Sweetheart

I just wanted to put up a quick post about how wonderful my husband has been this past week. We have been struggling to get everything ready in the nursery. If it's not one thing, then it's another. Even though we hoped to have the nursery set up about 90% before vacation, it's only about 25%. Oh well, I know we'll be get there sometime. So for those of you who are hoping to see pictures of the nursery you'll just have to wait a little bit longer.


Back to Travis being sweet. I had just been at the grocery store and forgot to pick up butter. I'm a little scatter brained lately...ugh the dreaded mommy brain. I'll survive. So I asked Trav to stop and pick some butter up on his way home since he already had to stop at the hardware store for sandpaper. Well he came home with a dozen beautiful Orange Fire & Ice roses just because he felt like it.


Tonight should be a busy night once I get home from work. I need to finish doing the laundry. Once the laundry is done, we can pack for vacation. (Yes we're packing tonight because tomorrow we'll be at the Twins game with a big group of friends.) I'll be making dinner at some point as well as yummy Pumpkin bars & bundt cake to bring to work tomorrow. I figure it's nice to bring stuff to celebrate a birthday with co-workers. I just have to make twice as much because I love all of my Retail & Inpatient Pharmacy staff!! Last but definitely not least, we have to clean the whole place. I hate coming home from vacation to a dirty house. So we have a full agenda for the evening.


Until next time get outside and enjoy the beautiful fall weather,
~Tiff & Trav

Weekend in the Frigid North (aka in Duluth!)

I hope this post finds you all enjoying the nice fall weather we finally had this weekend. Tiffany and I went to Duluth this weekend for a few reasons. First, we hauled up some of our stuff from the nursery to put into storage and then loaded up the crib, high chair, pack 'n' play to bring home so we can finish setting up our little girl's nursery. Saturday was a day filled with relaxation and shopping to replace some of the items that were stolen from our family cabin.

Today we had two separate events that took place. Tiffany went on the buddy walk along the boardwalk. This walk is to raise money for the Down Syndrome Association of Minnesota. Sean was very excited to have Tiffany, Mary, Norrie, Jullianne, and about 80 player from the St. Scholastica College Football team walking with him.

At the same time that they were walking the boardwalk, Dave and I were golfing at Lester Park for the Duluth East Athletic Association. This was to raise money for all the sports teams at the High School. For those of you who don't know, the East Hockey team has made Sean one of their own as their Student Manager. Sean loves to be part of the Hockey team, so we enjoy supporting the athletic association. Besides, it is just another good reason to get out and play a round of golf. We ended up shooting a 65, 7-under round, which was only 8 shots out of first place!

The weekend is quickly coming to an end, which is always sad, but hopefully the week ahead will go by fast as we prepare for our vacation to Williamsburg, VA. Hopefully this week we will be able to get more of the nursery set-up, but we will see how it goes.

Until next time,

Trav & Tiff

Sean with Captain Scott

Bundled up for the round.

                             

It's Raining

Good Afternoon everyone. We're now into day 2 of solid rain. It's really been coming down. I'm sure you might have caught some of the news about places flooding and roads being closed. We really don't need this much rain all at one time.

Now for more baby news...this little girl has been really active lately. Today while I was working, she started to kick pretty hard. I swear my whole stomach lurched in one direction. She likes to wake me up in the middle of the night because she's so active and wants to explore. Not too much to see but there's no telling her that. Our little girl is just growing away.

This weekend we're headed up to Duluth. We're bringing home some more items for the baby's room. Not to mention that my sister is giving me a whole bunch of clothes for the baby. I'm excited to see what all is there. Every little bit helps when it comes to babies. Hopefully after this weekend we'll have quite a bit of work/set-up completed! 

Until next time, hope you all are having a good week & staying dry.
Love Tiff & Trav

Cribbage is FUN!!

Hello everyone! I hope everyone had a good Monday of work. The rest of the weekend went as planned for Tiff and I. We were able to finish most of the cleaning that we needed to get done in the nursery. Everything is taken apart and reorganized for storage. This coming weekend we will get the crib brought down and that will be my next project to put it together and continue getting everything in order for our little bundle of joy to greet us.

This is more of an impromptu blog post for me. You see Tiff and I enjoy playing cribbage and I usually don't get to taste the sweetness of victory. But, tonight it actually happened, including a skunk in the second game! That was basically the whole point of this post, so until next time enjoy your endeavours.

Love,

Trav & Tiff

Weekend

Happy Weekend Everyone! It's been a very productive & wonderful weekend. My weekend started with a girls movie night. Of course there were several treats on hand...chocolate, dinner mints, peanuts, popcorn & tea. We watched Letters to Juliet. It was a cute, predictable chick flick and I liked it. It's so wonderful to have close girl friends to hand out with on a regular basis.

It's only Saturday afternoon and today has been so productive. Travis went up to our friends house to help put up a fence. While he was out and about he also picked up a changing table & dresser combination for the nursery. It's all starting to come together. My morning has been jam packed with cleaning. The nursery is almost ready. I spent the morning rearranging and clearing stuff out. I wanted to surprise Trav with just about everything finished in the room. All that's left to do is haul more stuff down to the garbage, Trav to go through a few bins and move items to our storage locker. Hopefully tomorrow will go smooth because the nursery could be ready for the rest of the items to be moved in! Baby Girl will be here sooner than we think. Time has been flying by. Only a few more months to go, I'd rather be prepared than scrambling.

Tonight we're going bowling to celebrate our friends birthday. It should be a great time. Hopefully you're all having a great weekend too.

Until next time
Love Tiff (& Trav too)

Started Cleaning!

     So we've finally started to get ready for our Baby girl! We tackled our storage unit...that was a mountain of junk to sort through. We were able to throw away unwanted/unneeded boxes, combine items and fit them into our Rubbermaid containers. It was a great feat!! Anyone knows going through a bunch of stuff that you only see once a year or so is a daunting task. Both Trav & I feel relieved that we were able to make a small amount of progress. Although the sad part is that we just cleaned it out only to add more stuff to it. It was the first step in clearing out the dreaded office closet area.
    
     We're going to attempt to clear out the office all in one afternoon. I'm sure there will be kicking, screaming, crying and general chaos but I'll try to be the calm one. Basically my goal for Sunday afternoon is to clean out the closet, take the futon apart & clear off the tall book shelf. Hmmm I say that and we'll see how far we get. I can't think about that now or I'll start to hyperventilate. =) Just let me have this small victory from tonight.

Hope you all have a great evening. Until next time,
Love Tiff (& Trav too)

Another Tuesday Baby Update!

Last week we posted that during the ultrasound, one of the baby's ureters measured a little big so we had to go back for a level II ultrasound.  Today we had that ultrasound and everything checked out ok with mini. Today's ultrasound was pretty in depth with measuring everything all over again, and today mini was estimated at weighing in at a whopping 12oz! Everything seems to be moving along so fast. I mean 12 weeks ago all we saw on the first ultrasound was this little blob with a head, and now Mini is approaching a pound. Every time we get to see Mini, we are reminded at how amazing the miracle of life really is.

Some of you who have been following along now for the last couple of weeks, may be wondering when will the announcement regarding Mini's sex will come. Without any more hesitation, we are pleased to announce that baby Mlodzik has indoor plumbing (that is exactly how the doctor told us). We are very excited to be expecting a little girl! She is already daddy's princess!

We are starting, all be it slowly, to put together the nursery. Over the next month or so we hope to have everything that is currently in the extra bedroom out and the crib and such brought into it. As we move along with the transition of the nursery, the excitement will continue to grow as we await the arrival of our little peanut!

Until next time,
Trav & Tiff

Start of another week

We had a good time this weekend, it's just too bad it flew by. Saturday Tiff  picked up a few extra hours at work while Trav played golf. Later that day we went to our friends house for a BBQ and bonfire. We had a wonderful time reconnecting with friends and meeting new people. Another weekend with a bonfire & smores, can't beat that!!! No alarm was set for Sunday morning, we only slept till 7am. Soon we won't even need an alarm because we'll already have been up for several hours with the baby. Church, grocery shopping and laundry has taken up most of the day. Now I'm (Tiff) making one of my favorite foods for dinner and lunches...Chili!!! Nothing can beat chili and corn muffins in the fall. I could eat it just about everyday, no joke!

This week will be jam packed. We'll be back to the daily M-F grind with a few interruptions. We have a follow up ultrasound on Tuesday to ensure that Mini is doing well. I just view it as another chance to see our baby and the miracle of growth. Trav has his annual physical on Weds. I'm sure it'll be another clean bill of health (healthy as a horse). We'll be spending some time with friends again; pie night, tea party & U-30. Even though we're just starting another week, I wish it could already be next weekend.

Until next time, Have a wonderful day!
Love Tiff & Trav

Happy Pie Day

I (Tiff) just wanted to comment on how much I look forward to the middle of the week. If you don't know, Bakers Square has Pie Rush Wednesdays....basically free pie with any purchase. It's a great time to meet up with friends and enjoy good pie. Since it officially feels like fall, pumpkin pie is in season. Trav had a huge piece of pumpkin. It was really good, but it fails in comparison to some of the family recipes. I tried a new pie Berry Peary. It's a combination of fresh pears and blueberries. Now some of you might think that it wouldn't taste good at all, I was even skeptical. I was pleasantly surprised at how good it tasted. The chefs mixed sweet and tangy flavors together in a perfect combination. The pie was even served warm which made the flavors melt together even more. Now that I've probably made you all start to crave your favorite pies, I better get going. Just keep  in mind that next Wednesday if you're hungry for some pie, go grab a free slice and enjoy time with friends/family!

Baby Update!

Today we had another ultrasound, which meant another chance to witness the miracle of life. What an amazing journey this has been so far for us, and we are only 19 weeks into it. The baby was full of energy today, moving and swimming around. The ultrasound technician was very nice and explained a lot to us as we were looking at the screen. We were able to look at the baby's brain to see the two halves, heart to see the four chambers, kidneys, and even the umbilical cord with color to see the arteries and veins within it. In order to see that, they turn on color and you see blue (veins) and red (arteries). Measurements were taken of the legs, arms, brain, heart, kidneys, circumference of the head, circumference of the abdomen and all checked out just fine. The only questionable measurement was with the ureters, which is what allows urine to flow out of your kidneys. They measured 1mm too large, which could mean that the baby hadn't gone to the bathroom for awhile or the angle the measurement was taken at wasn't quite right. So, we will go back in about a week to make sure everything is alright. The doctor said that we shouldn't lose any sleep over it for now, so no worries.

We were able to see facial features such as the lips, nose and eyes including the lens of the eye (basically the circle of the iris and pupil). One thing that I (Travis) found amazing was that at 19 weeks your bones are starting to harden and become more dense. The way we could tell this is because they show up on the ultrasound very white. This allowed us to be able to see the spine, femur, skull, and other bones starting to really take shape. Even though seeing all of the different aspects of the baby was amazing and special, the best part of the ultrasound would have to be the 5-10 seconds that we caught the baby sucking it's thumb...that is simply beautiful to see.

Tiffany is still on track for a February 1st due date, so we are getting closer to meeting our little gift of life. We have attached a couple of pictures of our little bundle of joy, but to put everything into perspective, Baby Mlodzik is approximately 6" from head to rump and weighs roughly 11oz.

Love Travis & Tiffany

                      

Labor Day Weekend

The weekend started out on a rough note. Our beautiful family (Raimo) cabin was broken into and several items were stolen. Not the way to begin a holiday weekend. We tried to rack our brains trying to recall all of the items that were missing. My Mom and I ran into the next town over, stopping off at a few places to replace a few items and see if the criminals were stupid enough to try and sell any items. On the upside, the sheriff assigned to our case is an amazing man! It'll be nice to see these criminals brought to justice.

Once everything had calmed down, we had a nice time at the river. Travis went fishing twice a day. He caught a really nice Northern Pike; 35 inches, 13-15 pounds. Trav was pretty lucky to land the fish. Inevitably every time my Dad and Travis catch large fish, they do not have a net in the boat with them. Trav and my Dad took turns holding the rod and trying to grab the fish. My Dad was successful in hurling the fish into the boat. Hopefully it'll be mighty tasty to eat!

We did a little bit of raking, cleaning up downed branches and leaves from a large storm that passed through about a week ago. Sean & I built a great bonfire down at the Smokey Joe right before dinner started. Little did I know that several pieces of wet wood found their way into the pit. Sean wanted to help make a huge fire. There had been a lot of rain in the past week. Needless to say lots of the wood that Sean found in the woods was soaked. Trav did his best to pick off the wet wood and salvage the fire. We eventually fought our way through the thick, white, billowing smoke to revive the fire! With enough newspaper, dry kindling and a few logs from the shed we had a beautiful roaring fire. We had the most perfect red hot coals to roast marshmallows and make smores. We had to abandon the fire to seek shelter from the wicked mosquitoes. Perfect way to end a night at the river.

All said and done, the weekend turned out to be nice and relaxing. Just as we had hoped for.
Until next time, Love Tiffany (& Trav too)

Starting out

Hello Friends and Family,

We are entering into a new phase in our lives...parenthood.  We thought by starting a blog we'd be able to share some ups and downs of daily life with you all.  Just a fun way to stay connected with you all despite the distance between us.  We hope that you'll follow along with us as we transition to become parents and start our own family.

Love Trav & Tiff