4th of July - 36 weeks 4 days

Do you ever feel like everyone wants a piece of you? I do. On the one hand, it's quite flattering that so many people desire mine and my husband's company. On the other hand, it gets pretty frustrating that every time we get a day off, we are somehow committed to spend its entirety with our families or friends. I think many people often forget that we are a relatively young couple and that I work weekends. We don't have much family time.

Fourth of July, we'd been invited to my aunt's house and Aaron's parents house. We were talking it over. Where should we go? Who invited us first? And something in me just snapped. "I want to do what I want to do!" I told Aaron.

"What's that?" he asked.

"I don't know. Let's just spend the day together."

"Okay! What do you want to do?"

So we thought and thought and thought. What do you do when you're 36 weeks pregnant?

"I feel like driving," I said.

And that was that. We decided to go on a day trip. And we decided to head to Door County. Our last and probably funnest night of our honeymoon (which was when this baby was conceived) was in Door County, but it was in early November. Aaron had really wanted to have the Door County experience but you just don't get it unless you go in summer.

What a lovely day together! We took long country back roads. We stopped at a winery and tasted wines and picked out a few to put on ice until the baby arrived. We found a little restaurant down by the beach and had a quiet lunch. We stopped by a roadside market and picked out fresh strawberries and cherry cider. And finally we found a park that we had stopped at on our anniversary and just sat on a bench and enjoyed the view.

We talked about baby names and what we thought the baby would look like. We planned our first anniversary. We talked about what we were excited for and what we were nervous about. And at the end of the trip, we agreed we needed that day together and were ready to have this baby now. We hadn't quite felt ready before but now we knew we could stick together.

It was a beautiful day. We came home exhausted but somehow managed to muster the energy to go to the beach and watch the fireworks with Evan and some friends. I went to bed feeling totally refreshed and am still on cloud nine today!