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.)