Happy New Year!

It's kind of hard to believe that today is the last day of 2008. A few days ago, Keith and I had a discussion about what we thought the world would be like once we hit the 2000 year mark. I wonder why everyone thought the world would be such a different place? Keith and I grew up in different parts of the country, in different environments, yet both of our predictions for our planet by 2000 were very similar. Think Jetsons combined with Independence Day and Minority Report. Why did we both assume we would be driving hovercrafts and have jet packs strapped to our back? And while there have been a lot of technological advances in the past 20 years, we still aren't anywhere close to living in buildings that are hundreds of thousands of feet up in the air like the Jetsons did. I wonder, if the world were to be around long enough, would we ever reach the point where we were living like some of these futuristic movies and shows? Of course I now would say that definitely by the year 3000 that would be the case, but I'm sure whatever I might predict for that era would be far from the reality.

I'm not sure how I got off track there. I planned to post my New Year's Resolutions, or atleast some semblance of them. I'm a big list maker and I usually can follow through with my lists, but resolutions are a completely different thing. I've rarely followed through with them, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway.

1. After the baby is born, I want to get on a good exercise routine. Hopefully I can lose some weight by doing that along with eating healthy. Watching "The Biggest Loser" this season has given me motivation. Now I just need to get a personal trainer and a personal chef and I'm all set.
2. I want to do better about planning out our meals for the week so that I won't continue to get in a rut of fixing the same things all the time or eating less healthy than we should be.
3. I want to have more of an established house cleaning routine so that it doesn't get down to a day where I'm just fed up with the house and end up cleaning the entire day just to set things straight and I'm exhausted and worn out by the time I'm done.

I think I'm just going to keep it to 3 things, maybe I'll be more apt to follow through. I know there's something major missing from this list and that is the resolution to either read the Bible more consistently, pray more, have a consistent quiet time, etc. I definitely need to do all these things too, but like I said above, I don't usually do a good job of sticking with my resolutions whereas these are more important things that I really do want to accomplish, so I'm going to leave them off my resolutions list, but just know that they are areas that I'm constantly working on, New Year or not.

A brief look back on 2008 shows an average year in the life of our family. Nothing super exciting or life changing occurred. Obviously I did get pregnant and that is exciting and most definitely life changing. We also bought a new TV and all the accessories to go with it after having gone 6 years with a 19 inch TV from the 80's. That was pretty big for us. I feel like the biggest changes have been with Garrett himself. The jump from a 2 year old to a 3 year old is pretty big. I was looking back on blogs that I posted around this time last year and I can't believe how far we've come. He's now potty trained, sleeps in a regular bed, and talks up a storm. It's hard to comprehend how much he's changed in a short period of time. Especially when we see him every day, the changes aren't as significant to us.

Obviously looking ahead to 2009, we will have a less than typical year. Newborn babies tend to do that. The first half of the year will be preparing ourselves and our house for a new addition and the second half of the year will be spent adjusting the new baby to our life and schedule. I'm really hoping for an easy baby this time. They can take after Garrett in the sleep department because he was sleeping through the night at 8 weeks, but everything else could be a little different and it would be ok with me. I feel like I'm on the cusp of something new. Up until now I've been in the baby mode. Not necessarily having baby fever, but knowing that I was going to be enduring the newborn stage once more. But after this we're done having babies, so I feel as if, as this baby grows, we will be slowly shifting from the baby mindset to a family mindset. Really establishing household routines and family traditions that will stick with us until our kids are in college. Not that we haven't already been doing all of this for the past 3 years with Garrett, but I feel like everything will be more firmly cemented this go around.

OK, so now I feel like I'm babbling. I really should get off here and do some house cleaning. Here's hoping I might even feel like taking down the Christmas tree and decorations.

Happy New Year's to you and your family! If 2008 was a great year for you, then I hope 2009 will be the same. If 2008 was a tough year, then here's hoping that 2009 will be all you're wanting and more.

Christmas Pictures

This post is going to pretty much be entirely comprised of pictures. For me it's easier to do it this way.

This first pic is of Garrett and I decorating the tree, I hadn't started hanging ornaments at the top yet, but as of right now, ornaments are only on the top, the bottom ones have slowly migrated north (or to the trash can, thanks to the 3 year old who can destroy the indestructible). You can see our nativity set (the Fisher Price Little People one) on the cabinet under the TV and obviously the stockings are hung by the chimney with care. I have a few things on my dining room table and kitchen table, but I didn't take pictures of those. We have those electric candles in all the windows, but after our fire scare with the fridge a few weeks ago when we initially thought the candles were the culprit, I never turned them on after that, so really we only have a wreath on the door as an outdoor sign that we actually have Christmas spirit. Maybe next year I'll do a better job with my outside decor.

A week before we left for our trip to Indiana, we had our family Christmas here at home. I didn't want to haul every single gift we bought each other to and from Indiana. We saved the stocking stuffers and a few of the smaller presents to take with us and open on Christmas morning, the rest were opened the week before. Here are a few pictures from that day. This is Garrett helping Keith open a present.

Here I am making my excited face as I open a new phone for the house. Our's is old and a piece of crap, I love the new one! As you can see in the picture, I also got a new, big, stainless steel crockpot. I love it! I promise both of these items were on my Christmas list. Keith done good.

I know he looks disgusted here, but I promise it's his new, fake, excited smile face. He had just opened his new Thomas the train. We're drowning in trains over here.

Garrett's class had their Christmas party on the last day before the break. One of the things we did at the party was build gingerbread houses out of graham crackers, icing, and candy. Here he is showing off our creation. I think he got more icing on his shirt than on the house.

This is what happens when you're stuck in the car for 14 hours. You get a little crazy. Keith did this to see if Garrett would notice and what his reaction would be. He got a big kick out of it and this entertained him for quite some time. (That's Bullseye from Toy Story 2, for those of you who don't recognize him. He's not as famous as his counterparts, Buzz and Woody.)

So here's what I did with Buzz. There were some other stunts, but I could get carried away posting them, so let's move on.The day after we got there, we saw some snow flurries. It was also only 3 degrees outside with negative 19 degree windchill. Here's a quick shot of Garrett and Keith before getting in the car to go back to my parents after a visit with my Aunt Pat. You can kind of make out the snow flurries in this shot. This is what I did during a lot of my free time. Played old school Super Mario Brothers on the Nintendo from the early 90's. Fun! I managed the save the princess one time during the week. Another time I got to the final world, but completely forgot the pattern to get through it. I was lucky that first and only time to win the game, I even beat it with only 1 second on the clock! My brother, Jesse, and I both yelled "1 second!!!" The rest of the family was thrilled with us breaking the relative silence at that moment, but it was too exciting to not scream about it!

Here are my parents and their 3 grandkids. Yes, my child's mouth is wide open, but other than that, it's a good pic. In less than 6 months, they will add 2 more to this group.

Christmas Eve

Helping Pawpaw hunt for presents under the tree on Christmas morning.

Opening presents.

This is what Garrett and Jake did while we were eating Christmas dinner.

I guess that's it. My mom and sister can thank me for refraining from posting pictures of them trying out Riley's new hula hoop. I do accept bribes if you don't want me to post them in the future. :)

Ode to Heartburn

Oh Heartburn, how I have missed you. It's been a long 3 and a half years since we've spent any sort of quality time together. I do appreciate the occasional visits when I've eaten something spicy too close to bedtime, or the occasional food that doesn't set well. But I'm so thrilled that you're back with me 24/7. And how wonderful is it that Pepcid doesn't work on you anymore? I knew you really cared, even when I try to get rid of you, you still stick with me like glue.

It's been many a night since I've had to sleep on a stack of pillows the size of Mt Everest, but thanks to you, my trusty pillows are back. I spend the night awake visiting with you or trying to keep myself upright on the pillows, which is always relaxing. It's so wonderful to go hours after eating and still get that familiar burn up my chest and into my throat. I'm not sure how I'm going to stand the thought that in less than 6 months you will be gone, hopefully to never return, with a few exceptions, I'm sure. It almost makes me want to have another baby just so we can spend even more time together in the near future.

I do have to tip my hat to you though. Spreading around that old wives tale about you indicating a full head of hair on a new baby. *shakes head* You and I both know that is far from true, Garrett is still partially bald and he's almost 3 and a half. How you love to make me laugh at your tomfoolery! It's just your way of making first time moms ok with your appearance, hoping that upon seeing their new baby for the first time, they will be amazed at all the beautiful hair upon their head. Those poor, innocent moms.

I do have to tell you though that the saying "Two's a Company, Three's a Crowd" definitely does apply at times, so please give me and the unborn baby some space on occasion, atleast at night. And know that if I pop a Pepcid, it means I would like some alone time, try and take the hint. But I can completely understand why you want to visit when we're having pizza or Mexican food. It's obviously my way of inviting you to the party, so feel free to come on over. But realize that over the next few months, those meals will be few and far between.

Enjoy these last few months because I'm afraid I'm going to have to break off this relationship soon. But don't worry, it's not you, it's me. I can't offer you what you want. So enjoy this time together while you can.

**On a side note, my non-vomiting streak is over. Here's hoping this morning was the first and last time that happens during this pregnancy. Garrett is 100% to blame, but I'll spare you the details. And thyroid medicine tastes much worse coming back up than it does going down.

Home Once More

I didn't intend to go this long between blog posts, but it just sorta happened.  

Last Saturday, we left Texas and headed for Indiana.  I think Keith and I got about 4 hours of sleep the night before our 14 hour trip.  That always seems to be the case when traveling for some reason.  Keith was busy doing vehicle maintenance on our SUV and I was busy packing for the trip.  We left at 5:30 am that morning and hit the road.  Garrett stayed awake for about 2 hours and then managed to go back to sleep for a couple more hours, so that made the beginning of the trip very uneventful.  We had agreed that should Garrett fall asleep at any point in our journey, we would not stop at all unless we were out of gas.  Thankfully my bladder cooperated and we were ultimately able to get as far as Brinkley, Arkansas before making our first pit stop.  I have to say that Garrett has a bladder made of iron because that boy did such a tremendous job staying dry and waiting until stops.  He only told us one time that he needed to use the bathroom on the entire 14 hour trip.  

I had made us sandwiches for our meals, but when we stopped in Arkansas, it was lunchtime, and the gas station we chose was next door to McDonald's so Keith suggested we use their restroom and get Garrett a happy meal for lunch.  He doesn't care for sandwiches much.  So we did that, and I got out mine and Keith's sandwiches and we were back on the road.  We didn't stop again until Effingham, Illinois.  I was pretty proud of our longevity in the car.  By this point it's about 6 or 7 in the evening and Illinois was MUCH colder than Texas had been.  We decided to take a breather and actually sit down to eat Arby's.  After getting gas, it started misting some.  For the rest of the 2 hours on the road, I alternated my gaze between staring down the mist to be sure it hadn't turned into freezing rain or snow, and watching the thermometer in our SUV to be sure we hadn't reached freezing point.  We just made it in my parents' driveway before things started getting a little bad on the roads.  Their driveway had some ice patches.

The week there was a lot of fun.  Garrett enjoyed spending time with his grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.  On Sunday the high was about 3 degrees with a windchill of minus 19 degrees.  We definitely got our fill of cold weather.  I would have appreciated the cold had it been accompanied by a good snowfall, but we just saw snow flurries for a brief period of time.  I did get some pictures of Keith and Garrett out in it, but I don't know if you can even see the snow in the pictures since the flakes were so small.  I promise I'll have tons of pictures uploaded later and I'll post a blog including some of them, but my camera isn't cooperating with my work MacBook and Keith is on our Dell, so it will have to wait until later.  

Garrett had a wonderful Christmas and was showered with presents.  He enjoys the unwrapping process every bit as much as actually seeing the present inside.  I think he opened the majority of Keith's for him.  One funny point was when he helped me open a present and the present was the book "The Strong Willed Child" by Dr Dobson.  Kind of ironic since he's the reason for the book in the first place.  My brother, Jesse, got both of his nephews Nerf guns which were ultimately used more by the adults than the kids, of course.  The funniest gift though was the huge machete that Jesse bought Keith.  He loved it and has already tried it out on a cardboard box in the garage.  

One night our family played "Imagine If".  The premise of the game is that the card has a statement and you choose a person playing the game to fill in the statement, then everyone picks the option they think best completes the sentence about that person.  Well, I was chosen for a statement which was "Which form of communication would Lydia be?".  The options included: mental telepathy, telephone, email, car horn, and one or two others.  How wonderful was it that my own husband and 2 of my siblings chose car horn.  Yes, I know that's probably true, but still, they could have at least been nice about it, like the rest of the group was.

I do have to tell a funny story about Jesse though.  Garrett needs help pulling his pants up after using the bathroom at times.  Well, one of those times, Jesse just happened to be the closest to the bathroom, so I asked him to help Garrett.  He didn't want to do it, but he did it anyway.  At one point I heard him yell "His butt touched my arm!"  It was one of my highlights.  Anytime you can gross out your 19 year old brother, the one who regularly mooned us growing up, who was found naked in our other brother's bed because he was too lazy to get himself dressed after taking a shower and wanted to do some of his own grossing out, the one who loves to fart or belch in anyone's direction.  It's so worth it to have him help my 3 year old pull up his pants and know that Garrett was giving him a hard time of his own.  I also loved it when Jesse's girlfriend came over for the day on Friday and Garrett followed them around the entire time.  Jesse got a bit of a taste of what we dealt with when he was little and Grace, Brad, and myself were bringing home dates.    

The trip home was pretty similar to the trip up there, except it was a very windy day across the majority of the states we drove through.  After leaving Little Rock, it started pouring down rain and didn't let up for about an hour.  We did see one accident that resulted from the rain, but it didn't look like anyone was hurt, though their car did rollover.  

I will add just one thing to this.  During both of our days of traveling, to and from Indiana, we encountered many bad drivers, the type who run right up on your bumper as if they're going to push you out of their way or off the road.  Every single one of those drivers were from Texas.  It was almost funny after the 10th or 11th time it happened, we could just predict where they were from before we even saw their license plate.  Texans, we aren't doing ourselves any good when we drive like bats out of hell across the country.  It just makes us all appear to be terrible and rude drivers.  

Well, I must sign off now so I can finish watching "The Sound of Music".  Last time I blogged about watching this, Garrett was up all night with a terrible bout of croup and we ended up in the ER.  I really hope that isn't the case tonight.  

Here's hoping we're going to be healthy for Christmas!

I should be writing a blog recapping all the fun and hilarity of the church staff Christmas party last night, of which I would have been in the midst of, but life sometimes likes to change your plans.  Thankfully this change of plans wasn't a big deal, but I did hate to miss out on the fun and festivities, mainly I want to know why Steve was laying on the floor in one of the pictures that I saw from the party, but I digress.

The plan was for me to leave the house promptly at 4:20 pm yesterday afternoon and take Garrett to our friends' house where he would spend the evening romping and playing with their 2 kids and getting out every toy that they own.   Then I would come back to the house to pick up Keith, where he should have hopefully been changing his clothes into "Christmas casual" and we would then head to the church where we were meeting the rest of the staff at 4:45 pm.  The only information we were given for the party was the meeting time, the dress code, and the fact that we were all riding in the church bus.  Everything else was a secret.

Unfortunately it remained a secret for me because when I woke Garrett up from his nap at 3:45 pm yesterday (that would give him exactly 35 minutes to wake up fully, eat a snack, change clothes, and have a minute to play before herding him out the door.  Can you tell I'm a little OCD with scheduling and such?) his cheeks were flushed and he felt warm to me. I got out the thermometer and checked his temperature: 100.5.  You know, if your child's temp is 99, MAYBE even 99.3, you can probably get away with taking them to school or to a babysitter (assuming that they feel and act good, which Garrett did), but once you break the 100 degree mark, it really is best for them to stay at home, or atleast get someone without kids or an OCD aversion to germs to watch them.  We only had one sitter option with our friends with kids, so I made the dreaded phone call and let the staff know that I wouldn't be able to make it to the party. Then I called Keith and told him he didn't need to hurry home (he's in the middle of a big project and was being given a lot of grief for asking to leave before 4:00 pm as it was, so it turned out good for him).  Garrett was very upset that he wasn't going to see his friends and even though I explained to him that he was sick and we didn't want to get them sick, he insisted that he was all better.  I called my sweet friend to let her know we would not be coming over and she actually said that if the fever went away soon, to bring him on over.  It's wonderful to have awesome friends.

I gave Garrett tylenol, turned on "Kung Fu Panda", popped a bag of popcorn, and somehow managed to distract Garrett from where he should have been rather than where he was.  (He ate the entire bag of popcorn, I might add, I had maybe 5 kernels.)  Then I got a phone call from my OB/Gyn's office.  Turns out my latest lab work showed that I have a bladder infection.  Yay! Just what I always wanted for my birthday.  The nurse called in an antibiotic and I told Keith to pick it up for me on his way home from work.

So rather than spend the evening thumb wrestling at the Christmas party, I spent the evening with Garrett and a bladder infection.  Oh, and after Garrett took the tylenol, his fever never came back.  He woke up this morning nice and cool and ready to go meet Santa at school today. And I'm starting to feel the effects of the bladder infection.  Let's hope the antibiotics kick in quickly.

Christmas Parties and Birthdays

We've been busy having fun for the past few days.

Friday was Keith's work Christmas party.  His parents came up to watch Garrett for the day (the party was at lunch time) and Keith and I headed to the Dallas Arboretum.  This is the second or third year that this party has been held at the Arboretum and I have to say it's a good choice for a party site.  The room they rented was nice and big as well as highly decorated for Christmas.  I'm not sure if the Arboretum does the food or if they hired an outside caterer, but there was beef, fish, and pork to choose from and the chef cut your portion off the main slab for you as you came through the line.  They also had some of the best mashed potatoes that I've had in a while.  One thing that I found to be different is that they had "fixin's" for the potatoes.  Bacon bits, chives, sour cream, butter.  I added some of them and that made the potatoes even better.  There was also a vegetable dish and bread.  On the other side of the room there was a salad bar where they were making salads in martini glasses.  It was a cute concept, but everyone at our table had a hard time actually eating the salad out of those glasses.  Keith and I skipped the salad and headed straight for the beef.  Normally I would eat some salad, but the line was long and by the time I finished my plate of food, I didn't have enough room for salad.  Well, salad and a cupcake and honestly, which one would you choose?  

They had a cupcake bar with many toppings to add and they even passed around individual cartons of milk to drink with them!  I was so excited.  The major disappointment for me was that the menu we were given stated that there would be Butterfinger bar for cupcake toppings and somebody changed that to Oreo instead.  I LOVE Butterfinger, especially Dairy Queen's Butterfinger blizzard.  Though it probably turned out to be a good thing because I would have potentially tipped the entire bowl over onto my plate and just ate it all separate from the cupcake.  Normally I would eat a cupcake with my hand/fingers, but since we were at a luncheon with Keith's coworkers, I ate it with a fork, it felt a little odd, but it was the right decision since everyone else ended up doing the same thing once they got their cupcakes.  During the eating portion of the lunch, they showed the movie "A Christmas Story" on the projector screen.  

After the meal, we moved onto games.  We all picked a glass ball ornament out of the bowl in the middle of the table, if you had the orange sticker on your ornament then you got to take home your table's centerpiece and a gift card, if you had a green sticker, you could pick a present from under the tree.  Keith got the orange sticker, so we brought home a glass bowl and $20 gift card to AMC theaters.  Everyone else who did not win a prize got to participate in a few other games.  I was glad we had already won, so we were able to sit there and relax.  

After the party was over, we walked around the Arboretum for a little while.  My feet decided to rebel and catch themselves on fire since I was wearing heels and they aren't used to that. I'm still paying for this decision too.  Either I should wear heels more often to toughen my feet up, or avoid heels in the future.  I'm leaning towards avoiding them. 

Since my birthday was the next day, we had already made plans to go to the movies afterwards.  I went back and forth over whether we should see the new James Bond movie or "Four Christmases", but ultimately decided on Christmases.  Keith said it was completely up to me to choose the movie so I figured I would go with the one we wouldn't normally see in the theater.  It was a cute movie.  Certainly didn't blow me away, but I have a hard time seeing Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon actually together, or even giving one another the time of day, so it seemed a little unrealistic to have them together as a couple in this movie.  

Keith wanted to take me birthday present shopping after the movie so we went to Haverty's because I've been wanting more decor for our house.  We came to the conclusion that we want to buy a recliner sometime soon, but ultimately we bought a wrought iron wall hanging to go in our bedroom, so that was my birthday present.

Yesterday was my 30th birthday.  It's still hard to wrap my mind around that number, but I won't wallow in it today.  I went grocery shopping first thing in the morning while Keith took Garrett out to buy a few more things for me.  He said that after I left for Walmart, he told Garrett that they were going to go buy me a cake and Garrett said "I love cake!".  Garrett also informed everyone they came across that it was his Momma's birthday.  :)  After lunch, Keith and Garrett sang Happy Birthday to me, Keith even bought a #30 candle to go on top and he insisted on taking pictures of me with my cake and blowing out the candles.  I don't have them uploaded yet, but I'll share later.  And I just have to point out that Garrett ate twice as much cake as I did, so he definitely does love cake. 

At some point I may take the time to write about my feelings on getting a decade older, but right now we're watching "National Treasure 2", so I'll go there later.

Little Nudger

I think I've been feeling the baby move for the past couple of days.  I'm not positive about it and I know it's early, but on the other hand this is my second pregnancy and it's only 4 weeks earlier than the first time I felt Garrett, but I'm not sure if that's really what I'm feeling.  It's just a very light "bump" in roughly the same spot, a few times a day.  I haven't gotten my hopes up too much because I'll be honest and say that even when I wasn't pregnant over the past 3 years, I've felt strange things at times that I would have sworn was a baby moving or kicking.  What I'm currently feeling is very light in comparison to those "phantom" movements, so that's what makes me sit back and take more notice of them than I usually would.  But I feel pretty sure that even if I'm not feeling it now, I will be feeling it in the next month or so.  I think that will make this baby seem more real to me.  Right now it's pretty easy to just forget that I'm pregnant, but once there's something moving around inside of me, it will be a bit harder to forget it.  

Tonight we're going to eat supper with some friends of ours for my birthday.  We're all busy between now and Saturday, so Wednesday was the only night that worked for us.  She's made homemade lasagna which I haven't had in a while, so I'm very excited to eat that!  I better take some Pepcid before I leave though.  The heartburn has started to kick it up a notch the past week.  That's actually making it a bit harder to forget I'm pregnant because heartburn is just part and parcel of pregnancy for me.  This friend will more than likely have a homemade dessert as well.  A while back she made a homemade cheesecake and it was soooo good.  She's a very good cook.  Her son has requested that Garrett bring his "Snotrod" car.  (If you've seen "Cars" then you know who I'm talking about.)  Apparently her son has a new obsession with Snotrod.  Unbeknownst to him, he's getting one for Christmas, but right now, he's dying to play with Garrett's.  His mom told me today that he said he was thankful for his bear and that Garrett was probably thankful for his Snotrod.  Because who wouldn't be thankful for Snotrod?

(Shout out to the "Twilight" series with my post title, for the uninformed out there.)

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

I am officially finished with all my Christmas present shopping! I bought Keith's last few gifts today and can now cross everyone off my list. Well, I do still have to buy a $5 gift for Garrett's Christmas party gift exchange, but that doesn't count, does it? It really does feel nice when you know everything is purchased and ready to be wrapped. For some reason the wrapping job is overwhelming me right now, but I really need to get on it. This Saturday we're doing our family Christmas so I need to atleast have those presents wrapped soon. Since we're going to be in Indiana on Christmas, we made the decision to do our own family Christmas on Saturday so that we can avoid hauling presents to and from Indiana. Of course we'll still take our stocking stuffers with us and maybe one or two smaller "tree" gifts, but everything else will be opened on Saturday.

My Christmas card pictures finally came in the mail today so now I need to put a picture in each card, seal them, stamp them, and mail them. Hopefully that last step will take place tomorrow.

I have one Christmas party out of the way and 2 more to go (3 if you include Garrett's school Christmas party). This Friday is Keith's work party. It's being held at the Dallas Arboretum, so I'm in hopes that the weather will be nice so we can walk around after the party is over. I bought a new top to wear to this party and I really hope it will still fit. It's fitted over the hips and let's just say that I think I'm going to be showing a little earlier than I did when I was pregnant with Garrett. So hopefully I can still get the shirt to work on Friday before I have to put it up for a few months. At last year's party, they had 2 handwriting analysts, and that was really interesting. I can't remember now exactly what they said about my handwriting, but it was pretty accurate, albeit generic. I'll be curious to see who the "entertainment" will be this year. It's an accounting firm so I don't have very high hopes, but it will be nice nonetheless.

Next Monday is the church staff Christmas party. Now that I work there part time, Keith and I are invited. This party should be interesting in more ways than one. But I'm mostly interested in seeing how the staff parties. I have a feeling they can be a pretty wild bunch when the opportunity presents itself so I'm sure it will be fun for the most part.

The weather outside is getting colder by the minute and putting me in a Christmas mood. Maybe I should go tackle some of the presents that need wrapping while I'm feeling this way. Because we all know it will be in the 70's by this weekend and the Christmas spirit will be waning some.

12 Week Check-Up

This morning I had my 12 week check up at the doctor. With Christmas parties coming up, I've already booked my babysitters and didn't want to ask anyone to watch Garrett for me this morning as well as watch him when we have a party this weekend or next week, so I decided to suck it up and take him with me. Knowing that I will be having these appointments atleast once a month between now and June, it's only natural that eventually he will have to come with me to an appointment or two. Monday morning is definitely the best time to go to the ob/gyn. We sat for maybe 5 minutes before the nurse came out and got me, so that was nice. I was a little apprehensive about having my blood pressure checked while my 3 year old was sitting on my lap, but surprisingly she said it was normal.

Then I had to weigh. As I stepped onto the scale I remembered that I had my cell phone and keys in my pocket. Not smart. But again, surprisingly, I lost 7 pounds this month! Pretty shocking since I don't think I've been all that sick. Plus, last night I ate a few frozen waffles and pancakes because I was having a weird craving. I figured those would show up on the scale this morning, but that didn't happen. I should explain that when I was pregnant with Garrett, I ended up weighing 2 pounds less when I checked into the hospital compared to what I weighed at my first pregnancy appointment. For whatever reason, I tend to lose weight in pregnancy. Since I have it to lose, it doesn't concern my doctor, so that's nice.

As most of you know, the next step at the pregnancy doctor visit is peeing in a cup. This is truly fun when you have a 3 year old in the bathroom with you. He told me he needed to poop in a cup after I was done. I convinced him to hold that thought until after I saw the doctor.

Unfortunately this was one of those appointments where you have to strip down for a complete exam. Again, lots of fun with the 3 year old in the room. Thankfully I had a sucker in my purse, so that managed to get him through the first part of my exam. During the second part, my doctor started laughing, always something a practically naked woman wants to hear. He explained that he happened to look up at Garrett, who was sitting behind me, and he had his shirt lifted and was looking down at his stomach while my doctor was examining mine. After a question/answer session, I was free to head down to the lab and have my bloodwork done. Garrett sat on my lap while she drew my blood. He made a few comments about my "boo boo", but he was mostly interested in the rubber glove that the tech gave him to play with.

After that we were ok to leave. I was loaded down with formula samples, that may or may not expire before this baby is even born, as well as the paperwork that I have to fill out for the hospital. Overall it was a good appointment and I'm glad to know that Garrett can behave himself in that setting. I don't plan to take him to every appointment, but I'm sure he will accompany me a few more times before this baby arrives.

Oh and he told the lab tech he was having a baby sister. That's the first time he's ever said that.

Who's Who

We just finished cleaning up after eating a very yummy meal of grilled steak, baked potato, green beans, and crescent rolls. These steaks were some of the best we have grilled in a long while. I say "we" but I do mean Keith. Garrett loves steak and will put it away. He told me he was done after eating quite a bit of it and then ran off to get a cookie (his treat for cleaning the living room which was a disaster). But after I cleaned off his plate, he came running back looking for more steak. I cut a few pieces off of mine and let him have at it. We certainly aren't raising a vegeterian. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I thought I would give you a brief rundown of my "blog roll" on the right hand side of the page. Let me first start off by saying that I love reading blogs. I'm sure that's partly due to my nosey nature, but I also just love hearing what other people have to say. What their ideas and thoughts on a variety of topics are, how they parent their children, where they go on vacation, etc.

So these are my family members and friends who currently have a blog. I've put them in alphabetical order so I don't have the appearance of ranking my friends and family. Because we all know that won't end well.

1. My friend Alicia. Alicia is new to the blog world, but she is not a new friend of mine. I've known her since the 5th grade. Her brother, Jordan, is the same age as I am and we all went to the same church in southern Illinois and became good friends. Even though it's been 11 years since we moved away, we still keep in touch. She's a super sweet woman and a mom to 3 kids. One of which is my sister in law.
Ok, not really, but when her oldest daughter and my youngest brother were little, maybe 5 or 6?, they "got married". It was a church wedding and everything. I was the photographer and she was a beautiful bride. I believe she wore a lace doily on her head. One of the best weddings I've ever been to.

2. My youngest sister Christie. She posts very sporadically, but when she does post, it's very profound stuff. Well over my head and she's 9 years younger than me. Her latest post, which was from like 2 weeks ago! come on Christie!, is a list of 101 things she wants to accomplish in 1001 days. It's a very interesting list. And she's already accomplished one of them. When Christie was about 7 years old, I was babysitting my younger siblings. She and our youngest brother Jesse were jumping from the couch to the coffee table to another couch. I had already told them once to stop, but they certainly don't listen to me. :) Christie slipped on the coffee table and fell. I yelled at her to sit on the couch and stop crying because I had already told her not to be doing that. When my dad got home a little later, he examined Christie and discovered that in her fall, she had broken her collarbone. I still haven't lived that one down.

3. Our pastor's wife, Joy. She is such a sweet person. And probably one of the most talented people I know when it comes to decorating and coming up with creative ideas for decorations. For example, she has a window shutter hanging in their kitchen and she hangs pictures on it using clothes pins. It looks so cool and it's such a neat idea. Some day I'm going to hire her to come to my house and give me pointers.

4. My friend Mary. She is my oldest friend, haha. Not in age, but we've known each other since birth. It's very interesting when God gives you friends and keeps you together no matter the distance. Mary is one of those friends. We haven't lived in the same state since I was 10 years old. But we've still stayed in touch and keep informed on what's going on with each other. And when we get together it's as if we've never been apart. She has the best sense of humor and can always make me laugh. She's an RN and lives in Florida with her husband and 2 kids, Maddie and Sam. I saw her last October for a few hours when we both happened to be in Indiana visiting our families. That's one thing working in our favor now, both of our families live within an hour of each other, so the odds are good that at some point we'll both be up there at the same time and will be able to get together for a few hours.

5. My cousin Melissa M. Melissa and I are only 3 months apart, so as far as my cousins go, we're probably the closest simply because our age has helped to bond us together. Had Melissa been born closer to her actual due date, we might have been more likely to share a birthday. But Melissa and her twin sister Melanie were born prematurely and only weighed about 2 pounds or less. Melanie only lived for a few weeks, but Melissa is a fighter. She's still full of spunk now at the age of 30. She lives not too far from Boston with her husband and 2 girls, Katelyn and Madelyn. She and I were pregnant together with our first babies and they were born only 6 weeks apart. Now she posts about all she's learning in regards to natural living and eating organic. She's trying to guilt me into giving up my store bought, non-organic milk. But I've managed to resist thus far. :)

6. My friend Melissa R. This Melissa is the sister to my friend Mary. Mary and Melissa are 2 out of 7 kids. I spent the first 10 years of my life growing up with all of them and still consider them to be part of my family. Their family always had so much fun and there was always something exciting going on at their house with 7 kids. And it always seemed like somebody had a broken bone. I cannot imagine what life was like for their parents. One of my first memories with Melissa is of her giving me a ride on their 3 wheeler and we almost tipped it over when we took a corner too fast. Melissa lives in Arkansas with her husband and 4 boys. Not only that, but she's homeschooling them. All 4 of them aren't school aged yet, but I still tip my hat to her for taking on that challenge.

7. The senior pastor at our church, Pastor Brent. Not only is he our pastor, but he's also currently my boss. He's a good boss and always very complimentary of my work. He's an excellent pastor and has done some amazing things at our church. His current vision for reaching all the unchurched families in an 8 mile radius of our church by 2010 is very inspiring. It takes a lot to get Keith fired up about something, but this is definitely something he's excited about. Keith thinks that our pastor and my dad would do some amazing things if they were ever given the opportunity to work together.

8. My cousin Phoebe. Phoebe's story is very interesting, in my opinion. Several years ago she was hired to work for Compassion International. Compassion is one of the organizations where you can sign up to sponsor a child in other countries. In the past, I know part of Phoebe's job was to take groups of sponsors to various countries to meet their sponsored child. I think she also did some of the photography for Compassion's magazine and maybe even wrote some of the articles. Now she is living in Rwanda where she runs a big part of Compassion's Africa division. (This is all from what I've understood from Grandma, so, Phoebe, if you're reading this and want to clarify a little, please do so!) I haven't seen her in many years, maybe since my wedding, I'm not exactly sure. She was back in the states this fall for her wedding, I wasn't able to go to Wyoming to attend, but from all the pictures I've seen, it was gorgeous. So now she and her husband are back in Rwanda. I think they are awesome for doing the work that they're doing.

9. My cousin Stephanie. Stephanie is a newlywed (Garrett was a ringbearer in her wedding back in August), a school teacher, and a newly expecting mom. She's due about 3 or 4 weeks after I am next summer. We should all be extending our sympathies to her for the fact that she'll be 9 months pregnant in July, in Texas. It's not going to be pretty, Stephanie, I can already attest to that. Stephanie is Melissa M's sister. Growing up, whenever our families would get together, Stephanie, Melissa, my sister Grace, and I would always do fun things together.

10. The associate pastor at our church, Steve. Steve is married to Joy and they have 2 boys. He shares some of the funniest stories about their boys. I find myself laughing out loud and reading them to Keith. Steve is extremely smart and his blogs prove it. Many times he goes over my head, but I thoroughly enjoy reading his thoughts and opinions on things, many of them theologically based, though I rarely feel qualified to comment on those posts. He reminds me a lot of my dad in that their personalities are very similar. My first memory of Steve was on a Sunday when we were visiting the church for maybe the second time. He came out onto the stage holding a paper plate and a styrofoam cup, pretending to be finishing his breakfast. Then he threw them into a trash can and started talking about the disposable world that we live in. That's all I can remember from that sermon, Steve, sorry, but it has stuck with me after 5 years or so. He's an awesome speaker. Just recently he spoke on Beer, Blackjack, and Bootscootin'. What the Bible says about drinking, gambling and dancing. I found the series to be very interesting and dead-on.

So that's my "blogroll". Maybe somebody on my list has caught your eye and made you want to read more from them. Check them out! I'm sure they would love to hear from you and have you read what they have to say.

And now it's time for me to go take my Sunday afternoon nap. Garrett's asleep and Keith is gone so it's the perfect time for catching some zzz's.

It's Been a Long Day...

*This was written on Wednesday, but I didn't get a chance to post it until now. I don't have the energy to go through and update everything as if I was really posting it today. Sorry!*

I guess our "day" actually started last night around 10pm. I was on the verge of heading to bed (read: turn off Christmas lights, check to be sure doors are locked, check on Garrett, take out contacts, take prenatal vitamins, get dressed for bed) when Keith asked me if I could smell something burning. I said no (which is pretty typical, but being pregnant, my sense of smell has been stronger than normal). He jumped up and immediately started going through the house checking things out. He said "Something is on fire!"


Now, I'm not sure what kind of person I am in a stressful or panicked situation. There have been few times where I was seriously stressed and have seen how I handle it and those times certainly vary. In high school, my sister and I were rear ended and my instinctive reaction was to jump out of the car and take off to go punch the guy that ran into us. I don't know why. It seriously was an instinct. Obviously he didn't intentionally hit us. Grace immediately jumped out of the driver's seat and intercepted me before I hauled off and hit the other driver. Another time my family was on the way to church and another driver ran a red light and we hit them. My sister Christie hit the windshield because of it. Initially I gave the driver of the other car my "what were you thinking!" face complete with hand gestures (not THOSE kind of hand gestures) and then jumped out of the car to get ice for Christie at the gas station close by. However, when our house was hit by a tornado, I had a hard time keeping myself together in order to call Keith and tell him what happened. It was a short period of time but then I got myself under control and managed to make a few coherent phone calls to the insurance agent and our home builder.

So you can see why I don't really know what my response is in stressful situations. Obviously when you hear your husband basically say that your house is on fire, it constitutes stress. But my first instinct was just to calm Keith down. He started running all over, unplugging everything because he said it was definitely an electrical fire. So I went from room to room unplugging my Christmas candle lights that I have in each window. Once he decided it wasn't any of those things plugged in that were causing the smell, he climbed into the attic to see if he saw smoke up there. No smoke in the attic. As soon as he walked back into the house, he said the smell was very strong and he knew something was wrong. So we started walking around the house sniffing the appliances that stay plugged in 24/7. We finally narrowed it down to the kitchen appliances and then eventually focused on the refrigerator.


We pulled the fridge out from the wall (easier than I thought it would be, by the way). And Keith started looking it over, while I freaked out over the mess that was under and behind the fridge. I remembered spilling an entire bottle of juice awhile back and apparently quite a bit of it went under the refrigerator without me realizing it. So I hauled out the vacuum cleaner to clean up all the dust, dead ants (they try to colonize in our house every summer), and cobwebs. Then I got out my Shark Steam Mop (I love this thing!) and went to work on the sticky, caked-on juice. You know, I got all of the juice up using just my steam mop, no chemicals were required. I thought that was pretty dang awesome.


Sorry, this isn't an infomercial. Anyway, Keith decided there was definitely something wrong with the fridge so he started pulling various panels off (something I would be utterly fearful of doing because I would probably break one in the process) and then he began vacuuming underneath the fridge. That was gross. I did not realize how much dust accumulates under your refrigerator. I now want to pull out my stove and dishwasher and do this same kind of cleaning.


Bottom line, Keith did not trust the fridge to stay plugged in all night without potentially shorting out and burning us down as we slept. So we left it unplugged. There were a few discussions over whether or not we should do something with the food inside, but seeing as how we don't have a deep freezer and also don't have a large cooler, we didn't have any options that didn't involve driving to Walmart at midnight. We decided to leave the food and hope everything kept overnight. Keith found all the fridge's paperwork and decided to call Sears to see if they could come out and fix it today because their service number says to call day or night. I probably should have pointed out that the odds were pretty good that if you called in the middle of the night you were going to get someone in another country, but I was too tired to really think clearly. So Keith ends up talking to a man in India. If you know Keith, that's really not the best thing. At one point he looks at me and says (without covering up the the phone) "Do I really want to give my credit card information to somebody in India?) Finally the guy agreed to book him for a service appointment without prepayment, but it wasn't going to be until Friday! That was probably punishment for Keith refusing to give out his credit card number.

So we woke up this morning and Keith found a local guy to come out and check on our fridge. In the mean time he ran to Walmart and got the biggest cooler they had (which is ridiculously huge) along with several bags of ice. We decided to wait until the repairman had looked at it before we started moving food around. Everything still felt cold in the fridge and all the food in the freezer was still frozen solid. Thank goodness this happened in December and not August!

Once the repairman got here, I took Garrett into his bedroom to keep him out of the way. He was super thrilled that we spent our time in there cleaning and organizing his toys and closet. After a couple of hours the repairman left and our fridge was fixed!! Some starter something or other had gone out and he changed it. Thank goodness! So we didn't have to empty the fridge and now it's all clean underneath it as well.

Since Keith was already home for the day, we decided to spend that time in the bedroom. Don't let your minds get too far into the gutter. We reorganized our furniture. Since baby #2 will be joining us in June, we've been doing some rearranging of things. One of them being that the treadmill has moved into our bedroom. However, with our old arrangement there wasn't anywhere to put the treadmill where it would be relatively out of the way. So we moved our bed to a different wall and the treadmill barely fit into another corner of the room that was now free. Thank goodness our's is one of those space-saver kinds where the running base folds up because otherwise it would not fit at all.

Eventually I'll post pictures of our "new" bedroom", but I still need to clean out the bookshelf. (Keith asked me last night why I had that many books. Once I've read them I should get rid of them. I told him that I don't say that about his guns, so he can't say that about my books. All the books I own are books that I enjoy reading multiple times. Yes, there are a lot of them, but hey, they're cheaper than most other hobbies, so they're staying.) I also want to hang curtains and pictures in there. Yes, we've lived here for 6 years and haven't hung one picture or curtain in our bedroom. I hang my head in decorator's shame. I promise I have the curtains and the pictures to hang, they just haven't made it to where they belong.

We wrapped up the day with me going to MOPS (Mothers of Preschools for those unfamiliar) at 6:00pm and Keith going to a church finance committee meeting at 7:30pm. Now it's time to kick back and watch "Life". Ironic, isn't it?

Pregnancy Brain

There's this term that you can find in a variety of books on pregnancy that discusses the scatterbrainedness (of course that's a word, I don't go around just making them up randomly!) of pregnant women.  This highly sophisticated issue facing most pregnant women is known as "Pregnancy Brain".  I don't know where it came from exactly, but I'm in the throes of it now.  

For example, yesterday I was doing laundry, after switching loads around, I headed to my bedroom to get a new load, got into the bathroom doorway and thought "Now what am I doing and why did I come back here?"  I had to leave the room before I remembered the original purpose of going to my room.  Once I had an armful of laundry, headed toward the laundry room, I somehow found myself standing in front of my kitchen trash can about to throw away all of our clothes!  Thankfully I stopped myself before anything got pitched.  

It's been this way for the past week or so.  I'm really hoping that it's not going to be in place for the next 6 months.  Atleast Garrett is old enough to keep me from misplacing him somehow.  :)

Speaking of Garrett, his current favorite phrase is "oh my gosh".  And he says it with much emphasis and feeling.  In the scheme of things, that's certainly not the worst thing that he could be saying, however, it's just a little funny to me to hear a 3 year old saying that in his little 3 year old voice.  Keith is insistent that we put a stop to it, but I'm going to try the route of just ignoring it and maybe he'll eventually quit saying it.  If anybody has any other tips to encourage him to find something more age appropriate to say, I would love to hear them!  

Something else that he's been saying frequently is "neato mosquito".  It took me a while to figure out where that was coming from.  I do not use that term (I can't say that about oh my gosh though).  But I finally saw a video preview on his Thomas movie where a character says it.  He seriously picks up on EVERYTHING!  We really have to watch ourselves.  He'll be playing and then all of the sudden he's parroting back things he's hearing off the TV.  

Another thing he's learned that I find cute, but no one else probably will, is the majority of the words to David Cook's song "Light On".  He's hilarious when he sings it and puts a lot of feeling in his performance.  I promise he also knows all the words to "Jesus Loves Me", "Jingle Bells", and many other child appropriate songs as well.  

With the exception of really testing the boundaries lately, I'm thoroughly enjoying his current age.  He's a lot of fun as well as capable of doing lots of things for himself, which is wonderful.  Now if he would just stop arguing with me and do what I say...

The Weekend Wrap Up

This weekend was boring so I'll spare you the play by play. Keith went "pawn shopping" with a friend of his. For those of you unfamiliar with pawn shopping, this is where Keith and friend go from one pawn shop to another in the Dallas area looking for good deals from a variety of things that people pawn on a daily basis. Right now they're looking for good deals on guns, their motto is you just can't have enough. But Keith has bought many tools at pawn shops as well. Thankfully he's never purchased a gift for me at a pawn shop. Atleast, if he knows what's good for him he won't. He did buy something from one of the pawn shops, but I couldn't tell you what it is if I wanted to. It kind of resembles a towing chain with a hook on it, but I know he called it something else. I know you're disappointed that I don't have more information to give you.

Sunday was church, then grocery shopping which is becoming a Sunday ritual at our house. Then we picked up Wendy's for lunch and came home. After eating and putting away groceries, Garrett took a nap in his room and I took a nap on the couch. We did a little cleaning once everyone was up and then I changed Garrett's clothes and took his picture for our Christmas card. Here's one that didn't make the cut.

After Garrett went to bed we watched our usual Sunday night TV while I did some online Christmas shopping. I can now say that Keith is the last person I have to buy for and excluding him and a few stocking stuffers, I am done with my Christmas shopping! He's insisting on buying a scope for one of his guns and considering that to be his Christmas present, so I might take him up on that. With a few inexpensive exceptions of course.

Today I found out that my sister is having another boy! She's due 2 months before I am. She also has a son who is 8 months younger than Garrett, so if I'm having a boy too, all 4 of our boys will have a cousin close in age to them as well as one of the same gender. It should be fun at our family get-togethers in the future if we have 4 boys within a 3 year age span.

Thanksgiving 2008

Thanksgiving this year was a very low-key celebration, but we had a good time and ate good food. We spent the day at my in-laws. They fried a turkey and made most of the side dishes, I brought a broccoli casserole and some other veggies as well as rolls and a pie. Keith's Grandpa has been in poor health for a long while now, but he came up for 30 minutes so he could see Garrett. (They live next door to Keith's parents so it wasn't far for them to go.) They said he's special to them because he's currently their only grandchild sharing their last name. And a boy at that. Garrett is basically it as far as the name lineage goes. Keith's dad has one brother who only had one daughter and Keith only has a sister, so Garrett will carry on this branch of the family name. Of course if I'm having another boy, then they will share in that responsibility.

Garrett is a very friendly kid for the most part, so he enjoyed having a captive audience in the way of Keith's grandparents. They hung on his every word and ooh'ed and aahh'ed at the appropriate moments as Garrett was showing off all his toys. At one point Keith's grandma looked at me and asked where he got the chatty gene because Keith was not a talkative child. (Is anyone surprised by that?) Apparently I haven't shown my true colors to most of Keith's family because they all acted surprised when I told them I was a pretty chatty kid. (Hence one of my nicknames being Gabby Abby.) My mom got a good kick out of that when I told her about it later.

(Garrett and one set of his great-grandparents)

After eating the yummy food (of which Garrett ate exactly one bite) we all watched Garrett work off that piece of turkey. Keith's parents have a pull-up bar in the doorway of one of their bedrooms. His mom has back problems and this helps her to be able to stretch out her back as well as do a little working out. Garrett was completely enthralled with it and would have spent the entire day doing pull ups if he had a willing participant to help him. This product has an infomercial that we've seen many times. So often, in fact, that Garrett has it basically memorized. One of the lines in the infomercial is "Wanna get ripped" which Garrett loves repeating. So he said this multiple times while "working out". I never got him saying it in its entirety on video, but here's an idea of what he was doing.

Later in the afternoon, Keith and I went to his sister's house to see her new baby. Michael Brayden was born a couple of weeks ago and Melanie didn't feel up to getting out of the house with her 3 kids, so they stayed home that day. The baby looks a lot like her other 2 kids.

After that visit we went back to Keith's parents to pick up Garrett and head on home. We live about an hour from them, so we wanted to get home before it got too late. On the way home, Garrett sang to us in order to keep himself awake. The whole time at Keith's parents I kept trying to get Garrett to sing his days of the week song, but he refused, instead he decided to sing it over and over in the car on the way home. I apologize for most of this being dark. I thought the camera would pick up a little light from outside, but it obviously didn't. Keith doesn't like having the interior lights on while he was driving so that's why I turned them off and on a few times.

Once we got home, we ate leftovers from lunch and then watched "The Incredibles" which was on TV.

We had a great day. The weather was perfect and the food was delicious. I hope everyone else had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Now it's time to start checking people off my Christmas list. I have bought exactly nothing for Keith, but I'm almost done with everyone else. I attempted to do a little "Black Friday" shopping yesterday morning, but our local Walmart was a joke. Nothing was labeled with their sale prices and more than half of the items that I was interested in buying weren't even there and I didn't see a place where they had been there earlier. It makes me wonder if they were even available at our Walmart. Oh the joys of attempting to find a great deal. It usually backfires on you.

I have to add that Target totally came through and gave me a $25 e-giftcard for their mistake with the mispricing of the carseat that I tried to buy from them a few weeks ago. So I've cancelled my Target boycott. Good thing, since I love that store.

Thanksgivings Past

As we get closer to Thanksgiving, I've been thinking of the ones that I've celebrated in the past. A drawback to having a dad in the ministry means that you ultimately live in a variety of places, which also means that you probably don't live close to family. So when you don't live close to family, you don't celebrate holidays with extended family.

Thank goodness my immediate family is pretty big. 5 kids, 2 parents. A 7 person Thanksgiving feast is still a pretty good party. We always enjoyed ourselves whether it was just the 7 of us or if we had additional family members visiting. For many years my uncle Jamie, my mom's youngest brother, would come to our house for the holidays and take part in our family traditions. I can also remember atleast a couple of Thanksgivings where 2 of my cousins came to spend the holiday with us because they were attending Wheaton College in the Chicago area and we were the closest relatives to them. Those were fun times as well. But the majority of our holidays were spent with just our family.

I think my fondest memory of Thanksgiving is simply that the menu rarely changed. Baked turkey, stuffing (somestimes homemade, sometimes StoveTop and to be honest I love both equally), broccoli casserole (the best EVER), canned cranberries (they had to be canned because they had to have the can shape to them, just another tradition), a variety of veggies, homemade rolls, and the creamiest mashed potatoes you will ever eat. ("These mashed potatoes are so creamy." Name that movie!)

One of my favorite Thanksgivings was a few years ago when Keith and I hosted both of our families in our house. It was our first time to fry a turkey and I also baked one (which was also a first). Everything turned out really good except I was heating up some black eyed peas, actually a ton of black eyed peas, and they weren't thoroughly heated until about halfway through our meal. But other than that, it all turned out well.

While my worst memory is probably our first Thanksgiving in Texas. My mom decided that was a year to make homemade stuffing and she asked me to give her a hand in the kitchen. Somehow the uncooked stuffing was in its pan, sitting on top of the stove waiting to go in the oven and I turned on the wrong burner for something I was heating up. I ruined the stuffing because the burner I turned on was under the stuffing pan. My mom was NOT happy. I had to make a run to the grocery store for some StoveTop.

Until my parents moved to Indiana, Thanksgiving was always the holiday that Keith and I spent with my family. (The one in '04 being the exception.) We would drive down on Wednesday night or early Thursday and stay until Saturday or Sunday. It always worked out well because it was about a 5 hour drive so we were able to spend several days in a row since we were both off work. Garrett celebrated his first Thanksgiving at Nana and Pawpaw's house. While we ate, he tried out the Exersaucer that Grace loaned to us.

(Garrett's first Thanksgiving.)

(Garrett's second Thanksgiving. So he's not really eating here, but I promise this was taken on Thanksgiving day. That's Keith's dad's dog, Scooter.)

How sad is it that I don't have a picture of Garrett on any other subsequent Thanksgivings. I guess it's true what they say that the older they get the more the newness wears off. :) Hopefully that won't apply to baby #2.

This year will be the third Thanksgiving that I haven't spent with my family. Of course it's sad, but it's just life when you live 14 hours away. I know they will have an excellent day (minus my dad's broken ribs of course) my grandparents will be there along with my mom's brother, Jerry, and his family. Poor Brad and I will be the only missing members of the family. Brad, we should have gotten together and done something extremely fun this year so they would all be jealous.

A few of the things that I'm thankful for:

1. Keith
2. Garrett
3. Baby #2 (I really should come up with a nickname to use. Got any suggestions?)
4. My parents and siblings, nieces and nephews.
5. Keith's family
6. All 4 of my grandparents who have blessed me over the past almost 30 years and are still around to meet my children and bless them as well.
7. The rest of my extended family.
8. The fact that God has provided for us in abundance. I am so amazed at the things He does for us. We are so blessed.
9. My family's health. I know there are so many families that struggle with a chronically ill child or family member and we have been overall very blessed in this area. My dad's broken ribs will heal and he will go back to being a healthy, busy man.
10. My new job that I didn't really go looking for but it found me. It's nice to be able to make some additional money as well as work with some pretty cool people. (And get free homemade pies from church members for Thanksgiving!!)
11. Keith's job which has allowed me to be a stay at home mom for all these years. I know there is many a night when he doesn't get home until 10pm or later and in those moments he's hating his job with every fiber in his being, but he has learned a lot while working there, established a lot of contacts, made many friends, and is paid enough so that we don't have to worry too much about our finances. I think he would agree with me, with maybe the exception of when he's in Minnesota for a week.
12. Our house, which I may grumble about because it's on the small side, but it looks nice and is fairly easy to clean (when I'm in the mood) as well as having an affordable mortgage. That's probably the biggest asset.
13. Our vehicles that get us from point A to point B, one of which is completely paid for and the other is very close. One is Daddy's truck and the other is Momma's truck, according to Garrett. He much prefers to ride in Daddy's truck. (I don't really drive a truck either, it's an SUV.)

I hope you all will take the time to count your blessings over the next couple of days.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Weekend Wrap-Up

This weekend started the same as last weekend, the eating of frozen pizza (well, not frozen, obviously I heated it up in the oven first) and the watching of "Don't Forget the Lyrics". (The contestant on there was awesome! She was born without her right ear, though the inner workings are all there and intact, the outer ear is not. The surgery needed to fix it costs $100,000 so her goal was to win $100k. Which she did. When she correctly sang the missing lyrics and Wayne told her she was right, she cried, her boyfriend cried, her brother cried, I cried. Then Wayne gave her a pair of diamond earrings from himself and the show's producers so that after she had the surgery she would have her first pair of earrings to wear and show off her new ear. I thought that was so awesome. She ultimately won $200,000 before quitting. I was thrilled for her.)

On Saturday morning we headed out to eat breakfast at a fairly new "all you can eat breakfast buffet". It's actually a local barbecue place that recently started serving this buffet on the weekends. It. was. good. And cheap. For the 3 of us, all you can eat, including drinks, we paid less than $20. And they had eggs, 2 kinds of potatoes, 2 kinds of sausage, ham, bacon, biscuits and gravy, pancakes and syrup, fruit, cereal and juice. Keith said we're never going to IHOP or Denny's for a Saturday morning breakfast again. Unfortunately for me, I was only able to eat about half of my plate's contents because I get full so darn fast lately. But Keith finished off his plate and mine, so he didn't have to actually get a refill of food. We both love breakfast food, especially when nobody has to cook it. Because let's face it, I'm not going to attempt to fry bacon, the few times I've tried, our house stunk for a week. So let somebody else stink up their own place and we'll just come eat it and then be on our merry way.

After breakfast we headed out to do a little more Christmas shopping. Keith bought 2 things for his dad and I bought something for my brother. As we were debating where to go next, Keith called his mom to let her know about the purchases he had made and she told him that they were getting ready to leave to come to our house! They don't have a cell phone (the madness) so it's a good thing he called when he did because who knows how long they could have sat at our house before we finally came back home.

We rushed home and immediately went into high gear to get the house clean. Why is that always the case? Of course my intentions were to clean the house when we got home, but instead we had to do it in a rush. But it got done (save for our bedroom and bathroom, I just closed the door and walked away. Sometimes it's easier like that.)

The reason for their visit was because we had offered them several pieces of furniture that we had in our guest room. Now that baby #2 is on the way, we had to start thinking about the room assignments and what furniture was needed and where. Basically all the furniture in our guest room was deemed unnecessary, so they brought up an enclosed cattle trailer (his dad has cows that he hauls to auction once or twice a year, thus the need for a cattle trailer) and hauled everything off. We got rid of a bed (very sad to see it go, but much too big for a kid's room), a dresser, a 19" TV from the 80's, a VCR, a small cabinet, a clock, and a bag of cassette tapes. Not sure where all of that will end up, but between Keith's parents and his sister, everything had a home, so we didn't question it, we were just glad to be rid of it.

And now the real fun begins. Painting and more moving of everything. But that's for another post.

On Saturday evening, Garrett and I finally decorated the tree. He was very possessive of the ornaments and was not happy when I would hang a few towards the top of the tree. He wanted to be the one to hang every ornament. After a nice little discussion, we were seeing eye to eye and my tree is now decorated! Garrett grouped all of his ornaments by things that were alike. Santas in one section, snowmen in another, etc. I am very happy with the tree skirt and new stockings which I bought last year after Christmas. I do have a 4th stocking and even considered hanging it, but we don't have another stocking holder, so baby's will have to wait until next year.

Garrett and I decorating the tree. I'll post more Christmas decor pictures another time.

On Sunday morning, we got up and ready to go to church. For some reason Keith decided to get out the train that I had bought to set-up under the Christmas tree as additional decoration. This was about 10 minutes before we needed to leave the house. Garrett of course went ecstatic over the train and refused to part with it, so we let him bring a couple of its cars with him to church. We also decided to bring him into the church service with us because we only have a few more months before he has to be with us in church, so we might as well start bringing him in occasionally so he can get an idea of how that works. He was pretty good for his first time. He loved the praise band, of course, but he refused to whisper whenever he needed to say something to me during the sermon. He also broke one of the new train cars while sitting there. I'm just glad he did scream in frustration. That might have been awkward since our pastor was preaching on being thankful.

After church, he wasn't too thrilled to be heading to his class. He thought he had gotten away from the nursery that morning. But he seemed to settle down fairly quickly. (Our church has three Sunday morning services, we go to the 8:30 service and then go to Sunday school after that. I know many of you probably do the opposite on Sunday mornings and I realized what I just said might be a little confusing.) Keith went to his SS class and I went to mine (I teach 5th grade girls). Afterwards we met up with some friends of ours. They're awesome and wanted to give us a train table that they were getting rid of. They know how much Garrett loves trains and that we don't currently have one (though we have been looking at some). Their kids had 2 and they were wanting to cull some things before Christmas. So we totally lucked out! Then we all went to eat lunch together which was lots of fun. They have a daughter who is 2 and a half months younger than Garrett and a son who's 5, so Garrett enjoys their kids immensely and Keith and I enjoy visiting with the couple.

We then headed to Walmart for a fun-filled time of grocery shopping. At this point in the day, I wasn't feeling too good. I gave Keith a couple of items to take care of while I quickly went through the grocery section getting what I knew we needed for this week. Thankfully I never got sick in the store. I'm not even sure what you would do if you had the need to throw-up in a public place with no trash cans. I ultimately decided on throwing up in my purse if I needed to. Yes, it would be totally disgusting, but I wouldn't want to completely gross out the other shoppers. And now you're probably grossed out too. Sorry! Maybe I should wear a sign that says "I'm Pregnant" out in public in case something like that happens. I think it would be easier to forgive a random pregnant woman for being sick than almost anybody else.

We came home and put away groceries while Garrett proceeded to play with the new Christmas tree train for the next 4 hours!! He only stopped for bathroom breaks and a snack, that's it. This is how hardcore, serious my son is about trains. Initially I tried to help him with setting everything up, but I think I just got in his way. I can't even imagine how much time will be devoted to his new toys after Christmas. Ultimately the train is a piece of crap. Parts of the track have broken and one of the train cars is completely unusable. I'm sure trains like this weren't really meant to be played with as much as Garrett has. He's not rough with them, he just enjoys setting up a variety of configurations with the tracks and then watching the train race around them. I'm not sure if it will actually end up under the tree, but he's enjoying it nonetheless.

Last night was spent doing laundry and additional cleaning. Our church's annual Thanksgiving dinner was going on as well, but I was a little concerned as to how that would work for me. I'm sure the food would have been delicious, but I didn't want to take the chance that I would start feeling badly in the midst of a packed Fellowship Hall full of wonderful church people eating yummy food. If there was the slightest possibility that I would ruin that for everyone, then I didn't want to take that chance. I'm sure I don't need to go any further after my grocery store discussion above.

The cleaning out of our guest room has evoked a cleaning, organizing Keith. So he spent a lot of the evening cleaning out his closet as well as mine (!) and coming up with more things we needed to get rid of. Then this morning my hero killed the mouse that has had me riled up for the past week. He found it alive on a glue board in the garage, so he said "It met it's fate with a size 13." I don't want to know any more than that and I'm sure you don't either. I'm just glad it is gone. Did I mention that it ate a huge hole in my rocking chair cushions?!! We moved our rocking chair into the garage when Garrett got to be mobile because I was worried about him pinching his fingers in it. So I took the cushions off of it and wrapped them in a couple of garbage bags and set them on top of a few items in the garage. Somehow they had fallen to the floor at some point over the past couple of years and then met their fate with this mouse. Thankfully cushions like that are relatively inexpensive (atleast they were 3 years ago), but I'm still infuriated at the audacity of that mouse. The rocking chair will be coming into the house as soon as the Christmas tree leaves, so I guess I need to start hunting down some new cushions.

I'll leave you with a prayer request. Please pray for my dad. He slipped and fell on a patch of ice this morning while on his way into work and he broke 2 ribs. I know he's in a lot of pain and would appreciate your prayers.

What Are You Watching?

I'm one of those people who has to have something to watch in the evening. I don't necessarily watch something every evening, but I need to know what's on so I can know what my options are in case I have nothing else to do.

Now I should probably clarify this, but I ALWAYS have something to do. There's always something to clean or laundry to fold but by 8 PM, I'm generally of a mind to do some sitting. So I'm either sitting and talking to my husband, which we try to do occasionally, especially when it feels like we haven't seen or talked to each other much lately. Or I'm watching something on TV. I thought I would share the shows that currently hold my interest of an evening, and then maybe you can let me know what shows you're watching in case I might prefer your shows to mine. One thing you should know, we don't have cable or satellite so my TV watching is limited to the main stations: NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, etc. That may seem archaic to some of you, but hey, I'm saving $50-$100 a month by just watching TV via the antenna, so I feel like I've accomplished something by that. Now, if our landline phone company would get on the ball and start offering us the packages that are available to everyone else, we would probably go ahead and get satellite. They currently have a package online (that we aren't eligible for) that includes home phone (with unlimited long-distance which we don't currently have), DSL internet, and satellite all for about $100. That would be nice. But such is life when you live in more of a rural-type setting.

OK, so I took off on a rabbit trail there. Sorry.

Back to my original intent of this post. TV shows.

On Mondays, we watch most of the comedies on CBS: Big Bang Theory (which is just meh to me) and How I Met Your Mother (which I love. Neil Patrick Harris aka Doogie Howser is hilarious, but the entire cast is solid). Now after HIMYM comes Two and a Half Men with Charlie Sheen, but there's also a show on the CW called "One Tree Hill" that we sometimes watch. Yes, I know that's a teeny bopper show, but for whatever reason we've been watching it since the first episode so I can't just give up on Lucas and Peyton now! But if it's an extremely stupid episode (like last Monday's), then we watch "Men". At 9:00, CSI: Miami comes on. Let me first say that I loathe David Caruso. He's a terrible actor and I can't stand the way the show always lets him have the last line before they start the opening music. He's extremely condescending in the show as well. Now, why do we watch it? Well, there's really nothing else on at that time and Keith likes it, while also despising Horatio right along with me.

Tuesdays are a definite hit or miss night with TV. However, I've recently started watching The Biggest Loser and I'm really liking that show. If you're watching it, I hope you hate Vicki as much as I do. I don't think she even cares about losing the weight, she just wants the quarter of a million dollars. And is a quarter of a million dollars all that much money any more? I mean, of course I would love to win an amount like that, but is it really enough to make it the prize money for a primetime "game/reality" show? I guess "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" has spoiled me to people winning more money when they win a show.

Wednesdays we are at church until 7:15 or 7:30, which means that I miss New Adventures of Old Christine with Julia Louis-Dreyfuss. That show really makes me laugh, but I haven't seen it in several weeks now. At 8:00, "Life" comes on. I started watching it last year and I really like it. It's a different type of cop show and the actor who plays the main character is interesting, so we've enjoyed watching it. At 9:00, CSI: New York comes on. I used to have a dislike for Gary Sinise because he played the kidnapper in the movie "Ransom", but I really like him in this show. I actually find him to be one of Hollywood's more versatile actors. He was also in "Forrest Gump" and played a completely different character there as well. I enjoy watching this CSI simply because I think he's really good at what he does.

Thursdays make me a little sad. Thursday nights used to be Must See TV. It was the night that the Cosby Show came on, then Seinfeld was on on Thursdays, Friends also aired all 10 seasons on Thursday nights. I feel that Thursdays ever since Friends just haven't been the same. However, I have recently fallen in love with The Office. It's not quite Friends material, but it's still really funny. Keith doesn't like it all that much because he finds Michael Scott (Steve Carrell) borderline absurd in this show, but I find him to be hysterical in many episodes. Then at 9:00 is a new show called Eleventh Hour. We've been watching it each week and Keith really likes it. I'm still on the fence, but since he watches The Office with me, then of course I return the favor with this one. It's definitely a different show. The premise is that this scientist works for the FBI and he investigates all these weird, science-related cases.

Fridays, I mostly wait until 8:00 when Don't Forget the Lyrics comes on. I've already talked about that show in a previous post, but it really is a good show to watch.

Saturdays are very hit and miss. Sometimes they show reruns of the previous week's episode of the new Knight Rider. I don't even know when that show originally comes on during the week, but if they're showing it on Saturday night, then we watch it. Keith loved the original one, so he enjoys watching this one. But if you know him, then you know of his love of cars in general, and fast cars more specifically. So the car on there is right up his alley, plus all the cool stuff that it does, he gets a big kick out of it. 

And finally Sundays. As I've mentioned in a previous post, we typically watch Desperate Housewives and Brothers and Sisters. Sometimes we'll watch Extreme Home Makeover, depending on if we're in the mood. I kind of miss their early episodes where they actually went into people's houses and remodeled what they had rather than leveling the house and starting from scratch. It was interesting to see the things that they did to change things up in their houses. But I also understand why they build brand new ones.

So, after rereading this it appears that I'm a couch potato. I promise I'm not. There are very few shows on this list that are "Must see" for me, so obviously if we're not home, it doesn't bother me to miss it. We don't have a Tivo or DVR so if we miss it then we miss it. Occasionally I'll catch shows online, but that just depends on what show it is and how much I care about watching it.

What shows are you watching? I'm interested to see who all mentions Grey's because that seems to be a pretty popular show, but I've just never gotten around to watching an episode. And a post about TV shows would be completely useless if I didn't briefly mention my most favorite show which is Lost. The new season doesn't start until February, but that one is definitely Must See for me (and Keith). So I'm very excited for it to start back up this winter.

Random Friday

I think my Friday posts will just be random thoughts and ideas. By the end of the week, my brain is pretty fried. I'm sure once I've got this new job under my belt, I won't feel quite so frazzled, but in the mean time, here's some randomness.

• I still haven't decorated our tree (I haven't even "fluffed" it out) and it's been standing in my living room for a week. Somehow Garrett has managed to slide it a couple of feet to the left from where I originally had it standing.
• Part of the reason for the lack of decoration is because a mouse has gotten into our garage, so I'm hesistent to go in and out of the garage bringing in ornaments. I don't want to take any chances of that mouse getting inside the house. In fact, I've gone so far as to exit and enter our house via the back door, and then walk around to the garage and use our keypad to open the garage door. I hate mice with a passion! And I actually saw this one come in the garage, so that makes me freak out even more. Keith put out glueboards to catch it, but we apparently have a mutant on our hands because yesterday morning he found a glueboard covered in fur and a tail (!), but no mouse. Gross! That sucker better be gone soon if he knows what's good for him.
• I'm still feeling pretty good with my pregnancy. Not much morning sickness to speak of and some exhaustion, but that's about it. I apologize to anyone reading this who has experienced terrible morning sickness (Hi Grace!), but somehow I've lucked out in this department for both of my pregnancies. Since I only have a couple of weeks left of the first trimester, I'm in hopes that I can only feel better from here on out. Until I'm hugely pregnant, then I'll feel much, much worse. I'm just glad this baby is due in June and not August like Garrett. That summer was miserable.
• Because of how the first 9 weeks of this pregnancy have gone so far, I'm feeling more sure of my instincts that this baby is another boy. So far everything has been very similar to my first pregnancy.
• Keith and I looked through the baby name book last night and he vetoed a few more names. Finley, Linley, Graham. But he said he liked Leopold. I called his bluff and said I would be ok with Leo (I have an uncle named Leo, so it's not too big of a stretch) and he said no to Leo, so I pointed out that Leo would be the obvious nickname for Leopold, so he retracted that name. I know all these names probably sound a little "out there" and I have no plans of choosing an odd name, but I think some of them would grow on you. He did say he liked the name Natalie, but not as much as the other girl name that we've both liked for a while. I'm not going to share our current front runners for now, maybe once we find out what we're having. I did actually find a boy name that he liked equal to our favorite, so that name could change. Is it bad that I'm forgetting what that name was now? We may have found a new boy name and now I've forgotten it! I'm sure he'll remember, or I'll find it again...maybe.
• I still have a long ways to go before our guest room is ready for Garrett to move in. I really want him moved into it a couple of months before this baby is born. I don't want him to think that the new baby kicked him out of his old room. But I think he's going to love the new room so much, he shouldn't care. I'm doing a Disney movie theme, with posters from the movies "Cars", "Monsters Inc", "Toy Story", etc. I plan on framing the posters so they'll look a little nicer hanging on the walls. And this bedroom is bigger than his current room, so I think he'll enjoy spending more time in there playing. Some of his Christmas presents are specifically geared for his new room too. I've already picked out the paint color and have an idea for the bedding and curtain, it's just a matter of buying those things.
• Thanksgiving is next week! I'm really excited about the turkey and I cannot wait for the yummy rolls and potato casserole. The plus to being pregnant during the holidays is the fact that you can feel free to eat more than normal because you're "eating for 2". However, the negative to being pregnant (atleast for me) is that I get full much faster than normal. So I'll probably have to eat my food in multiple sittings. The crazy part is thinking ahead to next Thanksgiving when I'll have a 4 year old and a 5 month old. Bizarre!
• I'm sure I'll post again between now and next Thursday, but just in case I forget, I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving! We will be spending the day at Keith's parents' house and sharing the meal with them. I'm responsible for the vegetables and a dessert, but I think I'm also going to bring some rolls. His family doesn't really eat much bread (the shock and horror, I know!) so I'm not really sure if anybody will be taking care of the rolls. In my family, it's better to have too many rolls, than not enough. Of course that's probably why most of us have a weight problem.