Hello Snow... and baby Girl!

Wow, December 5th and it's snowing like crazy outside! For non-locals, it's been snowing all morning since around 10:00 and is still coming down in huge, heavy flakes. The roads are slushy but not totally covered over. The ground was probably still too warm for it to just lay. Grassy surfaces are covered, and every little tree branch has it's own layer too! Here at our house, we decided it would be a good day to stay in, stay warm, and catch up on some things! So we lit our Christmas candles, turned on Christmas music, and got down to business.

For me, business meant scanning my sonogram pictures from yesterday (!!!) and downloading some pictures of our tree I took this morning. Lucky you, this is a post with pictures!

Here's what it's looking like outside right now...

And this is what my house smells like right now... LOVE it!

Shall we begin with a guessing game? Here are some images from the Beck Christmas tree this year. Your "challenge" (you'll understand the quotes here in a second) is to guess who decorated the tree while someone else was writing a paper for school...... good luck!

Ok, so I know that was tough. Do you have any guesses? What's that, you can't guess because you're still laughing? It's ok. I'm sure I can guess what your guess is. That was a fun game.

I love my husband and am so lucky that he was willing to take care of decorating the Christmas tree (how many husbands really volunteer for that job?) when I had school work that needed to be done. He had so much fun doing it, it was like watching a little kid playing with all of their Christmas presents for the first time after the opening frenzy. Many of his ornaments talk or play music and he happily tested each one as he carefully took them out of their original packaging and placed them on the tree. There are some of my ornaments that are missing this year, but I really can't complain. Who looks at our tree but the two of us? Maybe some friends who will completely understand. And at the very least it reminds me of how adorable and weird my husband is :] Not like I wasn't aware when I married the kid! I'm sure some husbands in the world would have done much worse if left by their wives to decorate the Christmas tree.

Well, I know you're really only here for one reason (unless you're my friend on Facebook and then this part might not be as thrilling for you). We had our 20-week anatomy sonogram yesterday. What an amazing experience. There was a regular sonogram tech and a student in the room with us. The student was a wonderful addition because the tech was explaining everything we were looking at in incredible detail and most importantly discussing how things all looked the way they were supposed to. She apologized a couple of times for all of her talking, but we assured her that we loved hearing all about it! At one point the student was asking some questions and kept asking if "he" was laying a certain way or if "he" was facing this or that way. I interrupted with, "Wait! Did you see HE??" And the tech said that they hadn't looked yet, but.... (she scanned to the appropriate part) "Nope, we didn't see HE because this is a girl!" I think my shock kept me from squealing right there on the table. I was most definitely convinced that we were having a boy. Josh's family is full of boys and while rationally I knew there was just as much chance for a girl, I think my wanting a girl so much made me convince myself it was a boy so I could only be pleasantly surprised. Don't get me wrong, I would have been delighted with a boy as well. And by all means a boy would have been easier in the sense that we had already decided on a name and bedding -- and had neither for a girl. But nonetheless I wanted to know that I had at least my one girl to pass on the name Emily to a fourth generation. So Josh and I squeezed hands and exchanged a heart-melted glance before our eyes were glued back to the screen for the rest of the show. We got to see all kinds of amazing stuff, which those of you with babies I'm sure have all seen. But for any others, we were looking at her brain, chambers of the heart, vertebrae, fingers, toes, nose, lips, kidneys, aorta, you name it. I couldn't believe the detail. Then, once the tech had finished getting all the information and measurements she needed, she asked if the student could practice for a little while. Haha, you can imagine our response -- Please continue! So another 20 minutes of stealing glances at our first baby and we walked out with smiles that wouldn't budge. We were immediately on our phones calling family who had begged to hear the news as soon as possible. Everyone was very very excited to hear that we're having a girl. Several people screamed, which was fun and made us laugh :] And then we spent the evening showing off our pictures to our parents.

Now, it's your turn! Below are the first glances of baby GIRL Beck (well, besides the gummy bear pictures from weeks back, but now she looks like a baby!).

These first few are 3D pictures of her face :]

This next one is a profile picture. You can see she has her mouth open. We could see her swallowing fluid on the screen. It was wild. You can also see her heart in this picture which looked just amazing in action.

Finally, the "proof." That's about all you can say about this one :]

To top off this amazing experience, I was fully prepared to have the great name debate now that we knew she is a girl. However, while we were on the phone with our moms I heard Josh telling his mom that we did have a name... and then he told her my very favorite name that I've loved the most for as long as we've been discussing names (and those of you who know us know that's been a loooooong time). He had always just acted like he didn't really care for it, so when I asked him what brought him around he admitted that he never really minded it and that his resistance was just for sport! SPORT! Well he may be laughing, but I won :]

Do I even need to tell you that my husband has transformed into a warm pile of goo?? He hasn't stopped talking about our baby girl's life since the moment we walked out of the sonogram room. He scours the baby section of every store he goes into going, Awwwww!!! Won't this be soooooo cuuuuuuute?! I sent him to Target for milk this morning, milk, and I got three picture messages (among many other texts) about the cute baby stuff he had found including a pink Star Wars t-shirt and pink Chucks.

And he thought he wanted a boy :]