Lots of updates!

AHHHH---where does the time go? I know things are going to get worse when the baby comes, but time is flying by right now! I only have 10 weeks left until my due date. It feels like the 10 weeks will never end because daily tasks are getting a little harder now, but when I look back at what we have done in the last 10 weeks, I know our daughter will be here SO soon!

So…what have we done since the last time I wrote????

1. Trip to West Virginia
• Winter could not go by without a ski trip for the Husband. We went on a weekend trip to Snowshoe Mtn in West Virginia (about 4 hours away) with his former teammate and his wife. It was no Rocky Mountain experience, but we will go back and absolutely cannot wait to teach Baby how to ski in a few years!


2. Surprise Trip Home/Baby Shower
• Almost everyone who reads my blog knew about this before I knew about it. My wonderful, thoughtful, caring husband knew how much it killed me that no one from home would get to see my baby bump and the emotions were getting to me a lot. It was nice to see family and friends who have not gotten to share our excitement with being pregnant and expanding my family. We got some great presents, endless surprises, and some much needed time at home.


3. Day trip to DC
• We took a day trip to one of our favorite East Coast cities—Washington DC. Our family friends, The Kihntopf’s, were visiting from Wisconsin and we needed to see some familiar faces! We spent the day exploring and laughing.


4. Husband works nights L
• Since the week of St Patty’s Day, the paper mill has been working on starting up and getting back into a groove after closing down for routine maintenance and cleaning. My husband got to work nights through the process and it was/is not FUN! He worked two weeks of 60+ hours and many days we only saw each other in passing in the mornings. Now, things are starting to go back to normal, but I think we still have a week or so of weird hours L

 

Opening presents at my shower :)

Besties surprised me at my shower--Baby's first time meeting her Aunties :)

25 weeks! Taken at the end of February

i'm back!

Whooooops! It has been FAR too long since the last time I posted.  I am so sorry! I do not have a good excuse, but I will name some of the ones I usually try to use---
*busy at work
*preggo brain
*2 jobs, less energy, and scatterbrained :)

FIRST of all...I did not announce on my blog that Baby Glaser is a GIRL!  We sent postcards to our family that announced the big news in the form of a lottery scratch off (will post picture soon).  We are very excited to welcome our little girl in 3 months.

I think those all just about sum it up!  I am still working both jobs and my day job (recruiting) has gotten much busier.  I have made THREE placements so far this year, which I think is really good.  I get a bit of commission for each of them so I feel a little more worthwhile and like I am pulling my weight a bit more with bills.

We are getting ready for the baby to come in so many ways.  We are cleaning stuff out of our apartment, parting with things we never use, buying things we know we will need once she gets here.

Second trimester has been a breeze (which makes me wonder about the 3rd!)  We have been able to keep doing everything we did in the past, but some things are getting a little harder now that my belly is starting to get in the way.  I am on the verge of losing more energy again as well, but I am not afraid to relax and have Ryan pick up my slack :)

I PROMISE to post more! I am going to post pictures soon and keep a little more updated on our daily adventures :)

new year...

I cannot wait to see what 2013 has in store for us. Although, we have never gone through as many changes in one year as we did in 2012, I know we were just setting ourselves up for an awesome year this year.

2012 brought us….

• Ryan’s Bachelor’s Degree (Technically 2011, but 2012 was his first year out of school in 5 years!)
• Our move out of Michigan to Illinois
• Ryan starting his first career
• Finishing my Masters
• Celebrating our first anniversary
• Our second move to VA—even further from family
• Find out we are pregnant!
• Traveling to Europe—Ryan’s first time out of the country
• Starting my first career
• Having our first Christmas away from family :(

　

Whew, what a year!!!!

Like I said, we were only setting ourselves up for an awesome year….and I cannot wait!

adults?

I have a confession to make—I am at work. Writing a blog post. OOOPS.

The reason I do not feel bad for this is because I think this week I had to take a lot of steps toward being more adult-like …and being productive at work 100% of the time is just pushing me over the limit.

This week…

We had Christmas (like a lot of the world)….


ALONE! It was just Ryan and me and our television. We spent a lot of time relaxing in front of the TV. We watched Christmas movies, made Christmas dinner, and checked out some lights around town.
We had to work….


So long are the days of Christmas break and switching semesters. Both of us are now out of school for a very long time and that means we have more responsibility during the time we used to have NONE! Ryan was on call the whole weekend and holiday and had to go in for some time every day. I worked at my second job Christmas Eve and had to go right back to work on the 26^th! There are 5 people in my whole office this week. It is utterly boring.
I look pregnant now.


My tummy started sticking out big time yesterday. I do not think it will go back to it’s old self any time soon! It is here to stay for at least the next…24 weeks!

Do you see how all these things could lead me to feel a little TOO grown up all at once!

On a better note, we had a GREAT holiday. We are so blessed to have family and friends who definitely did not forget us even though we are further than we ever have been away during the holidays. We even had tons of presents to open from our parents and other family. We got to Skype with my family during their holiday dinner—which made us feel much more at home.

I thought it would be a lot harder than it was to be away. We got to start a few of our own traditions around our new town and spent so much time together. Lately, we really crave time together and last weekend was just what we needed to feel a bit better about spending endless hours working and keeping up a house (ugh more adult talk!)

Thankful...

Ryan and I recently had the chance to take a quick-VERY quick- trip home for  Thanksgiving.  It was soooooo nice to see family and friends, but of course too short of a trip.  We also drove...ugh. It took us 16 hours there and 18 hours back because of weather and traffic! This meant a lot of car time and since we were both in need of sleep...the driver was usually pretty bored.  I took this time to think about all these things people are posting on Facebook that they are thankful for.  Although I do not have nearly enough time (I am at work!!!) to post 30 different things I am thankful for, I decided to post the top 10.

I am thankful I finally have a career-like job. One that I can use experiences from in the future.


I am thankful Ryan has a career that will continue to provide for our family. He is a very hardworking person and I know that there are days he does not want to go in for a 12 hours shift, but he truly enjoys what he does and it makes it much easier.


I am thankful for the opportunity to move away from family and friends and everything we have ever known. It has made us a much stronger couple and given us a lot of life-enriching experiences…but….


I am also thankful that I have family and friends in Michigan and various other places around the world who keep in contact with me. Even though I love our life, I would be nowhere without the support from those closest to me.


I am thankful for the few friends we have met in Williamsburg. The extra special ones can relate to Ryan and me so much that it makes it easy to be friends.


I am thankful for a loving husband who I thought I would be sick of seeing everyday by now, but everyday we countdown to the time we get to spend together and could not imagine spending that time with anyone else.


I am thankful for my education—even though paying those bills is going to be a chore. I know that the experiences I gained during those years are unparalleled and will pay off in the end.


I am thankful lots of little things like: books, cheesy movies, exercise, chocolate, comfort food in general, memories, holidays, warm blankets when I am freezing cold, music, alone time, traveling, learning new things and the ability to have confidence in myself (mostly)!


I am thankful for technology. I hate it just as much, but it allows me to keep in touch, do my job more efficiently, and stay educated so I have learned to like it.


I am thankful for my health and the healthy choices I make…and the opportunity to announce (except most of y’all know) that we are expecting an equally healthy baby in late Spring and we could not be happier.

Now onto DECEMBER! and the NEW YEAR?!?!?! What happened to 2012?

New job!

On November 1, I started a new job/career at Tyges International.  Tyges is a local recruiting company that I have been talking to since August. We decided to push my start date back to after our Europe trip, so it seemed like I had the job forever before I got to start.  The last week and a half have been spent learning the ropes and all the ins and outs to the recruiting business.

Tyges recruits for manufacturing companies all over the country which has led too even more learning for me. I know almost nothing about manufacturing so I am becoming more educated on all the processes that happen--there is SO much to learn! I already know some random things from some of my business classes, growing up in Michigan, and living near Michigan Tech for a bit.  I cannot wait to learn more because I know that it can only open more doors in the future.  

Here is the website if you wanna check it out...my name is even in the list of employees already!
http://tyges.com/

European travels!

AHHHH! October was a crazy month! I apologize for being off the radar for most of the month, but we were busy the whole time and I didn’t find extra time to sit in front of the computer for any great length.  Therefore, my life needs a whole lot of updating and I promise to write more often in the coming months.

ONE of the most exciting things about last month was our first family trip overseas!  Ryan and I took a 10 day vacation to England, Finland, and Estonia.  The weather was yucky for most of the trip—considering we left sunny beautiful-hasn’t-even-turned-fall-yet weather in Virginia.  We definitely did not pack enough warm clothes!  We also went at a non-peak vacation season so a lot of what we wanted to do was not even open or available.  Regardless, we had a spectacular time during the whole trip and we could not have asked for better friends to spend it with. 

We flew to England, stayed 2 days, flew to Estonia/Finland, stayed 3 days, flew back to England for a few days.

The reason we chose England was because my best friend Kellie, her husband Joe, and daughter Ava live just south of London.  She has not had many visitors in her 2.5 years of living there AND it is not often that we will have friends conveniently living in other countries (although right now we have quite a few!) so we decided to take advantage of this opportunity and visit.  Kellie showed us around London—where we saw Queen Elizabeth riding in one of her cars down the street by Big Ben—and also took us to Windsor Castle (where the Queen lives) and Hampton Court Palace (where King Henry the VIII lived).  We also got to see one of Joe’s hockey games—which I think was cool for him because no one they know from the States ever gets to see him play in person anymore.  Best of all, we got some amazing, much-needed quality time between best friends and Ryan and I got to spend lots of time with Kellie and Ava.

Another reason for the trip was to visit our other friends Kristi and Dave in Finland.  Dave is one of Ryan’s offensive line teammates from college and he is studying this year in Sweden/Finland.  He had the week off from school so we planned the trip around this week.  Kristi is about to have a baby (within the next 6 weeks or so) and they have been away from family, friends, and everything they know for the whole pregnancy.  It was nice to get to spend some time with friends who made us feel like we were back in the UP and nothing had changed over the last year.  Again, we were hit with some cold, overcast weather and a lot of places shut down for the winter.  We still managed to have a relaxing and adventurous time.  We spent most of the time in the Old Town part of Tallinn, Estonia.  This was a great place to just take in historic buildings and neat sights. Then, we took a ferry over to Helsinki, Finland and did a bit of sightseeing there.  We took a boat ride to the islands of Suomenlinna, which had a lot of history.  Most of the museums were closed so we made our own tour and explored the nooks and crannies of the island.

Even though it seemed like everything we wanted to do was closed, we were surrounded by friends the whole trip and that is what made it worthwhile.  We have been a little friend-sick over the last few months and this trip was just what we needed to make us feel better!