More Maddi pictures

I'm going to try another way of posting pictures. If you click on this link you should be able to see the photos I put in snapfish. But just in case it doesn't work, here are a few more pictures of our adorable niece!

Maddison - Photo Shoot 1

We made it out to meet Maddison this weekend and are not looking forward to heading for home later this morning! Gammy Kuipers and I have had a good time dressing Miss Maddi up and playing photo shoot! Here are just a few pictures to get you started!


This is what happens when you leave Gammy, Mommy, and Aunt Krista alone with lil Maddi.

Bright eyes!

Maddi still has a little problem with jaundice, so she has to spend quite a bit of time under her "glow blanket".

It's hard to read, but Maddi is wearing her "I love my Auntie" outfit.

Three generations.

Check back for more updates once Aunt Krista and Uncle Trever return to Illinois!

We're having a....

After nearly an hour of watching the computer screen, a trip to empty my bladder, and lots of pushing on my belly to get its little butt out of my belly button, we finally got a picture of what appear to be little girl parts! The technician doing the ultrasound decided we might want to wait for a second ultrasound before we paint the nursery, but if she was a betting woman, she would bet on a girl! The three lines are the girl parts, but most importantly she didn't see any boy parts!

She took lots of pictures and measurements. Everything looks good and is measuring just about a week ahead of schedule. She would put me at a due date of June 13 but says the doctor probably won't change it. The little thing apparently likes to have her hands in her face and her mouth was moving most of the time! It appears that she is going to be a thumb sucker!

In other news, we are very excited to officially be an aunt and uncle! Maddison Kenzie was born yesterday morning just before noon Ohio time! She was 18 days early, weighed 6 pounds 6 ounces and was 20 inches long. It sounds like mom and baby are both doing great, and according to Grandma Kathy she's just wonderful! Hopefully Uncle Trever and I will be able to make a trip out to Ohio this weekend to meet her. Otherwise the kid might be crawling before we see her! I'll post pictures of our new niece as soon as Grandma and Grandpa figure out how to get them off of their camera!

Boy or Girl???

We're planning to find out on Monday! Place your vote on the survey to the right!

I had another doctors appointment yesterday. Just a routine meeting with my doctor to listen to the heartbeat and check up on everything. It seems that things are progressing as they should. The heartbeat was around 150 beats per minute and she could feel my uterus just below my belly button.

We are heading to Gibson City Monday morning for an ultrasound and another blood test. If everything goes as planned we'll find out if this little monster is a boy or girl. And, most importantly, we can figure out if we need to paint the baby's room!

So, what do you think we're having? Place your vote and keep an eye on the blog early next week for the answer!!!

From Christmas until Today

It's been a week or so, but know I'll catch you up on the few days following Christmas.

December 25, 2008
Christmas day we headed to Grandma Ficklin's house. We skated our way to the front door and then headed toward the basement for mass quantities of food, family and presents! I enjoyed taking pictures of the kids in attendance and we look forward to two more little ones next year. Unfortunately I'm having a hard time uploading the pictures to the blog. But if you have a snapfish account you can check out all of my holiday pictures here

December 26, 2008
The day after Christmas Trever went back to work and I stayed home to put away all of our gifts. I met Mike & Ria for lunch in Gibson City and Mom, Dad and Kirk ended up joining us too. That night we headed back to Greg & Kathy's for dinner with Grandpa Kuipers, Dee & Marshall.

December 27, 2008
Saturday was a baby shower for Kyla and baby DeOrnellas. It's hard to believe that our new niece will be here in a little over a month! She got lots of cute, and useful, things. However, most of the group didn't get to see them since the electricity was out for the majority of the unwrapping.

After the shower, we headed to Trever's Great Aunt Sue's house for the extended Ficklin Family Christmas. She had a houseful even though we couldn't see much of each other. Trever is blamed for electricity going out. We still managed to have our gift exchange by candle light and flashlight and had a great time.

December 28, 2008
December 28th was Trever & Mom's birthday. We hit church early in Onarga, did a little post Christmas sales shopping and headed to the Illini game. We watched Illinois beat Eastern Michigan and then went to Jupiters for a birthday dinner.

December 31, 2008-January 1, 2009
New Year's Eve we made a stop at the Guth's and then proceeded to Kevin and Nicole's to ring in the new year. We hit the sack around 2 a.m. and Trever had the alarm set for 6 a.m. Those darn cows got fed earlier on New Year's day than they do most weekends!

That afternoon we headed to the Rademaker's for our last celebration of the season. We gathered with good friends and again ate lots of good food. Their new house was filled with kids and I made Trever practice his baby holding skills. I will admit, he is improving!

Since then...
We have been pretty low key. We went back to work for a day on Friday. Saturday we both ran errands and then headed to Champaign for date night. We hit our usual spot, Lowes, and then did some browsing for baby before using our Biaggi's gift card for dinner.

Sunday Trever was the fill in preacher as our's was called away to a family funeral. After church I spent the rest of the day in bed fighting a terrible cold. Yesterday was back to work for a full week, neither one of us is sure if we can handle another 5 day work week!

That's about it. I know blogs with pictures are more fun, but hopefully I'll do better next time. I'm not sure that we have too many exciting events coming up but I'll do my best to keep everyone posted on what's going on with us!

The last few days

The last few days have been exciting and busy and it's only Christmas Eve! As I write this we are sitting at my parent's, have successfully unwarpped oodles of presents and are watching Mama Mia. Now, for a bit of a recap on the last few days.

Friday, December 19

Last Friday night was my company Christmas party. We had a really good time celebrating at Railside Golf and Country Club in Gibson City. Trever got to meet all of my co-workers and he enjoyed the open bar. We came away with a gift card to Red Lobster! Yummy!

Saturday, December 20

Saturday started out like any relaxing weekend should be. Then, after I got out of the shower and before I got my hair done, the electricity went out. We still headed to Kankakee to pick out my Christmas present. We used our Red Lobster gift card, did a little shopping and then headed home to rig up the generator. We made ourselves look presentable and headed to the Red Door. Little did our friend Nicole know that her life was about to get very interesting. Her boyfriend Kevin had a plan to propose and surprise her with a surprise birthday and engagment party. She was definately surprised and we are excited for their upcoming 2009 wedding.

Sunday, December 21

We headed to LeRoy to celebrate with the Builta's. Since part of the family feels the need to head south for the holidays, this was the only time the majority of the family could get together. For the second year we did a white elephant exchange. I ended up with some soda and beer nuts and Trever came home with a video and some candy.

Monday, December 22

I had my second doctors appointment. It was pretty uneventful, but I got to hear the heartbeat again. It was approximately 160 beats per minute and according to an old wives tale that means this little monster is going to be a girl! We'll wait and see in a few more weeks.

Tuesday, December 23

The last day of work for a few days and I had a little Christmas lunch with my coworkers. It rained and froze most of the day. After work and a quick haircut I headed to the in-laws for another Christmas. It took Kyla, Ron and Caisey about 8 hours to make the typical 5 hour trip back to Illinois. Icy roads and lots of accidents kept them to a creep all the way back. A quick round of showers, some yummy snacks and the unwrapping began. We decided to pass on a slumber party at the Kuipers' and headed back home. The usually routine 25 minute drive took about an hour on the ice covered roads.

Christmas Eve

And now we are at my parent's house. We got here around 11:30, ate some yummy steak and pork chops and unwrapped gifts with my family. Again, lots of goodies for everyone. We're getting ready to head back to Grandma Builta's house for some soup and cheese ball for our annual Christmas Eve dinner. Then, hopefully it's off to Christmas Eve service in Onarga at 11.

Tommorow we're off to Grandma Ficklin's, Friday is a lunch date with Ria, cleaning hous and dinner with Grandpa Kuipers. Then Saturday it's a baby shower for Kyla and Christmas with the extended Ficklin family. It wears me out just thinking about it! :)

*Note...the above pictures are courtesy of my Christmas present from Trever! Yeah for my new Nikon D60 camera! Yup...the same one Ashton Kutcher advertises for!

The word is out!

We're having a baby! We've been anxious to share our news for quite some time but wanted to wait until the time was right to make the announcement.

We actually found out October 12th but had to wait until November 10th to confirm it with the doctor. After a couple of cancelled appointments and playing phone tag with the doctor's office, we finally got to hear a nice strong heartbeat on November 26th. Just in time to share the news with our family on Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving morning we headed toward LeRoy a little early to make the announcement to my parents. We gave them a "Thanksgiving card" that was actually a special invitation to meet us at Gibson Area Hospital on ~June 18, 2009 to meet their new grandbaby.

We shared te news with the rest of the Builta's at lunch that day. However, I don't think it really hit them until after we had left. Then Kirk started text messaging me with lots of off the wall name options.

We made an early exit from Grandma's house so that we could make it to Greg & Kathy's before Trever's grandparent's left. We made it and shared our invitation with them as well.

Today we are at 12 weeks and 5 days. Just a couple of more days and I'll be out of the first tri-mester. Overall I think things have been going fairly well. Trever can't understand how I can sleep for 11-12 hours a night and still be tired the next day. Besides being tired ALL THE TIME, I've felt pretty good. I head back to the doctor's on December 22nd for a routine appointment.

We look forward to more updates as the pregnancy progresses, so stay tuned!