Ready...Set...Go!

I'm 37 weeks today, which means my little baby boy is considered full term. So now, he can come at any time and be as healthy as can be. This is big news in the Schulz house. We have been praying, preparing and participating in all kinds of activities in the great expectation of our first child for months and months and we can hardly contain our excitement that we are so close to meeting him.

His little clothes (and I mean teeny weeny) have been washed in his special little baby soap and they are hanging up waiting to be worn, his bassinet is all assembled and waiting to be slept in, his car seat is in the car waiting to bring him safely home, the hospital bag is packed with all kinds of useful comforts and is already in the trunk.

Birthing classes have been taken, books have been read, registries have been made, showers have been attended, research has been done, blogs have been written, doctor appointments have been kept, advice has been given and received, cribs have been assembled, nursery walls have been painted, our home has been rearranged as well as our lives and all in preparation of a little tiny bundle that will soon join our lives.

Meanwhile, Jackson is in the womb all nice and toasty, unaware of all of the fuss and goings on. Little does he know that in weeks, days or maybe even hours he will be thrust into the world to began this journey of life.

The bible says, "Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him. Children are like arrows in a warriors hands and joyful is the man/woman whose quiver is full of them." Psalm 127.

I am truly in awe. I weep even now. (yes I'm pregnant so I cry a lot) but these tears are meaningful. Jackson means "Son of a Gracious God" and how true it is. God is so gracious and so good. He gives good gifts to his children. He is giving Ernie and I the most amazing gift of family. In these last nine months God has not just allowed us to have time to prepare our home, but he has prepared our hearts.

So I say, bring on the stinky diapers, 3am feedings, and plethora of hormones. What a small sacrifice for such a huge gift from our Spiritual Daddy. Thank you Jesus!

Mommy Schulz

Pregnancy Photoshoot (By Ann Pasquini Photography)

Last week our good friend Ann flew into San Diego from Texas. I was so excited because Ann is also a photographer and she lived in San Diego when Ernie and I were engaged and she took our engagement photos, which we loved. I was hoping that she would come and visit sometime during my pregnancy because I was dreaming of a baby bump photoshoot with her.

It was a gorgeous sunny day in La Jolla when we joined Ann. The three of us had so much fun frolicking in the park and playing at the beach. We took a ton of pictures but these are some of my favorites. (I will post more of them in a slideshow format later)

We only have about two months left in this pregnancy and it's amazing how quickly the months have flown. I'm glad this time as been captured on film, it's been such an amazing season. We are so ready for our son to join us and we are so thankful that God has blessed us with the miracle of life.

Jackson's Nursery

So, I had so many different ideas for the nursery when I began looking around. I liked modern, I wanted something unique and colorful. I played around with the idea of orange. However, when I saw this nursery called Bali by Cocalo Couture I fell in love. It has my favorite color combination which is aqua/turquoise and bright green and it has chocolate brown and a great sand color. It is very tropical and a little "jungly," but I am adding more "beachy" elements as well. It reminds me of our babymoon cruise and I know I will love spending time in it with little Jackson. I hope he loves it as much as his mommy and daddy do.

We are going to do all white furniture to brighten it up instead of the black. Ernie and I are going to paint the walls (which are now cream) white in the nursery and do an aqua accent wall.

This mobile is too cute, and I found a company that does odd shaped round wall decals and chocolate brown palm trees. I plan to put them on the wall behind the crib.


I also plan to sneak a few little pops of orange in as well through toys and cute little baby accessories.


I found this beach painting at Zgallerie. It matches the colors and brings in an ocean vibe.


These pillows will look great on the daybed we will have in the nursery.

I also bought one of these frames and a matching green one from Zgallerie that will look good on the shelf over the dresser/changer.

Ernie and I are having so much fun decorating Jackson's room and getting our home all prepared for our new little son. We can't wait for his arrival!

Slideshow of our Blessed Babymoon!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Awesome Blessing from The Skys!

Ok, so I just can't wait to blog this testimony! Can you say wow! Where do I start?

Let's see, for Christmas Ernie's parents blessed us with money. We were all set to put it aside in savings, with the baby coming and all. Then we got this brochure in the mail about a cheap cruise and our little wheels started turning.

We had a long conversation and put much thought into it and realized that we weren't going to be able to have our annual summer vacation this year and in fact we weren't ever going to have another vacation before we started having babies...that is unless we decided to take a trip sometime in Feb. before I was too far along.

Our next step was to pray and ask other friends who had new babies what they thought. Every couple with kids that we talked to told us to go for it and take the vacation. They said we would regret it if we didn't because our life was about to change forever.

So, we started looking into cruises leaving from San Diego to Mexico and from Florida to the Caribbean and the British Virgin Islands. We were thinking Mexico at first because we wouldn't have to pay for airline tickets, but in the end we chose a 7 night cruise leaving from Fort Lauderdale and going to exotic places like San Juan, Puerto Rico and St. Thomas in the British Islands.

We booked the cruise about a month ago, but I just kept putting off buying the airline tickets. I told Ernie several times that I just had this feeling to wait. Then last night we realized we only had a few weeks to buy our tickets so I went on line and they had gone up in price pretty drastically. This didn't fit into our budget and I was starting to get down.

I happened to check my Facebook page, and my friend Ann and sent me a link to a Southwest Airline Promotion that was happening in San Diego today. I even called Southwest to make sure the promotion was legit.

I found out that 200 Southwest employees were going to be downtown and they were going to give away just 40 round trip airline tickets to anywhere they flew. Ernie and I decided to hold off buying the tickets one more day and give it a shot.

Today, Ernie took his lunch break and scooped me up and we headed downtown, Gaslamp district for our adventure. On the way I asked my mom and my prayer partner friend Sundy to pray for us. My mom prayed specifically that God wanted to give Ernie and I this gift and she said the words, "they are going to find you and give you the tickets." Go prophetic momma!

Ernie and I roamed around for a bit and then saw all kinds of Southwest employees. However, most of them were tight lipped and wouldn't say anything about any round trip tickets. Then we found a group of employees who were rounding up people to be in a talents show (on the news) to sing and try to win 2 tickets. Ernie and I knew that wouldn't be us. We are no kind of singers, let me tell you!

We were a little discouraged, but I felt God was leading us and we walked down one more street. We saw a group of ladies from Southwest we had seen before and they asked us if we had an luck. We told them no and Ernie mentioned about our baby and the one last trip. Nothing. So we started to head back in the direction of the truck.

What we didn't know was that a man who had been with the ladies was following us. He followed us a block, almost to the truck and then stopped us. He started asking us questions about how we found out about the promotion. We mentioned Facebook and then we told him about the trip and our baby. He just kept smiling this really big smile and then he pulled out two free tickets for us. One of the lady's snapped our picture with the man and we just kept thanking them and laughing.

We are so excited and amazed by our Heavenly Daddy! I believe it was him all along that was guiding me not to buy the plane tickets and my mom's prayer came true. God's blessings actually chased us down on the street. I just looked up what the tickets are worth on Southwest and the total was $780. We are truly blessed. I had to put this on the baby blog because our little one was a big part of all of this. Plus he'll be traveling with us you know. His first vacation in a way :) Caribbean here we come!

"God's blessings shall come upon us and overtake us!" I hear him saying, "It's just because I love you."

Colorful, Modern & Playful Nursery Ideas

So, I love this kind of stark black and white look with vibrant pops of color everywhere, but I'm not sold on the black accent wall for a nursery. I think I would go with bright green, orange or maybe chocolate brown.

Ya, so I'm not gonna do pink for my boy's room, but I do love the crazy circle decals. I could really have fun putting those up in funky patterns.

I love quilts, but a lot of times they are a little too country for me. This is the perfect answer to my dilemma. A quilt like this would be a great piece to build a nursery around.

This nursery stood out to me because I love orange for a boy's nursery. It's bright and unique.

Can't Wait to Meet You!

Make a Smilebox slideshow