Valentines Day 2019
Well it's been a while since Chelsea or I have had the time or drive to sit down a write a blog. We've had a lot going on since last year on Valentines Day.
As you may know from our previous blog and/or facebook posts, our first baby was lost due to a miscarriage last year on Valentines Day. This day was the single hardest day either of us have ever had. I was out of town with my 7/8th grade band for a festival, and Chelsea was alone in Bozeman trying to keep things together. I have never experienced so much grief, and as hard as it was, I'm glad that Chelsea and I experienced this together. We ordered the angel below as our Valentines Day gift to each other this year to help us celebrate the baby we haven't met yet.
In the past year, we have experienced many other life events. We purchased our first home together, and moved in on April 1st. Chelsea and I have also moved into different positions in our teaching careers. Chelsea now teaches K-5 music at Morningstar Elementary School in Bozeman, while at Monforton Middle School, I still teach band and choir, but have also added responsibilities in tech support at my school. Finally, Chelsea and I are expecting another baby! This baby boy is healthy and on track to arrive at the very start of April of this year.
As we get closer to the arrival of our baby boy, I wanted to write down some of the things we have experienced in the past 7 or so months as the baby grows. I hope to be able to tell these stories to our son in the future and thought this would be a good time to write them down (before things get really crazy in April).
1. BABY'S NICKNAME - One of my favorite stories so far, is one that we've told many times already. Because we are both teachers, we've really been struggling to find a name that we both really like. One night while we were talking about name ideas, I threw out the name Ampersand (like -> &). Even though I totally was kidding, we talked about it way more than I expected. I said we could call him And for short, and had to explain my thought process. Since then, we've been calling the baby Ampersand. While I thought this "name" was pretty funny, Chelsea and the other elementary music teachers apparently embraced it more than I expected. During the annual Raise the Roof concert, put on by all the Bozeman School District music teachers, Chelsea and & were featured in the credits. Since the nickname came up, we have a tendency of saying "dang it Ampersand" anytime pregnancy has caused some sort of inconvenience or struggle for us. Chelsea has trouble putting on shoes - "Dang it Ampersand!"
2. BABY ROOM - Once we finally decided which bedroom would be the baby's room, we had to make sure it was what we wanted. Because of this, most of our house now has matching blinds, thanks to a great deal find by Chelsea! Also, we decided to repaint one of the walls in the room as well as all the trim. The cool thing is that the previous owners had painted this half-wall with chalkboard paint. We really liked this idea, and decided to paint it a dark blue color. While the new color looks great to me, Chelsea really didn't think it matched the rest of the paint in the room. So...we repainted the rest of the room too. In addition, though this probably isn't necessary quite yet, we've replaced all the old cream colored outlets with new white tamper-resistant outlets (in preparation for the curious little guy). Though we aren't quite done with the room yet, we are getting closer!
3. BABY BACKPACK - While I've been around babies before, I always felt a little awkward. To help explain this a little bit, with our cats, I just want to pick them up and play with them ALL THE TIME! With other people's babies, this is not really an acceptable thing to do at will. I am SUPER EXCITED to have a baby of our own, because I can't wait to play with him ALL THE TIME! Something I'm especially excited about is getting a back pack baby carrier. I really want to take the baby around to do all sorts of things. Every time I mention a task that I could do with the baby, Chelsea looks at me and tries to explain how babies work... Again, I'm no expert, but I'm sure baby will love pulling weeds, trimming bushes, doing dishes, etc. with me all the time. haha!
4. BABY'S FIRST INSTRUMENT? - Another thing that Chelsea and I have talked about quite a bit throughout the pregnancy is what instrument we want to expose the baby to first! We're pretty sure the baby has gotten used to both piano and 4th grade recorder so far, but we hope he'll like pretty much every instrument. We have a lot of instruments between the two of us, and every once in a while, we talk about getting rid of some. But we can't - what if the baby wants to play one of them some day!
5. TRUCK STEP - This past summer, we bought a new (to us) Dodge Ram. This truck, named Boris, is a pretty big rig. It is pretty much the truck I've been dreaming about for years. We got a great deal on it, and have already been putting it to work. As you can see in the photo below, the truck is pretty tall. One of the first things Chelsea told me after we brought it home is that she's going to need a step to get her "pregnant butt into the truck." Thanks to my brother, Danny, we now have a step rail installed for her.
Throughout these past several months, Chelsea has certainly earned on outstanding shoutout! In addition to teaching full time all day, where she's doing a great job building student excitement for music, Chelsea has about a million other things that she does, and goes all in doing so. Chelsea has been teaching Oula for well over a year now. Even though the baby is starting to make this tough (dang it, Ampersand!) she and a friend have been team teaching the class, and drawing quite a crowd each week. Chelsea is also the primary piano player at our church. There are some weeks where she attends 2 rehearsals on different days, and plays at 3 separate masses on a weekend. She really does a great job helping the music group work together to touch the hearts of the congregation. In addition, Chelsea and I are working on completing our masters degree (with the goal of being done by next December) and she is always the one pushing us to get it done and to do it right. Chelsea also has been taking lots of photos. Though she's decided to turn down some large gigs in the future (since we'll have a newborn) Studio Q has gotten some great shoots this year! These are just some of the things Chelsea does in addition to preparing the room for baby, finishing up projects around the house with me, and still making time to go on adventures with me.
Even though this year has been the most challenging for us, we can't wait for what the next year holds. We hope to flood your facebook feed with pictures of our baby doing new things, and we hope to flood our house with people visiting us and our baby. If you ever find yourself in Bozeman, please let us know! We love to have people over, even if it's just for a few minutes.
I can't wait for the next year, and I can't wait to experience it with Chelsea. She is truly an incredible partner, and I wouldn't want to do this adventure with anyone else! Happy Valentines Day Chelsea <3
As you may know from our previous blog and/or facebook posts, our first baby was lost due to a miscarriage last year on Valentines Day. This day was the single hardest day either of us have ever had. I was out of town with my 7/8th grade band for a festival, and Chelsea was alone in Bozeman trying to keep things together. I have never experienced so much grief, and as hard as it was, I'm glad that Chelsea and I experienced this together. We ordered the angel below as our Valentines Day gift to each other this year to help us celebrate the baby we haven't met yet.
In the past year, we have experienced many other life events. We purchased our first home together, and moved in on April 1st. Chelsea and I have also moved into different positions in our teaching careers. Chelsea now teaches K-5 music at Morningstar Elementary School in Bozeman, while at Monforton Middle School, I still teach band and choir, but have also added responsibilities in tech support at my school. Finally, Chelsea and I are expecting another baby! This baby boy is healthy and on track to arrive at the very start of April of this year.
As we get closer to the arrival of our baby boy, I wanted to write down some of the things we have experienced in the past 7 or so months as the baby grows. I hope to be able to tell these stories to our son in the future and thought this would be a good time to write them down (before things get really crazy in April).
1. BABY'S NICKNAME - One of my favorite stories so far, is one that we've told many times already. Because we are both teachers, we've really been struggling to find a name that we both really like. One night while we were talking about name ideas, I threw out the name Ampersand (like -> &). Even though I totally was kidding, we talked about it way more than I expected. I said we could call him And for short, and had to explain my thought process. Since then, we've been calling the baby Ampersand. While I thought this "name" was pretty funny, Chelsea and the other elementary music teachers apparently embraced it more than I expected. During the annual Raise the Roof concert, put on by all the Bozeman School District music teachers, Chelsea and & were featured in the credits. Since the nickname came up, we have a tendency of saying "dang it Ampersand" anytime pregnancy has caused some sort of inconvenience or struggle for us. Chelsea has trouble putting on shoes - "Dang it Ampersand!"
2. BABY ROOM - Once we finally decided which bedroom would be the baby's room, we had to make sure it was what we wanted. Because of this, most of our house now has matching blinds, thanks to a great deal find by Chelsea! Also, we decided to repaint one of the walls in the room as well as all the trim. The cool thing is that the previous owners had painted this half-wall with chalkboard paint. We really liked this idea, and decided to paint it a dark blue color. While the new color looks great to me, Chelsea really didn't think it matched the rest of the paint in the room. So...we repainted the rest of the room too. In addition, though this probably isn't necessary quite yet, we've replaced all the old cream colored outlets with new white tamper-resistant outlets (in preparation for the curious little guy). Though we aren't quite done with the room yet, we are getting closer!
3. BABY BACKPACK - While I've been around babies before, I always felt a little awkward. To help explain this a little bit, with our cats, I just want to pick them up and play with them ALL THE TIME! With other people's babies, this is not really an acceptable thing to do at will. I am SUPER EXCITED to have a baby of our own, because I can't wait to play with him ALL THE TIME! Something I'm especially excited about is getting a back pack baby carrier. I really want to take the baby around to do all sorts of things. Every time I mention a task that I could do with the baby, Chelsea looks at me and tries to explain how babies work... Again, I'm no expert, but I'm sure baby will love pulling weeds, trimming bushes, doing dishes, etc. with me all the time. haha!
4. BABY'S FIRST INSTRUMENT? - Another thing that Chelsea and I have talked about quite a bit throughout the pregnancy is what instrument we want to expose the baby to first! We're pretty sure the baby has gotten used to both piano and 4th grade recorder so far, but we hope he'll like pretty much every instrument. We have a lot of instruments between the two of us, and every once in a while, we talk about getting rid of some. But we can't - what if the baby wants to play one of them some day!
5. TRUCK STEP - This past summer, we bought a new (to us) Dodge Ram. This truck, named Boris, is a pretty big rig. It is pretty much the truck I've been dreaming about for years. We got a great deal on it, and have already been putting it to work. As you can see in the photo below, the truck is pretty tall. One of the first things Chelsea told me after we brought it home is that she's going to need a step to get her "pregnant butt into the truck." Thanks to my brother, Danny, we now have a step rail installed for her.
Throughout these past several months, Chelsea has certainly earned on outstanding shoutout! In addition to teaching full time all day, where she's doing a great job building student excitement for music, Chelsea has about a million other things that she does, and goes all in doing so. Chelsea has been teaching Oula for well over a year now. Even though the baby is starting to make this tough (dang it, Ampersand!) she and a friend have been team teaching the class, and drawing quite a crowd each week. Chelsea is also the primary piano player at our church. There are some weeks where she attends 2 rehearsals on different days, and plays at 3 separate masses on a weekend. She really does a great job helping the music group work together to touch the hearts of the congregation. In addition, Chelsea and I are working on completing our masters degree (with the goal of being done by next December) and she is always the one pushing us to get it done and to do it right. Chelsea also has been taking lots of photos. Though she's decided to turn down some large gigs in the future (since we'll have a newborn) Studio Q has gotten some great shoots this year! These are just some of the things Chelsea does in addition to preparing the room for baby, finishing up projects around the house with me, and still making time to go on adventures with me.
Even though this year has been the most challenging for us, we can't wait for what the next year holds. We hope to flood your facebook feed with pictures of our baby doing new things, and we hope to flood our house with people visiting us and our baby. If you ever find yourself in Bozeman, please let us know! We love to have people over, even if it's just for a few minutes.
I can't wait for the next year, and I can't wait to experience it with Chelsea. She is truly an incredible partner, and I wouldn't want to do this adventure with anyone else! Happy Valentines Day Chelsea <3
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