In some ways, it has been really hard to say that you’re thankful for anything in the past couple of years. But in the same vein, I think the past couple of years have made us more grateful for what we have and what we have been able to grow/achieve.

I will be the first to be extremely grateful that Devon and I have managed to remain healthy and that our family has also. We’ve had a few members “get the grossness”, but they have recovered well and for that we are grateful. We’re finally able to see some of our family again this holiday after not seeing them for 2 years, so we’re looking forward to that.

Devon and I bought our first house this year. While it wasn’t anything we were initially planning and may have been stressful in the process – I love our house. I love that it’s ours. I love that (while we haven’t done much yet) we can do whatever we want to it without having to ask someone first or wait for someone to take care of it for us. It’s just ours, and there is something so wonderful about knowing that you own a place of your own.

We have had quite a bit more to be grateful about recently, which we have been keeping quiet for awhile now.

I know! 2021 is just the year of secrets, okay! I’m sorry!

(kinda)

But I’m telling you now:

As of today, I am exactly 12 weeks pregnant with our first child. And it still, sometimes doesn’t feel real. It has taken us so long to get here – and at some point I will get more in detail with that – and it still feels so surreal. We’ve known for almost 2 months, we found out in October, but we wanted to wait until we were a bit further along before we said too much.

Our estimated due date is June 10, 2022 – so 2 weeks before our 4th wedding anniversary. It feels so crazy to me that by the time our next anniversary hits; we’ll be parents.

This first trimester has been….exhausting. It amazes me how something so small can make me need to take a nap every day after work, when before I could keep going for several more hours after school without taking a breath. I’ve been lucky in terms of morning sickness and general grossness – it hasn’t been too bad. It’s really just the exhaustion that really got to me, like there were days I literally couldn’t get out of bed.

But, the baby is healthy, I’m healthy, that’s what matters. I can live with being tired. Ive heard some of your energy comes back when you hit the second trimester anyway, so we’re going to cross our fingers for that.

Devon is…more excited than I’ve ever seen him, and for those who know Devon, that’s hard. He’s not an outwardly expressive guy. But this is the final piece of his “life trifecta” that he’s always wanted. Since he was a kid, he’s really only wanted 3 things: to be a teacher, to be a husband, and to be a dad. He’s had the first two for awhile and now he’s finally getting the last one, so he is just giddy (which is not a word I ever thought I’d use for him).

We told the family at Thanksgiving yesterday. This is the first grandchild, so Devon wanted his Mom to have something tangible as opposed to just saying, “Hey! You’re gonna be a grandma!”, so he had this shirt made.

We gave it to her as an “early Christmas present” and folded it so that she had to open the entire shirt to see what it said. Let’s just say…her reaction definitely did not disappoint.

We really are just so excited. It still sometimes doesn’t feel real, but we are also really looking forward to this new chapter of parenthood and everything that comes with it!

I hope everyone was able to have a great holiday!