there's a first time for everything....

6am, Sunday, December 12, 2010...there I was, laying in bed awake, wondering what the test would say. I snuck out of bed and to our downstairs bathroom, where I waited for probably the longest two minutes of my life. The test came back with a resounding blue plus and that's when everything changed.

Rick and I were sure we wanted to have a family someday but we had some uphill battles before we got to that moment. When we moved to Chicago in the summer of 2007, the economy disintegrated and we spent months worrying about whether I would keep my job at the bankrupt Tribune Company...and whether he would survive several rounds of layoffs at Metro/Shadow Networks. Finally, after three long years, I got a very overdue bump in pay..and that's what ultimately pushed us into the next phase of our lives.

It wasn't easy...we had steered ourselves for a long journey toward parenthood. A journey that abruptly ended just three short months later, when I took that pregnancy test and it came back positive.

So now, here we are...creating this blog to keep all of our family and friends updated on everything baby. This is where you'll find all the belly pictures, all the ultrasounds....and all the hopes, dreams and worries we have for the newest addition to the Gregg clan. Please feel free to "follow" our blog so you'll know when we update it -- and leave us any advice, well wishes or just good thoughts for Baby G.

One other thing...I have to explain the significance of our blog URL. When we first started trying, we decided we needed to come up with a code word to keep our project top secret. That was around the 2010 baseball playoff season, which of course, we were watching (sports is Rick's true love besides me!!!)....so naturally he suggested calling it Project Shortstop...and came up with a bunch of baseball metaphors that really just applied to the baby-making process. So that night, we toasted to Project Shortstop...and now, we're toasting (alcohol-free for me) to our future son or daughter...due to join us in August of 2011!!