Another JOY!

 I found out just after Christmas that I was expecting again and luckily, still had all our decorations up.  I decided to wrap up the pregnancy test as one last Christmas gift for Brad.  I had the perfect wrapping paper - it had the word JOY written all over it.

 When we had a moment alone, I told him that he still had one more gift in his stocking.

 Realizing the just how special this gift really is...

 And so excited about it!

  We had the sonogram done in late April and Brad and I found out at the appointment what we were having.

 The first picture is a shot of the baby looking forward. 
When the sonographer said "they are looking right at you", I immediately teared up. 
Just such an intimate moment of Brad, me, and our little one "seeing" each other for the first time.

At the very end our sonographer asked if we wanted to know the sex and it took a few minutes for the baby to get into a position where it was clear. 
When we found out, we immediately looked at each other with HUGE smiles and honestly, were practically speechless for a few minutes.

Since the girls birthday party would be just a couple weeks after our appt., we decided we would keep the gender a secret and reveal it at the party.

I have to say, it was more fun keeping that information from people than I expected it to be.  

(Side note - I was dying to tell someone, so I told a stranger who asked in the play area at Chick-fil-a the day after we found out.)

All the kids at the party gathered around the box because it was such a big present.

  

I love everything about this picture...how the girls are both looking at the balloons and how our friends and family are reacting.

 More friends and family excited by our news.

Here I am at 21 weeks, already more than half-way to meeting this little guy.

 

I was thinking about how each of my pregnancies has been special in their own way.

Since Anna was my first and everything was new for us, there were so many unknowns and so much anticipation and excitement for her arrival.

With Haven, I was so thankful and happy that her and Anna would have a sister and I immediately felt a special bond with her because she was the second child and girl just like me.

With this pregnancy, I feel similar to when I was pregnant with Anna because this time
it is a boy.  I am so curious about what he will look like and what his temperament will be.  I ordered a couple of books on raising boys because I am intrigued about how God has wired boys differently from the two little girls I have been raising.