A Lame Attempt to Catch Up

The thought of even trying to catch up on everything we've done since our last post is a bit overwhelming, so I'm not going to go into much detail.  Here's the gist of what we've done:

1. We went to Washington DC and Virginia Beach for Brandon's friend's wedding/reception.  His friend Joey was the best man at our wedding, and they served their missions together.  It was a lot of fun, but such a quick trip that we wish we could have devoted even another day or two to traveling.

2. Brandon started a new job at a company called Bulkmatic.  They transfer various foodstuff/dry goods from train to truck to be delivered to several local companies.  For example, he pumps flour and sugar from the trains into the trucks and those are then delivered to the Kellogg/Keebler factory just down the road for us.  They then make pretty yummy cookies with these goods, which in turns makes the air around our home often smell like homemade cookies.  He works long hours, but we're grateful for the better job conditions for him.

3. We got Nicholas's photos taken for his first birthday...I will post those photos soon because he's just so darn cute in them.  (I know he turned 1 about 3 months ago, but we've been really busy, AND he's so accident-prone that he has always had some sort of bruise on his head, arms, and/or legs.)

4. Brandon went on a short deployment to northern Michigan to participate in chemical warfare training games.  He said he pretty much had to sit around all day in his gas mask and other gear just in case there was some "enemy attack."  

5. We celebrated the 4th of July!  We went up to Brandon's sister Cassy's home for a picnic/fireworks.  It was pretty rainy that day, so we didn't go outside much, but we did set off various smoke things and did sparklers and poppers, so the little kids were pretty happy.  We had to come back to Cincinnati before seeing any actual fireworks because Brandon had to work the night shift at his old job.  While I was trying to sleep, though, it sounded like the local fireworks were going off right above our home, but fortunately Nicholas slept through it all.  The next day we were invited to go out on the Ohio River in some ward friends' boat with them.  Brandon got his first taste of trying to water ski.  He never got up, but he loved trying it out!  We had a lot of fun that day!

6. I am officially down to 8 more weeks until little Renae arrives!  I pretty much refuse to have any offical baby bump photo taken, but I will try to find and post some candid shots.  When I went to the doctor last week, I discovered that I have gained 12 pounds since I got pregnant, which isn't a lot.  However, I did lose 14 with morning sickness, so when you combine gaining all that back plus the 12 pounds, I guess you could say I've gained 26 pounds!  She's been doing a number on my back, though, and I've been having pretty severe back pain with this pregnancy, so the doctor told me to cool it on lifting as much as I have been.  Fortunately Nicholas is pretty good at climbing in and out of things, so I'm trying to let him do more of that on his own.  I was also told by the doctors that I'm once again anemic with this pregnancy, so that's not been too fun, but as long as I take my iron pills I do pretty okay.  

I think that's about it for the major stuff that we've done lately.  I hope it's enough to get us caught up on our blog!