It's a Boy!!!!

Okay, so the time has finally come...we know the gender of the baby! Jon and I will be welcoming our beautiful baby boy Jackson Clyde Kelley to our family in June :-) Here are the latest and greatest pictures from this morning's ultrasound:

Baby Jackson upside down.

Here's the evidence he's a boy!

Jackson with both legs crossed at the ankles.

He had his arms up near his head.

Chillin' on his back.

I have no idea what this is a picture of, but it's part of Jackson, lol.

Sorry this post is so short; however, as tax season is in full swing, this is as good as it gets during the week, lol. I will give a better update of things this upcoming weekend, including a new baby bump photo!

Oh the places you will go...

Okay...so I know that I haven't blogged in a while; therefore, I have tons to catch ya'll up on. First, baby Kelley has now travelled to two more states in utero (he/she is becoming a cross country traveler already!). Jon and I took a weekend trip up to Charleston, SC the weekend of January 6th to visit some of Jon's best friends and his second families from his college days at the Citadel including the Vitello's, Kursh's, Hemingway's and the Hayne's. We truly enjoyed spending some time with some fantastic people while in Charleston! Thank you to our friends for hosting us and taking the time to have a meal with us on our quick trip :-)

Here's a few pictures from our trip!

The very next weekend Jon and I went to south Florida for two very big occassions. First, on January 14th, Jon and I traveled to Coconut Creek, Florida in order to pick up some exquisite paintings done by my great aunt, Marion Bohannon. She so graciously allowed us to choose any of her paintings or chalk drawings that had been loaned to the Coconut Creek Community Center for the past 7 years. Consequently, we ended up falling in love with two of the paintings that were shown to us, in addition to two works of art done in the chalk medium. Our home now has amazing artwork hanging on the walls and we could not be happier. Thank you Aunt Marion!

The very next day, January 15th, Jon and I traveled with his siblings Jason and Jennifer to go celebrate their cousin's upcoming baby girl, Vera Raye, by attending her baby shower in Port St. Lucie, Florida. We all had a wonderful time of fellowship with Jessica and the rest of the Weinman clan that attended. It was so great to see everyone and spend some time with the beautiful expectant mother!

The fun still has not ceased, as my Aunt Cindy and Uncle Craig came to visit us in Orlando this past weekend to help me celebrate my 26th birthday. We all went to my favorite Mexican restaurant on Friday night for my birthday dinner...yum, then on Saturday we went to Disney World to introduce Cindy and re-introduce Craig to the magical world of the Disney theme parks. We ended up spending time at each of the four parks giving them a little taste of what each park had to offer; though I'm not sure I would recommend it, as by the end of the night we all had sore feet and were exhausted to the bone from the walking and standing all day. Despite the soreness, I had an absolutely wonderful time, and I'm sure baby Kelley enjoyed him/herself (even though we couldn't go on many rides) :-) Cindy and Craig also were so generous to us and gave our little one some adorable Alabama Crimson Tide onsies...ROLL TIDE ROLL! along with some other fabulous goodies. Thank you both for taking the time to come visit and for your thoughtfulness, we truly appreciate it.

Other than all of our activities lately, Jon and I have been able to continue to make our house a home by adding our own personal touches to it. We are still going strong at our current places of employment and are continuing to enjoy our work. Our church is continuing to grow and Jon and I are truly blessed with such a wonderful church family. I will soon be trying to head up a clothing drive and distribution for the local residents near our church in addition to helping assist with the preparations for the upcoming vacation bible school in June this summer.

Now onto the most important stuff...the baby! Jon and I went for our sixteen week checkup at Delaney OB/GYN on January 5th and found out that everything is going well for mother and baby. Dr. Fritz also told us that we would be able to find out the sex of our baby at the next ultrasound (if we wanted to know)! The ultrasound is scheduled for 8:00am on Monday, January 30th; therefore, we will soon know if we will have a son or daughter joining our family (as long as the baby cooperates of course) :-) We know everyone is curious, therefore we will try to let everyone know as soon as we can; however, please be patient with us as we will still have to work a long day that day and will likely be unable to call or text anyone until that evening. We are extremely excited that we are nearly halfway there and can't wait to meet our little one.

Here is a picture of the baby bump at week 18 in front of one the aforementioned paintings, in an awesome Alabama maternity shirt compliments of my aunt and uncle.

Your Pregnancy: Week 18

As your growing uterus starts shifting your center of gravity (belly forward, bottom out), hormones are causing your ligaments to relax and joints to loosen. The result? Back pain and soreness. On the bright side, if you want to know baby's gender, this might be your first week for a sneak peek.

Baby's now the size of a sweet potato!Baby's become amazingly mobile (compared to you, at least), passing the hours yawning, hiccupping, rolling, twisting, kicking, punching, sucking, and swallowing. And baby is finally big enough that you'll soon be able to feel her movements.

*Information and clipart above is from thebump.com.

Happy Holidays

So December flew by, including the Christmas season. I have been extremely busy at work with end of year tax projections for our clients, which has not left a ton of time for catching up with family and friends...I apologize for that. Fortunately, the craziest time of year at the firm has passed with December. Jon finished up his semester of graduate school about the second week of December, so he has been enjoying getting back in the kitchen letting the food "inspire" him as he likes to say, as well as catching up on playing some video games and reading books about becoming a dad. We continue to square dance on Friday nights with the Bren-Don Squares square dance club in Geneva, FL, which is still an absolute blast. Jon is also now apprenticing under Don Whitaker trying to learn how to be a square dance caller himself. He has had two very successful singing calls since he first started trying to learn.

Our baby has now celebrated its first Christmas and New Years (in utero at least) with us. Jon and I had a wonderful Christmas weekend as we went to visit Jon's mother Jodi in Fort Pierce on Saturday, with his sister Jennifer. To our surprise Jon's Aunt Cathy and cousin Jessica showed up for a visit as well. We had a wonderful time of fellowship with some of Jon's family and had safe travels to and from Fort Pierce. Sunday was spent going to church for a wonderful time of worship and praise with our church family on the most special of days! I can't remember the last time Christmas fell on a Sunday, but I was so pleased that we were able to attend a service at our church on Christmas morning. After church Jon and I quickly picked up and cleaned a few last minute things prior to Jon's siblings arriving for our Christmas celebration. Jason, Jessica, and Jennifer all came over to our house on Christmas for a wonderful Christmas celebration. Jason and Jon made a wonderful Christmas dinner that took approximately four and a half hours to complete, and Jennifer giving us a fantastic Christmas present, cleaned up the kitchen that was left in a disaster after they were done cooking. (In case you don't know, Jon and Jason both are known to make one heck of a mess in the kitchen when making their delicious creations). We had a fabulous time of fellowship with our generation of Jon's family on Christmas day.
On top of all of that, Jason and Jessica blew us away with all of the baby gifts that they brought us...we officially have our first baby things! Everything is just so adorable and cute; Jon and I are just so thankful for the thoughtfulness and excitement that Jason and Jessica have shown us. We know that our little baby is so incredibly blessed to have such amazing aunts and uncles excitedly anticipating his/her arrival. We had an absolutely wonderful Christmas weekend and we are so thankful for our wonderful family and friends. We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and hope that your New Year is better than any other you've ever had.

As many of you know, we let the secret out of the bag on December 9th that we were expecting our first child. I am now almost 16 weeks along in my pregnancy, with a very small bump starting to make itself known to the world. I am now having to start being strategic in my clothing choices, as my clothes aren't necessarily fitting as well as I would like them to anymore. I have officially purchased bella bands (one black and one white) in an effort to keep wearing some of my favorite pants. Jon and I have another doctor's appointment on January 5th; however, we will not find out what the sex of the baby is until the end of January or beginning of February. Everything is going well in my pregnancy...I have been extremely blessed in that I have not really had any significant nausea since about week six or seven, and no vomiting at all (sorry if that was too much information for some of you). My energy is returning, which is absolutely wonderful as well.

Here is a picture of the miniature baby bump from week 14.

Here are the pictures from the first ultrasound - Week 8:

Here are the pictures from the second ultrasound - Week 12: