Mall Parking

Well I went to the mall to get Cat's birthday present and I couldn't find a parking place. I was circling the parking lot and came upon this spot. I kind of blew it off at first. Suddenly I put it in reverse and whipped on in this spot. After all, I am an expectant mother, right??

Baby Coulter's First Outfit

I am sure you can guess who this is from..... :)

Second Trimester Time!

Well I am 14 weeks and could not be happier!! I decided it was time to post a few pictures as I seem to blossoming every week!

The picture where I have a purple and black dress on was taken at Jonathan and Melinda's wedding - me and my glass of water!! I did manage to bust a move or two, so I look slightly sweaty! I was 13 weeks 5 days.


This picture was taken the night before as I began to hand out candy to the trick or treaters. A little bit blurry, but you can see the beginnings of a bump! I was 13 weeks 4 days here...

Diaper Choice?

So tonight, Brad and I got Robert and Kara some Cracker Barrel for dinner. We also got some for ourselves and the four of us ate dinner together over at their house. After dinner, Kara and I were discussing how baby boys often pee in mid-air when changing their diapers. I then proceeded to tell a story about a little boy baby that created the perfect arc with his stream. The diaper that was being changed when this happened was a pee diaper, which I mentioned in my story. Brad was sitting with us and overheard this story. I looked over and he had a confused look on his face and proceeded to ask, "Wait...there are different diapers for pee and poop diapers?"

Clearly Brad does not have any experience with babies, and I can see where one would be confused after overhearing part of my story. But come on now....separate types of diapers for pee and poop????

I can hardly wait for Baby Coulter to join our lives....there will be many more stories like this to share :)

My Hubby Is The BEST!!!

I am so lucky...after a stressful morning coordinating a training, I got back to my office. Not 10 minutes later a delivery man came in with a package...for ME...from 1-800-FLOWERS!! They are the prettiest yellow, pink, and reddish/yellow/orange roses!!!! With a vase! (more convenient when receiving at work) And the note with the flowers was amazing - it was really all I needed.

THANKS BRAD!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love you! xoxo

The Rest of the Details

OK so I didn't include some of the details in the post below. My due date is May 4 - almost a Cinco de Mayo baby!!

When I found out that I indeed was pregnant, Brad was out of town! So I kept it a secret from him because I wanted to tell him in person. In the mean time, I went to the doctor to confirm the pregnancy via a blood test. They called and HOORAY - my beta was 49 (it is supposed to double every 48 hours). So the next step was to get Brad back from Atlanta and tell him.

I decided to give him an early birthday present. We both got to the house at the same time and I gave him a gift bag when we walked in and said something along the lines of "I found this for you and thought you could go on and use it - and it definitely counts as part of your birthday present!" In the bag was an outfit that says "I Love Daddy", the book The Expectant Father, and the pregnancy tests that said Pregnant. He was so happy when he opened it and figured out what I was telling him!!





I also wanted to wait and tell my grandmother, Meme, on her birthday. This day also happened to be the first anniversary of my grandfather's death, so I thought she needed something to really celebrate. This is a picture of her as she read a poem I printed out for her. Below the picture is the poem :)

To: Great-Grandma Meme

I do not have a face to see,

Or put inside a frame.

I do not have soft cheeks to kiss,

I don't yet have a name.

You can't yet hold my tiny hands, 'nor whisper in my ear.

It's still too soon to sing a song, or cuddle me so near.

But all that will change come May 4,

That’s when they say I'm due.

I'll be your First great-grandchild; I can't wait till I meet you.

All I ask between now and then is your patience while I grow.

I promise I'll be worth the wait, because of all the love we'll know.

So have a Happy Birthday

A wish to you from me.

I cannot wait to be a part

Of this great family!

Love,

Baby Coulter

(and for those of you that don't already know, we are calling the baby Cletus the Fetus until we know whether it is a boy or a girl!!)

Announcing....Cletus the Fetus!!

Well, on August 26, I took a test...a line is a line (and I had to get reassurance from Kara & Robert because Brad was out of town)...please notice the VERY faint up and down line in the left window!


I needed reassurance, and that requires using first morning urine. Early the morning of August 27th, I did a rather foolproof, digital test....AND HOORAY!!!! It said a very obvious PREGNANT!!!

This is a picture of me on August 27. I was about 4 weeks along (very early). It will be really neat to compare that picture to the size my belly grows to as time goes by. It is so hard to believe that I am already 12 weeks.

Fun Pics of Brad & Me!

I finally uploaded a lot of pics to my computer and thought I would do a quick post of some new pictures...Enjoy!!

Before a Diamondbacks game in Phoenix...

After dinner one night...

WAR EAGLE!!!!

Baby Carter

I am so excited that I am officially an auntie. I feel that since I have known Kara for so long, we are considered sisters. This means that her new bundle of joy is my nephew :) Baby Carter entered the world this afternoon. I could not be happier that both mom and baby are healthy and happy. The crazy part of the story is what a big boy Carter is....he was born weighing 10 pounds, 1.5 ounces. CRAZY!! What a big boy. Robert and Kara sure do grow them big!

Congrats to the new parents...what a blessing.

More Pictures

Well, I found some other pictures and thought I would post them!! We are so lucky to have such wonderful friends. These pictures are from various events over the summer - dinner at Red Pony, the Fish Fry at Brad's boss' house, and Cat and Tyler's rehearsal dinner!!

Verses of Inspiration

I just really love these and thought I would share them with yall!! Oh and I didn't ever write to discuss that we finally joined a church - as a couple - just the two of us! I am so proud of us and I can hardly wait to see what God has in store for us as we embark on finding our niche within the church!! We joined Brentwood Baptist Church. I have to be 'dunked' since I was raised Methodist, which means I was 'sprinkled' when I was baptised. Anyway, here are the verses!

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts. -Colossians 3:15 (NRSV)

As it is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him." -1 Corinthians 2:9 (NIV)

The LORD said, "I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told." -Habakkuk 1:5 (NIV)

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. -Proverbs 3:5-6 -6 (NIV)

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. -Psalm 46:1 (KJV)

Let your hope keep you joyful, be patient in your troubles, and pray at all times. -Romans 12:12 (TEV)

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. -Romans 8:28 (NRSV)

It's In the Air!!!

Well, it's that time of year again - and I can hardly wait......

FOOTBALL SEASON!!!!!!!!!!!!

It signifies that it should (hopefully) start cooling off. Tailgating with friends. Screaming WAR EAGLE and people get it. Waking up early to watch sports (not normal for me). Kirk Herbstreit. Auburn vs Tennessee in Auburn (true test of mine and Brad's marriage...hehe)!

I can hardly wait - good luck to all your teams...and a huge WAR EAGLE to each of you!

Addition to the calendar

Brad got his feelings hurt that I did not put his birthday weekend on the schedule below, so I am dedicating an entire post to state that Sept 19 is Brad's birthday - that means one more year until the big 3 - 0!!!!

Busy, busy, busy...

Well, I know I did this for the summer, but I was just thinking about our fall, and it looks like the weekends are already filling up! Here we go....

August 16-17: I have to work on Sat
August 23-24: We will be returning from Phoenix that Sunday
August 30-31: I think I am babysitting that Sat night
Sept 6-7:
Sept 13-14: Houseboat weekend with the Fetrows & Collins crews
Sept 20-21:
Sept 27-28: Auburn - UT game in Auburn (we will definitely be there)...WAR EAGLE!!
Oct 4-5: Auburn-Vandy game at Vandy (we will be there too)
Oct 11-12: I have to work that weekend
Oct 18-19:
Oct 25-26: Possibly going to Knoxville for UT-Alabama game
Nov 1-2: Knoxville for Jonathan & Melinda's wedding
Nov 8-9: Returning from Ohio from a work trip
Nov 15-16: weekend before my birthday :)
Nov 22-23: UT at Vandy (we will be there)
Nov 29-30: weekend after Thanksgiving...possibly coming back from NC?
Dec 6-7:
Dec 13-14: I have to work that Saturday
Dec 20-21:
Dec 27-28:

Good grief...that makes me tired just looking at our schedule!! Hopefully somewhere in there we will find some time for some rest & relaxation! Not too much longer until football season is up and running...I can hardly wait (or at least I say that now...)!!!

Pictures from Kara's Shower, K & Dallas' Wedding Weekend, & Anna's Return to School Party

Here are some pictures from Kara's baby shower, Katherine & Dallas' wedding, and Anna's surprise get together to celebrate her going back to school! Enjoy!

Title Change

Can you figure out the importance of the title of the blog now? Let me know if you can figure it out!!

Happy Monday, y'all!!!

Time for an Update & Change!

Well, I decided that the blog looked way too boring, so it was time for a little updating! We have been keeping really busy with work and hanging out with friends. The latest drama is our A/C in our house going out - what a pain. Though home warranties are wonderful, what good do they do if they company they assign you never answers there phone or calls to set up a time? Oh well...we leave tomorrow for Charleston, SC for K & Dallas' wedding - I can hardly wait. I have always wanted to go to SC!!!
This past weekend, I hosted Kara's baby shower at my house. It was oh so fun. She got some unbelievably cute things - onesies, pacifiers, bottles, blankets....so cute and little! It was also good to see some friends from high school. Here is a picture of the FRA gals and then a picture of me and my mom. We have the hardest time getting a picture together where she actually has her eyes open!!!

Nothing else really new to report. I am getting excited about the end of summer and beginning of fall...football season!! There is big group of folks going to Auburn for the UT-Auburn game...I can hardly wait!!! WAR EAGLE! And prior to that, we are renting a houseboat for a weekend with some friends - how thrilling! Should be an adventure for sure...

Pictures from Europe!

Here is just a small sampling of pictures from when we went to Europe. I had to pick just a few since I took over 1200 pictures :) I think one of my favorites is the last one - when the Eiffel Tower was sparkling at night...somehow, on a certain setting on my camera, it caught all the sparkles...love it! What a wonderful trip...now if I can just make myself sit down and make a photo book...

Gas prices & other stuff....

I can hardly believe that gas prices have hit $4/gallon! I know last week it cost me roughly $65 to fill up my car...ridiculous. Today I started riding a VanPool of Vandy employees that are from the Spring Hill/Thompsons Station area. It is amazing the money we will save if I continue with it - for June, it cost me like $3.75 for the whole month. That is THRILLING! The downside to this arrangement is that the van leaves the Krogers at 6:00am sharp. And it does not leave Vandy until 4:15. Talk about a long day. I am reminded today how much an extra hour of sleep is worth. It is 2:00pm and I am drinking coffee to be able to make it the rest of the day. And I won't necessarily ride that EVERY day, like if I have meetings that I have to drive to and everything, but good grief I wish I had looked into this earlier. 64 miles a day roundtrip to work gets rather old! At least I can jump on the van and just zone out until I get dropped off at my office - all I need is a good book and my iPod and I am set!

Sidenote...I have a lot of pictures I plan to post here sometime this week. So be looking for some Europe pics (finally...I know....sorry!), pics from Cat's showers & bachelorette party, and pics from the Gatlinburg weekend for Jonathan and Melinda...crazy fun! Hooray for summer....sunshine and fun times with friends!

Busy Summer

I was just looking at my planner and realized that this summer is already shaping up to be equally as busy as the ones in the past....between weddings and work and all that, should be exciting...

May 31/June 1: Cat's shower/bachelorette activities
June 7-8: Gatlinburg for Melinda & Jonathan's weekend
June 14-15: I have to work that Sat.
June 21-22: Cat & Tyler's wedding
June 28-29: Couples party for Dallas & Katherine
July 5-6: Travel somewhere for the 4th...maybe?
July 12-13:
July 19-20: I have to work that Sat.
July 26-27:
Aug 2-3: Kara's baby shower is that Sun.
Aug 9-10: Dallas & Katherine's wedding weekend in SC
Aug 16-17: I have to work that Sat
Aug 23-24:
Aug 30-31:

Something else I also need to do is organize my Europe pictures. This is something I had all intentions of doing this past weekend, especially since it was a long weekend, but I just never got around to it. Guess I need to put that at the top of my list of things to do so I don't forget all of the neat places we saw. I also need to make a photo book online - should be thrilling :)

Let the laundry begin!

I just wanted to write a quick note saying we made it home safely!! Our alarm went off at 4:15 AM in Paris. Our flight left at 9:20 AM and we arrived home in Nashville at 3:00 this afternoon. Needless to say, we are pooped! We have already done 2 loads of laundry and picked Sadie up from Pooch Playhouse (she was SO excited!) and got somewhat settled in. I think I will wait and write about Paris tomorrow when I can put together a complete thought.

Sidenote, we brought back 6 bottles of wine and a bottle of olive oil. The sad news is that 3 of the bottles of wine and the bottle of olive oil broke in the bag and ruined some of Brad's shirts in the process. I guess the upside to that is that 3 of the bottles survived :) And with out luck with luggage, we are just happy our bags made it home! On one of our recent trips, our bags did not make it back with us!! Hooray for Nashville :)

French Riviera

...and having a ball!! We are in Nice right now - and have been for about 3 days or so. We LOVE it!! A new kind of cuisine was definitely welcome...and being on the beach is a definite plus as well! We also had ZERO tours scheduled when we arrived, so we were able to sleep late and fly by the seat of our pants. We did do a 4 hour van tour with a number of stops and opportunities to take pictures - that was great. We got to see a lot of places we would not have seen otherwise - lots of great views with lots of great pictures! The food has been wonderful....I am a big fan of the Nutella Crepes (chocolate of course) - Brad continues to make fun of me because I have had chocolate at least once every single day of our trip. LOVE IT! The croissants have been great - we will both be doing Weight Watchers upon our return!! Oh well, at least we are enjoying things here! My mosquito bites are MUCH better - thank goodness for the Zyrtec and cortisone cream from the drug store!!!!

Tonight we are heading to Paris on another night train. On the night train to here, we had our own car with bunk beds. On this one tonight, we have reclining seats and that is it - I guess we will see how much sleep we actually get! Tomorrow night we are doing a bike tour of Paris which includes ice cream (yum!) and a ride on the Seine River - should be exciting!

Things we have learned that we definitely take for granted: availability of clean & free public bathrooms, air conditioning, lotion in hotel rooms, light food, good service at restaurants (we have had good service MOST places), dependable luggage (my two straps broke already - both in the same place - Brad had to rig them to be able to have straps to wear my pack on my back)....AND WE MISS SADIE!!!! (and family and friends, too, of course! hehe)

Not too much longer til we are home and able to sleep in air conditioning and in our own bed! On to Paris for now though....au revoir!

Mosquitos!!!!!!

Well today is our last day in Florence - it is great. We did our afternoon tour yesterday, which included a visit to the Uffizi Gallery. Lots of wonderful artwork - we did not know what to expect, which is kind of a nice way to go into those type of experiences. Our guide was amazingly knowledgeable, but good grief she was zany! She was yelling at kids to hush up and at people who were taking pictures when they were not allowed...I thoroughly enjoyed it because she was willing to say what I was thinking :) Aggressive Italians...love it. Then we had a FANTASTIC dinner - we were starving and ate pretty much everything in sight. Not to worry - I still had room for gelato though!!

Since the hotel has not turned on the AC, we had to have the windows open, which means...MOSQUITOS. I have an enormous bite on my right hand on top - from my knuckles to my wrist, and it is way swollen!! We are about to head to the pharmacy to get some itch cream.

Today we are going on a tour of the Tuscany region which includes Chianti tour and wine tasting. Should be exciting and so pretty too. Then we are taking a night train to Nice, which leaves around 11:25 tonight and arrives around 8:30 tomorrow morning. We do not have anything scheduled in Nice, so we are kind of excited about that. Maybe a day trip to Cannes? Who knows!

I will try and post again in the next few days - this free internet has been great! Happy Thursday!!

I think I forgot a day...

I forgot to mention that while we were in Rome, we took a day trip to Naples & Pompeii and saw Mt. Vesuvius. It was really neat to see all of the remains that have been found. We were talking about how it was amazing that we could come back even a year from now and see different things because they are constantly excavating parts of it. Naples was a lot bigger than we both had imagined - maybe one day we will go there because it is absolutely gorgeous!

Today we are finishing our tour through Florence (the afternoon part that we had to miss yesterday because of changing hotels). Should be exciting! We have been so lucky to have good weather, especially here in Italy. Clear blue skies and warm!

Take care! XOXO

Oh the excitement...

Well we are in Florence (Firenze) now...SO pretty. It is just so much more layed back and not AS touristy...the people are better looking too :) Well I guess a quick update is in order - Venice was so pretty but we were not too impressed. We were definitely glad to get out of there - it takes forever to get somewhere since it is all by boat. We did have some awesome food while we were there at a little hole in the wall kinda place that was recommended by the hotel staff. After there we went to Rome which was absolutely wonderful. The hotel was so nice and we had the taxi ride of a lifetime. I guess the traffic laws are just suggestions there! But we did make it it one piece to our hotel and then figured out the subway after that so we could get from Point A to Point B for 2 Euro instead of 25. We saw some amazing sites while we were there: Vatican Museums, Vatican Gardens, Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's Basilica, Colisseum, the Roman Forum, Trevi Fountain (which we could see from our hotel while eating breakfast - only like 10 steps away!), Spanish Steps, Piazza Navona, Pantheon (massive!), and so much more! Yesterday we had some free time to walk around and do our own thing before the train left, so that was nice. The people in Rome were friendly and it was just a great time.

Yesterday we came to Florence, which has a wide array of landscapes. It ranges from countryside resembling what you would imagine Tuscany to look like (grapes, grass, hills, etc) to crowded city streets. Last night I was craving American cuisine, so I had a cheeseburger and fries - probably the best cheeseburger I have ever had!!! When we got here, we learned that our hotel had overbooked and they sent us to a different hotel which SUCKED! We had to figure all of that out and tonight we are at a much better hotel. We were supposed to do a full-day tour today, but we had to reschedule the afternoon portion so that we could switch hotels. We did see Michaelangelo's "David" --- it really is as amazing as you would think. It is about 2 to 3 times human size and it is truely a masterpiece. We also went to Michaelangelo's Square and got a panoramic view of Florence (great pictures) filled with church domes and orange shingled roofs. Tomorrow we will do the afternoon portion of the tour and Thursday we will visit the Chianti region and do a wine tour (tastings included, of course).

We are having a blast and going through pictures daily so that we have enough room on the memory card - over 600 pictures so far!!!!!!!! We miss everyone at home but are having a great time!! We will try to do another post before we head to Nice since the Internet is free at this hotel (hard to come by)! Ciao!!