Preparation...

There are a lot of things to do before you have a baby. You gotta pick the dr and make an appointment first of all. That sounds pretty easy, but it really isn't that simple. My dr was an older man and came with good recommendations. Well......he had a stroke half way through my pregnancy and I had to find a different dr. All of his patients were frantically trying to find a new dr in town. The options were limited. I wanted a dr who would deliver at a certain hospital in town so my nurse friend could be there when I delivered. I chose a family dr who would also be Grayson's pediatrician.

We had to really think about what we would need or want for the baby so we could register. Holy cow there is a lot of baby stuff! We registered online and it worked out well for us. It was hard to decide what would be best. There are so many options. Infant car seat? Convertible car seat? Travel system? Pretty much just close your eyes and pick ...you might get a good one. I'm kidding, but really, there are a ton of options.

We had 2 showers. One at the church and one that my friends threw me. We got a lot of good stuff.

Mike put together all of our gear. I helped, mostly by taking pictures. :)

Tucker wanted to help too!

The nursery. Its such a big part of the preparation. I started coming up with decorating ideas soon after finding out I was pregnant. Of course all of my ideas were for a girl. I was convinced I was having a girl. I was wrong. So I had to start fresh on the decorating ideas. I didn't really want a theme. I just wanted it to be cute. And I really really wanted the bumper from pottery barn. It is just so darn cute!

This artwork took us a little while to complete, but it turned out awesome!

Grayson's aunt Jenny made these for his room. She's so creative!

Pregnancy...

Let's start at the beginning. We found out I was pregnant in June. We freaked out a little at first because it happened so quickly after we started trying. I had all day sickness (instead of just morning sickness) for 3-4 weeks. After that I just felt tired a lot.

I loved the way I looked during pregnancy. I was huge and it didn't matter! Except for when I started to swell... I had cankles.

I got to experience the "big" part of pregnancy during the winter, which I LOVED. I got to wear sweaters all the time (Really just the same ones over and over. I was cheap and didn't buy many maternity clothes.)

My belly was pretty pointy there for a while...

I craved sweets. Any and all sweets. The dr. said I needed to watch my sugar intake and by that she meant no sugar. Ever. Milk and water to drink only. No cookies. No ice cream. It broke my heart.

I didn't go through a nesting phase. I was really hoping I would because the house could have really used a scrub down, but I never really got around to it.... :)

This is one of the last pics of me before I had Grayson. Me in all my hugeness!

We're Back!!!

Well we went MIA in 2010, but we are back! And we have a baby! Once I started working I didn't seem to have time to keep up with the blog. But now I'm looking for a good way to record all of our baby happenings. I'm not into scrapbooking, so this is what I came up with! Get used to hearing all about our little baby boy!

Grayson Newborn

He's Here Birth Announcement

Turn your favorite photo into a birth announcement.

View the entire collection of cards.

Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year everyone!!
I am really looking forward to seeing what this year has in store for us. Some of the things we hope to accomplish:
I am running a half-marathon!!
We expect to be out of debt (except our mortgage).
Mike will be getting his raise.
We will be celebrating our second anniversary.
We are expecting a new neice/nephew from these guys.
We are also expecting a new little cousin!
There will be many things in this new year that we have no idea about and that excites me! Wishing you and yours a very happy and healthy new year!! :)

Watch Please :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVqqj1v-ZBU

Happy Day!!!

We got a letter from Clara today!!! Clara is a sweet little girl in Indonesia that we sponsor through Compassion. She wrote it all by herself! This is what she had to say:

"Dearest Papa Mike Bolz,

Greetings! Papa and Mama Bolz, how are you there? Are you fine there? My family and I are fine here, always. The weather is not very nice here. I got fever. That's why I did not go anywhere in this vacation. But I am promoted to the next grade. I am so happy cause I am promoted to grade 1. I hope I can get good marks. From here, I always pray for Papa and Mama Bolz. I hope your family is blessed and has the peace and joy from Lord Jesus. What can I pray for Papa and Mama Bolz? Please pray so I can study well at school. That's all the letter from me for now. God bless."

Isn't she sweet? Go to Compassion and learn how you can sponsor a sweetie like Clara!

Operation Christmas Child

Please watch!!!
For more info:
samaritanspurse.org/occ

Hello Fall, Goodbye Summer...

I'm so excited about this time of year. Its time to start buying Christmas presents and putting together lists. Its time to put out the cider scented candles and put up the decorations. I love it!

I'll leave you with some pics from this summer.

Outside of our hotel in London.

Waiting in the Barcelona airport.

The hotel we stayed in.

The Mediterranean Sea.

This was the subway map, all in Spanish. A tad confusing...

Mike in front of Casa Mia.

On the day full of walking.

On the subway after the U2 concert.

We took a trip to Branson, Missouri over Labor Day weekend with Mike's family.

With the sisters-in-law in a cave at Silver Dollar City. We climbed down about 50 stories of stairs thinking we would get on a train and ride back up. Since there was a storm we didn't get to ride the train. The walk up wasn't as fun as the walk down...

Us girls at SDC.

My nephews came for a visit.
My brother with the boys.

A few pics from the fence building project.
Mike's mom and grandma and I cooking dinner.

Some of the boys working on the fence.

Thanks for stopping by!!!

Little update...

As I sit here having my breakfast of plain yogurt with frozen raspberries and a granola bar (trying to be healthy these days and lose some of the weight marriage has put on me), I am going to try and tell you about our last month and a half before work.

Let's start at the beginning of June... Mike was in the pandhandle (4 hours away) for 2 straight weeks working. He then came home for our anniversary weekend. Then we both parted ways, him back to the panhandle and I to lake Tenkiller for a mission trip with the church. When we returned I started a new job at an abstract company here in Enid. We worked 2 days then made our way to Barcelona, Spain. We had a lot of fun and a lot of new experiences. It was a challenging vacation and I think our next one will be a bit more relaxing. While we were there we saw U2. Great concert! Sooo Sooo Sooo many people. Maybe one of these days I can get some pics on here to show you all.

We came home and worked for a week, tried to play catch up on all the things that got behind. We went to Dallas this past weekend in pursuit of a specific car. I fell in love, it was super nice. Great price, great mileage, great features. Turns out that it had been wrecked 2 different times, and the salesman didn't mention that (found it on the carfax). The report wasn't very specific so we decided to wait on the next great one.

That brings us to this week. Mike is a sponsor at Falls Creek (youth church camp), so he will be gone all week.

To say the least we have had a very busy summer and it doesn't look like it is slowing down yet. We have a family reunion at the end of July. Mike's little sister is also supposed to move in around the end of July. We are still trying to get Tucker healthy, he has a staff infection on his skin and the vet told us its hard to get rid of. We have all the supplies to build a privacy fence, just no time to build it.

Hope everyone else is having a great summer!!

soon and very soon...

I know, I know, I know...

We are horrible bloggers.

A new post is coming very soon. And it will be jam-packed with lots of goodies. Details on my new job, pics and stories from Barcelona, house update, info on our busy summer so far.

Stay tuned!

New Design!!!

We have a new design!

Comment if you like it. :)

If there are no comments we will know that A) it is ugly or B) we have no readers.

Neither are good. So comment!

Peace!

Lots to tell...

Things around this Bolz house have been a little hectic the past few weeks. The biggest thing being we closed on the house. It is officially ours! We have already begun working on it. We took down the wallpaper in the kitchen to reveal the guacamole colored walls underneath. Not to mention all of the small nail holes. So we have patched the holes and painted it. I have a few touch ups to do, but the kitchen should be finished this week. 

When we were looking at the house we were under the impression that the refrigerator was included. We were under that impression because we asked the realtor if it was included and she said yes. Come to find out, it didn't make it into the contract in the counter-offer. So, we bought a fridge this past weekend. Best Buy was having a sale on the kind I wanted (freezer on bottom). So I called to get some info about it before we took a trip down there. It was going to be back orderd so we decided to head over to Lowe's to check out what they had going on. The had the same one that was on sale in OKC but not in stock, they were going to have to back order it also and it was more expensive. I asked if they could do a price match, and they did! So same fridge, same price, bought locally, and free delivery. I checked today to see how much it was now and would you believe me if I told you Best Buy dropped the sale and it was about $15o more now? And Lowe's still had the same price of about $200 more than we paid. Gotta love a bargain!

Priced here at GE's website for $999, way more than we paid! :)

http://products.geappliances.com/ApplProducts/Dispatcher?REQUEST=SPECPAGE&SKU=GBSC0HCXWW&SITEID=GEA

Another new thing going on around here - I have a new job. Sort of. I am watching my cousins new baby a few days a week. He is absolutely precious. 

I also had a job offer about a week ago. I didn't even apply. I used to work at a bank about five years ago and they have an open position. They offered it to me before they started accepting applications. I appreciate them thinking of me but I'm not sure it's what I want to be doing.

I got first place in a triathlon about a week ago. Ok so there were 3 of us on the team, Jenny swam, I biked, and Kim ran. We got first place out of our category. (There were only 2 teams in our category, and we were one of them.) The details aren't that important.   :)

And now for the biggest announcement.... 

We are going to Barcelona!! We booked the trip last night. Mike and I have been thinking about what we wanted to do for our first anniversary. We decided we wanted to fly to a "cool" city and go to a concert of one of our favorite bands. Mike started looking up Snow Patrol's tour schedule and found they would be playing with U2 in Europe. So he found a tour date close to our anniversary and Barcelona it is. I'd say that's a pretty cool city. 

Miss USA...

Watch this video, if you haven't seen it already.

This is going around the internet right now. Everyone is talking about how she blew her chances of winning and that she got booed. I watched it a few times and I never heard any booing. I heard clapping and whistling. What did you hear?

I know this is a lot more controversial than we usually get on this blog, but I need to vent. I'm so tired of this non-sense about being so politically correct that you can't speak your mind when asked to. Who wants a pageant winner that can't even stand up for what she believes in?

What I'm really tired of is the "silent" majority sitting back while the comparatively "loud" minority takes over as if they are the majority. I can't complain too much because I am definitely a silent part of the majority. What I really want is for the minority to realize that there is a reason that when the public votes they choose to keep marriage between a man and a woman. And as far as I'm aware, the only time same-sex marriage is legalized is when a judge or committee of some sort enacts it. Most people do not want this, welcome to democracy! Majority Rules (or, at least, it's supposed to)...

Hope this makes sense, it was just a rant. I'm done.

Another Update...

Another update, because we don't post very often anymore. 

Kasey and I are getting over being sick. We feel mostly "normal" now, but we were feeling pretty puny there for a while. Kasey was sick for about a week and a half, and I managed to resist until she was getting better. Luckily, I was only sick for a few days.

We got a message from our realtor the other day, we are scheduled to close on Thursday morning. We're really excited about finally getting to start moving and painting and all. Kasey is very excited about decorating.

Well, that's a fairly good little update. Check in with you later!

House update...

Inspections are finished, along with the appraisal. We are now waiting on the seller to put on a new roof and make a few small repairs the inspector found. He has plenty of time since we are not set to close until the end of April...but I was kind of hoping it would be sooner. :)

I am now spending my time trying to come up with really cute decorating ideas. It's harder than I thought it would be! 

We are buying a house!!!

We are in the process of buying a house! :) We made an offer on a cute little 3 bed/ 1.5 bath house in Valley View (here in Enid). The seller counter-offered and we accepted! (the deal included a new roof!) So here we are filling out and sending off paperwork, scheduling inspections and waiting on an appraisal. If everything goes according to plan we should close at the end of April. We plan on moving throughout the month of May and be totally moved in and settled by June. Just in time for our one year anniversary!! 

Happy Birthday Hubby!!!

Just a short little post to wish my wonderful husband a very happy 26th birthday! You are a great husband and I am so happy that I get to grow old with you. :) 

To buy or not to buy...

We're considering buying a house. Well, that may not be entirely accurate. We've been considering it for quite some time. Now we're ready. I think...

I never have gotten very excited over the idea of home ownership. I suppose I focus a little too much on the negatives. I really don't want to be the one responsible for the upkeep on a house. I don't want to be the one that has to deal with the little catastrophes that can happen around the house. It really wasn't until recently that I finally embraced some of the positive aspects of owning a house. I can see that it really is a better use of money than renting is, but it takes a whole lot of money to buy a house!

Anyway, there's not really a point to this post, other than to let people know what we're up to. So, if you happen to think about it, pray for us, that we'll be able to keep our senses about us and make good choices when it comes to buying a house.

And we're always open to advice!

Is this a joke???

I am kind of freaking out. It is 6am. Mike and Tucker are still in bed.
My left eye is swollen.  I have a very important interview today.
I am kind of freaking out.
Those are my thoughts…

Last night my eye felt funny. I went and checked things out and this is what I saw:

I have been having some problems with my eyes/contacts lately. I ordered a new kind of contacts to see if it would help but it surely did not. I called my friend that has had an eye infection before to see if this was part of the process. Nope. This never happened to him. So he put his wife on the phone. My very good friend is in nursing school and she didn’t really know what was going on either. We agreed that it would probably go away by the morning. Mike insisted on me taking some antibiotics before bed just to help it along.

This is what I found this morning:

It doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t itch. It isn’t really red. It isn’t tearing up. There is no mucus.

So should I call the doc? Should I go to the interview looking like a drunk (professional appearance is required)? Should I reschedule the interview? Should I take more antibiotics? I am kind of freaking out.

On another note here are some pics I took of Tucker last night while I was taking all the pics of my eye.