Some house updates

Here are a few pictures and updates on our new house!

We painted our bonus room / 4th bedroom a deep brown, it was a very light sky-blue.  We also bought a sleeper sofa (thanks for helping us get it up the stairs Johnny!) and can accomodate more guests than just our guest bedroom (we needed it on Thanksgiving weekend!).  This is the room above the garage and has one of the dormers so there is an interesting "nook" in the room.  Here is the before and after:

Before:

Here is after, with a panoramic view of the shots:

We also painted the laundry room.  It was an off-white color and we painted it blue.  Here is before:

Proof that Jim still can paint as good as when he worked for Lindbergh School District:

And the after with our new washer and dryer:

Here is the guest room set up now (sorry no before pictures)

The guest bedroom walk-in closet is part of one of the other dormers and is neat nook in it too!

Here is our christmas tree set up with our dog sleeping under it

We'll post more once the nursery and other rooms are set up.

http://colleenandjimdahlem.blogspot.com/

Kylie

We thought this was a cute photo of our dog Kylie.  She always sleeps at the top of the stairs.  Here it is:

Baby Update

We went to the doctor yesterday and after 15.5 weeks, Colleen has not yet gained one pound!  She doesn't look pregnant either:

We heard the baby's heartbeat and the doctor said it sounded great.  Our next appointment in a couple weeks will be another ultrasound, which hopefully can finally tell us if it's a boy or girl!!!

We also found out that Colleen will probably need an C-section due to a lower abdominal condition which required her to have surgery two years ago.  Having a C-section will prevent her from having to repeat the surgery after the birth.  Even though Colleen's a little worried about the C-section, the positive is now at least we can now better plan the date!

We have a website for our baby which includes more ultrasound photos, updates, our registry, etc

http://www.totsites.com/tot/babydahlem

Leaf Raking! Leaves, leaves, and more leaves.

Well, we moved to the east coast partly because we missed all the trees...well we love the trees but hate the raking!  The town of Cary lets you rake the leaves to the curb then they come by and pick them up.  We have about 12 deciduous trees in our front and back yard, and we worked all day one Sunday raking our leaves to the front, look at all the leaves on the curb from one end of our lawn to the other:

By the following weekend the lawn was covered again in leaves.  Blah.  So we took our lawn mower and mowed them, all into mulch.

All this raking is the price to pay for enjoying foliage in the fall!

http://colleenandjimdahlem.blogspot.com/

We just got back from the latest ultrasound!!! It was a test to determine the risk for Down's Syndrome, Trisomy 13, and Trisomy 18. The good news is, on the ultrasound there is no indication of any risk (they measure the thickness of the neck), they also took blood tests from Colleen which will give more indication in about week when the results come back. However, they were not able to determine the sex at this time, so we'll have to wait to see if it will be a baby boy or baby girl.




Attached are two shots from the ultrasound. The picture on the left was hilarious, the baby was litterally doing the 'raise the roof' with both arms! The nurse, Colleen, and myself were cracking up. We said it had to be Colleen's baby because Colleen loves to dance! The picture on the right is a good profile, he/she is almost sucking their thumb in it!

It also had the hickups while we were watching. It was really cute to see the whole body have a hickup every few seconds. (the nurse said it is completely normal to have hickups at this stage).



That's the latest from here!



-Jim and Colleen

Washington DC

We were excited to know that our friends Cliff and Betty (who live in Sitka Alaska) were going to be in Washington DC for a conference.  We decided to go up to DC to see them and to visit Mike and Lisa Pozsgay to see the house they just rented in Silver Spring, MD, and to see Jim's cousin Susan who lives in Virginia near the Pentagon.

Unfortunately, Cliff and Betty came down with H1N1 while in DC, and because Colleen is in the high-risk group for that flu we decided it would be better to not meet up with them while we were in DC.  We felt bad that they flew all the way across the country and then got sick...and we were sad we couldn't see them even though we were in the same city.

So we packed up with Kylie

and drove up Friday morning and went straight to the mall downtown.  Here are some photos of us on the mall with the dog

Then we made it out to Mike and Lisa's and saw their new place.  They have a nice set up, they live near a trail that feels like it is almost out in the country, yet live near the end of the red line so they can take the Metro right into the City.  Here is some more info on it from their blog:
http://pozsgayandromito.blogspot.com/2009/06/new-diggs.html

Friday night we went to Comet Ping Pong for some Pizza.  The tables are all old ping pong tables, and they have ping pong tables in the back to play on:
http://www.cometpingpong.com/

The next day we went to a local breakfast place called "The Original Pancake House" but then found out while we were there that there are over 100 of them nationwide.  Oh well, it seemed like a local to place to us!

After breakfast we went to the C&O canal trail along the Potomac River.

It was a canal from Washington DC to Cumberland, MD that closed down in the 1920s.  http://www.nps.gov/choh/index.htm

The National Park Service took it over and now it is a national park and a trail.  We got to see the Great Falls of the Potomac, a series of waterfalls that were very impressive!

That night we met up with Susan at The Palm for dinner

Because of "morning sickness", Colleen threw up her entire meal about 20 minutes after we ate, at the lobby bathroom of the show we were going to see.  Thanks to Susan for helping out!  After Colleen thought she felt better, we headed in to the Capitol Steps show.
http://www.capsteps.com/

Sunday we drove back--after eating Einstein Bagels for breakfast and Friendly's for dinner!

(Thanks to Mike and Lisa for letting us stay with them, and for letting us 'board' Kylie in their house, much to the detriment of their cute cat Julian)

We're Expecting!

Most of you already knew this, but for those of you who didn't, WE ARE EXPECTING!  Our little guy or girl is due to arrive on May 23, 2010.

This is a picture of our first ultrasound at 2 months where we saw our little bean moving around and also heard the heartbeat.  The doctor said that we could go ahead and tell anyone we wanted because after hearing a heartbeat the risks of a miscarriage are very low. 

We have been very excited and it was hard to keep it a secret for the month that we knew but didnt want to tell anyone yet.  We even had family visit our house and see the room that we left empty and they asked us if we had anything to tell them, aka, is this a nursery???

We are now finishing our third month and almost done with the first trimester...boy will Colleen be happy when that happens.  She has been very tired and has some bouts of morning sickness that actually hit her at night.  She even threw up while visiting her in-laws in Missouri! :-(  She has had a hard time eating healthy because when she doesnt feel good all she can stomach are things like Bagel Bites and Spaghettios!

We have another doctors appointment today and then another ultrasound a week from Friday where they are going to try and determine the sex (among other things!)  But by next Friday we could know if it is a Baby Boy Dahlem or Baby Girl Dahlem!  That will help us with narrowing down our list of names!

Canoeing with the dog

About a month ago we decided to take our canoe out for the first time (since getting it from Colleen's mom on Labor Day weekend.)

We took our dog Amber and left Kylie at home because the canoe could probably only hold one dog with two people!  (Amber is now back with Colleen's uncle up in DC)

We tied up the canoe to our car

Drove 8 miles over to Lake Johnston by Colleen's school, and put in at the loading beach

Amber was a little nervous at first with shaky legs, but she eventually warmed up to it:

and eventually just continuously leaned over the edge of the canoe and drank the lake water!

There are other places we want to canoe too.  The City of Raleigh has a canoeing park along the Neuse River with about 15 miles of canoeable river with multiple put in and take outs. 

We stopped by to check it out one time when we were driving by the most upstream launch

Above this you can put in with kayaks and go through the small falls/small rapids shown below.  Some kayakers were setting up a little upstream of us and we kept waiting to see them go through it, but they never got going the whole time we were there.  So we just hung out on the rocks (it was back in September and it was warm and pleasant back then) and enjoyed the sounds of the water.

 

Go Blues!

We went to the hockey game with Jim's cousin Johnny and his cousin's wife Meredith the other night to see the St Louis Blues play here against the Carolina Hurricanes.  We left for the stadium really early so we could eat at the game, and not knowing how traffic and parking was.   Well, we had plenty of time to spare, notice the scoreboard clock, it says 22 mintues, that was until the players came out to start warming up!

So needless to say we finished all our food and drink before the game even started.

The fans call themselves Caniacs, and what was actually neat was that they all tail-gate before the game in the parking lots.  It looked like a college football game tail gate, there so many people grilling, etc.

Anyway, the game started off with a few fights in the first 5 minutes.

And the blues pulled out to a quick 3-0 lead in the first period going on to win 5-2.

Go Blues!!!!