really think about what the code was as I was trying to figure out when the movies where!

We ended up going to Gordmans, Motherhood Maternity, Target, and Owen’s Nursery, which was closed, before coming home. We never did do what I had planned on doing; the timing didn’t work out and I just decided we’d come home.

Feb 26, 2011

by Kona

in Uncategorized

Snow in the morning

James happened to catch the following shots first thing in the morning. It had snowed the night before and with the morning sun shining everything looked beautiful.

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Feb 23, 2011

by Kona

in Uncategorized

Comment (1)

Baby bump

It’s official, the baby bump is visible!! My regular clothes hadn’t been fitting very well for the last couple of weeks, but sometime over the weekend the baby must have hit a growth spurt because the belly definitely popped! In this picture I’m 11 weeks, so it will be interesting to see how big I end up getting!! 🙂

Just starting to show!

Picture taken by the amazing and talented Alida Duff Sullivan!

Feb 16, 2011

by Kona

in Uncategorized

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KISSING

James and Kona sitting in a tree

K-I-S-S-I-N-G

Ziplining (and kissing) in the trees - Florida, December 2010

First comes love

Valley of the Gods - Utah, May 2009

Then comes marriage

Wedding Day - Illinois, July 2009

Next comes baby in the baby carriage!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yes, we are pregnant!! We actually found out on James Birthday (see previously hidden blog posting), but decided to keep it a secret until we were a little further along and had seen the midwife. Yesterday was our first appointment with the midwife and the baby and Kona were both doing good, so we decided to go ahead and start telling people!

Kona is about 10 weeks and the current due date is mid-September. Thus, we got pregnant during our week in Florida while on our December 2010 vacation! We are both very excited about the baby and are looking forward to all the new changes!

Feb 15, 2011

by Kona

in Uncategorized

First appointment

After having to reschedule because of the huge snowstorm two weeks ago, today was our first appointment with the midwife! We’re going to a midwife because Kona believes in doing things as natural as possible and would like to do a water birth. Fortunately there are facilities available in our area, but they are located in the Champaign-Urban area. Thus, for the next seven months we’re going to be doing a lot of driving to Illini territory!

Our first appointment of the morning was a group session with two other pregnant women. This was the session where we filled out all the paperwork (which was crazy!), learned about the different tests we had to get and the ones we had the option of doing, covered what to eat/not eat, what to do/not do, as well as learning about the policies and procedures of the practice and the hospital.

Next we went to our actual check up with the midwife. We spent a lot of time just talking while she went through Kona’s chart/records, but we also got to actually see the baby and it’s tiny heartbeat (James said it looked like a little shooting star… Yep, go ahead and sigh, it was really sweet and cute!!).

The funny thing with seeing the baby though was that it started with her just trying to hear the heartbeat. She estimated that Kona was just barely 10 weeks and thus there was a possibility of hearing the heartbeat. Yet, with the fetal doppler she just couldn’t get it to come through, so she went and got two more dopplers to try and hear the heartbeat!! Yet, little Baby Jones was having none of it and wouldn’t cooperate. Being funny, the midwife said she hated it when the baby won and would we mind if she went and got the portable ultrasound she saw sitting out in the hallway? We told her to go ahead, so she got the ultrasound going and there the baby was!! We could make out the tiny little head and appendages, but best of all, we saw the tiny little heartbeat going nice and strong!! Definitely an amazing an awe inspiring moment!!

After our appointment was over, we then had to go down to the lab to give (way too much) blood and a urine sample. By this time we had been in the clinic from a little before 10AM to 1PM, so as soon as we were finished we went and got some lunch before doing a little maternity clothes shopping for Kona (and yes, she just about needs it already!).

The rest of the day was spent telling family about the baby (up until today, no one except our parents knew that we were pregnant), as well as friends and some of our coworkers. It was a great, but very busy day!!

Feb 13, 2011

by Kona

in James

Kona’s birthday weekend

Even though my birthday was on Friday, we saved the celebrating for Saturday when my parents came to visit for the weekend!

I was excited because they had brought me some of my childhood treasures they had been storing in their basement, but James wasn’t nearly as pleased!

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After catching up and having a wonderful lunch that my mom made, we headed out to walk around our property. The weather was pretty nice and we ended up walking almost the entire perimeter, as well as some extra so we could see the bridge adjacent to our property.

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One funny story from our walk was that while taking our picture on the bridge, mom accidentally dropped her camera. James and I had the perfect view as it bounced its way down the bank and then slid along the ice on the creek to the very edge of the water! I think all of us were holding our breaths because we couldn’t believe it didn’t slide the extra centimeter or two and end up in the creek!! Before it was hardly done sliding across the ice, mom was sliding down the bank after it!! Luckily both she and the camera ended up making it out dry!! 🙂

Mom with a big smile after rescuing her camera from the edge of the ice!

After our walk, we relaxed for a little bit before heading to Decatur to catch a movie and then dinner at Red Lobster! The movie was pretty good (The Mechanic) and the meal was excellent, even if we had to wait almost an hour to get seated!!

The next morning we had a big breakfast and then mom and dad headed home. It was a great birthday weekend and we had a lot of fun and laughs!!

Feb 07, 2011

by Kona

in Uncategorized

Personalized gift

A few weeks ago James was working on a secret something and asked me to (1) pick out my favorite picture and (2) pick out a font (text style) that I liked. I thought about it for a while and since I didn’t know what he would be doing with said items, I told him for the picture to go ahead and pick any of the dragonfly pictures I took over the summer from out in our yard. For the font, James printed off TWELVE pages of fonts and I went through and narrowed it down to a few that I liked and then finally to the one we both liked the best. I had no idea what James was going to do with all of this, but I figured he might be making some kind of personalized birthday card or something else along those lines.

Ok, fast forward to a week or so later and I received a box from Amazon in the mail. James asked what it was and I told him I had gone ahead and bought a birthday gift for myself (before my birthday) because I had been wanting it since before Christmas it had gone on sale. James asked what it was and I told him it was the Flip Video Camera. He got a strange look on his face and told me I’d have to send it back since he already got me one for my birthday and it was on it’s way.

Can you say HUGE whoops? I really had no idea he was going to get it for me, especially since I had been wanting one since before Christmas and hadn’t gotten it. I figured he had forgotten and when I saw it on sale at Amazon, I just went ahead and got it. **Note to self: Never do that again!** I felt absolutely awful and apologized again and again, which James accepted, but didn’t make me feel any better. 🙁

Ok, now to the present. I had returned the Flip Video I bought and we were waiting for the one James got me to arrive. Due to the snow and bad weather the previous week, it had been delayed, but showed online that it was out for delivery. And yes, there it was waiting for us when we got home! I told James I could wait until my birthday to open it up, but he told me to go ahead and open it!

So, I sat down and started opening up the box!

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And what was I so excited about??

Personalized Flip Micro Video

A Flip Micro Video Camera that was absolutely amazing and completely customized just for me!!

The dragonfly is a picture I took over the summer out in our yard, so points for it being (1) a picture I took, (2) a dragonfly, and (3) from our yard! The font was the one I picked out and fits perfect with my name across the top! No worries about someone not know that it’s my camera!! 🙂

So, extra double bonus points to James for being the most amazingly thoughtful husband ever!!!

Yet, that wasn’t it! There was even more accessories for my new Flip Video in the box as well!

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Overall, James got me the Flip Micro Video Camera, action tripod, 2 carrying cases, a wide angle lens, waterproof pouch, and an outlet charger (normally you just plug the camera into the computer to charge)!

–Update– What I couldn’t include in the initial post was that the reason I decided to go ahead and get the Flip Video (and the reason James independently did as well!), is that we both thought it would be great to have a small and easy to use video camera around once the baby comes!! I guess great minds really do think alike! 😉

Feb 03, 2011

by Kona

in Wedding

Snow Day 2011

February 1st, 2nd, & 3rd the winter weather was so bad, Richland closed the campus for all three days! This was probably smart because between the ice, snow, and wind, the roads were definitely bad! Not that James and I actually left the house to find out, but on the 2nd day, James went out to plow first thing in the morning and didn’t come back in for EIGHT hours!!

The drifting was crazy and while the snow fence helped, the main drifting was up by the house along the tree line.

After James had been out for about 3-4 hours, I got my winder gear on and went outside to document the snow and the drifting!

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It was actually a lot of fun wading through the snow drifts to get my pictures, but I was sure glad to get back inside after I was done!

–Update– What I couldn’t include in the original post is that I was originally scheduled for my first doctor’s appointment Tuesday the 1st. Because of the bad weather we had to call and reschedule and the soonest they could get me in was two weeks later on February 15th!! I was pretty upset because I hadn’t been to see a doctor yet and really wanted to make sure the baby (and I) were doing ok. This thus resulted in my first (and as of February 16th only) irrational pregnancy breakdown. Even though mentally I knew there was no way we could make it to the appointment, it didn’t matter and I was still really upset. I don’t think I did “that” bad, only crying and it didn’t last too long. James was a trooper and just sat with me while I had my moment, which was exactly what I needed from him! Overall, he’s definitely doing pretty good with all the crazy hormonal pregnant wife stuff!