The baby's room

Here are the letters that I painted to hang on the wall in the baby's room. You can't tell from the photo but the brown color is actually a sweet metallic brown and the 'J' has green dots all over. All of the letters also have a gloss finish on them.

We got the curtains up. We will change the long curtains for a valance once James is crawling so he doesn't pull them down. For now these will keep out the light the best.

This is the crib! I put it together not too long ago and I'm very proud of myself. It wasn't terribly hard but I did it in the middle of the night, by myself, at seven months pregnant. The bedding is a green and white gingham print which you can't tell from the photo. It looks great in person.

Tons of fun at the Ruybalid's

Alright, I got some complaints about my last photo that I posted since it was from the front and I was wearing black. Well here is a side shot of me and the baby bump. I look massive but I promise I'm only having one baby! Just be thankful that you are not the one who has to push him out! :)

David and I are still working on settling into the apartment. I haven't put everything into place as quickly as I originally thought. I actually ended up nannying for a family who used me for the last five weeks. I had a blast watching the kids and hopefully will be able to watch them again in the future. Sydney is 9 and Brandon is 12. Both of them are very active in various activities [baseball, soccer, girl scouts, piano, camps, acting] and a lot of my job required me to drive them around from place to place. It was a great way for me to get to know the area too.

David has been very busy with work and other activities. At the beginning of the month, David's good friend and old roommate, John, got married! He married his long time girlfriend, Rindy. They are such a perfect match. Their wedding was absolutely beautiful. David ran the music and sound for the wedding. Below is a photo of the bride and groom during their first dance as a married couple. They both looked beautiful!

David has also been playing for various events. Last weekend he was in Colorado Springs playing with his good friends, Boyce and Rebekah Burley, for SpringsSpree. Earlier in the afternoon he played for a charity event in Woodland Park. This Saturday he was finally able to take a little bit of a break after the events of this month.

While David was relaxing, I took my car down to Castle Rock to be worked on. My dear friends, Chris and Vanessa, entertained me for the day and Chris replaced the brakes in my car. They are two of the sweetest and selfless people I have ever met. They are a true example of Christ's love. After Chris was done working on my brakes, we helped one of their neighbors get ready for their party. I had a ton of fun and it was great hanging out with their neighbors.

After I left Chris and Vanessa's house, I headed down to Colorado Springs to hang out with my old roommates and friends. Two of my roommates are actually getting married next weekend! It's going to be busy going to two weddings in one weekend but it will be a blast. I'm so excited for both of them. I know their weddings are going to be absolutely beautiful too!

This week should be decently relaxed for the two of us. I'm going to continue working on the baby's room and the apartment. The baby's room is looking great! I'll post photos of the room soon. Hopefully it will be complete before James joins our family! :)

7 weeks left...

TheNestBaby.com kindly reminded me this morning that there are about 55 days left until my due date. That's if the bump doesn't decide to show up early. AHHHHHHH. I can't wait for him to be here but at the same time... we are not prepared for him. We just got the crib put together the night before last. His room still needs to be painted [it's a third of the way done] and the shelves need to go up and his clothes need to be washed and we need to babyproof the house as well as a ton of other things before he arrives. Ekkk! Hopefully everything will get done in time.

We met with the new doctor last week. Dr. Jensen is great. We are lucky to have found yet another great doctor! The hospital looks great too. We still have to do a tour though. I wish we could have moved up here a little earlier though because I'm going to be waddling while we do the tour. Waddling? Yes, I'm kinda like a penguin now with my big belly and swollen ankles. Yay.

Long time no talk...

WOW! It's been a while.

David and I are currently without internet access at our house so unfortunately I don't have any photos to put up.

We have finally moved up to Longmont and are working on getting settled in. It's great being up here but it's tough adjusting to all the 'newness' of it.

James is getting bigger and bigger everyday. My bellybutton is almost an outie!

David has been working a lot more since the church increased his hours and I've been babysitting a couple of times a week to fill up time.

Hopefully it won't be too much longer before I get some photos up but don't hold your breath, it might be a while.

Living out of boxes!

It's finally time for us to move! Yesterday, David and I signed the lease and got the keys to our new place. It will be nice to have a place to call home for a while. We plan on being in this place for a while!

Tomorrow, Saturday, David and a crew from church will be helping us move in all of the heavy boxes and the little furniture that we do have. Thank goodness for friends and family because I'm not any help right now! I just get to 'boss' everyone around and tell them where things go.

David and I also finally picked out a couch. We've been needing one for a while since our futon has been on the brink of falling apart for the last year. Now we just need to give the furniture place all of our hard earned pesos and pick it up! The couch we picked out is above. Once we get the living room painted and the sofa in, I'll post a photo on here of the completed room.

Once we get settled in, we hope you will visit! :)

Welcome to the World Kyanna!

On Saturday at 10:30 in the morning, Kellie's step sister Samantha, gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named Kyanna! Welcome to the family little one!

It seems that this is the time to have babies! Heather, David's cousin, is also pregnant. She and her husband Daniel are just 8 weeks behind us. In addition, there are two other couples on staff at Calvary [Where David works and where we attend church] who are due the SAME week that we are! We are very excited to have so many little ones around us!

David and I finally found an apartment in Longmont, Colorado! We move in on the first of May. We are excited to have our own place again and I can't wait to start decorating the baby's room!

An Update

Just a quick update since there have been a lot of changes in the last few weeks.

Our lease for our apartment in Castle Rock is up at the end of the month. We've really enjoyed the year that we have spent here. Castle Rock is a fantastic quiet family community and we are really going to miss it.

Our plan is to move to the Boulder-Erie area so that David can be closer to his job and so he won't have to commute as much. Currently it is about an hour commute depending on traffic. It's a lot of time and a lot of gas!

Kellie was working at Messenger International but has recently left which means we no longer need to live in an area that is in between both of our jobs. Kellie was driving about 30 minutes south everyday and David was driving north on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays.

We are currently looking for a two bedroom apartment in the Longmont, Louisville, or Layfette areas. Housing is a little bit more reasonable in these towns then in Boulder. Erie is a 'bedroom' community without any apartments at the time and a townhome is too big for us. These areas will be about a 20 minute commute from Erie and Boulder. We want to be between the two towns since David works in offices in both places.

David's dad and stepmom, Rick and Kim, have been kind enough to open their home up to us during the transition. Since we still have not found an apartment and since our income levels are changing in the next month, we will be staying with them in Colorado Springs for the month of April. We are very lucky to have family so sweet. Hopefully they will be able to deal with us when we come back from Boulder/Erie grumpy because of the extra 45 minutes that has been added to the commute!

Our Follow-Up Ultrasound

Well we had our second ultrasound today at the hospital. We needed to go in for a closer look at our little boys heart. The doctor's who helped us today were extremely helpful and very sweet. They were really comforting the whole time. I think David and I were both a tiny bit nervous.

The ultrasound showed that our baby is perfectly healthy. His heart has a small calcification on it but it's a very common thing and it will not cause any health problems in the future. He can play as much soccer as he wants and even run a marathon when he gets older!

The doctor's also double checked and measured all of his organs. He is developing very well. They gave us some more photos but unfortunately they were not on a disk like the last ones. They were able to give us some 3D photos and they are really neat! It's not nearly the same as the regular ultrasound photos. He still looks like a little alien at this point but he definately looks more like his dad then he does his mom!

When we get the photos scanned in, we will post them. Thank you for all of your prayers and support!

Oh boy!

Well for those of you who voted on the gender of our little one... half of you were right and half of you were wrong. David and I were surprised that the results really were 50/50.

We were so excited this morning when we woke up. We both couldn't wait to see our baby! We were very excited to see the baby swimming and squirming around in my belly. We can finally stop calling our baby 'It' and calling him or her by name!

Our ultrasound showed that we are having a little boy! We are still debating names but for the time being his name is James Grey Ruybalid.


The photo above shows his handsome profile!

Ultrasound photos make the baby look a little bit like an alien!

We did find out that there maybe something wrong with the left ventricle of his heart but we are believing that he is 100% healthy! We are going in for another ultrasound in a couple of weeks to double check but we know everything is fine. It's just another excuse for a photoshoot for James.

Estes Park

A couple of weeks ago, David and I stayed in the beautiful Estes Park in Colorado for a weekend. David was playing drums for the band 519 at the YMCA camp up there so we decided to make it into a mini vacation. When David wasn't playing we cruised around the area and had a blast hanging out with one another.

This photo can't capture the beauty of this place! This is Estes Lake.

David was forced to pose for this photo. He is such a great sport.

Below is the famous and historic Stanley Hotel. They filmed 'the Shining' here and 'Dumb and Dumber'. It's a fabulous building with wonderful detailing all throughout.


There is wild life everywhere in Estes. We saw deer, elk, and big-horned sheep! It was fantastic. None of these animals seemed to be bothered by the people taking photos of them. This deer was actually so people friendly that it let me pet it. :)

After wandering around all day - look what we found - Noah's Ark!!! Okay so it's the real Noah's Ark but it was kinda fun to find. Inside was a stuffed animal store. It was a little weird and they played really bad music. We had a hard time trying not to laugh.


David and I had a blast and we cannot wait to go back sometime soon!

Sorry it's been so long...

We’ve been very busy.

The holidays are always a busy time of year. In addition to our normal festivities, David and I took a trip out to Santa Cruz, California. While we were there we visited Santa Cruz Bible Church and David played for them one night. He did such a great job. He was really able to show his creativity and used some electronic loops in some songs. He sounded so great. I wish you all could have been there!

We enjoyed seeing what Santa Cruz has to offer. It has a very different atmosphere then conservative Colorado [Boulder excluded!]. As we were leaving a restaurant in the downtown area, a couple actually asked us for our leftovers, they didn’t look deprived and homeless either. That was a first for us. There were a handful of people who were painted and decorated in silly costumes who walked up and down the main street talking to themselves and to strangers. It was very neat but I did cling to David the whole time.

Santa Cruz was absolutely beautiful.

In addition to our trip, David and I found out some big news. Early in the month I was having a lot of pain in my lower abdomen. It lasted for about a week and David was beginning to get concerned. Then for a couple of days straight, I was unable to hold any food down. We didn’t know if both things were related but we weren’t going to take a chance so David took me to the hospital.

It was my first adventure to the ER and I was very willing to cooperate. They poked me with needles and IVs and took blood from me. We were there for about 4 hours just to find out that I’m okay [thank goodness] and I am pregnant. PREGNANT! We could hardly believe it. While we were there we had an ultrasound and we were able to see the tiny, tiny heartbeat of our 5 week old child.

We are now officially 14 weeks along and in the beginning of our second trimester. After a wonderful first trimester filled with morning sickness, I’m finally regaining my appetite and it seems that it is making up for the time that I was sick. I want to eat all the time. It’s horrible. We might go broke because of how much food I want!

We are also looking to move in the next couple of months. We are still waiting to see if we will stay in Castle Rock or if we will be moving up closer to the Boulder-Erie area. There are a few factors that will decide that. We are doing a lot of waiting to see at this time. We will make sure to keep everyone updated though!

A New Addition!

Yesterday, our family welcomed a new addition to the family. A little girl named Kaelyn joined Rebecca [David's sister], Jeff, and big sister Kyla just before noon.

She is just precious!

2007 in Retrospective

This has been an amazing and eventful year for David and I.

We were married on January 27th, 2007 by our brother-in-law, Pastor Jeff Stone. We had the ceremony and the reception in The Barn in Palmer Lake, Colorado. We were thrilled that so many family members were able to come and celebrate with us.

Afterwards we headed to the Breckinridge area for our honeymoon. We had a blast and it was really nice to relax after all of the wedding planning and moving.

Once we returned from our honeymoon, we took the next week to settle into David's apartment in Westminster. Kellie immediately took to adding 'a woman's touch' to the place.

Two months later, David and Kellie decided to move a little bit closer to Kellie's job and settled into another apartment in Castle Rock, Colorado which is just about in the middle of both of their jobs. David's sacrifice paid off and Kellie was promoted to Manager of the Call Center a few months later.

Currently David is a Worship Leader for Calvary Bible in Erie, Colorado. He also pursues his musical talents outside of church. He has also been working on producing songs and albums for local artists in the area. This last year, David has done a lot of traveling. In April, he went out to Nashville, TN to hang out with friends and record some of his music. Early this summer, he went to Nebraska a couple of times to play at a camp.

Kellie is working at Messenger International, a ministry of John and Lisa Bevere, in Palmer Lake, Colorado. She enjoys creating and selling cards, scrapbooking, and crocheting in her free time. She also loves her monthly Bunko games with friends and co-workers [even though she has been on a losing streak the last several months]. She has also been putting time and effort into organizing and decorating their apartment.

We both enjoy seeing each other as much as possible but in our free time love to hang out with family and friends. We enjoy watching movies [at home or at the theaters], and learning how to cook together. Its been an exciting and eventful year. We look forward to 2008 and the posibilities that it holds.