"Have you picked a name yet?"

"Have you picked a name yet?" is a popular question now that we know a little boy bun is in the oven and usually the 2nd question is "Are you planning to share it?" The answers are, yes, we've picked and name and, yes, we plan to share it. I realize many people choose not to share and I can understand why - the last thing you want to see is a weird face on someone or hear the opinion of someone after you announce the name you've chosen for your baby. I figure those things will happen if you announce it now or after the arrival, plus I'm just really bad at keeping secrets!

So, if you haven't heard already, "Colton Earl Meade" is the name we've chosen for our little guy. "How did you come up with this name?” you ask.

I will start with "Earl". "Earl" is Chad's middle name and the name of his maternal grandfather and a name that we knew we would pass onto a son if we had one. Chad would actually love to have "Earl" as the first name, but I just felt I would have a hard time calling my cute little baby "Earl" after the Dixie Chicks' song among other things so we agreed we would keep it as a middle name.

The first name was much more difficult. We decided not to make our son a Jr. or II because we couldn't come up with a good name other than "Chad" to call him and having two Chads is just confusing and inevitably one would be "Big Chad" and one "Little Chad". I've always had some ideas of little boy names that I like but Chad strongly disagreed with all of them. He claimed that they were too sissy and that our son would get beat up on the playground. So, I spent one evening going through a baby name book that a friend had given me and that's when I found "Colton" which means "coal town". When Chad came home that evening and I told him he loved it. Since Chad and I are both from small coal mining towns in Southwest Virginia and from families of coal miners, we thought it was a strong name with meaning from our roots. The day we found out we were having a boy we decided to test drive it for a while and make sure we liked it...now after 6 weeks of calling him "Colton" we can't imagine calling him anything else.

Some who have heard the name "Colton" have asked if we will call him "Cole" or "Colt" and as of now we are not planning to shorten it. I figure in school or through family he will gradually end up with nicknames so we plan to call him "Colton".

By the way, we had two beautiful girl names picked out that would have been hard to choose between so maybe next time we can use one of them!

Also, I had my 24/25 week doctor's appt yesterday and everything is going great. Less than 15 weeks to go!

A perfect babymoon!

Chad and I are back from our "babymoon" to St. Thomas and I must say that it was absolutely wonderful - actually better than we imagined it would be! We stayed in the beautiful Great Bay of St. Thomas and got lots of R & R. Our daily itinerary was pretty much as follows: woke up whenever our eyes opened, ate breakfast, worked out (optional depending on the day), laid by on the beach or by the pool and read, had lunch, continued to lay at the beach or pool and read and had a daily nap, showered, went out for a fabulous dinner and bed again. It was perfect! We did venture over to St. John for dinner by taking a sail on the resort catamaran and also took another adventure for snorkeling but other than that it was a lot of R & R which I'm told we will be thankful for come October.

We absolutely loved St. Thomas and can't wait to go back next year as a family of three. Traveling with a little one will definitely make things much more interesting but we look forward to packing toy sharks, Tonka trucks and sand buckets for next year's family vacation.

A few pics from the trip and if you are on Facebook I've posted all of them to see.


In these pictures I'm 24 weeks...only 16 more to go!

A weekend in Boulder for a beautiful wedding!

This past weekend our good friends, Dan (aka Koz) and Sarah, were married in Boulder, CO. Koz is a really good friend of Chad's from Janus and someone I've grown to love dearly over the years. Koz might be the pickiest man on earth when it comes to standards for women, so Chad and I were thrilled when he meet, Sarah, his perfect match! Koz left Janus last year and moved to Chicago to start his own fund and Sarah went with him. We miss them dearly so it was great to see them this weekend and share in their wedding festivities. Chad was an usher so we took the weekend as a little getaway and stayed in Boulder at the fabulous St. Julien which was a nice treat.

This pic is Chad and I at the reception. I'm 22 + weeks. Since my bump is really low, I still do not fit into maternity dresses. Most people didn't even know I was prego. Hopefully the full bump will come soon. :-)

I'm now on a countdown to our babymoon in St. Thomas! We leave in 4 days...WOO HOO!! Chad and I are both looking forward to having our toes in the sand for a week.

Nothing too exciting to post but an update for those who are bored at work and need something to read :-)

For the past week or so, we've been busy with nursery planning and the baby registry. Both are fun but completely exhausting!

For the nursery, I've ordered all the furniture, bedding and decorative wall stuff. I still have a long list of things to do though, like get the current furniture out, have two can lights replaced with a ceiling fan, paint, add closet organizers, pick out window treatments (or use my new found sewing skills and make some) and find some other odds and ends that I want. We don't really have a theme but we've chosen denim blue, navy, red and white along with all things sports and trucks - no pastels for this little boy. Many would say, "relax, you don't have to have everything complete and ready by October 8th" but for those of you who know me, you know that it actually needs to be ready and perfect by September 1st or earlier. :-)

The baby registry was as overwhelming as I expected but I did a lot of research and got a lot of great advice from friends who are new parents before we went to the ever daunting Babies R Us. It went better than I expected, in fact, I think it went better than our wedding registry. I'm a little concerned though because Chad and I wrestled with most baby strollers and other baby things trying to get them to close up. I'm hoping the "ease" as advertised comes with a little practice. I literally thought we were going to break one stroller in half trying to fold it up to no avail. I'm sure it was entertaining to the fly on the wall. My other concern is where in the heck are we going to put all of this stuff?!?!

Signing off for now... XOXO!