And baby Hall is....

A GIRL! Yep, looks like Kyle and I will be welcoming a little daughter come March! We're so excited, there hasn't been a Hall girl born in several generations so she will be really special... she looks really healthy too, the brain, heart, spine, all that stuff looks great. We feel so blessed! :) Finding out the gender makes the baby seem so much more real for some reason, I think now because we get to start planning! Pick out a room theme, a name... so much to do, and only about 5 months left to do it! It seems like such a long ways away still, but I can't believe I've already been pregnant for four months, and once you consider that the holidays are coming up... time is really gonna fly!

Here's what she's doing at 17 weeks:

Her skeleton is changing from soft cartilage to bone, and the umbilical cord (the lifeline to the placenta) is growing stronger and thicker. The baby weighs about as much as a turnip and is around 5 inches from head to bottom. She can move her joints, and her sweat glands are beginning to develop.

And in other baby news... I've finally started to get a bump!



Haven't felt any movement or anything yet, but I hear that it can take a while for first time moms... I've been feeling great though, only a little tired. It's hard for me to get a good nights sleep when I'm going back and forth from the bathroom all night! Maybe that's natures way of preparing me for life with a little one... :)

I spent most of Saturday with Elena, it was so good to spend some quality time with my best friend! I miss her a lot, we were practically attached at the hip in high school, but I'm so glad that we've been able to maintain such a close relationship long-distance... I went over to her house in the morning and she gave me a haircut and highlights, which was very badly needed and I love the look! She took off 4 inches and gave me lots of layers, it feels so much more manageable and cute now, instead of just long and blah... afterwards she had to make 4.5 pounds of meatballs for a big dinner that they were having for a friend's Moroccan themed birthday, and I offered to help! We made them from scratch, it was really interesting because Moroccans cook with a lot of stuff that I'm not used to... they put cinammon in their meat!

Unfortunately, this is the only picture of the day I got before my camera died...

Afterwards we went to lunch at Round Table (which is a tradition for us, we used to go all the time!) and then picked up my mom and saw Fame at the movie theater. All in all, a really great day!

Kyle and I celebrated our one year anniversary on Sunday. He came home early from his reenactment so we could hang out for a while, and then we got ready and went to a restaurant downtown in the Pearl district called Urban Fondue. If you've ever been to the Melting Pot, which is also a fondue restaurant, it's pretty similar... except this one was less expensive, so an obvious choice! We like to try new restaurants, especially since we don't plan on living in a place like Portland forever, gotta take advantage. Anyway, the restaurant was TINY, easily the smallest one I've ever been in, but very cute and cozy. How it works is you pick a cheese fondue to share, an entree, and a dessert fondue to share, plus a side. We had sausage and bread to dip into the cheese, and you cook your own entree in pieces in this broth. You have to let it cook for three minutes, they even give you a little timer! It's definitely a different eating experience for us, because it really forces you to eat slowly, something Kyle for one is definitely not used to! :) We had steak, lobster, and chicken, plus a side of mashed potatoes... it was really delicious! Then we topped it off with tiramasu fondue, which we dipped pound cake, cookie dough, donuts, cream puffs, bananas, strawberries, etc. in... needless to say, we were so full by the end that both of our stomachs hurt pretty bad!

Eating our dessert!

In fact, we were so full that neither of us could even consider eating one bite off our cake top, which my mom generously let live in her freezer for the last year... so we cheated a little and ate it the next night!

Our enormous cake top! Actually didn't taste bad, I love red velvet...

This weekend is our friend Pearl's birthday, so we're going to go out to dinner with a bunch of friends to celebrate, should be fun! Hope you're all enjoying the start of fall as much as I am! :)