My Megan!

So I wrote this post about 3 weeks ago and never got around to posting it! Oops! Here it is finally!!

This weekend (Oct 17th) was a wonderful opportunity to celebrate my longtime friend, Megan. Megan and I met during our freshman year of college. Since then we have grown closer and closer as friends! She has been a constant source of encouragement, accountability and wisdom. We met in a bible study our freshman year and then lead a bible study together the following year.

Here we are enjoying some hot cocoa at a small group sleep over. Notice the date (3/17/01), over 8 years ago! Crazy. Can you tell we were meant to be best buds? Look at those pants! :)

Megan and I also share a deep love for our Pitt sports! Go Panthers!

Time goes by so fast! Pretty soon, I was getting married! And of course, Megan was a bridesmaid. (8/14/04)

Me with all my bridesmaids.

Next was our friend, Melissa! Megan and I were both bridesmaids. (June 2005)

And now it is Megan!! :) (Oct 17, 2009)

What a beautiful bride!

The happy couple! Josh and Megan McKinley.

Here's a picture of Chris and I from her wedding.

And of course, a bump picture. :) 23 Weeks at this point.

A fantastic blog

I just wanted to make note of a blog that I have been following frequently. It is fantastic! Great ideas for parents. Even though I am not a parent (yet), I have really enjoy the creative tips and tricks found here. Check it out!

Diapers to Diplomas

Fall Happenings

There has been a lot happening this fall! We have had something every weekend since the beginning on September!! Here is a brief recap of what the Ansell's have been up to:

Sept 5-6th: Penn State Get-away! We spent the whole weekend in state college and watched the Nittany Lions beat Akron.


Sept 12th: Willard wedding! We watched our friends Randon and Kelly tie the knot!


Sept 19th: Back to Penn State! This time with Marell and Jason. So fun!


Sept 26-27th: Bridal shower weekend! I attended two bridal showers, one in Altoona and one in Somerset for my friends Charity and Megan. Here is a picture of Megan and her bride's maids.


Oct 2-4th: Bridal Shower/Bachelorette weekend. We kidnapped Megan and took her for a girls weekend in Hidden Valley, PA. We even spent some time in Seven Springs at their Fall Festival.


Oct 7-8th: Home in York while recruiting for CCO. Here are some cute pics from home. Including new bump photos. 22 weeks now!!

It's a . . .

GIRL!

Chris and I learned that we will be welcoming a little baby girl into the Ansell family! (Of course, there is never 100% certainty till the little one is born!!) Poor Chris will be highly outnumbered with me, a baby girl and two girl dogs. I guess he will know how my dad felt (he LOVED it, btw).

Just so you know, we will take suggestions for names, but when we decide on a name, we will be keeping it a secret! We want to be able to announce the name at the birth. So we are going to keep you in a little bit of suspense!! Hehe.

We are so excited! Chris had guessed it would be a girl and I had guessed it would be a boy. We have been going to a lot of weddings lately and Chris said that each time he loves watching the Father/Daughter dance. He was hoping we would have a girl so that he would be able to share that moment with his daughter some day. How precious! He will be such a wonderful father to this little girl!!

We are currently 19.5 weeks and just had our GRAND ultrasound. The whole process took a full hour! The technician measured every bone in the baby's body, the heart beat (we could see all 4 chambers of the heart!), the head and torso, the arms, legs, hands, and feet. It was such a joy! The technician said that everything looked normal. The baby is measuring a little big for our due date, but only by 5 days or so. (How can they tell!!??) So we may be looking more at a Groundhog Day baby then a Valentine’s Day baby. We won’t get the official results back until we go back to our normal doctor in October.

It was so reassuring to be able to see each little part of our baby looking and functioning normally. She is so BEAUTIFUL!! It was amazing watching all four chambers of her heart beat together. Heart rate was about 143 bpm (normal). She had her legs crossed at the ankles most of the time and her arms held up around her face. She continued to move around a lot! (I was preparing myself for an ADHD boy, but what will a hyperactive GIRL look like?? We will need to get her involved in sports right away!) She was waving her arms and stretching her legs. At one point while we were looking at her profile, she YAWNED! What a strange thing to see! Her little mouth opened up so wide! It took us by surprise.

Chris enjoyed watching the tech take the measurements. All the measurements were in cm, but Chris converted them to inches in his head. After he converted the measurements for the lower leg bone (between the knee and the ankle) and the feet, Chris asked, “Do the feet develop faster than the legs?” (He had figured out that the lower leg measured about 1.25 in and the feet measured about 1.5 in.) “Do the legs catch up later?” The tech replied, “No they grow at about the same rate. Your baby just has big feet!” We are hopeful that means that our little girl will be tall, like her daddy. It would be very awkward to be 5’2” and have huge feet! I’m sure I will get used to feeling those size 12 feet jabbing me in the stomach and ribs as she gets bigger and stronger!

The last thing we did was try to determine the sex. The tech got a good look “down there”. The baby seemed to be cooperating for the most part, although I don’t know if she every uncrossed her legs. Chris and I agree that there was no “package”. But more importantly, rather than just relying on the lack of a visible penis to determine gender, we were able to view the labia as well. It looks like 3 bright lines, or a “hamburger bun” if you will. I had looked up pictures on the web before this appointment so that I could know what to expect to see either way. From my amateur understanding of baby anatomy ultrasounds, I agree with the tech’s assessment that the baby is a girl!

So that is our big news! We can’t believe we are about half way through our pregnancy already! Our little girl will be here before you know it! We still have lots to do before she comes, but it will be so fun preparing for her.

A quick update on me before I show you the new baby pictures: I am feeling pretty good these days. I have really popped out or “blossomed” in the last couple of weeks. There is no more hiding this baby! I am sleeping well and haven’t had headaches for awhile now (hooray!). But I am using the bathroom ALL THE TIME!! I am also doing well eating all the different kinds of foods I need to eat for the baby. Chris has been a great pregnancy coach, asking, “What have you eaten today? Let’s make broccoli with dinner!” I am feeling the baby kick and move more consistently. Still feels a little bit like bubbles or popcorn in my belly! It’s still not strong enough for Chris to feel on the outside yet. Here is the latest picture of me:

Week 19.5

Chris says that finding out that he will have a daughter is helping new things to sink in. Until now we were just having “a baby”. Now we are having a daughter!! We definitely have lots to prepare for! I’m so excited to meet our little girl! I can’t believe how attached I am to something that I have never met and still barely feel. It is a miracle that God is using me to grow this precious little girl. I am glad He is in control, because I would have no idea what to do! But He knows! He knew this bundle of joy before the creation of the world. He knows every hair that will be on her tiny head and loves her more than I could ever fathom! That is reassuring for me to remember.

Alright, well, without further ado…

Baby's Profile
You can see the little legs pushing up on the left.

Profile Again
Here you can see the little hand up by her face.

Arms and legs!

Little Feet!

If you would really like to be amazed, check out our youtube video of part of the ultrasound!

Baby Ansell

3,500 Bottles

That is how much water Chris and other Cornerstone staff and students handed out to incoming freshman. This is a service and outreach activity that Cornerstone does every year. Over the two freshman move in days, staff and students sweep campus in their red t-shirts, offering a friendly smile and a cold beverage. Each bottle of water has a business card attached with information about Cornerstone: the website, meeting time and activities such as the Kick-off Cook Out (more on that in another post).

Like other years, the water give away went really well. People were grateful and many were interested in hearing more about Cornerstone. Several even came over to the church to take a look inside.

Progress

So some of you may have been wondering what I looked like before I was pregnant. I thought I would put up a picture so you could make comparisons as I continue to post new bump photos. This picture is from right after I stopped dieting/exercise for the Biggest Loser. I stopped when I found out I was pregnant. I had lost about 8 lbs.

Week 6

As you can see.. I've progressed a bit since then...
Week 15

The baby has also progressed since then! When I was 6 weeks, the baby looked like a little bean. Now look at him/her...

Baby Ansell at 14.5 weeks.

I love watching the baby on ultrasound. S/he waves its little arms and legs and moves around all over the place. Right now, the baby is somewhere between the size of a lemon and an orange. It will start growing pretty fast now.

5th Anniversary

Happy Anniversary! We celebrated our 5th anniversary on August 14th. Phillip, Chris' brother was in town on the 14th and celebrated with us. Chris had to spend the day working, so we started our celebration by going out to eat Friday night at our favorite place, Chilli's.

Out to dinner. Expressing our true feelings.

Phillip headed back to Illinois on Saturday morning and Chris and I spent a lazy morning watching movies, cleaning the house, and napping. It was fabulous! In the afternoon we cleaned up and got ready to continue our celebration. We decided to check out the new Rivers Casino that just opened in Pittsburgh last weekend.

Baby Ansell came along to celebrate. (week 14)

We had dinner at one of the restaurants in the casino called "Grand View Buffet". It was a little pricey, but I suppose that is to be expected. The buffet was all you can eat and included stations for BBQ, American, Asian, Mongolian, and Italian. The atmosphere was very classy, with jazz music playing in the background. You also had a nice view of the Ohio river from your seats. The tables were very closely packed together though and you felt like you were right on top of the people next to you.

After dinner, Chris and I decided to try our hand at the slot machines. The casino floor was pretty large. I don't have any way of guessing how many slots there actually were. I haven't been in a casino in quite a long time. My family went out to Las Vegas when I was in high school, and I think that is the last time I was at a true casino. (Not including casinos on cruise ships). Some of the things were the same as I remember them. There was the chaotic jiggles of various slot machines bombarding you from every angle. There were tons of different types of games, from penny slots to black jack tables. The main difference that I found was that everything is now automated. You no longer put in quarters to play the slots, and when you win, you don't get to hear that satisfying sound of coins falling out of the machine. Instead, everything is digital. You put your money in and you get a certain number of credits. If you win, your credit number goes up. For example, if you were playing a quarter slot and put in $1, you would have 4 credits (basically for plays). Or you can bet up to 3 credits each turn. The more credits you bet, the higher the return if you get matches. It seems like this would make it really easy to keep playing and lose all your money quickly because you no longer have to put in a quarter each time, you just have to push the button. Plus, to end your game on a certain machine you have to "cash out" which means you get a little vouchure to go pick up your winnings elsewhere. The machines don't actually dispense your winnings anymore.

So after walking around a bit and trying to figure out how things worked from watching other people, we got our players club cards and then picked out a couple of machines that we could play next to each other. We each put in $20, figuring that it would be our contribution to the city of Pittsburgh for the evening. I seemed to pick a pretty good machine because at first I was winning a few credits every few turns. Chris was not having as much luck, and lost all of his money pretty quickly. After getting up to around $5 over, I hit a losing streak and ended up with only 9 credits left. I decided to go all in (Max 3 credits) for my last 3 spins. On my second to last spin, I hit it big and received 240 credits back!! That's $60! Wooohooo!! (I know, we are such high rollers!) When the credits finished totaling, I yelled, "Cash out! Cash out!" and got my voucher to claim my winnings.

Me with my winnings. Put in $20, got back $60. Not bad.

Enjoying the river walk outside the casino.

It was a wonderful anniversary celebration.