It's a girl! Gender reveal and 20 week bump photo.

Baby sessions update! We got to find out the gender about two weeks ago. We are having a girl! I love knowing what she is now. It makes me feel so much more connected to her while she is still inside me. I feel her moving around all the time now. I first felt her move at 18 weeks and what a weird feeling that was! She did a little flip around and I was so excited to know what the feeling would be like. Ever since then she has been moving and kicking all the time. Mostly when I am sitting down during the day. 

My bump is starting to poke out more now, but still not really noticeable unless I wear a really tight shirt. 

I feel like she is REALLY starting to grow now. Every day she sticks out a little more. I am experiencing round ligament pain, which is basically your ligaments in your belly stretching out, and there isn't much you can do about it. It's not too bad, just a little uncomfortable. Especially when I am waking up in the morning. 

Everyone in my family was SO curious what we were having. On my mom's side of the family we have all girls, so we figured it would be crazy odds for us to have another girl! We hosted a fun bbq at our house with friends and family and had my parents open a box that we put balloons in to tell them the gender. 

 

 It was so fun to see how excited they were to finally find out! I am sure they would have been just as excited either way, but the look on their faces is just priceless!

Here are all the girls on my mom's side of the family for mother's day!

Vacationing in the wonderful Cabo San Lucas

Earlier this month we traveled to Cabo San Lucas Mexico with mi familia. :) The weather was perfect and our condo was fantastic. It was a week of soaking up the sun and relaxing, trying to escape from rainy Washington.

 

Baby on Board!

We have some exciting news that I haven't announced yet on my blog. We've got a baby on board. :) Next Friday I will be 20 weeks pregnant! This is a picture of the little bump on our recent trip down to Cabo San Lucas Mexico. 

We took this picture of our flip flops with a pair of salt water sandals that Garrett wore as a baby to put up as our announcement on Facebook. We don't know what it is yet, but we get to find out next week!

 I am so excited to find out what it is. We have debated finding out now or when it is born and ultimately have decided that we would rather find out now with just the two of us in the room together since we are going to have my mom and sister also in the delivery room, and it also gives us something really exciting to look forward to halfway through the pregnancy!

My pregnancy so far has been really nice actually! No morning sickness, thank the Lord! I don't know how other women go to work and try to keep it a secret and also have to deal with feeling like throwing up all the time. I did find that exercising regularly, and eating a little bit of healthy food really often, (Not junk! Even though that is what your body is telling you to eat because it wants all those calories!) helped me to keep any nausea away. If I let myself get too hungry, I would start to feel a little bit nauseous so I just kept snacking for the first three months! I was wondering what all my coworkers were thinking of how often I was eating! 

My view of the bump and the edge of the waves in the ocean. 

  Here is a little photo journal of the little nugget so far. Not much to see yet.

Next weekend I am looking forward to our gender reveal BBQ we are planning with some family and friends. Our family is dying to find out what it is because on my mom's side of the family we have had only girls for three generations. My grandma has a sister and my grandma had two girls. My mom has a sister and had two girls and her sister, my Aunt, had 3 girls! It will just be crazy if I have a girl. Lately I have been feeling more like it is a girl. At first I thought boy, but now it feels more like a girl. 

I also started to feel it move at 18 weeks! That was such a wierd/amazing feeling that is so hard to describe!

Staying at La Tavola Marche Agritourismo and taking an Italian Cooking Class

For the last stop on our vacation before heading back to Rome to catch our flight home, we had booked a two night stay at an aguritourismo in Piobbico, Italy, called La Tavola Marche. It was located on the East side of the country about a 5 hour drive south of Venice and about 5 hours north of Rome.

I ended up finding out about this place randomly by clicking through to a "how to travel like a local" article on a website when I wasn't even researching for our trip. I posted a request for information about dates we could stay and had to fill in my information on their website. The owner saw that we were from Washington and couldn't believe it because they were actually American's who moved to Italy 6 years ago and they grew up in Ballard, WA. We knew it was meant to be so we booked it. 

This is their beautiful kitchen in their farmhouse. They ended up moving to Italy and starting their cooking school after they took a trip here on their honeymoon. Jason, the chef and cooking instructor trained in French cooking, but has adapted his classes to focus on the true Italian style of fresh, seasonal and delicious! Click here to read about their wonderful cooking classes. 

I was a little hesitant to book with an American couple because since we were in Italy we wanted the Italian experience, but by the end of our trip we were SO excited to have another couple to speak English with, and they just happened to be from our home state! 

This was our quaint little room. We had our own kitchen and bathroom too. 

This was THE most comfortable bed we slept in for our whole trip! Finally a regular queen mattress!

We were the only people staying with them at the time, but there was another chef from British Columbia staying with Ashley and Jason for about three weeks to train with Jason. The first night we all ate dinner together in their kitchen and got to know one another. Then the next morning we started our day with a lovely breakfast delivered to our room by Ashley and then headed down for our cooking class. 

This was the morning class menu: 

Hungry yet? I was most excited to learn how to make the egg pasta. 

We shucked the peas outside to soak up the sunshine. The peas that Jason bought at the market were SO fresh and delicious! 

Here we are making our fresh egg pasta. 

You have to let it sit out and dry for about an hour or so before you cut it. 

We went out in the field and picked fresh wild greens to put into our ricotta ravioli with toasted walnuts and sage. Let me tell you... this filling for the ravioli was to die for! We used fresh ricotta cheese that Jason made and added lemon zest and the wild greens.I just kept eating it plain before we added it to the pasta because it tasted so good.

We sat down and everyone ate all the food we learned how to cook for our lunch, and then we had a couple hour break before we started the afternoon class where we would be cooking the dinner for the evening. 

They raise their own chickens and have a large garden where they grow most of their own food. :) 

The afternoon menu: 

This was a dish we made with veal, tomatoes, fresh herbs and potatoes. I haven't tried a dish like this before and it turned out really yummy. I really liked the flavor the potatoes took on from the other ingredients. 

We made a homemade aoli for the asparagus with an ostrich egg! Jason grilled the asparagus in the fire for a couple minutes to get that charred flavor. YUM!

Brandon, the chef from Vancouver said that we did a really good job and enjoyed our food. :) 

After filling our bellies to the brim we enjoyed a yummy dessert that we made, an apple-nut roll, and then shared stories about what we missed the most about home before calling it a night. 

The next day we headed back to Rome for our last night in Italy and then caught our flight home. We had such an amazing experience and are so glad that we were able to get to do this fun adventure together!