Fake Christmas in Tennessee

We are going up to St.Louis for Christmas but we still did our Christmas down here. We got our tree from a tree farm in Virginia where we went last year and the lady there remembered us because I was a crazy lady and asked her to take our picture but made Kyle change shirts first because it was going to be our Christmas card (we had a new shirt in the car from our awesome deals at Steve & Barry's last year). It snowed that day, but had already started to melt by the time we got out there. We love the smell of a real tree, I'm so glad Kyle talked me into one last year.



This is me at 12 weeks, I did just eat a big dinner but I am starting to feel like other people notice my tiny belly.

I had to borrow a guitar hero from our friends to use at a school party and Kyle wanted to try it out first to make sure it worked so this is how he de-stressed after his test. My friend Alarie (her husband Michael goes to school with Kyle) is my pregnant buddy and we are about 5 days apart in our due date. We both were enjoying pringles and the boys were making fun of how we were both chowing down on the pringles.


We had a big snow last night and I was so excited to be out of school for Christmas and enjoying all the beautiful snow. Some lady at Kroger asked if I was driving in this and then said I was nuts, well I preceded to tell her I was "from the north" that's how people refer to people from St.Louis or any other place north of Tennessee from them. Anyway, I told her I loved this and it was the best day ever, she thought I was crazy. Well we are headed to St.Louis tomorrow for Christmas and we can't wait to see everybody! Merry Christmas!

Telling the News

We waited until Thanksgiving to tell Kyle's parents that I was pregnant, and we waited about 4 or 5 weeks. It was really hard to keep it a secret for that long, but it was totally worth it. We were all in a hotel room in Alabama at about 1:00 and we gave them a picture frame that said I love Grandma on it with a sonogram picture inside. It took them a second to figure it out and then their reaction was priceless, check it out...

Christmas Pictures

We had some pictures taken this fall for our Christmas cards and to have some pictures with the pretty fall leaves. A friend from our church who is in high school took the pictures for us at the National Park in Middlesboro and she did a fantastic job. It's crazy to think that this time next year we will have a 6th month if we went and took pictures. Here they are..

We're back and now with one more!

Well it has been a long time since my last post and a long time since I've kept up with things, but my new year's resolution (I know I'm starting a month early) is to keep my (our) blog updated. We have so many things going on in our lives down here and it's hard to always let everyone know what's going on but this is one easy way to do it. Well the big news is there is one more (well on the way) with us. Baby Toti is due to arrive June 24th, 2010 (4 days before our anniversary).

This is our tiny little shrimp at 7 weeks. We got to hear the heartbeat (167) which was the most amazing sound I've ever heard. We prayed to know whether or not this was the right time in our lives to start a family or not but on many accounts I always remember saying there's never a right time and so Kyle and I started off on that journey towards parenting. Now talk about God having a sense humor, on the same month I'm due Kyle will be taking his first boards test and we will be moving (probably somewhere within Tennessee). I at least get out of the part of the heavy lifting of moving :). Kyle had said he could tell when I was pregnant but I didn't notice anything different at all, but we were very excited when that test came out positive. It killed us to wait several weeks to tell family but we wanted to be able to tell them in person. Which their reactions were priceless! Here are a few pictures of my growing pooch, for some reason it seems like I wake up not pregnant at all super flat tummy and then at night after 7:00 it pops out and all of a sudden I'm pregnant.

6 weeks and Kyle said he can already tell a little bit.11 weeks and we can definitely tell and my pants are starting to get tight.

Kyle is busy studying for his last test of this semester and then he will only have one more semester of class left. We can't believe how fast med school has gone so far. He will start his clinical rotations on June 28th (yep, 4 days after the due date, haha) and we aren't for sure where the will be yet. We will find out for sure in February where we are off to next. We will also find out in February if we're having a boy or a girl. Kyle is very adamant about having a boy, but we'll see. I thought at first it was a boy if there's such a thing as "knowing" what you're having, but now I'm really going the other way and thinking it's a girl. We don't have any names set in stone and Kyle isn't discussing girls name at this point because he said there's no way it's a girl, I'm not great at math but I'm pretty sure there is a 50/50 chance, haha. Well that's all for tonight but I'm going to be better about posts from now on. I'll leave you all with a video of our little Toti, he/she is famous on youtube! Kyle made fun of me for putting it on there at first but then realized how neat it was for our family and friends to see our little shrimip. Here he/she is... ()

A New Hobby

Since we had a lot of free time this summer, Kyle and I have started to golf together. It started when Kyle bough a new golf club around my birthday so then I started to give him crap for buying a club on my birthday but then a month later Kyle and I decided to buy clubs for me for his birthday so we could start golfing together. I am a very athletic person but never really wanted to take up golf, I thought I was going to be awful. The first time we went golfing we had two of our friends from church meet up with us and it was nice to have 3 different opinions when it came to what I was doing wrong. I think I heard "keep your head down" from Kyle about 50 billion times, so I was thankful I had some other suggestions and it relieved all the stress between Kyle and I, haha. All in all we had a great time, the first couple of holes were frustrating but then I started to get the hang of it. I even shot par on one hole and I hit better than Kyle on that hole. Ooops. The best part of the whole experience was learning the whole "etiquette" of golf. I should have read a book on it before I went because I got scolded several times. When I had a really good hit I said "OH YEAH!", just like I would in any other "normal sport" and I was told that you aren't supposed to be that loud. Ooops, sorry for me being excited. Then I talked to somebody during the backswing, yep their BACKSWING! I didn't realize that they basically kick you off the golf course for doing this, haha. Least to say Kyle gave me a very dirty look and I had no idea what I did wrong. The other little rules I learned by experience was not walking in the "line of a putt" and not have your shadow in the "line of a putt". Geez, Rodney Dangerfield sure made golf seem like fun in Caddyshack so I thought there weren't many rules in golf, but boy was I wrong! I loved playing though, it was frustrating but relaxing. I have played a few other times this summer, but since school is starting back up I don't think we'll have time to go anymore. We at least have this great new hobby that we can both do together, and I'm not too bad at it either! Oh and the golf course we play at Kenny Chesney's dad lives there and we see him every time we go, which is really cool. Kyle for some reason didn't want me to ask Kenny's dad if he could call him and I could talk to him on the phone, I don't know why. Here are a few more pictures from our last golf outing... Kyle had an awesome drive and it landed about 10 inches from the hole!

We're ALIVE!!!

I know it's been forever, but Kyle and I have enjoyed spending so much time with each other this summer that blogging took a back seat. A wayyyyy in the back back seat. But, here we are 4 months later and Kyle has started back with his second year of medical school. I asked if he was ready the day before he started and he was excited and said yes. I will start teacher work week on the 10th and the students start the 17th. Last week I helped out with the med school's orientation for the student advocate group I'm in and it was so weird to see all of the first year students and spouses. I can't believe that was us a year ago. We made it through one year of med school and we're much more prepared this time to tackle the second year. Here is a list of some fun things we did this summer just to catch ya'll (yeah I've been caught accidentally saying it a couple of times) up:

• Moved from Kentucky over to Tennessee, we now live only 5 minutes from school and work!
• Got new Tennessee plates and driver's licenses, yes we are law abiding citizens even though we only moved like 15 minutes away we had to change states, bummer



• Went back to St. Louis to help host Savannah's wedding shower and spent time with both of our families



• Kyle's Dad and sisters came down to help us move- We went hiking and celebrated Kyle's birthday


• My mom came down to visit and help make curtains for our laundry room, she was also here for our book club and helped me host at my house



• Drove up to Ohio to go to Cardinals/Indians games with Chuck and Colleen and go to Colleen's wedding shower



• Kyle was a groomsmen in Chuck and Colleen's wedding, yay for MR. and MRS. FISHER!



• On the same weekend we stayed a night in Cincinatti to celebrate our one year anniversary with a fancy dinner out



• We went to Florida for 10 days with the whole Bartosiak side of the family and had a blast playing at the beach with Caden, Noah, and Josalyn. Not to mention spending time with my parents and sisters was amazing!




• Kyle's brother Cole came down to visit with 2 of his friends and we had a fun filled weekend full of a trip to the flea market, a hike to White Rocks and Sand Cave, and we visited the waterfall in Corbin
  
  
  

DO Day on the Hill

Kyle got the chance to go to Washington, DC for an event called DO Day on the Hill a couple of weeks ago. He got the chance to meet with members of the Congress staff and discuss Osteopathic Medicine, he didn't actually get to meet a Congress member but he did see many different historic buildings in DC. I was very jealous that he got to go and the history teacher didn't, but he made sure to take plenty of pictures.

Trips, trips, and more trips

We've been very busy spending time with family and each other. I took a trip up to Indiana to visit my sister and her family on Valentine's day weekend. I know I'm horrible for leaving Kyle on our first valentine's day married but he would have been studying all week because DCOM was nice enough to give them a huge test the Monday after Valentine's day. Before I left though we went to a Valentine's dinner at church and played the "not so newlywed game" with a few of the older church members. We were the only newlywed couple and you know what....WE WON!! We kicked all those old couples butts! This was after they played a trick on the women where they put a blind fold on us and had us feel our "husbands" hands and guess which one was ours, well I thought I guess right. Low and behold they had switched our husbands with other members and I thought a 14 yr. old boy's hand was Kyle, ooops my bad.

My friend Colleen and I drove to Indianoplis together and we found out our sisters live 20 minutes from each other, so it worked out perfectly. I played with Noah and Josalyn and was thankful they let me crash their Valentine's weekend. My mom and grandma came down to visit us and we had a blast. Kyle once again had a huge test to study for and so we just hung around the house and tried to stay out of his hair. We took a trip to Morristown to look for a heater so my grandma wouldn't freeze to death, and we even went to FAZOLI's...my favorite (it stinks we have to drive 45 min. for it). They also helped me make a dress, yep that's right "make" a dress, I had a lot of help but I still did a lot of it on my own. I'm turning into a little Betty homemaker as my grandma would say. I had a great time seeing my family and I get to go home again next weekend for one of my teacher friend's wedding.

Saturday Night Grill Out

Saturday night after we got back from hiking was gorgeous so we decided to grill out. We got 40 pounds of beef for Christmas from Kyle's mom and dad so we decided to grill steaks and corn on the cob(MY FAVORITE!!). Bailey hung outside with Kyle while he grilled the steaks and it was nice to enjoy a summer evening in February (crazy!). We were able to see the sun set while grilling outside.

Before we sat down I said this would be like a $40 dinner at a restaurant and we did it for like $5, it was the best dinner we've had for a while. Bailey was lucky enough to get the bone from the steaks and was occupied for about an hour. We dealt with a throwing up dog in the middle of the night but speaking for Bailey I think it was totally worth it.

Hiking to the Pinnacle

After having the whole week off of school and poor Kyle has been studying all week for big tests on Monday and Tuesday next week so we decided to take a break on Saturday to do some hiking since it was 60 degrees and sunny outside. I can't believe that it was snowing 4 days earlier. We have a beautiful overlook that you can drive up a mile to see over Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee so we decided to hike up to it from the town Cumberland Gap. It was Bailey's first hike and she did really well and didn't even get tired when I did. It was a little muddy from the snow melting and we all got really dirty and Bailey had a blast playing in the mud. The neatest part was once we got up to the pinnacle the parking lot had about 3-4 inches of snow still on it, so there was nobody up there and we had the whole place to ourselves. I was so glad Kyle was able to take a break from studying and go hiking. After we were all done it was about a 4 mile hike and we were all exhausted afterwards, especially Bailey. She passed out once we got home and slept most of the night. I never realize how much we would like hiking until we actually got out and did it, I enjoy being away from everything and being out in the woods (weird, never thought I would say something like that). We plan on doing a 19 mile hike over the summer without Bailey so we are working our way there.