We learned at our 20 week ultrasound that we are having a girl in June. Without a doubt, it’s a girl. The ultrasound was a really cool experience. We saw the four sections of the heart, the kidneys, the bones, the brain – it’s truly amazing what you can see! This will be the first girl great-grandchild on my mom’s side and the first girl Boone’s mom gets to shop for. I have a feeling she’s going to get a lot of pink/ruffle/sparkly stuff from those people. And I’m ok with that. Every girl needs a little bit of that.

Now that we’ve seen the healthy baby and know the sex, it feels like we can get started with the serious stuff like names, shopping, daycare, and parenting. Shopping is the hardest thing to do since our condo is staged and we don’t know where we are going to be when the baby gets here. If we are still in the condo, the baby will share Boone’s office, we’ll buy/keep less stuff, and we’ll have to get creative with IKEA storage solutions. If we are in an apartment or a house, the baby will have her own room and we’ll do a more traditional nursery.

If you want to know names, sorry but we are going to keep the name a surprise until she is born. We have a list of favorites and we might publish that, but we think it’s fun to keep the name a secret. You only have to wait a few more months though. 🙂

We’ve been terribly lazy with the blog lately. We’ll have more to share in 2011. Here’s a recap of 2010:

Boone’s company was purchased by another company in California early in 2010. Luckily they kept everyone at the Madison office and in August, they closed the Madison location and had all the Madison staff work from home. Boone now works out of our office everyday. It was a little bit of an adjustment, but I think he’s used to working from home now.

The biggest adventure of the year was our trip to Europe. In July, we spent three weeks in Greece, Italy, and France. We visited Athens, Santorini, Venice, Florence, the Cinque Terre, and Paris. We saw the Parthenon, the canals of Venice, St. Mark’s square, Michelangelo’s “David” statue, the Eiffle Tower, the Louvre Museum, and many more beautiful places and people. It was an amazing experience and we have lots of great stories and memories. We’ll post some pictures on the blog soon.

We went to a couple weddings this year, but the biggest was definitely my brother’s wedding in Mexico in September. Ben married Andrea Labor Day weekend and a lot of our family got to be there. The resort was a different, more relaxing vacation from our Europe trip, and it was a lot of fun. I got another wonderful sister out of the deal and Ben got yet another sister as well. Ben will have to wait for everyone to get married for him to have more brothers.

We put our condo on the market in August and we had a few bites through out the fall. We love our condo, but we are ready for a house and something a little bigger. It’s a tough market so we expect a long hard fight. We are continuing to try to sell this coming Spring and reevaluate in March.

The most exciting news of the year is that in June 2011 we are going to have a baby! We are excited and so are our families. This will be the first grandchild and the first niece or nephew for both our families. For great-grandchildren, this will be the 5th great-grandchild on my mom’s side, the 22nd on my dad’s family, the 3rd on Boone’s mom’s side, and the 19th on Boone’s dad’s side. It’s been a good pregnancy so far; I’ve been really tired but not too sick and everything has been normal. I’m well into the second trimester (just starting month 5) and while I haven’t had any weird cravings yet, I mostly want cheese, ice cream, and fruit like apples. It’s definitely a Wisconsin baby. 🙂

2011 looks like a busy year for us – hopefully a new house, definitely a new baby, a few weddings, and lots of other day-to-day adventures. We’ll try to post more since we have more to talk about.