So this one time it snowed and everyone can now guess that I'm not just getting fat.  

Also, these two things are probably not related.

And now, the perfect example of "puppy dog eyes." 

How can you say no?

Proof of our uber boring life

While I am a little behind and have pictures on my real camera of our "Neck 'N Nog" party and some baby bump pictures (I failed and took only one Thanksgiving photo), I just thought I'd take a moment to share the photos that we snap in our boring daily lives.

(L) Now that we have a house to decorate, the projects are getting more ambitious!I bought a whole bunch of barnwood that is currently sitting in our family room hoping to one day be magically turned into a TV stand and end table. 

(R) The old "Nebraska Crossing Outlets" between Omaha and Lincoln were recently revamped into REAL outlets. So long Osh Kosh B'Gosh, Van Huesen and Indian Motorcycles (that was pretty much the extent of the stores).  We now have Gap, Banana, Coach, Michael Kors, Nike, Under Armour (hooray!) and so on.  I made the mistake of going opening day because heck, it's only 10 minutes from our house.  Once I arrived I remembered how much I dislike shopping and crowds.  Combine the two and I'm not a happy camper. Oh and clothes never fit right when I wasn't pregnant, so I'm not quite sure why I thought this would be an enjoyable experience.  I blame the baby brain.  I hoped that Motherhood Maternity would be a good place to start shopping for my first maternity clothes but it was a terrible experience.  The prices were too high and the jeans were... mom jeans.  Somehow they just made me look extra wide, even though they were hugging my hips.  No, thank you. I'll stick with the unbuttoned pants for now.  But back to the pictures - that is the line to get INTO Coach! 

About a month ago Ryno was excessively scratching his neck and WOULD NOT STOP. He was a hot mess of scabs, puss, and fur (too graphic?).  We tried to handle the situation ourselves with some cleansing wipes, guaze, and athletic tape but it would just slide down and the next morning it was a fresh wound once more.  On the same day I went to the outlets (yep, great day) I finally gave in and took him to the vet.  It was some sort of allergic reaction and he had developed "hot spots."  $150, a shaved neck, 10 pills, and one tube of ointment later we were on the road to recovery. I spoiled him with long walk through the park, but at home he would just hide his neck because it was so painful.  Poor little guy.

Now comes the really fun and random pictures on my iPhone. The nipple cream my friend gave me and recommends (the pic was to send to best friend, Bri), an extra bone that Ryno came home with after being puppy sat by Rob and Melissa over Thanksgiving, and the dresser we are most likely going to buy.  Super exciting stuff, hey?

Now this really IS exciting! We got to see our little babe again! Ultrasounds are seriously one of the most amazing pieces of equipment out there.  It's just amazing.  We weren't quite prepared for when they switched over to "High Definition" and holy moly, there was our baby's face! Talk about getting real!  Because we're not finding out the gender, I didn't mind waiting until 23 weeks to get the anatomy ultrasound.  I knew the little thing would just get even more developed and defined as I let it grow.  Ryan is warming up to the idea of letting it be a surprise, but the temptation to find out was almost too much as we had to turn our heads as the tech inspected the lower half of the body to make sure everything was okay.

The heart rate has consistently been 149 the past few visits, and it's currently approximately 1 lb. 2 oz and in the 35th percentile.  I am totally fine with a little baby.  The doc said it'll most likely be in the 6-7 lb range which to me is normal.  Does anyone else think that babies are getting bigger? Or is it just my friends having all 8lb+ babies?

To top off the baby excitement, Ryan also felt the wee one for the first time just a few days before we went in for the visit.  If it wasn't real for him before, it definitely is now! 

Kindness and Panic Attacks

First, can I just tell you how awesome the people are in Nebraska? It is the number one reason we moved back here.  Not just for our fabulous friends, but the people here in general are just good people.  Take for example my other day at work.

Normally I am only dealing with the students who make not-so-great decisions and it can get pretty negative having to be the rule enforcer.  But I must say that most of these kids take it like a champ.  They admit the error of their ways and accept the punishment in a humble and apologetic manner (most of them at least). Then I have days like the other day that just can't help but brighten my  mood!

As I was walking into the building for breakfast, a student was ahead of me quite a ways.  He had already entered the first set of doors and was going through the second set when he saw me walking up.  He kindly waited in the vestibule then came completely outside and held the door open for me even though I was at least five steps away still! What a sweetheart.  Then, it happened again at lunch!  A different student was holding the door open for his group of friends and saw me coming, still at least 10 steps away (which to me is that awkward time to wait). But he did it; he stood there with a smile on his face holding the door open for me.  Nebraskans are such good folks! (Ryan says I just looked really cute that day).

Ryan has even said when he comes to eat in our cafeteria how nice everyone is.  The staff and students all say please and thank you and "excuse me" when they are in your way (and even when you're in theirs). I love it.

Now onto the panic attack.

Holy moly, I just almost had a heart attack.  Ryan and I are going to St. George for Thanksgiving and flying in and out of Vegas. I was checking my email to put our flight times on our calendar.  I open it up and it lists the date as SUNDAY FEBRUARY 2.  WHAAAAAAAT??? I was in a big hurry booking our tickets and I had to do it through two separate accounts paying cash and using points and it was quite a mess. But I was pretty sure I got the date right at least. That's a huge thing to mess up.  The hot flash came on immediately and my heart was racing.  There was no way we could get a flight back to Omaha now on such short notice!! Thankfully it hit me fairly quickly (but not quick enough in my opinion) that Ryan was going BACK to Vegas in February for a conference. WHEW.  Not cool.

Women in Engineering

So although in the end, a career in Engineering wasn't for me, I highly highly encourage girls to get involved in Math and Science.  It always makes me sad to see the statistics that girls perform better than boys in these subjects from Elementary to High School yet they don't consider a career or higher education in any of these fields.  I saw this video this morning on Good Morning America and Upworthy.com and I loved it.  You go, girls! I will not be raising princesses in my home.

Pretty Impressive, huh?

I bet you've never seen anything like this before. I sure hadn't. 

Well helloooo!

I take full responsibility for being a failure at blogging lately.  When I am on the computer 40 hours a week at work, the last thing I want to do when I get home is sit on the computer at home.  So instead, I get home and sit on the couch with my husband.  It's pretty awesome.  We're pretty awesome (hence the title of the blog).  

In all reality though, one of us always has something on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesdays each week so that only leaves us with Thursdays and the weekends.  The past two weekends we went out of town so I was not ashamed when we may have spent the entire last weekend in front of the TV (I hate you, Netflix) getting addicted to a show called Arrow.  But it was all so Ryan could get over a cold; it was well needed, I promise.  I gotta do what the sick person asks!

Alright, Ryan is home and it's time to wrap this thing up.  So you're not going to get the total update. But you will get weekend getaway #1 - Kansas City for the half marathon.  As I mentioned I was a liiiiittle nervous for this thing.  Unfortunately, it went more poorly than I expected.  The 10k we did a month before gave me too much confidence in my pregnant body.  As the pictures will show, a few weeks makes all the difference.  This time around it was my hips.  That whole loosening of joints pregnancy thing was not working in my favor.  Only a few miles in my hips started hurting until about halfway through they were killing me and the walk/jog began.  Sadly without about 3 miles left there was very little jogging to be had unless it was downhill.  And it was freeeeezing. As you can see by our hands tucked in our sleeves even at the end of the race!

Ryan had fun telling people I was pregnant. 

 Melissa convinced us to run the race back in May and she at least rocked it. Go you!

We got to stay with an old resident and classmate of mine, Joanna, and her hubby she also met at the dorms.

We had to compare our bellies.  However, Ryan can suck his in and I can't hide mine anymore!

Maybe in future posts you'll get a few other pictures from recent events (because I've actually got energy again - YAY!)  For now though, be amazed as I am at what a difference 5 and 10 weeks make in a pregnancy!  And just so you know, I swear I do not look as big in real life as the 18 weeks picture makes me seem.  I wore a form fitting shirt today and I don't think most people would know that I'm pregnant.  What's that saying, the camera makes you gain 15 pounds? I'm sticking with that story.

Christmas Cards (for cheap!)

I've been toying around with the idea for the past few months of creating a few Christmas (or Holiday) Card templates and selling them at very reasonable prices for all of us that are poor (and cheap) out there.  I am also available for custom cards, as well! I can (attempt to) recreate any pricier cards you see on websites like Shutterfly or Snapfish.  I still consider myself a beginning designer, so I'm keeping my prices low (for now). Watch out for when I become famous! :)

• IF I have the time to create stock templates I will charge $10 and sell you the digital copy (jpg and/or pdf) of your file.
• Custom cards will be $25 for single-sided and $40 for double-sided (with digital copy of file).

And the best part? I had a friend recommend a website called "Overnight Prints" for printing and it is so inexpensive!

I've seen two of my products printed through this website and everyone has been very happy with the quality! It's only $4.15 for 25 single-sided 4"x6" Value Postcards which are the same quality they ordered. Double-sided only goes up to $5.35 and 100 double-sided is only $13.85 (plus shipping).  If you want to upgrade to a larger 5"x7" card, the price doubles but it's still only $26.95 for 100 cards.

You really can't beat that if you're looking for an inexpensive way to send Christmas Cards! Too bad stamps are so stinkin' expensive now.  BUT, the digital copy can always be emailed out if stamps aren't in your budget.

Please message or email me if you are interested and let's chat!

caitlin.b.sweeney AT gmail DOT com

Here are my most recent projects and they are definitely some of my favorites so far!

Wish me luck!

Do you know what two things don't mix?

Size XS compression gear and being 16 weeks pregnant.

And another bad combination?

Attempting to run a half marathon with practically no training.

Welcome to my Saturday morning!

A friend of ours really wanted to run another half marathon and Ryan thought he could do another full.  So back in May we went ahead and signed up for the race in KC which is tomorrow.  Training started off well for me! After a few weeks I had a great four mile run around the lake near our house and was feeling awesome.  The next day is when the pregnancy back spasms started.  Then work continued to be crazy and all I wanted to do was sleep.  Needless to say, running was not a priority for this lady.

Now it's October and the mornings are a chilly 45ish degrees which is not ideal.  Also less than ideal as I mentioned is that none of my warm-weather gear fits.  Why is compression gear so tight in the first place? I settled on one of Ryan's that says size M/L.  It is SKIN TIGHT.  That stuff sure does have a lot of stretch in it, sheesh!

So yes, wish us luck tomorrow.  Ryan dropped down to the half because his training regimen turned out a lot like mine.  We "ran" a 10k about a month ago and I think if I can jog really slowly (I'm talking 11 min/mile pace) I can make it 6-7 miles without having to take a long break to walk.  That is, if there is minimal hills.  Which there is not.  But I'm told it's supposed to be a gorgeous run through downtown KC so hopefully the sights can entertain me for the 3ish hours I am pounding the pavement!

The Whole Story!

Well, the word is out, thank goodness. I'm finally pregnant! And I know that when I say "finally" that what felt like an eternity for me, is only the beginning for some couple's stories.  It took Ryan and I almost exactly one year to the day that I went off of birth control to finally see those beautiful pink lines on a pregnancy test. 

We were too excited to even notice that the test was upside down for the picture.

I know a lot of people won't care about the whole story, but I personally wish I would have heard more stories like this before we began trying for a little one.  From almost everything I'd seen and heard, getting pregnant was easy.  Everyone was doing it these days!  It's really not that complicated, right? Until you have to explain it to a child... But back to my expectations.  I figured it wouldn't happen right away so I planned that it would happen three months after I went off birth control. 

On July 13, 2012 Ryan had his last class and he received his White Coat. As we were walking away from the ceremony, and all the stress was finally over he said he was ready. He always knew he couldn't even bear to think about it with school in the way and he was right. The day it was done, he was ready. That was the last day that I took birth control.

The timing was perfect! The plan was to get pregnant around October and have a summer baby after Ryan graduated. The first few months came and went and it was harder on me than I expected.  Deep down I hoped that I would be one of the lucky ones that got pregnant right away. October came and hopes were very high. This is the plan - October was the month! But again, nothing. It also didn't help that in one week I had 10 - yes TEN - friends announce on Facebook they were pregnant. That was supposed to be ME. Ryan was so incredibly supportive through all of this and just held me as I cried. He also brought home what I called my "I'm-sorry-you're-not-pregnant" flowers. Lucky for me (and him), I only cried on that one day that I found out and the rest of the month I was mostly fine.

In the next few months my sadness turned to anger.  Then, as I was in the Temple one month, the word "infertility" ran through my head over and over again.  I knew that I had to stop being angry and figure out the problem.  Although it had only been six months, after that prompting, I knew something was wrong.  I bought some ovulation tests and began tracking to make sure the timing was right.  Everything became very calculated and scheduled.  It was stressing us out and we were incredibly frustrated by the whole process.  I was getting angry again because as time went on, I realized I had no other plan.  That is when I wrote this post.

When my period started on my birthday (a week late), I had had enough.  I called the fertility doctor the next day and set up an appointment.  I didn't care that it hadn't been the year of trying that they recommend. I knew something was wrong and we were going to do our part to figure it out sooner rather than later.  I was checked out and everything seemed to be fine on my end.  Ryan, however, through the help of multiple doctors found out that the hormones in his body were all out of whack.  This is where we were very grateful to be at Duke.  He was able to see an endocrinologist that is one of the few in the country that specialize in exactly what he needed.  She was able to get him started on medication that after it kicked in, impacted many areas of his life, not just fertility.  (Remember all those sleeping pictures of Ryan?). In terms of fertility, they said it should start helping after 3-4 months. Well, he started taking his shots (yes, they are nasty scary self-inflicted shots) in April and lo and behold, three months later I got pregnant!

About a week after I ovulated in July, I started getting very intense and painful back spasms that lasted a week.  After doing some research it could either have been from ovulating or a very early sign of pregnancy.  At the end of the week, just a few days before Ryan had to take his PT boards, I found out I was pregnant. Despite my excitement, with his stress levels, I knew the good news would have to wait until the test was done.  I was so anxious to get home from work that day! When I showed up, I brought him celebratory root beer for finishing his exam, but it had an extra little surprise on it.  And boy, was he surprised!! And he was especially grateful that I told him AFTER he took the test.  He immediately started stressing about having to provide for a wife and now a baby.  But of course we are so excited (and terrified!).  Like most first time parents, our days are filled with "Is this really happening?" and "What are we doing?" moments. But that's the fun of it, right?

Once we found out about the baby, life just took off at full-speed.  I was working anywhere from 50-70 hours a week, Ryan passed boards and started his job and we moved into the house.  Hence why I did not blog for awhile there!  Thankfully, I can hardly complain about being pregnant.  I was absolutely exhausted at the end of the day and suddenly had sympathy for Ryan's inability to stay awake.  There was no morning sickness, just a lot of trips to the bathroom (but I also drink A LOT).  Oh, and I was STARVING. I wanted to eat everything in sight!  At about 11 weeks the tables turned and food got gross.  Really my only aversion has been chicken.  I've had a few bad experiences and I've made sure to stay away from it the past week or two.  We will see what the rest of this pregnancy brings!

Like I said at the beginning, I know people have tried longer, had a miscarriage (or multiple) and have been through many more struggles than us in their journey to have children.  But that's why I'm sharing my story! And I know not everyone is comfortable sharing.  But we didn't mind telling others about it, we still don't, and I hope that it makes someone else feel just a little bit better about being angry or upset or sad that it's not going the way they "planned."  I found the more I brought it up, there were a lot of women who had struggles as well.  I needed their support. In a world (especially a church) surrounded by babies, it's just nice to know you're not alone.

Surprise!

Housewarming Party

Look at me, two posts in one night!

And still no more pictures of the house.  Just some glimpses here and there but mostly views of a bunch of good-looking blonde folks eating some tasty food.  

This one's mostly for the fam.  For poor Ashley and Shelby who are far away from Nebraska and couldn't come.  You missed out! And we missed you!

Remember when?

Remember when we lived in North Carolina and we did all sorts of fun things?

Remember when we were so excited to move to Omaha to be close to our friends and family

Remember when Ryan had to study all summer so we spent hardly
any time with said friends and family?

And then remember when we both started working and I had to work
even on the weekends so we had even less time with family and friends? 

Oh and remember that one time we bought a house where we used our awesome
family and friends to help us move and then we still haven't had time to see them?

Yeah, that was pretty much the summary from May until now.

But in case that wasn't enough, here are a few things that were documented along the way.

Baseball comes before studying for this kid (and before work for me, apparently)

This is Melissa, one of those awesome friends we returned to Omaha for. We went to a spontaneous "She and Him" concert on a school night! We didn't know any of the songs, but it sure felt like the perfect summer night.

We couldn't help but spend some time at Nebraska Furniture Mart drooling over furniture that is probably too big for our house and our budget. 

We gathered some friends for Ryan's traditional Birthday Baseball and Fireworks.  While it was at TD Ameritrade instead of Rosenblatt, it was still filled with amazing people (and nachos).

We went to my Mom and Pop's for a spectacular neighborhood fireworks display on July 4.

Shortly thereafter the gang gathered in Wisconsin/Minnesota for baby Addie's baby blessing.

(Oh and I designed her AWESOME announcement)

And we found more furniture.

And slept on the furniture kindly lent to us by Tommy and Jayme in our basement abode.

We ventured out to a UNO Soccer Game.

We scaled ladders and roofs to paint a house.

We found our house stocked with the necessities when we moved in - water, diet coke, and beer. (Compliments of our realtor).

We had our first family photo in front of said house.

Ryno quickly remembered his favorite piece of furniture.

And it didn't take long for Ryan to find his favorite place to lounge, either.

So there you have it.  That's the extent of our summer.  Please come back.  We were robbed.  Reality has been unkind to us. (Only in terms of time. Let's be honest, real life has been AWESOME to us). Let's try it all again, okay? Please, September?

DINKS

DINKS: Double Income No Kids

This is a big milestone, guys. We both have big kid jobs.  And it shows.

Have I gone grocery shopping yet this month? No.

Have I even thought about grocery shopping yet? No.

Are we living off of Mac & Cheese and Frozen Pizza? Most Definitely.

Did I work almost 50 hours last week? You betcha.

Am I ready to fall face first into my bed after every day of work?  No doubt.

Is Ryan already stressed after just one regular day of work? Mmhmm.

This is the life.

But for real, we are very grateful for the money. 

But boy, is this taking some getting used to.

We are officially in survival mode through the end of this month when we get to move into OUR HOUSE!