Thanksgiving 2012

This Thanksgiving was a little low key, but perfect. My Mom came in town Wednesday night and we enjoyed some shopping and then got up Thursday morning for parade watching and cooking. We loaded up all our goodies and went to the Shands house. We ate until our hearts were content and our tummy's couldn't handle anymore. Then we went fishing. We saw a HUGE catfish that kept coming to the surface to eat the hotdog buns we were throwing in the water, but we couldn't catch him. He was too wise for us. After fishing, Jeff dropped my Mom and me off at Target so we could sit in line (for 4 hours) to get the camera I had seen in the Black Friday ad. He then dropped the kids off with Roy and got his Mom and went to Walmart to get Preston's Christmas present. He said it was absolute chaos. Of course, what else would we expect from Walmart?? He picked my Mom and me up at 9:18 (Target opened at 9pm might I add) and we went home. Friday morning, Linda, my Mom, Emily, and I went to Charleen's in Halls, TN. We try to go every year and always have a great time. We noticed this time that the food and decorations were more expensive than years past. My Mom got me some pretty decorations to go in my garland and I got a little tree for our half bath. She also got a beautiful frame for the baby's room. It was an all day adventure, but it was fun to have time with just the girls. Jeff and Preston also had a great boys day. We got our Christmas tree that night, but were too tired to decorate it so we waited until Saturday night to decorate. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving and look forward to an even more enjoyable Christmas.

Nursery Update

We decided to hire someone to paint the nursery since Jeff and I really only enjoy the first 30 mins of painting and that's about it. It's just one of those things in life where it's easier to have a professional do it. The painter came Friday morning at 9 and was done and gone by 12 noon. He used none of that blue tape and got green paint on only the walls. I can assure you that Jeff and I would have had to repaint the ceiling and clean it up off the carpet if we had done it! Oh, and chances are it would still not be done. :) I had ordered some letters from an old friend that does vinyl lettering. I was anxious to get them up before my Mom left so I started to put them up Saturday night. They had a really hard time sticking, but my friend said it's probably because the paint was not all the way dry. Because I'm impatient, I preformed what felt like surgery and got all the letters up and done by Sunday night. The nursery is now complete minus some paintings that I would like to find to hang on the walls as well as figuring out where I want my little shelves to go. Oh, and the major item... the baby!!

Nursery

Well, the nursery is starting to come together. I have had the bedding for a little over a month now and I still love it. We got new bedding for the daybed, and bought a glider rocker. When I bought the bedding, I bought 3 yards of fabric to make curtain panels. I should have known better, but I didn't measure the window before I purchased. I got the fabric and immediately held it up to the window to make sure it was going to work. You guess it... it was too short. So, after talking to some friends and looking on Pinterest and changing my mind a million times, I finally decided that I was going to make a cute cornice board. Easy enough right? At least the people on pinterest made it look easy. After three trips to Lowes for wood, we finally got some we could work with. The first trip left us with sheets of styrofoam. That was a site! Try figuring out how to get that sucker drilled into the wall! The second trip left us with wood shelving that weighed a ton and wouldn't stick together. The third trip left us with 1/4" thick wood that I was determined to make work regardless. Well, we FINALLY finished it last night. Jeff and I almost divorced over it (we do NOT do projects well together), but it's up. I guess I was imagining that the room would look perfect once I got it up, but I stood back and felt that something was missing. First I thought it needed some panels and after talking to family and friends, we've determined that the walls need PAINT! UGH! I was hoping to avoid that catastrophe. AND to top it all off, that sucker is not coming off the wall for us to paint so we'll just have to paint around it I guess. So, Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday, Happy 10th anniversary to us. We're painting a nursery! Can you sense the sarcasm?!!! In all seriousness, I'm so thankful and feel extremely blessed to have our house and that the baby will have his/her own room. I'm just a bit overwhelmed with all the $$ that has gone into this little room. Here's a picture of the cornice board. It had to be that big because our blinds only go up to the bend of the window and the sun shines right through the open part and into the crib.

One of the Best Weeks

So, this week has been such a blessing in many ways. Monday,my sister found out that the spot they had to biopsy was not cancer. HUGE BLESSING!! Then Wednesday I had my routine Dr. appointment. It was great. We listened to the baby's heartbeat and then they gave me my glucola drink to take home and drink on the way to my appointment in December. After that appointment, I'll start going every 2 weeks. WOW. I just can't believe how quickly this is going by. Before I know it, we'll be bringing little one home with us. So, after my appointment, I drove over to the hospital to stay with Amanda while she was in labor waiting for Griffin to come. To my HUGE surprise, she said I could stay in the room and take pictures if I wanted to. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! If I wanted to?? Of course, I was honored and suddenly got a burst of energy as everything started happening really quickly. She progressed almost 4 cm in 1 hour and was ready to start pushing! Amanda pushed for 15 mins (I'm extremely jealous as this was her FIRST) and Griffin was born. He is absolutely beautiful and perfect. I went back to the hospital a couple times today and both Mom and baby are doing great. Tommie is deployed so he will not be able to hold Griffin until he comes home in March most likely. As I looked at Griffin, I just marveled at the fact that God is so great. To think that he had just been inside Amanda and now he's out for good just blows my mind. I also got overwhelmed with thankfulness for this baby inside me. I told Jeff that if I had not already been pregnant, I would have come home and asked if we could have a baby. At that point, he reminded me that it would have most likely been too late. Once again, God shows me that He knows our hearts even better than we do. My heart is at the point where I know time is going to come to a screeching halt because I CANNOT wait for baby C to get here! Anyway, I am thankful to God for all His blessings and for giving us exactly what we need even when we aren't expecting it. God is good... All the time.

I didn't get a picture of Emily "holding" him because I let her help me hold him so I didn't have a free hand to take a picture, but she was loving on him like crazy. I think we are going to have to buy another Boppy for the kids to use once baby C gets here!

A Silly Little Post

Just a little silly post, but one I had to write... I just have to say that I LOVE absolutely LOVE feeling this little one growing inside of me kick! As I'm sitting at my desk during the day, he/she just kicks and kicks and suddenly the world seems okay again to me. Jeff and I joked last week that this baby is going to come out smelling like Zaxby's sauce (because it's our newest addiction) and doing acrobatics! It seems this baby never stops kicking and no one will hear one complaint from me because it's one of my favorite things ever! :)

Fall Fest and Adventuresome Weekend

This weekend has gone from relaxing to a little stressful. Friday night was perfect. It got really cold and rained off and on all day so we had taco soup and rented some redbox movies. We ate our soup and then snuggled up on the couches for movie time. We all ended up getting to bed at a decent time, but still planned to sleep in on Saturday. All of us except for Jeff that is. He had to get up and be at the school at 7am to proctor the ACT. ~Have I mentioned how much I love this man?? He is always willing to do whatever it takes to earn some extra $$ for his family.~ Anyway, I woke up when he left and made the mistake of checking emails. That's another story for another day, but let's just say that reading a particular email sent my morning on a downward spiral so I used that frustration and hurt to get busy cleaning the house. By the time Jeff got home at 12:15, the house was clean and we were ready to get out of the house. We had lots of things to return and several to buy. We got home late afternoon and I cooked dinner while Jeff finished cleaning out the garage so he could start parking his car in there as well as mine. We watched some football and got in bed. We woke up this morning and Emily started complaining of her stomach hurting. The problem is that she always complains about her stomach hurting so we never really know. Since her choir was singing in big church this morning, we went on to church. We went to get in the van and I saw that there was a screw in one of the tires. LOVELY... Emily made it all the way to the offertory prayer (which is the end of the service) and then started throwing up. LOVELY. We ran home and got her changed and headed to Firestone to get our tire patched... Or so we thought. 30 mins later, we found out that our tire had to be replaced. Oh, and the little over a year old tires on the van were not under warranty and we had not selected the roadside hazard protection so we were going to be out the full price of a new tire. Thankfully, the guy figured out a "loophole" and we were about to get the protection on all 5 tires and a new tire for $111.00. LOVELY... Jeff and I feel like we got "taken", but we were too rushed to worry about it at the moment. We ran over to the Shands for Sunday lunch and then ran home to get ready for the Fall Fest. Oh, and in the middle of the Shands and home, Emily managed to throw up again. We weren't going to let her go to the fall fest, but it nearly broke her heart and I figured she'd be out in the open air so it should be ok. We stayed for almost 2 hours and came home. Emily ate some chicken noodle soup and crackers and she is like a new child. All the energy she didn't have for most of the day is coming out now! So while we didn't have any severe issues or stress this weekend, I'm ready for it to end. Here are a couple of pictures I got of the kids tonight. I had to literally bribe Preston to get his picture taken with Darth. Funny kid. Baby C is good. He/she is constantly kicking and I LOVE LOVE LOVE it. I'm so ready for C to get here so I can hold him/her. I have had a little heartburn lately, but nothing a Tums won't take care of. I am wearing full blown maternity clothes and realized last week that I really don't have much to wear. Thankfully Old Navy has started carrying maternity in our store in Southaven so I was able to get a few items yesterday.

Perfectly Healthy

Today we had our fetal survey. The baby weighs 8 ounces and is healthy. The ultrasound tech said she loved this baby and if we didn't want it, she'd take it. :) She said he/she has a lot of personality and she blew a kiss to it. She gave Preston and Emily their own profile picture of the baby and told them that they had to promise to pray for him/her every night. I let her know that they already pray for the baby every night and day. Preston didn't let his eyes off the monitor. Emily wasn't as thrilled as she was expecting to actually see the baby (probably in color and like it was on tv). We got to hear the heartbeat which was 147 bpm. The baby put its whole hand in its mouth a couple of times and waved at us once too. He/she is very active and started out on one side of my tummy and then moved over to the other side in the middle of the ultrasound. He/she has also been kicking a lot. Today was the first time I've been able to feel it kick on the outside of my stomach. Preston also was able to feel it kick too. We once again feel very blessed and humbled and can't wait to hold Baby C in our arms.

18 Weeks

With my first 2 pregnancies, I hid from the camera. Since then, I have been a little sad that I didn't capture any pictures of my growing belly while I have pregnant. So, this time, I decided I would take pictures every once in a while to note my growing belly. They have also proven to keep me a bit "in check" with my ever-growing face! I'll probably end up cropping out my face eventually. :) Anyway, this is a pic from Friday, 10/5/12. I am 18 weeks, feeling good besides the little cold I'm starting to develop (probably from the drastic change in temps here). I started feeling baby move a couple weeks ago. Every once in a while I'll feel a pretty good jab and it catches me off guard, but for the most part, they are just little flutters. I haven't really had any cravings other than just wanting pickles a lot. If I had to compare this pregnancy with the other 2, I would have to say it's more like when I was pregnant with Preston. I had some sickness in the beginning with Preston, if I stood in the same position for a while, I would start to feel like I was going to pass out, and absolutely no heartburn that couldn't be cured by Tums. Those are the same things I'm experiencing with this pregnancy. I actually haven't had any heartburn so far which is crazy considering all the junk food I've eaten lately. We got the bedding we ordered last week. It's so pretty and I know we made the right choice. It's yellow with nursery rhyme pictures on it. It's exactly what we wanted and what a relief to get that knocked out.

We're In!

What a whirlwind the last several days have been!! We closed on Tuesday night and it went really quickly and easily. So much different than our first move. We took a load over that night and then went back to the Russum house. The next morning, I took a load over and met Linda so we could do some deep cleaning. I took down all the blinds in the house and she scrubbed them and got them looking brand new. While she did that, I did various cleaning jobs around the house. We continued to take loads over to the new house and then Friday, we had movers coming at 9am. It took them 4 hours to get everything from Russum to the new house, but I have to say that it was worth every penny. They knew exactly what they were doing and made it a lot less painful for us. We turned the keys in around 8pm on Saturday and could not feel more relieved to have that all behind us! We still have a lot to do at the new house, but we are taking it in strides. I don't think either of us have felt this amount of exhaustion before. I think it was worse than the exhaustion you have with a newborn. I was to the point where my feet screamed every time I would get up after sitting down for a few minutes. Last night, we worked in the flowerbeds a little bit while the kids played with other kids in the neighborhood. During our moving process, we had several friends take and pick up the kids from school and provide dinner for us and the kids. What a true blessing!! I know what to do next time I have a friend move. We are completely overwhelmed by the grace and love that God provides us every day.

Second Trimester and 1 Day!

I officially started my second trimester Friday. The kids absolutely love Fridays because I tell them what fruit the baby is the size of. Baby is the size of a lemon this week. I feel great and depending on the clothes I wear, my family can tell there's a bump. Surprisingly, I've had a good bit of energy. I'm not sure if that's because I'm completely consumed with the house stuff or if I just have more energy this time. We think we have narrowed the names down to either Caleb/Catherine or Hudson/Hadley. Either way, we feel certain the middle name will be Gregory or Grace. Oh, and NO, we are not having twins, but since we are not going to find out what we are having, I want to stick to the same initials so I can get some things monogrammed before he/she gets here. The One Day part of the title refers to ONE DAY UNTIL CLOSING!! After a crazy week last week, I have never been more ready to get this done with! We were originally supposed to close Wednesday, but everything was finished a little early so we got to move it up to tomorrow at 4pm. We plan on taking a load over there after we close and I'll spend the night cleaning the kitchen and bathrooms. Thankfully the carpet is new so I don't have to get that cleaned. It's in great shape, but has been vacant for over a year so it's due for a deep cleaning. We are so excited and can't wait for this week to be over so we can be done with the physical moving part of it and just to the unpacking phase.

Buying a House is NOT for the Faint at Heart!

Ok, so I knew that going into the whole house hunting process, but geez, today has been a day! Between emails and phone calls not being returned as soon as I would like and finding out that our contract got hung up and therefore never got sent to our mortgage lady, this has been a scary day. Thankfully, I have a wonderful Mom and realtor (Jeff can't talk during most of the day since he's teaching) that keep reminding me that God has this and it's all in His control. Stress has no part of His provision for our lives. I've calmed down A LOT, but that is probably due to the fact that we have finally locked in an interest rate (and a great one at that!) and I've just signed about 35 pages of papers for our loan. Now we just have to get Jeff's signature and MAYBE I can breathe a little bit. We have been packing and packing and packing since last week. We decided that it was time to get rid of several "large" items since we either didn't need them anymore or didn't really have a place for it. I posted an ad on Craigslist Sunday afternoon that we are going to have a moving sale on Saturday. Yesterday, we had someone come look at our pub table I had listed and when we opened our garage, he started to shop! He ended up leaving with 1/2 our stuff and we ended up with $390! It's really neat to see God continue to provide. Especially since our first OB payment is due next Friday! Anyway, we are still set to close on September 12th. We have movers coming to move our heavy items on Friday, the 14th and then we have to be out the 15th. I so cannot wait to get over there and start decorating. Fall is my absolute favorite season and I have some fun fall decorations in mind for our house thanks to Pinterest. Oh, and baby update ~ Everything is great. I'm not feeling sick anymore and not even that tired. I think the whole house thing has really helped. I've had lots of energy to pack and move things into the garage. I will be 12 weeks at our appointment next Friday so I hope I get to hear the baby's heartbeat. Jeff can't take off to go to the appointments with me so I'll be going to most of them alone, but I guess that's the 3rd baby for us! :) The kids are still so excited and Emily had to get in some extra kisses to the baby this morning. I'm thankful they are excited about it and it's been sweet to watch them talk about it.

We Have a HOUSE!!

We have been renting for the last 2.5 years. We moved out of the Danville house because we wanted Preston to be in a good school district and we weren't positive Jeff would have a teaching contract so we took the safe road and started renting. We signed a 3 year lease for many reasons, but 1 being that we knew we wouldn't want to move again really quickly. Since last August, we have been house hunting. We have found a couple that we have fallen in love with along the way and even had an offer on one, but none of them came about. Until this weekend. We met our realtor at a foreclosure on Friday night. The house we met at was one of my favorites even though there were only a couple pictures online. The outside was beautiful and it had the right amount of bedrooms and bathrooms, etc. We walked around and spent about 45 mins at this house. They say when you know, you just know and I so wanted to "know" this was the house. Our realtor (who is a long time friend) told us she wanted us to look at another foreclosure in the neighborhood. It was on my list of houses we wanted to see, but I told her the backyard was bad and we had changed our minds about it. She took us to the house just for kicks and we walked in and KNEW. All 5 of us started oohing and ahhhing the moment we stepped into this house. It had everything I had on my list of desires (before we found out about Shands baby #3). Granite countertops, smooth ceilings, double ovens, hardwood floors, and the list goes on. This house had only been on the market for 17 days and we knew it wouldn't long. We went home and prayed about it, dreamed about it, and talked about it. Jeff was still very reserved about the backyard, but by the next afternoon, he had decided that there were plenty of options to fix it. We went back over there that afternoon and walked the property and it just felt right. There are a couple things that will need to be fixed, but all manageable. The inside is almost spotless. New carpet and fresh paint. Sunday afternoon, we went back over there with Carmen and as she, Jeff, and I stood outside, we all three mentioned how we had a peace about it. We didn't need to look any further because we were home. We went to her office and wrote up an offer. We gave the bank until Friday night to get back with us and I just knew it was going to be the longest week of my life. She called me yesterday afternoon and said they had already responded with a counter offer. We sent them back a counter and Carmen texted me this afternoon and said "We have a deal!!!!!!" We are set to close on September 12th and we couldn't be more excited. This has been a long time coming and it will be nice to finally have a place of our own again. We give all the glory to God and His perfect timing.

Our new house before it gets some love from Green King. :)

Open House and First Day

Thursday night, August 2nd, we had Meet the Teacher Night at the kids school. It didn't start until 6:30, but at 5:45, my impatient self couldn't take it anymore and we drove up to the school. Obviously I'm not the only impatient one because there were lots of other kids and parents there. They finally put the list of classes out so we jumped out of the car and walked (very quickly) up to the front. We are very blessed with a school full of wonderful teachers, but as a perk for teachers, Jeff gets to request who our kids have. You have to list your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choice and there is still no guarantee as to who your kids will get. Preston got Mrs. Kim Wood. We have heard nothing but wonderful things about her and look forward to a wonderful year. Emily got Mrs. Lori Bowles. We have also heard wonderful things about her. We would have requested Mrs. Leslie (Preston's K teacher), but she also teaches pre-first and we weren't sure if she would be teaching that again. Mrs. Lori is very sweet and I know Emily is going to LOVE her. We took a few pics and then joined friends for a late dinner. Today was the first day of school. The kids were both very excited and couldn't wait to get to school. Preston had been very adamant about us not taking him to class. He told me "I've got this." While we were waiting for the doors to open, he turned to me and told me that I could take him to his class as long as I didn't take any pictures. :) My sweet boy! They both had GREAT days and were bouncing off the walls last night! I thought school was supposed to wear you out, but they seemed to have extra energy. They couldn't wait to go back today. I think this is going to be a fantastic year and can't wait to see all the growth!

ATL Day 3

It's so hard to remember what happened on day 3 now that our life has been turned upside down a bit. Shoot, I can't even remember what the actual date was now! Oh yeah, day 3 was my birthday. We went to the Coca Cola Museum and spent the morning there. It was a lot of fun, but our favorite part was the tasting part. We got to taste soda's from around the country. Most were horrible, but there were a couple that we liked. Toward the back was a section where you went up to a computer screen and could flavor your favorite Coke products. For example, you could pick coke and then flavor it with raspberry, lime, vanilla, orange, etc. The possibilities were almost endless. All of us really enjoyed that. When we exited, we all got our own glass bottle of coke that we got to keep. The kids were a bit disappointed that they didn't get to drink it, but we were all pretty "coked out" for the day. After that excitement, we went to the fountain of rings. It's located where the olympics were held. It's basically exactly what it says... a fountain of rings. The kids got to run in and out of the water with a million other kids. They had a lot of fun and Jeff and I enjoyed people watching. We went back to the hotel and got ready to go to the American Girl store and dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. Emily was completely overwhelmed with everything at the AG store and ended up picking out new pj's and a carrier for her doll, Belle. She also picked out the big doll that she is going to get for her birthday. She had her pick of any doll in the store and she picked Emily. We went to Cheesecake Factory afterward and ate until our hearts were content. One funny thing was that since the restaurant was right outside the mall, we parked our car near AG and walked inside the mall to the restaurant. We made sure to ask the hostess if they would lock the mall doors since we had parked pretty far away. She said they wouldn't lock the doors to the mall entrance, but they would lock the store doors. SO, after our bellies were FULL, we walked to the mall doors and of course, they were locked. We walked what seemed like forever in the ATL heat and finally got back to our car. By the time we got back to the hotel, we were DONE. We were able to go to the pool and let the kids play in the water until after 10pm. It was a wonderful birthday spent with my favorite 3 people.

Day 3 Pics

More Pics Day 3

I really should learn how to add more pictures to 1 post....

I love this man!! And notice that nice birthday present in the background?! :-)

Shands Family of 5

Well, everything is confirmed and we are set to have baby #3 on or around March 8th, 2013! We got to have an ultrasound first thing at the doctor on Friday and got our first picture of this little one. There isn't much to see in the picture, but when I looked at that screen and saw its little heart beating ever so fast, my heart skipped a beat. We can't hear the heartbeat until after the 1st trimester, but the tech measured the heartbeat and it was 160 bmp. Perfect. We made it "official" yesterday by putting up pictures that my friend, Elizabeth Lee took for us. We are overwhelmed with the amount of support by all of our family and friends and look forward to sharing this blessing with everyone.