Fun, Fall, Family Pictures :)

We have a sweet talented friend, Ande Fanning, that we asked to take a few pictures of me and Hogan one day. My hopes were to get a good couple of shots that we could use on a Christmas card this year as well as a few with some blue balloons since we had just found out the gender of our baby and thought that'd be a fun memory to have.

Well she gave us SO much more than we expected. We went out to the Botanical Gardens here in Birmingham and she took pictures of us for like 2 hours! It was such a beautiful day and it was such a blessing to us. I've shared just a few of my favorites below...

Gender Reveal

I can't even express how excited Hogan and I were to find out the gender this past Friday. Hogan was like a kid on Christmas Eve. When he was finished getting ready in the morning, he joked about just going to wait in the car until I was ready but in all honesty, I think he would've if I hadn't laughed at him saying that.

They did the ultrasound right away when we got there. It was an incredible experience. While we were so excited about finding out the gender (which we did at the end of the ultrasound), I was completely in awe of seeing our baby on the screen as the nurse checked on the development of it's entire body. Technology is amazing. Pregnancy is amazing! Hogan and I keep saying over and over again what a miracle pregnancy and childbirth is. By no control of my own (other than being responsible with my body of course) am I forming this baby. What an amazing gift from God and what an amazing God we have!

After the nurse had checked on all the development, we had to wiggle the baby around a little bit to make him uncross his legs so we could find out! Luckily, he did and we immediately could see we were having a baby BOY!!!!! Not that I favored either gender but I just thought it'd be a girl for some reason so it was more of a surprise for me (Hogan had told me a few days earlier he "knew" it was gonna be a boy). We are beyond excited for this precious baby boy and it's so much more real now. We even have a name already but are keeping it a secret until he's born! It's been so much fun though to pray over HIM now and talk about him to each other using the name we've chosen. Now on to registering for boy items whatever those might be :)

Here are some of my favorite pictures from our ultrasound...

And finally he reveals that he is a boy!!!





We found out the gender on Friday and celebrated our 1 year marriage anniverary on Sunday so it was a pretty exciting weekend to say the least. We've been all smiles and are so grateful :)

Oh, and Hogan has already persuaded him to pull for Auburn...

A Beautiful Birmingham Fall

I LOVE LOVE LOVE my city in the fall. I especiallly enjoy my drive to work in the mornings because I go through an area that is abundant in trees and leaves. The entire way in this morning, leaves were falling and blowing all over the place. Put a huge smile on my face!

Also wanted to give an update on life right now. I've gotten a little lax in blogging. These past few months have flown by. Our pastor said last night at church that there were 7 weeks until Christmas - is that for real?? That kind of scares me because I am so bad with Christmas shopping. I aspire to be one of those people that buys gifts throughout the year and is done with major shopping by the end of November but sadly, I don't see that happening. It doesn't help when so much of my family have birthdays that fall closely before Christmas - gotta focus on those days first of course.

This fall has been wonderful. Hogan and I have led a newlywed small group every Friday night where we go out to eat with other couples at a different restaurant every week. We call it "Taste of the Ham - Married Edition" - all Hogan's creativity there. We only knew 1 of the couples before we started this group so it's been so neat to build relationships with new faces. It's also been fun to lead a group with my husband. We have each led many small groups individually before we were married so to join together in this has been great.

The extent of our Halloween activities included pumpkin carving and trying to hand out candy to kids trick or treating. Unfortunately I think our doorbell only rang 3 or 4 times and NO ONE was really dressed up in costumes. I really don't care if you are 15 years old and trick or treating but make an attempt to dress up at least - geez! I had so much fun though carving my pumpkin. An added bonus was the pumpkin seeds that I got from it and roasted - still snacking on those. Here are our creations - Hogan's is the left one and mine is the right one. The picture doesn't do his justice though - he actually made ears that stuck out of the side of the pumpkin as well as nostrils!

And this is Molly checking them out. She was very curious.



Even though our 1 year anniversary is this coming Sunday, we "celebrated" it last weekend by going to....................Ross Bridge! Surprise there :) But it's seriously the best in-town getaway and that's what we were up for. It basically turned into a day of pampering me though as much as I tried to take the focus off of just me, but if you know how sweet Hogan is, that's what it always turns into. I had a pre-natal massage and oh my goodness, it was amazing. I so prefer pre-natal massages over regular ones and seriously want to try to get those even when I'm not pregnant. I also enjoyed a pedicure and then we went out to dinner and dessert that night. It was such a nice relaxing night. Hogan also got me a dozen pink roses and I think the pregnancy hormones are affecting me because when I walked in the room and saw them, I just started crying. It was a good cry but Hogan was so confused, ha ha.

Pregnancy has been a fantastic experience thus far. It is such a gift from God and I'm loving every second of it. We find out the gender here soon so stay tuned!

Jesus is doing a work inside of me right now too. Every now and then I hit those seasons where I get so much revelation from the Lord and I think one of those seasons is happening as I speak. I'm going to articulate myself a bit better though and I'll post a blog on it all soon :)

Love y'all. Thanks for reading!