Baby GIRL Clarke!

Doug and I had the five month ultrasound today and found out that we are having a little girl!  Everything looked great on the ultrasound.....healthy and growing accordingly....my due date remains on August 20th.  Here are some pictures for y'all to check out.  The one picture that might be a little hard to figure out is the third one down....it's her hand and she pointing to us.....see?

See her foot by her head in the top picture?

Cherry Blossom Festival and the Aulenbacher cousins

We were lucky to have family come and visit us this week!  The Aulenbachers came down from West Virginia for several days to spend some much needed quality family time.  Sam absolutely loved having his cousins in town.  Emma was nice enough to ride with Sam on the rides during the Cherry Blossom Festival so he wouldn't be scared.  Not only was he not scared, but he pitched some major fits after taking him off of the rides.....you can probably see a lingering tear while he was on the fish ride....he didn't like getting off of the previous car ride!

20 months

Sam is 20 months old and loves going down slides. We went to the Cherry Blossom festival today to go see the sea lions that performed a show. The sea lions were interesting, but not for long.....the playground was calling! The Cherry Blossom festival goes on all week, into the weekend so I'll post some other pictures later in the week of more visits.

New stuff....updates.

We have several updates for the family....most of you know about all of them but I figured that I would post them anyways.  Plus, I have pictures....which is always fun.  First, I have finally been feeling the new baby move now for the past couple of weeks.  It's been very exciting and very real (although I think that Doug is still in complete denial.....I talk about the pregnancy and he says "what pregnancy, you're pregnant?!" Haha.).  We go on March 30th to have an ultrasound to determine the overall health of the baby and of course the sex.  I'll let everyone know as soon as I can get to my phone/blog.

The other update is that we purchased two more pieces of investment property in January.  We purchased our second house back in March of last year but unfortunately my role as a fairly new mother prohibited me from posting info and pictures about it.  That property is an old house built in 1945 that was built as four 2 bedroom apartments in there.  It's on the same block as our first property.  Doug has been working not only his MWI Vet job but going over to this property to gut each apartment.  It's been extremely hard on him and on me as well.  But, we feel confident that we are making the right decision to secure our future....and our children's future as well.  He has finished three out of the four apartments (well, the third is waiting on the hardwood floor guy to come by and re-finish the floors).  He has updated kitchens, bathrooms, fixtures, floors, walls, some plumbing....my husband is a regular "mr. fix-it" now.  Sorry, no pictures of that property.  I'll try here shortly.

But, I do have pictures to post of one of the other properties that we purchased in January.  Both of these houses are duplexes that were built in 1900...they are just streets over from our first two properties....but the same nice neighborhood.  This one house is.....wow, to be nice....a diamond in the rough?  I'm hoping?  No, seriously, it has a lot of charm and we feel like it's going to be really easy to rent once we're done.  Most of the work on this property is being done by our contractor at this point but once Doug is finished over at the other property, the contracted work will be done and he will move over here to do the cosmetic work.  His work is never done!  I'm hoping that the work will be done before this baby is born but I'm starting to think that I'm totally out of my mind.  No way it's going to be done.....no way.  I guess it's good that I'm coming to this realization now right?  I'll have some updated pictures of Sam soon!