Friday Favorites: The End is Near!

Happy Friday everyone! As always linking up with some of our favorite bloggers to wrap up the end of the week, and oh my do I have a lot of favorites for this week! It's been a fun week, and we've had a lot of exciting things going on. So without further delay, this week's favorites...

ONE

Snow! We had our first snow (and quite possibly our only) of the winter, and the kids LOVED it! We only received about an inch or so, but they acted like it was two feet deep. 

They threw snow balls forever, rolled in it, played chase, and simply had a blast. They were so sad when it melted a few hours later. 

Seeing their excitement, we might just have to follow suit with Carrie Beth's family and start incorporating ski trips into our vacation plans. 

TWO

While we were "snowed in" I was able to catch up on a lot of projects and get some reading done. I finished our book club book, and can't wait to discuss that with you guys next week.

It was so nice to just relax a little bit. Now if I can just catch up on my Bachelor watching, I would be one happy relaxed mommy. :) 

THREE

Speaking of relaxed I saw this funny chart somewhere in my Internet travels this week, and thought it was hilarious. 

If this rings true, Carrie Beth and I should be some of the most relaxed people you meet. 

FOUR

And at the mention of baby, one of my favorites this week is finally figuring out a plan! The end is near!! I have grown super uncomfortable over the last few weeks, and The Cutes have been taking full advantage of a slower mommy. We did an ultrasound earlier in the week, and have another scheduled on Monday. My guess is baby will make her appearance before then, but if not we now have an official eviction date. 

{Maternity tunic top available HERE}

Bring on baby!

FIVE

And knowing baby is on her way in less than a week, we definitely amped up the whole nursery decorating business. Choosing a paint color was the turning point and then everything else fell into place from there over the weekend. 

I will share all the details soon, but I love what we ended up with and am so excited to finally have a place for her to call her own in our home. 

It's definitely still a work in progress, but it's been fun to put everything together and put out some of her sweet shower gifts. I can't wait to see her precious little face!

SIX

In honor of all things baby, and the fact that sometime soon my feet will be on major display for a room full of strangers to see, I planned a little girly outing with L.C. to have a mommy/daughter mani and pedi. We will have our toes done in this fun pink color. 

I let her pick it out at the store and she was so excited! Usually we do her mani/pedi in Piggy Paint, but she was so excited when I told her we would match for baby 3.0. I was nervous letting her pick out the color, but she went straight for a pink. That's my girl! 

SEVEN

Cute's birthday definitely tops my favorites for the week! He is such a fun little boy and always keeps us laughing. He seems so tiny still and I can't imagine what it will even feel like to hold another newborn again. 

Little Cute picked out these Ninja Turtle pjs for him for his birthday, complete with mask, and no joke he has worn them almost every single day since his birthday. Good thing I am doing laundry all day every day or else this would be a major issue each night when he requests his "Ninja footies". 

EIGHT

While on the subject of pjs, I have been lounging in these quite a bit lately. 

I can't get over how cozy they are! So much so that I decided to order this set for when I am in the hospital. They are that soft and comfortable!! 

And as an added bonus it comes with a matching gown for baby! Swoon!! 

And that's a wrap for favorites this week! Happy weekend everyone and hopefully the next time you hear from me, baby 3.0 will be here - EEK!

What were some of your week's favorites? 

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A Southern Style Gender Reveal

My pregnancy with 3.0 has felt like a whirlwind. The first half has truly flown by. Now that I am in the honeymoon phase that is second trimester, we've been able to sit back and truly enjoy our little surprise.

Even though it feels like just yesterday when I was pregnant with Cute, a lot has changed in medical advances in such a short time. We actually had the benefit of finding out the gender of 3.0 pretty early on in the pregnancy. We weighed the decision of finding out or keeping it a surprise the entire time. I loved the idea of keeping our little surprise a surprise from the start of the pregnancy to the end, which totally goes against my personality.

We sat on the decision for a few weeks and then finally caved. We told our families right away, but couldn't decide if we should keep it a surprise from everyone else. In the end we realized this would be way too hard. I am pretty sure I let it slip at least once a day. 

We knew for almost six weeks before we decided to tell. Last Sunday we hosted our dinner club and a few of our close neighbor friends for a cookout and a little gender reveal fun.

We asked everyone to wear pink or blue to show their vote. Carrie Beth and her family were unanimous in their decision.

Just in case you didn't have a closet filled with pink or blue, I found this fun voting chart and these cute stickers for guests to join in the fun. We had planned a southern style meal to serve everyone and what is more southern for a theme than bows and bowties?

I loved it and played it up a bit, but I forgot to take any photos. Not a single one! My photography game is getting weak.

Some people forgot to vote, but it was fun for us to see all the guesses and people seemed to be split down the middle.

As for our own family, the votes rolled out as such:
Me - boy
Mr. Cute - girl
Cute - boy, preferably bigger than him and likes to play games
Little Cute - no preference, but would like to note she is now the middle child and demands deserves extra special attention over the upcoming months. Currency of choice - cookies.

We told people not to bring gifts and that we were keeping this really low key, but our sweet friends the G family, showed up with this HUGE gift basket. How adorable is it?!?

It was filled to the brim with some awesome board books, some fun boutique items, and some of our favorite baby essentials. Such a sweet gesture and definitely most appreciated!

It was so fun to catch up with our friends over appetizers and dinner. 

After dinner we took everyone outside into the yard for the reveal. I had scoured Pinterest, but couldn't find anything I really loved. Mr. Cute, being your typical hunting loving southern boy, wanted to do some sort of reveal with a bow and arrow - sorry, not going to happen. 

We decided to do something a little different. Our favorite holiday is Forth of July and I somehow found fun sparklers that show pink or blue sparkles when lit. It was perfect for us and I felt like such a fun summer thing for everyone to do. 

The kids thought this was so fun. We might have scared a few by doing it all at the same time, but I think a lot of people were surprised to see the end result. 

PINK!!!

I don't think anyone was more shocked than I was when I found out. Based off my previous pregnancies I was for certain this was a boy, but just shows how each one is unique. 

We are beyond excited and can't for our little girl to join our family this winter. Now it's time to buy some coordinating Lilly outfits and start the nursery planning! :) 

Did you do anything special to reveal your baby's gender? Or were you able to keep it a secret? 

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3.0 - A Teeny Tiny Surprise

Life is so funny sometimes, and often at times I am reminded that as much as I would like to be able to predict the future and plan everything to a tee, I am ultimately not in charge. And that totally is a good thing!

The last few months have been a great blessing and reminder of that. Somewhere during our Jamaican vacation the course that our little family had been planning took a turn. Midway through the week, I began to feel a little odd and had this continuous nausea.

My thoughts varied:
- "Hmm...had I imbibed in too many of those delicious fruity frozen drinks by the pool?"
- "Maybe I have food poisoning?"
- "Could I be sick?"
- "Am I dehydrated? It is rather hot out."
- "Something in the pool water? Looking around there are a lot of kids here..."
- "Maybe it was the water on the island? I've heard about those things. Maybe I should stick with fruity frozen drinks."
- "Wait a minute...what was really in that coconut filled with rum?!?"

I shared my concerns with Mr. Cute, and we both denied to ask the question we were really thinking... "Could I be pregnant?!?"

The odds of that actually happening were so small looking at past history, but this wasn't my first rodeo and I had felt similar feelings before. Five times before to be exact, so it was hard to deny. With both of our children we experienced fertility issues. Not to the degree of some women out there experience, but in its own sense it was a long devastating road before we were blessed with either of The Cutes.

So clearly, I couldn't be pregnant. Could I???

The moment we stepped foot back into our home from our tropical vacation, Mr. Cute did a reverse in the driveway and headed out to buy a pregnancy test. We were both only home for a day before I left for a beach trip with my family so the suspense was killing us. If I wasn't pregnant we needed to figure out what was wrong.

Well a mere 15 seconds into the two minute wait we got our answer.

Huh? Well, this is new. We did nothing to get here. Well, you know what I mean...

I was leaving in less than 36 hours, so we decided I would still go to the beach with the kids and not worry. Whatever happens will happen, and we will see what our doctor says when we get back.

The Monday after we arrived home, we made our way to my doctor. We sat in his office, and he joked with us about how he was just as surprised as we were when he received the phone call requesting an appointment. The joking ceased for a brief moment when we received the results from my in office test and it came back as negative. We prepped ourselves - we had been down this road before, and again counted our blessings as this was a surprise and we already have two children we are very thankful for at home.

Well five seconds later, during the ultrasound he then said, "Must have been a bad test because not only are you pregnant, but you are really pregnant."

The looks on our faces must have been priceless because he quickly said, "I mean pregnant as in farther along that I thought - there's only one."

While twins would be so fun the thought that we could be surprised with two babies instead of just one was mind blowing in those few moments. My type A personality instantly did a multitude of planning on those mere seconds ("We'd have to move or do a renovation.", "We can name them rhyming names - wahoo!", "Holy cow we are going to need a cargo van...well really matching Suburbans."). Mr. Cute's thoughts probably reflected more of, "Don't pass out. Don't pass out."

Now here we are a few months later and have confirmed multiple times that The Magnolia Mamas will be expanding by one this winter.

The Cutes are very excited about 3.0's pending arrival and can't wait to see what he or she will be. Cute has been very vocal that he would like a big brother to be born who will camp with him, play baseball, and wants to chase animals. Last I checked giving birth to five year old instant play mates wasn't possible...but then again, I'm not in charge.

I can't wait to share this journey with everyone, and we are beyond excited to see what is in store for our little family over the next few months.

{ At the 16wk mark. Ignore the tired hot mess look, but seriously...I'm a tired hot mess. }

Now I'm off to re-purchase all those baby items we got rid of last year...

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