Pickles and Crawfish

Well, I figured it was about time I update this thing...this post will be pretty random!

I am now in my second trimester, which is awesome! I'm feeling pretty good...the queasy stomach seems to be gone and I am not feeling quite as lazy as I was during the first trimester! Notice I say not "quite as lazy"...I still have my moments, but I'm actually cleaning my house again. Right now I am 16 weeks...will be 17 weeks on Tuesday. We went to the OB on February 27th and everything went great. We got to hear the heartbeat again. It was going strong at 147 bpm. My next appointment is on Monday, March 23rd and we will hopefully find out the baby's sex! I'm just starting to show a little, but I tried to take a picture and you couldn't really tell much from it (for those of you who've asked for belly pics!). I think if I put on a tight shirt, you'd be able to see it...but I'm not ready to show that to everyone just yet, haha! It mostly just looks like I've eaten too much. However, I have grown enough to where most of my regular clothes are too tight...but most maternity clothes are too big! This makes dressing myself quite interesting. I did buy one of those maternity bands at Target and it has helped. Its supposed to help hold up maternity pants that are too big around the waist or regular pants that won't zip up. So yeah...that's where things stand these days! Oh, and I think we have a girl name picked out...and we are almost settled on a boy name. Once we find out the sex, I will share with everyone.

People always ask pregnant ladies, "are you having any weird cravings?"...well, to answer that question...not really. I have had cravings, but nothing I consider to be weird. I haven't craved anything that I don't normally like. One week it was cheese and crackers. Another week I wanted blueberry bagels with cream cheese every day. For a few weeks in a row, I ate lots of blackberries and/or strawberries. Now that crawfish season is getting underway, I can't stop thinking about boiled crawfish!! (which I have yet to have...*tear*) Rhett thinks it's weird that I've been eating a lot of pickles. I don't know what it is, but I just can't get enough of them. I have been drinking that blue frost Gatorade like nobody's business. I'm wondering if that's good for me or not...doesn't it have a lot of sodium and sugar? Hmm? I loved food before I was pregnant, and I still love it (this could turn out bad!). One of my favorite parts of the week is going out to eat w/Rhett on Saturday nights. I think about it all week long, LOL! Is that bad? Last night, we ate at a Japanese Hibache place...delicious! I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. I digress...

Let's see...what else? After the start of the year, we got new carpet in the bedrooms...love it! We picked out a berber style that is super soft. I don't even know how old the other carpet was, but it was yucky. I think the dogs were allergic to it b/c they used to all sneeze every morning when they woke up. Now, they barely sneeze at all. I'm convinced it was the old carpet. I realize that years from now, our lovely new carpet will be old carpet again...but there's just something more comfortable about carpet in bedrooms vs. wood floors. I love having the wood floors in the living area, but to me a bedroom needs soft carpet. We are trying to be vigilant about not walking on it with shoes...we'll see how long that lasts, ha! Much to our dismay, two of our three mutts have barfed in our bedroom already. I knew it would happen. Guess I'd better get used to it since we're about to have a kid! Luckily, Rhett worked diligently to clean it up and there are no stains. Before getting the carpet installed, we decided to clean out the "computer room" which will soon be the baby's room. We gave our computer desk, tv stand, and bookshelf that were in there to a friend who's in college. We cleaned out the closet too...that was fun. NOT! A lot of stuff got sent up to the attic...probably to never be seen again. Rhett made me do it (I'm a packrat...he's not). I'm glad we did it though b/c now the baby's room is pretty much empty and ready to be decorated when the time comes! That is another story... I think I have boy bedding picked out, but most girl bedding is just so pink. I can't stand pink. Anyway....

We also got furniture for our bedroom! I'm super excited about this! This is the first real furniture set I've ever owned in my entire life. I feel like a real grown-up now. Our room is still in need of some decorations, but it's coming along. I am finally using the bedding set I bought a year ago, lol! We found the furniture we wanted at Gallery Furniture. However, the bed was discontinued by the manufacturer before we could actually buy it in the store. Rhett did a lot of research online and found a furniture store in Ohio that ships nationwide. They actually had a few of the beds in stock, so we ordered it from them. Rhett feels like we got a good deal (less than what we would have payed at Gallery) so I'm happy. We were told that it would be 6-12 weeks for delivery...but we got it in 2 weeks!! Here are some pics:

The lighting in these pics is terrible, but the bedding is light blue, chocolate brown, and a beige color.

And this is the matching blue/brown doggie bed that my mom made for her grandmutts:

Hmm...what else? Oh yeah, work. It is pretty much what takes up most of our time, right? Yeah. Rhett is still enjoying his job. He's an engineer, through and through. I don't think he will ever leave Stress Engineering...which is a good thing b/c he loves it so much and he has a really good set-up there. My work, on the other hand...is driving me a little crazy. Let me just say that I love the vet compounding aspect of it...that is my ideal area of pharmacy to work in. For that, I feel really blessed to have this opportunity b/c there aren't many vet pharmacies out there. What drives me nuts is all the other stuff that goes on at my job. I don't really want to get into specifics here, but if you really want to know then email me. Let's just say that I cannot wait to be a stay-at-home mom....CANNOT WAIT!

Anything else, you ask? Yes! We have officially (as of March 1st) been on the "Dave Ramsey Plan" (as we call it) for ONE FULL YEAR! Dave Ramsey is an awesome Christian financial counselor. I can honestly say that going through his "Financial Peace University" course last year and sticking to it's principles, has been one of the most life-changing things for us as a married couple. Even if you're not married, being financially smart is important b/c God has called us to be good stewards of all that he gives us, including money! I don't want to get into our financial specifics here, but we have paid off a lot of debt in the past year. (I'm not bragging, so I hope it doesn't sound that way). We have tackled and defeated a good portion of our home mortgage, a Best Buy CC (never again!), leftover CC charges for our kitchen renovation (never again!), and now we are smashing to smitherines the balance left on my '07 Murano. One of our main goals in all of this (other than the obvious one of getting our finances in check) was to get to the point where we don't need my salary...so I can stay at home with our kids for as long as we want. I am so excited that we are almost to that point! What a blessing that will be! I also look forward to teaching our kids about being good stewards of their money and setting an example for them.


So yeah, that's life with the Dotsons right now. I know this post probably seemed to be all over the place, but I just typed it as it came to my mind. To conclude, here are some things we are looking forward to in the coming weeks/months (and hopefully things I will blog about):


1. Boiled CRAWFISH with corn and potatoes from Louisiana! (that is mostly me)
2. Finding out the baby's sex on March 23rd!
3. Spring and warm weather! (that is probably mostly me, too...for Rhett, it means yardwork)
4. Third Day/Need to Breathe concert w/my lil sis in College Station on March 27th!
5. Frequenting the Shaved Ice and Fun Food Factory to get sno-cones and funnel cakes!
6. Our CRAWFISH boil that we're having at our house on April 11th w/our HFBC small group!
7. Our mini-vacation to San Antonio at the beginning of May!
8. Decorating the baby's room!
9. Baseball season and time spent at Minute Maid Park! (Go 'Stros!)
10. The overlap of CRAWFISH season and baseball season!!