Florida - Day 1 and 2

We decided to take a "baby-moon", one last non-kids trip. We are taking a 4 night extended weekend trip to Hollywood, FL. (Hollywood is just north of Miami and just south of Ft. Lauderdale) We brought Kylie and we are staying in a dog-friendly hotel here 1 mile from the beach! We drove down and arrived last night (Thursday) and we will leave Monday.

On our way down the Florida coast, south of Daytona Beach, we stopped at the Ponce De Leon Inlet Lighthouse, the tallest lighthouse in Florida.

It is 175 feet high, 210 steps to the top. Even though Colleen is now 5 months pregnant, she climbed the steps with no problem!

It was a nice view from the top...

After that we went over to the beach to check it out before the sun set. We were able to legally drive on the beach and park our vehicle on it.

Colleen (remember 5 months pregnant) did a great cartwheel with the lighthouse in the background.

Jim tried to do a cartwheel and....it didn't turn out so great.

Colleen even got to see a couple manatees, well sort of:

We then arrive last night in our hotel, and this morning we took Kylie to the dog park near here. She loved the little pool at the dog park and just lounged in it after every ball retrieval. It was really funny and we'll try and get some pics tomorrow.

We then went down to the beach. The water was a pretty blue-green and the temp was around 75-77 today, perfect!

After hanging out at the beach for awhile, we went to go eat at an Italian cafe in downtown Hollywood.

Colleen even posed near this shrub that looked like a lady with shopping bags!

In case you're wondering, Hollywood, Florida was founded in the 1920s and is named after Hollywood, California because the town squares resemble each other.

We have a name for our baby!!!

We now have a name for our baby! Her name will be:

Avery Elizabeth Dahlem

We both think Avery is a pretty name. We also had fun looking up the meanings of names and we found that Avery means "blond ruler", and other sources say that it means "wise one". Maybe someday Avery will be president or own her own business!

We also both liked the name Elizabeth and we both have a maternal grandmother with that name so we thought it was a perfect middle name for Avery!

Christmas Trip

For Christmas this year we went to St Louis and stopped in Nashville for 2 days so we could see a show.  We took Kylie with us on the trip and we drove straight from our ultrasound appoinment (see next post below) in Raleigh towards Nashville.  However, to avoid the mega-snow storm we had to drive all the way south to Atlanta then up to Nashville.  Western North Carolina mountains were expecting over 20 inches of snow that day and we obviously wanted to avoid that!  We drove through rain the whole way, hit terrible rush-hour traffic in Atlanta, and finally made it to Nashville.  We saw the Radio City Rockettes Christmas Spectacular at the Grand Ole Oprey and really enjoyed it!

Then after two nights in Nashville we headed to St Louis.  We were very happy to know that some of our friends would also be in St Louis.  LJ and Vinnie from San Diego were visiting LJ's family in Defiance, MO and Cliff and Betty were in town from Alaska to visit Cliff's family in Lebanon, IL just east of St Louis.  We went to LJ's family's farm out in Defiance.  On our way there we visited the Daniel Boone home site in St Charles County

LJ's family has a really great farm with ponds and barns, etc.  Her dad gave us the big tour of the property.

Afterwards we went to get some pizza at place near their farm.

The next day we met Cliff and Betty for lunch downtown in St Louis.  We don't have any photos of it, but we really enjoyed our visit with them!  It was great to catch up and re-live some of Jim and Cliff's funny stories from when they were in college together.

Probably the best part of the trip was the snow!

Kylie has never seen snow before and absolutely loved running around in the snow.  She grabbed a football into her mouth and ran around back and forth for so long.  She loved sliding in it when she reached the end of the yard and had to turn around again.  Then she just laid down in the snow and started eating it.

She also got a great present for Christmas, a gigantic raw-hide in the shape of a huge bone.  It is now 9 days later and she still has about 20% of it left.  She just knaws on it all day long.

We hope everybody had a great holiday season!

IT'S A GIRL!!!

Before we headed to St Louis for the holidays, we went to the doctor for a full anatomy-scan ultrasound.  At this visit we leared that we are going to have a baby girl!  We are very excited to finally know the gender of the baby so we can start planning the nursery and buying clothes, etc.

The ultrasound also indicated the baby looks healthy.  They looked at the heart, arteries, brain, stomach, etc.  She is now about 7 inches long from head to feet (but all curled up in the fetal position)

We are almost ready to announce the name of the baby that we have picked out.  We'll post it here and on our baby's webiste http://www.totsites.com/tot/babydahlem

And at our latest doctor visit Colleen finally gained some weight!  She hadn't gained one pound yet by her 15 week checkup, but at her 19 week checkup she has gained 8 pounds and finally is showing that baby bump.

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/