Oh Baby

Ok so for the few people that I actually know who read my blog this is for you because I'm sure you've been waiting for it ;)

(While writing this post I couldn't decide on how many details to include.  Having a baby is a very personal decision between a husband, a wife and Heavenly Father and nobody else.  For that reason I couldn't decide on how much to share with everyone.  However knowing that I use this blog as a journal and knowing that anyone from anywhere can read my blog I came to my decision.)

Baby News!

Alright lets start from the beginning.  When Chase and I got married we decided that we wanted to wait to start our family until Chase was done with school.  This way if it all worked out as we wanted I could be a stay at home mom and we wouldn't have to figure out the whole babysitting fun.  I'm especially grateful we waited because looking back being away from my baby for 10 hours a day sounds painful to me.

So school was nearing an end and of course we were getting the pressure, but it still wasn't right.  Good thing it's our decision and not everybody else's.  So we continued on our way living in Michigan knowing that it would happen sometime soon but when, we didn't know.  Until one day Chase and I were talking and we decided that now was a good time to start our family.

YES, I'm a nerd and had to document us making this decision. 

Which brings us to where we are now.  Surprisingly to me we got pregnant pretty darn easy.  I have always had a worry in the back of my head that we would have a hard time getting pregnant.  This worry of mine comes from the fact of knowing many couples who are dealing with this struggle.  My heart aches for them because I know it must be hard watching others get pregnant.  So like I said I worried we would be in the same boat, which is why I was surprised.
The day I found out I had woke up in the morning and couldn't help myself and just had to pee on a stick to know.  I knew the test could be negative since I was too impatient to wait for a missed period.  But lo and behold it said I was pregnant, so of course I had to take another test.

 I had many emotions run through my head, but most of all I just couldn't believe that I was actually pregnant.  I decided I was going to tell Chase once he was done with work and at home.  I knew we would be keeping it a secret so I didn't want to call him up while he was at work.  Right after finding out I was pregnant I headed out the door to go running and take a few pictures with my friend Danielle.  Man was that hard keeping such a big secret!
Since I had taken pictures that day I figured I'd tell Chase I had a picture to show him.  He came home and I told him to look through my pictures on the camera and then to come see the picture I took with my phone.  Ha, like a phone can take a better picture than a camera.  Anyway, he came to look at my phone, saw my picture and kept on scrolling through.  Haha I laughed and said "really?" and went back to the picture and told him to read it.  He had thought it was just something I had found on pinterest.  Once I told him to look at it again he got excited and also couldn't believe that we were going to have a baby.  He laughed and mentioned that it probably wasn't the reaction I had been hoping for since he just scrolled on by the picture :) I mainly thought it was funny that he just scrolled on by.

So we knew based off of the online calculators that we would be having a baby in July.  We then had to decide when we would tell our families and friends.  We figured that since we would be going out to Utah in December that, that would be our best time.  It was however a little earlier than I wanted to tell but we figured they wouldn't be very happy with us if we didn't mention anything and then a few weeks later spilled the beans.  Since we told earlier than wanted everyone was sworn to secrecy until I said they could talk.  From what I've heard the parents did a really good job at keeping the secret.  The siblings on the other hand….. I have no idea if they were good or bad.  Everyone else found out once I had reached the 2nd trimester.
So there we have it the news of baby Birks coming around July 17th 2014! :D

House

Alright so in November Chase and I began really looking at houses again.  We had ourselves a new agent and were searching in relatively new areas.  One of the houses we wanted to see was in a town called New Baltimore, Chase found it because it has a 5 car garage.  AND since he's a car guy with a Porsche sitting in Utah waiting to have a full restoration done, then of course we HAD to see it ;)  I wasn't being of much help during the whole -searching for houses online to look at in person- process, I couldn't really say no.  Well it's a good thing because after looking at it we decided that we would be happy with putting an offer on it.  So the next day we let our agent know and lo and behold if we wanted to make an offer it had to be in by 5pm that day because the house already had an offer on it and the listing agent and his client were making their decision at 5!  Holy crap, talk about pressure!  We had been hoping to be able to negotiate and what not but instead we had to make the decisions lickity split.  To add pressure we were babysitting that same night which put another time crunch on us.  Well thankfully we got it all done, even if it included taking our printer/scanner over to our friends house so we could send papers while we babysat.
So we put in our offer and wala they accepted ours, not without countering ours though of course, to which we countered back.
Anyway long story short.  We closed on the house 11/25/13 and had keys to our new home.  We didn't end up moving in until 12/14/13 though because we went to Utah right after Thanksgiving.  Which meant that we got home from Utah and ended up packing up the apartment in 1 day so that we could move the next.  It was a whirlwind but we were glad we got it done.  Poor Chase ended up doing most of the work since I was pregnant, not feeling great and so forth.  The day we moved a big snow storm decided to help us out ;)  Which moving with a lot of snow and having white-ish carpet in both the apartment and house sure made me happy for wet shoes.  Anyway with the help of a couple guys from the ward we got ourselves moved out and then moved in.
Having the house has been really nice.  Being a home owner is a little stressful just because were now in charge of everything.  But so far it seems to all be worth it.  Plus we have a lot of extra bedrooms right now so having company visit is fun :)