Tiny Prints Holiday Card {Winner}

Thank you to everyone to entered the Tiny Prints Holiday Card Giveaway! And a huge thank you to Tiny Prints for hosting such an amazing giveaway!

  Congratulations to #60, Channing C. on winning $50 plus free shipping from Tiny Prints! Check your email, Channing!
{winner selected via random.org}

Brews & Barbeque Contest

Last weekend my sister and her husband came into town for the annual Brews & Barbeque competition. For the past 4 years Matt and his friends have entered into this competition and have a great time. There are 75 teams in the contest and the goal for Matt's team was to place in the top 50.
Friday morning Matt and Ryan left the house around 7:30 am to start setting up their tent and smokers. Meanwhile, Lindsey and I decided to sleep in, grab breakfast and relax a little bit before meeting the boys Uptown.

The weather was so wonderful. We had so much fun walking around the festival and snacking on plates of fries and BBQ from the street vendors.

{Boston Butts & Ribs}

 Laura and her hubs also hung out with us all weekend - so much fun!

The boys had to stay up all night to man the smokers. The next morning we came back to meet the boys for the competition day!

{the official BBQ team}

 {the 3 sauces they submitted to the judges}

 {the ribs}

 {the Matt's submitting the ribs to the judges}

 These ribs were hands down the best I've ever had. One of the guys made a chipotle blueberry sauce, Matt made the rub, and they smoked the ribs for a little over 4 hours. Everyone who came by the tent and sampled the ribs agreed they were award winning...

And apparently the judges thought so too because the boys made the top 3 finalists {out of 75 teams}! Later the judges came back by the tent to hear more about the ribs and taste them once more. The only problem? The ribs were so good that they were ALL gone! The boys didn't think for a second they would ever place so all they had for the judges were a few little scraps. Oops! Now they know for next year!

 All of the guys were so nervous once the finalist judges arrived that Matt was nominated to speak on behalf of the group. He explained the whole process and gave them once last sample.

Although it wasn't their best sample they had on hand, they somehow managed to secure 3rd place at the awards ceremony that night!

There was lots of celebrating and even a few tears shed. You better believe they will be using their recipe again next year {and making sure they have enough ribs leftover for the judging}! So proud of our boys!

After several meals of BBQ in a row and 36 hours of no sleep for the boys, we decided to have a low key night with pizza, our favorite snack {cream cheese & chives with pretzels} and football. It was a successful weekend!

Baby M Update

Thank you all again so much for all of the sweet comments and emails about our baby news! I am hoping to cover all of the questions you all had in this post. So let's get down to business!
How did you find out: Well, this is a very long and funny story so I'll give you all the abridged {husband edited} version. Matt and I decided we really wanted to start expanding our family in 2014. After speaking with mommy friends and doctors, everyone pretty much said to expect things to take 6 months to a year {or even longer}. So we booked a trip to Mexico in August for our last amazing vacation before babies. The day before the trip I took a test just to be safe - negative. I called Matt to let him know we were all set to have a fun and relaxing week, and we did just that! One night during our vacation I became super emotional while hanging out at the pool. I gave Matt a huge hug and started telling him how much I love him. Then I started hysterically crying about it. I also proceeded to tell him how much I love and missed Charlie. All of this was extremely abnormal behavior for me. The next day we all laughed it off. On the return flight home I fell asleep on the plane {something I never do} but chalked it up to exhaustion. Once we got to our car Matt asked me to start thinking about what we'd like to grab for dinner. Without hesitation I screamed "BARBEQUE!" and Matt almost pulled the car over in pure shock. Not only do I claim to be a 95% vegetarian, I very rarely give in to Matt when he begs to grab BBQ for dinner. So naturally, his response was "That's it. You are taking a pregnancy test as soon as we get home!" I laughed it off and told him he was crazy, but decided to take a test just to prove him wrong anyway. I only had 1 test left so I went ahead and took it and laughed when it read negative. I told Matt to come see for himself and he started freaking out, claiming we had a baby on the way. I checked the test again and was so confused. The box clearly depicts "pregnant" as two very solid pink lines and the test before us only had one very solid pink line and an additional line that was so faint it didn't even appear to count. I refused to believe I was pregnant even after Matt read the instructions aloud "even a very faint line indicates a positive result." Still in shock, I told Matt we needed to immediately run to the store and buy more tests. Three boxes {and $60} later we had the pink kind, the purple kind and the digital kind - all of which read "pregnant." I couldn't believe it. Never in a million years did I think we would get pregnant so fast! After the shock came the excitement, and then the panic of "omg, what about all the partying we did in Mexico!?!" {thankfully the doctor laughed at me when I told her my concerns and told me I had absolutely nothing to worry about. Praise the Lord!}. Moments later I confessed to Matt that I had always envisioned surprising him with the news in such a cute way {a baby themed dinner with a gift after dessert}. Thankfully, I had purchased a cute little onesie online just a week before Mexico to have on hand for when the time came. However, that onesie was still wrapped in it's original shipping packaging and I hadn't even opened it, just stashed it in the back of a closet. I told Matt to hang tight and ran to my hiding spot and grabbed the package. He laughed and ripped the package open to find the cutest "Daddy's Little Caddy" onesie. That night we prayed together for our baby and for the next few weeks tried to hide our excitement in public.

How are you feeling? Any morning sickness? Oh yes! Up until about 11 weeks I was nauseous all day every day. I felt like I had a hangover that wouldn't go away and I was living off of crackers and La Croix sparkling water. I also experienced exhaustion like never before! I'd get into bed by 7:30 pm every night and sleep for 12 hours, getting up once between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. to tinkle.    Jenny McCarthy describes it best...   "Imagine staying up all night, then running a marathon, then doing three hundred loads of laundry and raking leaves off a football field all in one day. How tired would you be? That’s how tired I felt EVERY DAY in my first trimester."   Amen, Jenny! I felt exactly the same! I stopped cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, packing lunches, grocery shopping, running errands etc. Basically, I was just a zombie and Matt has been unbelievably amazing through it all! And I know it may sound weird, but I totally embraced and welcomed the nausea and exhaustion as little reminders that there is a lil babe forming and everything is good! Thankfully, those symptoms have subsided and my energy is starting to come back!   How did you tell your family? Our baby is the first grandbaby for both sides of our family, so it was really exciting to tell our parents they are going to soon be grandparents. We told Matt's family at 7 weeks. They came into town to bring me an early birthday gift and while they were sitting down we told them we had a Mexico souvenir {onesies} for them to open...
We told my parents at 9 weeks during my surprise trip to Florida for my birthday! When I realized the next time I would see my family would be Thanksgiving, I was devastated. I did not want to mail them their gifts or tell them over the phone. Matt assured me not to worry and packed the gifts in our suitcase for Florida! It was perfect!

My dad's gift was hands down my favorite. Dad is a huge surfer so we got him a baby rash guard so he can teach his grandbaby how to surf just like he taught all of us. He was over-the-moon when he opened his gift! And Mom? Well she cried and cried and cried out of happiness.

 {Aunt Lindsey!}
Will you find out the gender? AB-SO-LUTELY! We will be 17 weeks at Thanksgiving and I begged my doctor to let us come in the day before our families arrive to see if we can find out early what the sex of our babe is. We are crossing our fingers for a little gender reveal party to go down after Thanksgiving dinner.
Any suspicion what you're having? I definitely thought it was a girl until I recently read that meat cravings are indicative of a boy. We will be happy either way, just praying for a healthy baby!
I think that's it for now! Thanks again for all of your prayers, comments and emails!