Peridot Rose

Too long

2010-03-25T09:21:00.000-05:00

It's just been too long since I was on here.

Things here are good. Ella has been a handful lately with me weaning her and her teething. Her first tooth came in about 3 days ago and we think she has another one close behind. It made me feel a little better when I saw the first one come in because she had become so needy, clingy and constantly biting me. I thought it was from the weaning since we just closed the door on nursing a week and half ago, but now I think it was due to teething, at least in part. She was a little better yesterday, but worse today so I hope this other tooth is close to the surface.

She's starting to get around even though she's not crawling. She manages to scoot on her bottom across the floor. It's quite impressive. She tries every chance she has to pull her self onto our lap or to standing even though she doesn't quite have the strength to do it yet. She's sure trying! She's been babbling a lot and often sounds like she's saying mama. :) I might be biased but I think it's sweet. :)

Things on the business front have been busy. We've had lots of potential clients over lately as well as online inquiries so that's good. Things are picking up a little bit and that's been encouraging to us. My biggest struggle right now is finding sitters. We have a lot of weddings and engagement shoots coming up and for those couples that don't want an engagement shoot we are meeting them for dinner so that we all get to know each other a little better before the wedding. Needless to say with all that's going on it's been hard to get sitters. So far so good but I'm having to go to some pretty desperate measures at times.

We get glimpses of nice weather here and there. Last weekend we were able to mow the yard and I was able to clean out some of the flower beds. The rest really need some love though so I'll try to do that next weekend. We did this Saturday when it was in the 70's and then Monday we got some snow!?!!! It's been so crazy around here!

I've fallen in love with the Julia and Julie movie!! I read the book a couple of years ago and loved it so I was excited when I saw it was made into a movie. We got in on Netflix and I loved it so much we bought it on itunes. I've watched it like 10 times already. I'm not sure if it's all of the food, or that I love Paris, or what, but I just love that movie!!

So there's an update. Very boring I know. I'll post again soon when I have a more entertaining story to tell. :) Hope everyone is doing well.

Busy!

2010-03-04T13:35:00.000-05:00

Sorry it's been a while since I updated this. We enjoyed every bit of our cake—I think it was the first cake that I've made for just us that we finished. I think I enjoyed the red velvet part more and both me and Grant found ourselves eating the heart part of the cake and throwing away the rest. :) So next time I think I'll just make a red velvet cake.

Things have been busy here. We had another Bridal Show and it was a much easier experience for us. Everything went smoothly and even though we had less traffic, we are getting more calls and bookings from this show. So we are encouraged.

I've started to wean Ella. This has been something I've been thinking about for a while and starting in early January I've been trying to get Ella to not only take a bottle but LIKE taking a bottle and it's not been going well. I've gone through at least 5 bottles and 5 different sippy cups trying to find the perfect combination that she would take to and came to the realization that the girl just preferred nursing. We have a wedding next weekend and more and more coming up so this was something I felt I had to do. I started on Monday only nursing her when she woke up and when she went to bed and the first two days were pretty rough. By Wednesday we saw improvement and today has actually gone really well. She's already taken 2 bottles today and with only a few seconds of a fight. Plus I was able to get her to take them today while sitting down which is a huge relief on my arm! I was having to cradle her with one arm while using the other for the bottle and she is 17 pounds now so that was soooo hard!

My goal is to get her to take a bottle well during the day, then drop the going to bed feeding and I may hold on to the morning feeding for a while...we'll see.

So that's what's going on in this house. Oh, I've started to go to Physical Therapy for tailbone pain. I've had this pain since I had Ella and finally decided to try to do something about it. After a doctor confirmed it wasn't broken he recommended and prescribed physical therapy for me and I've now had 3 sessions. I've seen a different person for each session, each does a little different thing and I'm starting to wrap my head around this whole thing. I obviously had no idea all of the things that can cause tailbone pain nor do I think I understand anymore my own body. It has been such an eye opening and humbling experience for me. The first therapist did ultrasound and message, the second did a number of different exercises on my hips, lower back, gluts, and legs. I was sore after both of those sessions.

Today I had my third session and she didn't think it was a good sign that I was having more pain since I started therapy so maybe they are working me too hard. I won't say much about the therapist I saw today other than she focuses on your pelvic floor, which gets pretty damaged during childbirth and she describes herself as a "gynecological physical therapist". Apparently your pelvic floor muscles have a huge impact on your tailbone. She feels like she can help me and I'm sure I'll see one of the other two people again as well but for now I'm just with her.

I really hope this helps my pain because as of right now, it's only worse. I'm learning a lot about how I'm sitting wrong and other things I'm doing that are only making things worse so it's more than just therapy, it's learning some different lifestyle things as well. There is a good chance that the pain I had for 12 weeks when I didn't heal properly from delivery caused me to start sitting wrong and tensing up my muscles which in turn caused this pain. Crazy.

That's all folks!

THE INSIDE OF THE CAKE

2010-02-14T15:24:00.007-05:00

It's pretty!!!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Even Ella liked it. :)

Thanks to Amanda the fabulous creator of this cake.

Read below about the process I went through making this - and all the pictures!

THE CAKE

2010-02-13T18:46:00.015-05:00

Okay. It's done. It's been a crazy day but it's done.

And..... here it is.

I would like to first thank my mom and Grant because this cake would not have happened without their help. Mom for the 100 phone calls I placed to her while making it and Grant for keeping Ella happy and also helping me figure out how much milk I dumped in the icing when I realized that I put more than I was suppose to in.

So. First things first. Going to the store. It took 2 trips.

Here are all of the ingredients I needed in addition to all of of the baking stuff I already have. This shocked me since I feel like I keep a lot of baking things on hand.

I had to go back to the store because after some research (and a phone call to mom) I discovered that Cake Flour is different than all-purpose. Luckily mom told me to look for a box and sure enough - there it was!

The importance of color....I had to buy CLEAR vanilla extract to make white icing and cake, and a giant bottle of red food coloring because well, I was making a red cake and the small tube I had of food coloring would not have cut it.

I wanted to include a picture of my mixer because Grant actually bought this for me as a Valentine's gift when we were dating. Nice gift huh. :)

So I started. Now. I'd like to put in a little background here. I like to bake. I LIKE to bake. That doesn't mean I'm always good at it nor have I pushed the limits of what I can do. Today that all changed. I've never actually made a cake from scratch before. I've always only altered cake mix recipes. So for me, the hardest thing for this whole project was making the cakes.

First Cake - Red Velvet

I started at 9 am on this sucker and I finished at 10:30 - meaning I put it in the oven after an hour and a half of mixing. I didn't have any problems, it was just complex and I didn't want to mess it up so I often read and reread the instructions before I did anything. Plus the creator of this cake altered her recipes and her notes were above the recipe so I had to read the recipe and then go back up and figure out if she changed anything for that ingredient. I put it in the oven and called mom (this happens a lot by the way...calling mom). I told her that it really filled up the pan. I guess my 9x13 is shallow compared to the pan that the lady used because when I opened up the oven I saw that it had overflowed and I had a mound of red velvet at the bottom of my oven. A great way to start the project!

Disaster #1 Red Velvet overflowing...too much batter.

Luckily the cake still cooked fine and since all I was going to do with this cake was crumble it, it was fine. And the pile of cake at the bottom of the stove came up easily.

So as I took this cake out I had the white cake mixed. This was a lot easier to make than the red velvet and I was feeling pretty good about it. I greased and floured 4 round pans and started to put the batter in them and quickly realized I didn't have enough batter.

Disaster #2 Not enough White Cake batter!

So I tried to put them in 4 pans but there wasn't enough so I dumped them into 2 and threw 2 in the oven and called mom. "Mom, this batter was only enough for 2-9 inch pans" Mom "well that sounds right - most cake mixes are for 2 round pans". Great. I had to make a whole other cake. I only had enough butter for what I was planning on but I had a couple of sticks of salted butter I could use for the icing so this was the plan. Mom called me back. "I was looking at the photos on the tutorial and those cakes look small. I think she just used 1 recipe for all 4". I didn't know how they would be enough but I quickly pulled the cakes out of the oven, cleaned out the 2 pans that had batter scraped out of them, greased again, flowered again and dumped a little bit of batter into both. In the 4 cakes went. It wasn't until they were baking did mom figure it out. "You are using 8 inch pans right?"

Hmm...no. I had 9 inch pans.

Disaster #3-9 inch pans should be 8 inch pans.

So these didn't take long to cook since they were so shallow so after I took them out I took a shower and a little break.

After my break I made the icing. I had bought enough ingredients to double the recipe since it said it was only enough for a 2 layer cake. Plus I thought icing is what will cover up my mistakes. I didn't know if I would need that much so I thought I would make 1.5 recipes. So I threw in 3 sticks of butter and had calculated that I needed 3/4 cup of milk. I added the milk and was adding the powdered sugar when I thought "boy this seems soupy". I stood there staring at the measuring cup and thought, I don't remember measuring 3/4. Did I accidentally put in 1 whole cup? I mentioned to Grant what I had done and he had a brilliant idea. "Did you wash the measuring cup before you used it again?" yes. "Then look for a residue on it at the cup mark". Sure enough we held it up to the light and there was a white ring right at the 1 cup mark.
So in went another stick of butter and some more vanilla.

Disaster #4 Measure Correctly!

Then the building started. I actually enjoyed this part more than mixing the cakes up. I got out the cake plates that I wanted to use and got one cake ready to flip out of the pan and...no flippin. It was stuck. STUCK. I had to use a fork around the whole thing to get it out. This ended up happening to all 4 pans! I'm not sure why, but all of them stuck even though I greased and floured them.

Disaster #5 Cakes Stuck

So I build 2-2 cake high cakes and put them in the freezer for an hour or so. Then took them out and started carving. Grant helped me build the "compass" to have a nice circle and this was by far the easiest and the funnest part of the cake. I guess I'm more of a sculptor than a chemist! I was also surprised at this point how much cake I was going to throw away. I literally carved half of the cakes out of these things, ate a few bites and thew the scraps away. Oh well.

Then I added the crumbled red velvet mixed with icing. This was very pretty and these crumbs were yummy!

Then I flipped the top half to sit on the bottom half...well I tried to at least. I flipped the plate but nothing was coming. I turned it back and did some research and guess what...the cake was stuck to the plate! And it was breaking. Great.

Disaster #6 Cake Stuck

I separated the cake from the plate the best I could and did some repair work with icing.

So at this point my cake is done other than icing but boy it's not pretty. I didn't level the cakes and with the top cake breaking my cake is slightly bigger at the top than the bottom. I iced as good as I could (I'm not good at icing) and then sprinkled the crumbs on. I really wish I knew how to ice a cake well. I love how the lady does it in the tutorial. It's so clean and smooth. I'm going to have to learn how to do this because after all that work I want it to be pretty on the outside.

At least the crumbs are pretty. :)

It took a while to clean up and then I relaxed the rest of the day. I finished it at 4 pm so it was a long cake making experience.

Here's the kitchen when I was done.

We are looking forward to cutting into it tomorrow. I don't anticipate a perfect heart since I had shallow cakes and lots of disasters. But since I ate the scraps I can honestly say that this cake will taste good. :)

Things I would do differently if I made this again:
- buy 8" cakes pans
- use 2 pans for the red velvet so it doesn't overflow
- put wax paper in the bottom of the pans and while I'm working on them
- buy a cake leveler
- buy an icing spatula and learn how to use it

That's it folks. I'll post pictures of the inside in another post.

Doing the Cake

2010-02-11T12:39:00.002-05:00

I've decided to do this cake and I'm crazy enough to even make the white cake from scratch.

She says you can do that part with a mix but I've never been a fan of white cake from a mix so I'm going for it.

I'm getting the stuff today and plan on making it Saturday. I've read through the tutorial and recipes a few times so I feel pretty good about it.

I'll take pictures throughout the process and post about it hopefully Sunday.

We'll see how it goes!

Maybe Not...

2010-02-03T16:22:00.002-05:00

So I just read the recipe for the below Heart Cake and she actually doesn't tell you how to make it, just the recipe for the cake and icing. Plus the more I look at this the more I think this is out of my league.

BUT, I do plan on making the red velvet part of this with the white icing and crumbles on top. I may even try to take gorgeous pictures of it like this person did. I may share those with you as well, but you won't see that beautiful heart in it. :(

I bet I can do a heart on the top with the crumbles....

I want to try

2010-02-03T10:07:00.003-05:00

To make this Heart Cake.

I really love to bake, I can do without cooking but baking just makes me happy. Maybe that's because the batter is yummy and I like sweets. :)

I'll let you know how it goes.

Now for an update. We survived the show and our house is (almost) back to normal. We still have a booth in the garage but will for at least 20 more days. Ella seems to be feeling better but it's hard to tell about her ears. She grabs them now when she's tired, hungry, or upset so it's hard for me to know whether they hurt or not. I may take her in again just to make sure they are okay...we'll see. But she's over her cold and acting a lot better but still not sleeping all night yet. The last 2 nights we've had middle of the night feedings and that's unusual for her. I think she may be going through a growth spurt because I swear I fed her 10 times yesterday!

About 3 days ago she discovered that things that are not her toys are more interesting. She was playing nicely at her gym thing and the next thing I know she's pulling on the curtains. Then she was on the couch next to me playing and then I notice she's doing a back bend trying to reach the lamp...and so on. She's not crawling yet, not rolling, but I think all of that will come soon because she wants to be in places other than where I set her down. It's going to be an interesting month!

That's all for now folks!

A very hard month

2010-01-28T11:18:00.008-05:00

I feel so bad that this blog is so neglected. I know there are some of you that just read this and are not on Facebook so I'm sorry that I've not been keeping you in the loop. So here's a quick rundown of the last month. If I keep this short and sweet maybe I can get it out there rather than waiting for a magical time where I have an hour to write a nice long post...because that time will never come!

So Ella got an ear infection right before Christmas, then got RSV immediately after Christmas which quickly gave her another ear infection. She was only off of antibiotics about 4 days before she got a horrible cold and then you guessed it...another ear infection. That was Saturday which was also the day before we had our bridal show. I'll post some pictures of the booth later in this post. Tuesday night in the middle of the night when I went to check on her, her ear was all bloody so we cleaned if off and were pretty sure she just scratched her ear, but it really bothered us that it hurt her so much she scratched it so bad. So this morning I went back to the doc and we got in with her official doctor today which I haven't been able to see the last 4 visits. It was good to talk strategy with him. He put her on 30 days of a low-dose antibiotic to help prevent another ear infection. He said if she gets another infection during this time or the fluid has not left in 30 days then we'll be looking into putting tubes in. I really hope we can keep another cold away for a month, but if tubes become necessary we are willing to do it to bring her relief.

On another note we have been busting our tails trying to get our new booth done. We did a sketch of what we wanted it to look like late one night. Then we bought all of the supplies and called our parents in for help. We build this thing in a week which meant every time Ella took a nap I was painting, and painting some more. I had to prime it, and then do 2 coats of the white color. I primed the brown walls, did a coat of a color that looked too green, then did 2 more coats of a better color. We also painted the back of all of this black. Our first gallon of "black" was not black at all. It was a funky green grey color so some places I had to paint the "black" twice. You can see from the photo we also had a lot of staining. Everything was going well until the 4th coat of brown paint started to drip as it dried. I think I put it on too thick (not wanting to do another coat). It was dripping right where we were going to put the logo lettering on so we had a problem. It wasn't until Saturday (show was on Sunday) that we thought of getting a canvas and paint it brown to put the logo on and hang on the wall.

Saturday was also the day of set up, plus Ella was so sick I took her to the doctor. Oh, and it was pouring down rain too. Grant and his dad went to set up and got the main walls up and the floor down while I worked on the sign and took care of Ella. That night we were up late (Ella wasn't sleeping anyway) finishing up things, printing off hand outs and a number of other last minute things. Sunday morning came quickly and Grant and his dad left the house about 8:15 to finish setting up. I was planning on leaving at 9 with Ella and Grant's mom with all of the albums and small stuff. Again - it was not only pouring down rain, but it was coming in sideways. As me and Grant's mom were heading to the car I realized I couldn't find my keys. I knew this was bad because I had recently seen them on the table. A quick phone call confirmed - Grant and his dad had both sets of my keys...we were stuck at home. I totally lost it. In front of Ella and my mother in law I used words that I don't like Ella to hear and sat down balling. Ella's sickness had taken so much out of me and I felt so overwhelmed with everything. I wanted to be involved in set up and to see people that I normally only get to see at these shows (other photographers) but I was stuck at home and Grant's dad couldn't bring back another set of keys until all of the big things were set up. After I calmed down I decided to iron our shirts that we were going to wear, I redid my hair since the rain ruined it, and redid my makeup since you know crying like crazy does great things with mascara.

Grant's dad was there about 10:45 which put me at the show at 11:15. It started at 12. I had time to carry everything in, park my car, go feed Ella (she's still not taking a bottle), change, and get ready to try to sell our business to lots of potential clients. We finished setting up about 12:05. :)

We really enjoyed the show. We had a lot of traffic and a lot of compliments on the design. We feel good about it and hope to get some business from the event. Grant's parents brought Ella back when it was done and we hung out there until we had it all tore down and headed home. I felt such a sense of relief! I was finally able to just hold Ella and not worry about the show anymore. Now our garage looks like a bomb went off in it, but that's okay. We are in another show in February so we'll leave all the stuff in the garage until then, and then we'll figure out where to store it until next year!

So there's an update on everything.

Here is Ella on Tuesday morning - starting to feel better. Her eyes were droopy and red when she was really sick so it was nice to see my bright-eyed girl again.

Here is a sketch we did of how we wanted the booth to look.

Here are a few pictures of the booth.

New in 2010!

2010-01-05T12:58:00.002-05:00

Our website and blog for our business:

Dotson Studios

Dotson Studios Blog

A lot of blood, sweat and discussion went into redoing our site and setting up a blog but I will say this...it was nothing compared to the first one. I also want to thank our dear friend Jason who helped us with the logo and was a sounding board for us through this whole process. Nothing is more difficult than for 2 stubborn (and married) designers to try to design together and Jason was the perfect mediator for us.

We feel this look better suits us as photographers that have been doing this for a while now and we needed to stay competitive. Plus since we both work from home now we feel we have a new look for the new staff. :) Ella is great at making coffee for us and cleaning up around the office. (I only wish!!)

We are excited about doing more with the business this year. We are actually involved with the local Fox station to do a reality wedding show and we are the wedding photographers. We are excited about it and hopeful that it could generate some more business.

Anyway, that's what we've been working on non-stop for the last few weeks and it feels so good to have it up.

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-29T10:36:00.004-05:00

So this was Ella's first Christmas and I have to say - I think she had a great time!

We started the week off rough because when we came back from Wisconsin Ella was congested. That cleared up but then she got super fussy and was grabbing her ear. So Monday morning I called and got her in and sure enough - she had a double ear infection. I was glad that I took her in because I almost didn't and then she would have been miserable over Christmas while we were traveling. So she started antibiotics Monday and I was hoping by Christmas she would be in better spirits. She was moderate. Not super fussy but not the happy Ella we had the last time we were at Grant's parents house. None the less being with family was wonderful and her cousins were sooo sweet with her.

On Thursday we got to have lunch and see some old friends of ours that moved to Johnson City and it was so nice. They have a son that is 10 months old so we had a lot to talk about! They were actually the first people we told we were pregnant outside of family because we were in town and she was pregnant too and I just couldn't help myself! After a nice visit we went to the Christmas eve service and I was really worried about Ella. She was still fairly fussy and I didn't know how she would be. Luckily she fell asleep right away in my arms wish is very rare and super sweet... it was an early Christmas present! Of course she woke up during communion though and was fussy at the end but overall she did great.

That night we got all of the presents ready and had a nice time with the family. Christmas morning was wild and fun and Ella got more toys then she could possibly need! She had funning grabbing the paper as we pulled the gift away so that she "opened" her own presents. It was fun.

We had a few unexpected visitors during the days we were there. Tuesday Grant's "Aunt" (mom's cousin but we call her aunt) came by even though she lives in Virginia. They were traveling and decided to make a 200 mile detour to visit the family. It was so nice because we had not met her husband yet and they had not seen Ella. Then thursday morning Grant's mom's sister and her husband stopped by unannounced but we missed then since we were visiting our friends. Last but not least on Christmas day Grant's uncle stopped by. He had been invited but we hadn't heard anything so we assumed he wasn't coming. It was nice to see all of the unexpected visitors but kind of funny that all these people stopped by without even calling.

The day after Christmas we spent the day at home and had some other family over (expected) and had a nice time playing games with the kids. Sometime during the evening I noticed that Ella was getting super fussy and felt warm. Sure enough she had a low grade fever. Not what I wanted to see since she was still trying to get over the ear infections. We waded it out and by morning her fever was better but she started getting a very runny nose. I thought maybe she caught a cold. She got so congested that one time when she woke from a nap in my arms she started crying immediately and choked on her mucus and threw up. We were about to get in the car to go home so we were concerned. Luckily she slept the whole way home. While getting her ready for bed I was sure she had caught something but wasn't sure what was going on. It was obvious she was miserable. When we woke up Monday morning she was worse. She was so fussy that I couldn't set her down. She didn't have a fever but was really congested and I could tell did not feel good. I didn't really know what to do. I hated to go back to the doctor's office especially since I thought it was just a cold, but she was so bad I didn't know. So I called and talked to a nurse. She thought she should come in to be checked. They wanted to make sure her ears were clearing up and to confirm that it was just a cold since she had so much junk in her head.

Well we ended up with bad news. She has RSV. Apparently nothing can be given to her to help her unless a secondary infection starts. It's pretty much a horrible cold that lasts for weeks and is highly contagious. I'm to look for a higher fever or troubled breathing and to take her in if either of those things happen.

I want my girl to feel better. I want to see the happy girl that we had a short glimpse of a few weeks ago. I want to sleep though the night. All of those things are so selfish though because Ella is the one who is really suffering. I feel so bad for her. I want to clean out her nose but she fights me when I try to suck it out. She struggles to breath while she nurses and is sneezing and choking a lot. Despite it all she is in fairly good spirits especially in the morning. She gets worse as the day goes on. I've started having her nap in her swing again because it's elevated and I can keep an eye on her.

Sorry for the lack of pictures. I'll get some on here soon - I wanted to go ahead and post though.

I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas! We were going to travel to my parents' house for New Years but have cancelled that because of the RSV. The next few weeks are going to be challenging. Not only do we have the RSV but Grant starts teaching for this semester and we have a wedding show on the 24th that we are building a whole new booth for. I'll be happy when January is behind us. These wedding shows always stress me out!

Catch up with photos

2009-12-15T11:37:00.008-05:00

So an entire month has gone by and I can't believe it's been that long since I blogged. A lot has happened in this last month - a lot of good. :)

Shortly after our trip to Florida we got the house ready for Thanksgiving. We had 8 adults here and 5 kids for 4-5 days. My parents stayed in a hotel but the rest of the group was here at the house and it felt like it was coming out at the seams! We had a wonderful time though.

My mom brought a ham and got a turkey breast from Honey Baked Ham so we avoided cooking a bird. Then we pre-assigned everyone to different things and I have to say - I think this was the easiest Thanksgiving that we've had here. I only got moderately stressed out. :) So the food was good and then the next day we did Christmas with my side of the family. It was really nice and I think the kids enjoyed it. We managed to get a tree up and lights on it and I grabbed my bin of balls, but we did not put any other decorations on it because of time. Little did I know that we would not get everything else out so even still that's all we have up. It's kind of sad considering how much we normally decorate for Christmas, but this year with Ella it's just really hard.

Ella LOVES her new toys!

Somebody missed Ella...

A full living room!

Um... cute!

One of the big memories of this Thanksgiving/Christmas was guns... yes guns. Grant got out his pellet and bb guns and before we knew it our back porch was turned into a shooting range. Quickly the kids got involved and my 2 oldest nieces actually ended up getting their first bb gun while here. E, the oldest is 8 and I have to say - she's a pretty good shot. She reminded me of myself when I wanted to do everything that my older brothers did. I remember learning to shoot at a young age as well. I think we were all proud of her. :) I'm sure some people would cringe at that but oh well. :)

The gingerbread house tradition... this year we had pre-built ones and it was wonderful!

Quickly after Thanksgiving we headed up to Wisconsin to visit my Grandma. She had recently had a hip replacement and was in the nursing home for recovery. She had not met Ella yet and we wanted to get up there before bad weather hit. However, the first week of December is not safe when it comes to bad weather! Literally the day we landed was their first big snow storm and we had to drive 3 hours from the airport to my Grandmother's house in a bad snow storm. Luckily we did fine. We had a wonderful visit with Grandma. One day we spent the whole day with her in the nursing home, except for taking her out for dinner. Then the next day I took her to a wedding shower at her church with Ella and that was the first time she had gotten out to go to church since her surgery. She was so happy to see everyone and I think everyone was surprised to see her... and me! I'm related to almost her whole church so it's like a family reunion to go there. They got to meet Ella and it was nice to chat with some of my cousins who are also recently new moms. It's amazing how much having a kid gives you things to talk about with people you normally don't have a lot to talk about. I liked it though because I used to be closer to these people and I miss that.

A couple great shots of my Grandma's house in the snow.

So this is Ella's 3rd outfit of the day. I only brought 1 extra so when she needed a third we took the outside jumper from outfit #1 and put it with the pants from outfit #2... not what I planned for Grandma's first picture with Ella.
This was our last night there. Grandma's roomate went to bed so we hung out in the common area. We are soooo tired in the photo since it's like 9 pm and Ella was up all night, but we wanted to spend as much time with her as possible.
Ella being a doll for Grandma - actually that's Great-Grandma to her.
I love this photo.

Then after the shower and a lunch out with everyone we headed to Madison to visit a friend of mine. She recently blogged about our visit and I have to agree with her that even though I had not seen her in 15 years it felt like we picked up right where we left off. The only change was we had husbands and children and own our own house! It was a wonderful visit. She looked great (she always had) and her children were super sweet and full of personality. I think they took to me as well so that felt really nice. Ella was a doll our entire visit to Wisconsin until the very end of the night as we were about to leave. She had had enough and it was time to take a sleepy car ride home. :)

Me and Amy. I'd love to find some old pictures of us. I'll have to do that one of these days.

Madeline being sweet with Ella.

If I can figure out how to post a video on here I'll post one of the best things about this trip - Ella laughing! When we were visiting Amy her husband was playing tug-o-war with their dog and Ella thought it was the funniest thing! She has a cute little chuckle that we have tried very hard to get her to do again but have had no luck! If I pretend to growl like a dog we get close... but not quite the full laugh. She's close to doing it more often though. She squeals a lot and starts to kind of laugh but then goes into her silent laugh with a giant smile that she covers with her hands. :) Very cute. It was nice to not only have Grant there for her first laugh but also to be able to catch it on video and share it with friends.

On Sunday we went to church and then to lunch with my friend Jenny. We went to Pizza Hut which I know does not sound nice but I swear, the Pizza Huts in this area of Wisconsin are the best in the nation. Not sure why but they are fabulous and we always go there when we visit. Then Jenny came over for a couple of hours in the afternoon. We had a nice visit and it was great to see her. That evening we went back to see Grandma after Grant shoveled the driveway and sidewalk. Little did we know it was going to snow again that night so we woke up to a few inches of snow where he just shoveled! Oh well. At least we got some salt down and Grant easily cleaned the new snow off in the morning. We left soon after he got it shoveled since it was snowing again and we had a 3 hour drive to the airport.

It was a great a great trip - Ella cooperated in every way, and we got to see family and friends. What more could you ask for! Oh and the day after we left they got like 17 inches of snow... talk about getting out of there just in time!

So that takes us to last week. Since then Ella had a great check up with her new doctor... yes I changed pediatricians. Not because I didn't like the one we were going to but because we saw this other guy for Ella's ear infection because I couldn't get into my regular one, and I really fell for this doctor. He was much calmer and laid back and easy to talk to. A much better fit for me - a struggling new mom. She's weighing in at 15 lbs and 24 inches long. She's growing well and soon we'll start her on some solids. I'm hoping that may help her take a bottle more as well.

Since then we had a Christmas party with our photography friends and have been finishing up on some Christmas shopping, wrapping and just enjoying this time of year.

One thing I wanted to mention here is how much things have gotten easier with Ella. Some time this month things have changed and I'm not sure what it is but it's gotten a lot better. I've stopped walking her to sleep for her naps which has helped because I don't get so angry anymore. I think the mixture of the fact that she naps so much (4 times a day) combined with the fact that she fought sleep I felt like I was dealing with a screaming baby all day long. Now I put her down for a nap. She may cry for 5 minutes but I've leaned to deal with that, and when she's awake I'm able to enjoy her so much more. I think also her age is playing a part. Now that she can play better and entertain herself she seems happier in general. She now also likes to "talk" instead of fuss for her default position... and that is sooo much easier to handle. So I'm happy to report that for me, it took about 4 months to really love being a mother. A little longer than some other mother's I've talked to, but that's okay because I'm here and it feels so good. :)

A weekend away

2009-11-10T19:59:00.001-05:00

So Ella did fine... and so did I. :) Once we landed in Memphis for our connection I was pretty relaxed and knew my in-laws were fully capable of taking care of Ella as well as surviving themselves.
I got this photo after we landed in Orlando with the caption "nite nite mom and dad".

What's funny about this is she's in her pj's... and her car seat! I thought, well I know they drove Grant around a lot at night to get him to sleep so maybe they did the same for Ella. Sure enough, apparently they took LOTS of drives over the weekend. When ever they could not get her to stop crying they hoped in the car! Not a bad game plan I have to say.
Also, after a little bit she started taking a bottle from them, whether asleep or awake so that was great.

Saturday morning as I was getting ready I got this photo.

That's Ella sleeping next to her "Junie". In the morning I often bring her to our bed when she wakes up, feed her and let her sleep next to us for an hour or so. Since she's in her own room now this is really a special time for us so I was glad to see that they got to share that with her.

I did better away from her than I thought I would. Oh, I missed her, and took every oportunity to talk about her and show people photos but it wasn't so bad.

Grant will never let me live down the early flight we took that required us to get up at 4 Sunday morning just so I could get home to her. I was tired of pumping and just wanted to be home. Physically it was straining. My back hurt, I had blisters, but it was good to be home with my little girl.

The wedding we shot was fantastic. It was at the Loews Portifino Resort in Orlando and was so beautiful. One of the nicest weddings we shot. The resort is set up to look just like Portifino Italy, which to me, looks just like Venice. It was sooo beautiful. Me and Grant felt like it was a mini vacation despite all of the work. :) Late Saturday night after the wedding we went down to the water and had some gelato... just like Italy. :)

We got home around noon on Sunday and it was so good to be home.

Terrified

2009-11-05T23:06:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow afternoon we are leaving to shoot a wedding in Florida. I'll be away from Ella for about 44 hours. Last night Grants parents got here to watch my routine and see all of the things we do to survive our fussy little girl. I was glad because Grant had a hard time giving Ella a bottle Tuesday night and I wanted them to give her a bottle a few times before we left. I had no idea what we were in for. Ella will NOT take a bottle from anyone but me, and this seems to have just started.
We tried everything under the sun, from suggestions if friends to ideas online. I eventually showed them how to force feed her with a sirenge if need be. We tried every position, tv on, walking, outside, even in the bath... this child has a will. We even went and got some different bottles and nipples to try. No luck. Finally for Ella's last feeding today we made a small breakthrough. If we slipped the bottle in while she was still asleep or just waking up she drank. We are not leaving until 4 tomorrow so the game plan is to try this technique and see how things go.

I am sick to my stomach.

I know she'll survive and be okay, but she's starting to have attchment issues and between that and the feeding issues I am scared to death to leave her.

We have no choice. I am terrified.

Hit Reset

2009-11-04T21:38:00.001-05:00

So last weekend we went up to Grant's parents house to hang with family, do Halloween together and celabrate 50 years of his parents being together (dating anniversary). Honestly I was a little stressed out about going. Ella's been so fussy and not feeling good... I just dreaded throwing our routine off even though it wasn't very sucessful in the first place.
Well I have to say it was nothing but a blessing. I was shocked how excited Ella was when we got there. Having 2 young cousins to entertain her plus soo many things to look at in "Granny & Junie's" house - she was beside herself with happiness.
Plus I discovered that Grant was a very fussy baby... now I know who to blame!!! It was wonderful to see her so happy all of the time, and it was nice to have other people hold her while I did things.
It was a very different experience than at the beach where I had a hard time relaxing, this weekend felt like vacation, a gift, a time to heal. On our way home I told Grant it was nice to look back at her when she started stirring and not think "oh no, she's waking up!" but instead... she's got cute feet.
Now that we are back home she's still fights naps and is occasionally fussy, but I think she's just bored. So I'm trying to come up with new ways to entertain her. Most importantly though is that I feel like I've changed. It was a much needed break that I'm so grateful for.
Who knew that a little trip would be like hitting reset.
:)

Meaning to the madness

2009-10-26T14:34:00.001-05:00

So after a very trying week last night I decided I needed to take Ella in to see the doctor. She hadn't been running a fever but with the fussiness and as of Thursday night the ear grabbing I thought it was time. I figure it's worth a copay to have a doctor tell me she's fine to avoid going back to the hospital.

Well Ella is good at telling me what's wrong because she does have an ear infection! I can tell she doesn't feel good and I know it hurts but a part of me is glad to know she wasn't just fussy, she was sick. We've had four doses of antibiotics now and I think she's starting to feel a little better, but she's still pretty fussy. I shouldn't have got my hopes up that she'd be a new baby once she felt better.
Oh well!

We had a nice weekend going down to visit my brother and his family for my niece's birthday. It was a princess party if I ever saw one! She seemed to have a good time and I enjoyed some family time. Ella also got to bring home a very nice blanket that my sister in law made for her. It's turned out to be the perfect tummy time blanket and is warm for the cooler weather that's on it's way.

Sunday we chilled and had a lazy morning in bed watching movies and recovering from a night of Ella waking up. :) We had moved her to her room but with her being sick we moved her back for a couple of nights. She was back in her room last night but still woke up at 3 and I had to feed her. Lately I've been able to give her a pacifier and she goes back to sleep, but no such luck last night.

That's about it here. Here are a few pictures from the last few days.

Ella doing her part in society...

Grant having fun with his glasses.

A hurt ear.

Feeling a little better!

Sometimes it's just really hard

2009-10-20T17:59:00.001-05:00

So I've not been posting much but that's because I just don't have time! Grant made the comment that having her takes up a percentage of our lives and when I said she takes up 90% of mine I wasn't kidding! It's been really hard the last few weeks that I've been home full time. It was hard before but I expected that with a newborn, then I expected it with my crazy working part-time month, but by three months of age I have to say, I didn't expect this. If I get a total of an hour to myself before Grants either home or done for the day it's a miracle. Ella fights sleep, cat naps, wakes up cranky, eventually I feed her to stop the crying, we get 30 minutes of a somewhat happy baby but one that doesn't like to be left alone, and then I do it all over again.

I'm sure some of you are thinking, "yep, that's what parenting is" and that's fine. I shouldn't complain because she sleeps at night and is healthy. But this doesn't work for me. I am not happy taking care of her full time and that being my only occupation. I'm possibly a horrible mother for putting that in writing but there it is.

My goal is to work on our home business from home, but I don't have time to do that. I have managed to get a small workout into my day in the mornings and I try hard to take a shower so that Grant won't kick me out of the house, but that's about it. I'm able to do laundry and dishes while she's in her carrier but what I want to do is sit at my computer for a couple of hours and contribute to something I feel very passionate about. I'm trying to prepare myself for the possibility that that might not happen for a long time. I had thought by now it would be, but I was wrong.

I apologize for the venting of this post but as one of my favorite bloggers once wrote "some of these women go wacko" in reference to postpartum depression and although I'm not depressed, I do feel like I'm going wacko.

- Sara

Woohoo!

2009-10-12T17:50:00.001-05:00

Healed!

Only took 12 weeks....

Happy to finally be here!

To the corn maze!

2009-10-04T10:14:00.003-05:00

Yesterday we went to the corn maze with Ella. She did great. We put her in the baby bjorn and she stayed alert and didn't fuss the whole time we wandered through the corn.

She gets bored easily these days so I think she liked looking at something completely different.

We did our normal thing at the corn maze - had hot chocolate and kettle corn. We went earlier in the day and in the season than we usually do because of Ella, and it was really nice. We didn't get as cold and didn't need our flash lights in the maze.

Please note the super chubby cheeks and double chin. Apparently we made chubby babies!

I'm starting to feel a lot better, in fact better than I have in 11 weeks... here's to hoping I'm finally healing.

Through the pain

2009-09-28T21:41:00.002-05:00

So pain sucks.

If you don't want to hear about the harsh reality of giving birth then stop here.

I am now slightly over 10 weeks postpartum and still not healed. The episiotomy I had did not heal well in one area and I had to go back in today to have that looked at. Luckily time flies with a newborn because it's hard to believe i've been dealing with this for this long, but I have and have tried to be patient. I called the doc at 3 weeks postpartum because I felt like an area wasn't healing right, and 7 weeks later it's not any better, in fact it's worse. At 3 weeks he thought another 3 would do the trick. At 6 weeks he gave me estrogen cream to help it heal, and at 10 weeks he had to do a mini repair surgery. That was today.

I have developed something called granular tissue, which I guess is "angry tissue" the body develops when it is rejecting something. Apparently my body has rejected the suture in that spot, hense the lack of healing. So to fix this he had to numb me (very painful but worth it) then cut away the bad tissue, singe that, and then glue me up in this area. Once I was numb it was fine, but I was shocked when I saw how much I bled. By the time I got home the numbness was wearing off so I took some ibeprofen, and after a couple hours I had Grant dig out the left over percocet I had been given after delivery. That is helping some, but I just have to say this hurts like nobodies business.

I figured I'd have to deal with more pain before this healed and here I am.

Hoping Ella sleeps well tonight and sleep helps the pain.

Organizing

2009-09-27T16:15:00.001-05:00

So today Grant is finally able to get to the yard. After being on vacation things have been pretty crazy. He attempted Friday night but could not get the mower to start. Luckily his dad put 2 and 2 together and realized there was prabably water in the tank from the rain/flooding we had. It wasn't real bad at our house but enough that where we store our mower had sitting water.
After letting the tank dry out it's now working.
Me and Ella have had a nice day after a rough morning. She's been waking up more in the middle if the night and last night I heard that she was awake but she wasn't crying... but then she started choking. She was fine but that sure got us both up in a hurry!
Then after I fed her around ten I gave her her meds and she completely threw up. All over me and our living room rug.
The rest of the day has been nice. I finally decided to organize and file the scary piles of papers I've collected since early in my pregnancy, and she's been sitting next to me smiling.
We are headed back to church next week. Now that things are a little calmer and we are finally getting into a routine.

Scary piles of papers.

Ella next to me.

Note the taped up vent behind her... where the ants were coming in on Tuesday. That's another story!

Smiles!

2009-09-26T19:29:00.001-05:00

I can't get enough of them.

- Sara

From my phone

2009-09-19T18:39:00.000-05:00

So this post is coming from my phone and I'm very excited about that. Since Ella was born I do everything on my phone and posting here was the only thing I could not do. Grant reminded me that I can get apps that let you do things on your phone... and here I am!
So we are driving back from Guld Shores Alabama right now. We were there a week with my whole family. We rented a house right on the beach and it was fabulous.
Vacationing with Ella had it's challenges but overall it was great. She obviously likes her environment and schedule because I couldn't get her to eat well all week. It stunk because she was fussy and I never knew if she was hungry or tired. I guess that schedule keeps both of us sane!
It was all good though and it meant the world to me that Gram and other relatives were so willing and helpful with her. Thank you!!
Here are a few pictures from out trip.

Sleeping on the deck with Gram.

Sleeping with cousin E.

All decked out.

Going home with the outfit from Jenny. Although she messed in this before we even got downstairs.

Happy phone day!

Sara

Time Flies

2009-09-06T11:01:00.004-05:00

So today Ella is 7 weeks old. Hard to believe!

Here's a picture Grant took while we were on a recent walk.

She is starting to sleep longer at night now and with that we are trying to establish night and morning routines in hope that she will get used to them at a young age. The problem is they are lots of work for mommy and I feel in some sense like we are taking a step back.

At night we have been keeping her up and in the living room with us until her late night feeding and putting her down afterwards when we go to bed. This means we are crawling into bed between 11 and 12 and for us that's fairly normal. We may fall asleep on the couch earlier in the night, I feed her and then we go to bed, also kind of our normal routine. Well I'm trying to put her down now earlier and doing a bath and reading time beforehand. So around 7 or 8 I feed her, bath her, and we sooth and read to her since she doesn't like baths yet and is screaming. Then we put her down to sleep. The first night we did this I woke her up for her late night feeding and then put her back down and she slept until 5 am. Sounds great right - except I hated doing that late night feeding in bed plus the middle of the night feeding in bed, when I was used to just doing 1 feeding in bed lately. I do not like feeding in bed. My episiotomy is still not completely healed and it's hard to get in and out of bed while holding her, plus I can never get her high enough with my pillow and it hurts to adjust how I'm sitting. But for some reason if I feed her in the living room in our recliner she wakes up more and I have a hard time getting her back to sleep. It may be worth another try though....

Anyway, last night I was too tired to wake her up to feed her for her late night feeding and decided to let her wake me up when she was hungry. (At this point it's totally okay for us to let her do this at night) She woke me up at 12 which was exactly 5 hours from her last feeding and then again at 5 am. So she's on a 5 hour routine at night which is actually pretty good I think. I put her back down after 5 and it's like she knows when it's 8 am because she's up and ready for her normal 3 hour feeding routine.

Today, I'm super tired. I'm not sure which way was better, to wake her up or let her wake me up for that late night feeding. Plus as she starts pushing 5 hours to 6 and 7 hours I'm not going to want to get up at 1 and 2 am to feed her so I'll need to get her up at say 11 and then let her sleep to 6 or 7.

I have no idea. I'm just thinking out loud here. Feel free to leave suggestions if you have any.

Here's a recent picture of her on her play mat that she loves. She starting to coo and smile and we found that she really loves this thing now that she can focus.

So cute!

Fabulous Photography

2009-08-12T15:37:00.003-05:00

We are so happy that we are able to have Amber Holritz photograph our family during Ella's first year. Amber and her husband Nathan photographed our wedding and were a huge inspiration to us as we began our photography business. We had our first shoot last week and even though Ella cried pretty much through the whole thing - they turned out great!

Thank you to Amber for the great photos.

Here's the LINK to the whole slideshow.

The real world?!?

2009-08-11T11:45:00.003-05:00

I've been planning on going to Target for about a week.

I decided I wanted some new yoga pants since the one's I wore during my pregnancy lost their elasticity. (big surprise!) I knew I had to try them on since my body is so messed up otherwise I'd be ordering online. I also had a few other things on my list. Here's the problem. We live about 30 minutes from Target. I'm nursing every 3 hours and it takes about 30 minutes to nurse. That gave me a window of 1.5 hours to shop which is enough, but yet I had to do things fairly quickly. I also wanted to look at a couple tops since nothing really fits or looks good in my closet right now.

No one tells you how messed up your body is after birth. I weigh the same as I did a few years ago before I went on a diet and lost 30 lbs. but this baby weight is completely different. I don't have the weight in my face, or hands... it's all in my mid section. So the clothes I thought I could wear right now don't fit because my stomach is still too big, and my maternity pants won't stay up. My maternity shirts are either too big or are tight under my breasts and I can't lift them up to nurse. Regular t-shirts look horrible because they hug this beautiful saggy fat that surrounds my mid section.

Anyway... I wanted to try to get a couple tops, yoga pants, and a few odd end things. I knew as soon as I saw the parking lot that it was a bad time to go shopping. I had forgotten about all of the back to school shoppers out there. It was literally the day before a lot of kids in the area were going back to school. Oh well I thought - I was already there. The crowds were horrible! I don't do well in crowds normally and for the first trip out to shop post-baby it was not a good experience. I was constantly looking at my chest to make sure my bra pads were working and I wasn't leaking all over the place, I was just kind of sore still, I was worried about time, and I was just upset that going to Target was such an ordeal - I wondered if anything would be simple anymore. By the time I got to the checkout the lines were really bad and no one knew where the lines were which was even worse. I managed to find 2 pairs of yoga pants and 2 tops that I didn't love, but were good enough - they hid my stomach and they allowed me to nurse. So I got back to my car and called home to see how Ella was doing to see if I had time to get some ice cream. She was screaming in the background so I wanted to come home but G assured me she was fine and to go get some ice cream. I cried the whole way from Target to Dairy Queen and after waiting in line forever there, decided to call my friend J. I hadn't talked to her since I delivered and I knew I could call her and cry and she would understand. I love friends like that!

Anyway, we had a good chat as I drove home and I felt a lot better by the time I got home and much better after I fed E and she was content.

Then to put icing on the cake I was talking to mom and found out that I managed to go to target during tax free weekend... which explains the horrid crowds. "Didn't you notice you didn't pay taxes on your clothes?". Um no. I managed to pay and get out of the store... that's all I cared about.

New Schedule

2009-08-06T19:10:00.003-05:00

I feel bad I have not posted more on here since Ella's birth but it's been hard for me to get computer time. If I could do all of this via my phone we would be set considering I spend hours on my phone since I can do it with one hand while nursing. Posting however, is just a bit too much for it.

To give you all an update we are doing really well. Ella's woken up a bit more and has her fussy times, but overall she is a good baby and is allowing us to sleep at night as long as she's not hungry. We had a weight check yesterday and she weighed in at 8 lb. 3 oz!! The doctor was wondering what we are feeding her. Doc says she looks good and to continue doing what we are doing. So that's what we are doing. :)

We are having our favorite photographer over tomorrow for a family shoot and after that one of my long lost friends may come by for a visit. She recently published this and it brought back fond and fun memories.

So that's a little update and here's a video I think is cute. I know I'm partial though...

Labor Story

2009-07-27T20:18:00.004-05:00

Note: there are a lot of details about my labor in this email - if you get grossed out easily you may not want to read.

So I believe all or at least most of the people that read this also follow me on facebook and know when she was born and have seen all of the pictures - but this blog would not be complete without going over all of the details of the labor and delivery of my little girl.

After a good check up on Wednesday and as the weekend approached I was ready to try a few tricks to see if we could bring labor on a little sooner. I read a few things that said that some food and or activities could that if you are already dilated (I was already 3 cm) so I figure no harm in trying... right? I didn't really think they would work, and no one will ever know if any of these things worked or if it was just her time but at 2:42 am on Sunday I woke up to some pain and quickly realized my water had broken.

Things I tried.

Friday I printed off this recipe and made this as it said to only making a smaller batch and using plain tomato sauce as a base to the sauce rather than tomatoes. This took more than 2 hours to make so it's possible making this could induce labor! But we ate this Friday night and then again Saturday night - it's a very good recipe, especially with some angel hair pasta.

I also drank a lot of prune juice friday night and on Saturday. I know a lot of people have issues from drinking prune juice and I was warned about this, but I didn't feel like this had any effect on me. I read anything that gets your bowels going could induce labor. It didn't have that effect on me so... it is what it is. I also stayed very active. Going up and down the stairs at every chance I could, laundry, dishes, I even pulled some weeds. Last but not least Saturday me and G had some close time... I heard it can induce labor.

So that was my cocktail of labor inducing tricks. I'd love to know if any worked... all I know is I went into labor. :)

So, back to the labor. I woke up and quickly realized I was wet, but just starting. I yelled at G to turn on a light and then ran to the bathroom because it was coming hard and fast. I sat on the toilet for a good 15 minutes freaking out a little and waiting for the fluid to stop so that I could get ready and go. We called the doctors office and was told to go straight to the hospital. G took a shower and we tried to remember what was packed and what was not considering we've been living out of our toiletries bag for about 2 weeks. I tried twice to put on a pad and stand up to get dressed and both times my cup runneth over as soon as I stood up. Finally a third time was a charm, at least for a while and by that time the contractions had started and boy did they hurt. They were only 2 minutes apart, but only lasted about 30 seconds each. They were very painful though.

We got all packed up and decided to call our parents as we were going out the door - around 3:20 am. Mom and dad were in Nashville which worked out really well because they were only 2 hours away as oppose to the usual 5. G's parents were home and it took them around 4 hours to get here. We got to the hospital and as I stepped out of the car at the front door my cup ranneth over again and I was wet through my pants. Oh well - it's a hospital. After I checked in me and G went up to L&D and as soon as I walked in they looked at me and asked if my water had broken... "yes" had the contractions started "yes!". This pretty much made triage unnecessary except for a quick strip test they pushed into my pad that proved it was amniotic fluid and not urine. We were walked back to our room where I lived for the next couple days. Being on the weekend the on call doctor was there and they introduced us to him but we told them that our doctor had told us to have him called if I went into labor over the weekend. So the plan was to call him once I was all hooked up and they knew how far along I was.

I was hooked up to the iv pretty quickly and since I was getting an epidural they went ahead and started giving me fluid. They never technically asked if I was ready for my epidural. They just asked if I was having one and around 5 am, the nurse anesthetist was in the room reviewing things with me. I'm not sure if it was how close they were together or if she just figured - I'm in pain - bring on the epidural but initially I had wanted to wait a little while before getting one. Once I realized the steps were in place though I did not argue. I had felt that pain enough and considering I was only 4 cm dilated I knew it would be a while. They decided to wait until 7 to call the doctor since it was technically his day off. I'm terrified of needles and was dreading the epidural more than the labor itself so getting through that was the worse part. Luckly they let G be in there and he stood in front of me as I curled up and tried my best to be completely still considering the contractions were coming hard and fast.

As I laid back after being all taped up the nurse asked me how that one was. "That what?" I had had a contraction and did not feel a thing - amazing! I loved it. I also liked the fact that I could still move my left leg. My right though was completely numb. I didn't like that feeling - really freaky. Anyway I stayed at 4 for a couple hours and around 7 the nurse came in and told me that our doctor had just gotten on the road with his family for a family birthday party in Birmingham (about 2 hours away). But that he would be back around 6. I think if they had contacted him before he left he would have stayed but it is what it is and I really didn't care who delivered this girl. I trusted all of the doctors in this group and knew it would be fine.

So also around 7 some things started acting up. I generally have low blood pressure but the fluid that they give you is suppose to help keep your blood pressure at a good rate while the epidural tends to drop it. Mine was dropping low, very low. They were trying to get one of the anesthesiologist to come back to my room but it took a while and when the guy who originally put it in had got there he thought the other one had already been there. When he realized that nothing had been done about my state he quickly gave me a shot of ephedrine in my iv which burned really bad and I learned later he did something to push it into my system super fast because my BP was so low. It was also around this time that 4 nurses walked in, threw an oxygen mask on me and started turning me to the side. Once my BP rose - the babies heart beat dropped. Luckily a change in position took care of that and I was able to take off the mask after a while.

I was starting to make progress and the on call doctor came by to check me and we chatted with him for a minute. We all bonded over some tech. stuff which was nice considering he was a stranger to us. And it was around this time that my parents got there and then soon after that G's parents got there. It was nice to sit around the hospital room chatting while I was in labor. Considering that we had another BP episode and oxygen mask episode I made a rule that if there was more than 1 nurse and or doctor in the room - I wanted everyone to leave except G. It was a bit too much to deal with when there were people trying to get either my vitals or the babies vitals under control to have people around. I ended up getting a second shot of ephedrine which then put my pulse high. It hung around 120-150 for the rest of the labor with occasional shots up to 180.

The nurse was predicting around 2 pm would be when she got here at the rate I was progressing. So late morning/over lunch we tried to take a nap for a couple hours. They came and checked me after one hour and I was at 8. I was still at 8 after my nap and since I had been at 8 for almost 3 hours the doctor wanted me to have some pitocine. I really did not want any but I wasn't going to argue with a professional. Especially since my vitals were all over the place. After and hour of pitocine things were progressing quickly and before I knew it all that was left was a lip on my right side of my cervix. The doctor wanted me to lay on my right side but that made me have pain on my left considering I already had some feeling there. The nurse anesthetist wanted me on my left side but the doctor won and I got a little more epidural to numb my left. This put me in a completely numb state and I could no longer move or feel either leg.

Shortly after that while the nurse was checking me she said "give me a push" and before I knew it I was pushing. She kept grabbing her little cordless phone and asking for the doctor and was irritated because she didn't know where he was. Kept pushing I did though. Soon the cart was rolled in, the doctor was getting into his gear and the team came in from the nursery and I knew we were close. We knew that from our birthing class that when she was born the room would be full with the teams and not to freak out by the 10 staff people in the room.

We pushed with the doctor for about 15 minutes and a couple times he put a towel on my belly and pushed her down from the top - from the outside of my belly. I've never heard of this technique but G said that when ever he did that he could see lots of progress was made. At some point during this time my mouth got incredibly dry and I asked for some ice. Literally as G was holding out the spoon of ice my mouth filled up with water and I felt sick. They got a bucket to me in time but throwing up while laying down is hard to do so it went spewing everywhere. G was still in his regular clothes and was wearing a very nice new button up shirt and I almost got it - he took it off right after that episode. The doc asked if it was okay to cut me a little since I was tearing and he wanted to control it - fine by me. I was not aiming for an all natural experience so whatever the doctor thought was best, I went with. It was somewhere during this time that I was pushing and was starting to feel like I was hyperventilating and made a comment about being surprised to need an inhaler for labor. The doctor quickly asked if I had asthma and G said just exercise induced, and doc was like - "this is exercise". I was fine as long as I could have a few breaths in between pushes so we continued and before I knew it she was out.

I remember first seeing her as she was out and the doc was holding her up how wrinkled she looked and being surprised she was my daughter. G cut the cord and then she went to the little table next to us to be measured and all that jazz. Apparently the placenta followed quickly - I heard G say something about that not taking long to come out and I was a little overwhelmed by it all being done and had a little cry. I also started shaking pretty badly and could not control it. Towards the end of the labor I had started shaking but if I relaxed it stopped - these shakes could not be controlled and I did not like how I felt. I wanted to feel relaxed and relieved but I felt jittery and overwhelmed. I also remember about this time I commented on how the light that was directly above me looked like a robot on the show "dr. who". I was surprised that the doctor (who was sewing me up at this point) commented and knew the show as well. It's a European show that G & I found via netflix and enjoyed for a while. Again - it was nice to bond over something with this doctor. When it was all said and done we were really happy with this doc and would recommend him to anyone.

They handed her to me and it was the strangest thing to look at this little baby and know it was yours. I think I expected to recognize her so when she looked like a stranger I was surprised. I held her for a while - or should I say shook her for a while considering I still had uncontrollable shakes and I was sad because I wanted to bond with her more calmly than I could at the moment. G held her for a while as little by little the shaking got better and my feeling started to come back to my legs. I remember the sweet nurse who brought me a coke immediately afterwards held me as they took out my epidural from my spine and when I said I was scared she put her arm around me and held me close. All of the nurses and staff there we so wonderful.

After about an hour I felt better and asked when I should try to feed her. The nurse advised I do it then before we let any family in. So we did and she actually latched for a while so I was happy. After that we let the family come in and they were so excited. By this time I was feeling a lot better too.

It was about 7 that our doctor stopped in and apologized for missing things. He was hoping that I would hold out until he got back but this was not something we could control. :) It was nice that he came by and even though I wished he could have delivered her we were happy with how things worked out.

That's about it. We are home now and doing well. Nursing took about 5 days before we got it down pat but we did and I'm so happy. She had a great check up and is only 3 ounces below her birth weight so the doc thinks we are doing well.

I feel like this is the last entry to a journal and in a way it is. Overall I had a very good pregnancy and delivery and have a beautiful daughter now that I love more than I can describe.

We'll do it again some day. :)

38 weeks and 3 days.

2009-07-27T18:28:00.002-05:00

My daughter came to our world.

Ella Grey

Born 7.19.09

7 lb. 5 oz. 20" long

38 weeks and PHOTOS!

2009-07-15T17:39:00.006-05:00

Sorry for the delay on the photos but here they are. Had a check up this morning and I'm 3 cm and between 80 and 90% effaced and she's dropped down pretty low. We are ready to go at any time and I hope it's sooner rather than later! :)

Mommy - please don't go away and have a baby. I'm all you need!!

Me and my big belly.

I hope she's not too big to come out. :)

We have much love for this little girl - just can't wait to meet her.

I have some other silhouette photos that are quite beautiful but too revealing to post publicly. I think some of you might enjoy seeing them... if you are interested let me know and I'll find a private way to show those.

I'll post nursery photos soon. I have those too. Overall I'm feeling pretty good. I have a lot less pain than I did last week so since she's taking a little longer than we thought last week at least I'm in a place where I can tolerate it.

Till next time.

37 weeks and in a holding pattern

2009-07-09T19:15:00.002-05:00

Just thought I'd update everyone. I went to the doctor today and have not dilated any more than I was on Monday & Tuesday. I'm a bit more effaced - between 70 and 80% and she's moved down lower which explains a lot of the pressure I'm feeling. Since I had not made any progress the doctor did not induce - he thinks I'll probably make it through the weekend and if not he told me who the on-call doctor would be. His best estimate is that things will happen next week. He does not think I'll make it to 39 weeks and that most likely next week will be when we meet her. We talked a little about when it's time for me to go to the hospital since I've had so many contractions and can go hours with them but them not being labor contractions. I'm to look for intense contractions that take my breath away and he wants me to head in after only an hour of them because I'm so thinned out.

I'm working from home tomorrow and the plan is to stay on this couch with my feet up until Tuesday when I'll start doing all in my power to get her to come.

If you all wouldn't mind - I am showing some slight signs that pre-eclampsia could be right around the corner, so please pray that is not the case. I'm a little swollen, have had a jump in my weight gain and my blood pressure was pretty high for me. Not too high, but for someone with low blood pressure the nurse was definitely a little concerned.

We took belly pictures last night so I'll get those on here soon.

till later.

First Trip to the hospital... and back again.

2009-07-07T14:47:00.002-05:00

Well the contractions lasted all night and morning and I started to develop lots of pain - to the point where I could barely walk. I woke G up in the middle of the night and told him we should decide if I should go in. We called the docs number and the answering service said a nurse would call us right back, but no one did. I was keeping track of contractions and they pretty much were the same every time I kept track. They lasted about 30 seconds and were around 3 minutes apart. The pain got a little better so rather than call back we tried to get some sleep. We were up most of the night. I think we may have gotten about 2 hours of sleep. We called again at 7 this morning and the nurse thought I should come in and at least be checked.

At this point we were pretty sure I was in labor. G finished packing his bag around 3 am and when 6 came around we both showered and ate some breakfast knowing we may not have a chance for a while. Around 8 or so we headed in fully intending to come home with a baby.

I was very surprise to find out I was not any more dilated than yesterday - maybe a tad but not much nor was I more effaced. So after the hour of full medical history they took and watching my contractions and the baby's heart rate we were starting to think it was a false alarm. She checked me again around 9:45 and there was no change. Since technically I am not full term yet - not until Thursday they were happy that it wasn't the real deal. I just didn't want to feel the way I felt anymore so I was relieved but disappointed.

After coming home and napping for a few hours the contractions have stopped. The pain is more of a constant ache at this point and I wonder if my hips are moving..? Does that happen? I told G it feels like my hips are on fire. Anyway it looks to be a false alarm.

Will keep you posted.

37 weeks... or will be Thursday.

2009-07-06T20:48:00.004-05:00

So first things first. My best friend in the whole world came to visit me last week. She flew in Wednesday and stayed until Sunday. We had such a nice time. We shopped, ate, watched tv, shopped some more, ate more, and watched movies... you get the idea. She did help me wash all of the baby clothes so that was a huge help, especially considering all that's going on. I won't go into the details of her visit, but it was really, really nice. I'm so glad she came and that we got a few days to be together without family responsibilities or anything else we usually do when we get together. Plus the weather was nice too. Thanks J for coming to see me - it meant a lot.

Thursday I had a day of contractions. Nothing painful and whenever I stood up and walked around they went away - all to be expected at this stage. Saturday night we went downtown and watched the fireworks. On the drive home I started having very painful contractions - not really to be expected, but again as soon as I got out of the car and walked around they stopped. Sunday I didn't feel good. Nothing really wrong, just didn't feel great and had intermittent contractions. Then today I had a few in the morning but nothing intense or painful.

We had our doc apt today at 1. I had an ultrasound and was so excited to find out that she had turned! She was head down in my pelvis - very good news!!! I was really scared to go into labor knowing she was breech. I'm not sure when she turned, but she did! Good girl.

She measured in at 7 lb. 3 oz. which is a good size. It put her at 37 weeks 1 day as oppose to 36 weeks 4 days. All within the margin of error. Everything else looked good too. Her breathing, fluid and all that looked good.

Then we went to see doctor and found out I was dilated to 2 cm and was between 60 and 70% thinned out. The doctor was just telling us that he will be out of town this next weekend and that we should come back friday since he won't be available next monday - then after he checked me he said he'd prefer to see me on Thursday in case I'm very dilated and he can induce me so that he could deliver me rather than me go into labor when he's gone. Sounds good to us. I would much rather him than a stranger deliver her. I'm okay with anyone making sure this girl gets out okay - but I would definitely prefer him. We also talked about what to do in case I go into labor before Thursday so he really thinks it will be soon.

Then, the contractions started, and got stronger, and would not stop whether I walked or sat. I went back to work and gave my boss a heads up. I stayed late to update my job status spreadsheet that we have at work and even wrote a few post-its on things in case I don't go in tomorrow - that's how bad the contractions were getting. As soon as I got home G installed the car seat and I started packing our bag. It's pretty much packed now and the contractions have slowed to almost a stop. If I don't get up they are only every once in a while. If I get up then it feels like a 20 lb weight falls on my hip bones and I start contracting. I've not had any really painful one's, but I really feel like things will happen soon.

At this point I'm really tired. We both kind of had an adrenaline rush after the apt. and I think we both have crashed. I'm excited, but terrified. My plan is to chill on this couch for the evening and we'll see how things go.

And because I don't want to post without photos here's a photo of the super cool pedicure I had when J was here. I picked a pattern and it's not quite like the template I picked from. It looked more like a plant coming out of the corner and G thinks this looks like a skelaton. The background is gunmetal gray - not black like the photo looks like. I love them despite the crazy pattern. All in honor of our little girl's middle name. :)

36 weeks and progress is made

2009-06-30T21:16:00.003-05:00

So even though I'm a day and a half away from 36 weeks I'm going to call this my 36 week post. It just makes it easier.

Things are going well here in very big and pregnant land. My belly size is starting to even surprise pregnant women. I had dinner last week with a friend who is 2 weeks behind me in her pregnancy and she was shocked at the size of my belly when she saw me. Apparently I'm carrying this girl very much out in front of me and and not in my torso at all. In some sense this is nice because literally I'm all belly and haven't gained too much weight in other body parts, but this also makes getting up, bending over and most mobility almost impossible. I simply do not know how woman carry more than 1 child in their bellies!

I had a check up yesterday and I'm slightly dilated - about 1 cm, but still very thick. I've been having occasional contractions the last week so things are starting to progress. She's still breech so we'll see how that goes. Next week I get an ultrasound to see her size, position, and to make sure she's ready for the world. If she is still breech then we'll be talking to the doc about our game plan.

This last weekend we had a fabulous weekend in Atlanta. We wanted to have a get away before the baby came but could not go that far away. Atlanta is only an hour and a half from us so off we went. Friday night we checked into our fabulous hotel and chilled for a little while. We took a short walk to a restaurant that a friend recommending and had a wonderful dinner. I splurged and had dessert too. :) Then Saturday we had room service and headed out to Atlantic Station around 11. There was an art show type thing in the park area of AS which was cool - I got some jewelry and we had yummy Italian Ice Cream. We went to a few shops there and then went over to Ikea. Ikea was cool but we didn't find anything we couldn't live without. Oh, except some ribbon... I found some really nice ribbon that I got. Then we headed back to the hotel because I wanted to go to the pool. Lots of people have been telling me how wonderful it is to swim when you are pregnant so I really wanted to do this while we had a pool. Upon check in Friday they told us the pool was closed Saturday but they were running a shuttle to there other location to use that pool. I was disappointed, but figured it was no big deal. Well when it was our time to take the shuttle it was on an extended trip so they paid for a cab to take us to the other hotel. Again - not as planned but fine. We got to the hotel and I almost started crying when we saw the pool. It was so small and packed with people. It looked like a big hot tub with a bunch of skinny, tan, 20 somethings all drinking their beers and margaritas... not really a place for a giant pregnant lady to have a nice swim. But considering the work it took to get to this pool we decided to make the best of it and found a small corner and hung out it. It did feel very nice and luckily the people close to us were a little older and more understanding of how I felt. We were there for about an hour and half when we decided it was time to try to head back and get ready for dinner. Then the real trouble began. This hotel was not going to pay a cab to send us back to the other hotel and again the "shuttle" was on an extended trip and could not take us back. So we were told to tell the cab driver that the hotel would pay them when we got to our destination. Cab driver #1 was not interested in this game plan and really ticked me off. We waited forever because we thought a cab was called specifically for us despite the line of cabs that was waiting for anyone who needed a ride. After more waiting we found cab that agreed to the arrangement and later told us that the other driver was not suppose to have denied us a ride. That paying upon destination was perfectly acceptable. Anyway, this cab driver was hilarious and helped me forgot about how upset I was. At this point I was in tears. I was huge, my makeup was off because we were swimming. I was in clothes but wet underneath since my swimsuit was under them, I was tired, hungry, and I just wanted to go back to our room.

Finally we got there with only 20 minutes to get ready for our very nice dinner that we had reservations for. Amazingly I managed to shower, blow dry my hair, style it, do my make up and get all dressed up in 20 minutes. Luckily the dress fit that I packed but had never tried on and got to wear some of my new jewelry I had bought.

Dinner at The Melting Pot by the way, was incredible. It is simply one of my favorite restaurants and we had such a wonderful meal and evening. I felt more full than I ever have in my life afterwards, but it was so worth it.

Sunday was also a bit of an adventure. We again had room service but just a simple coffee and croissant breakfast - with our favorite Pain au chocolate... yum! Then we checked out and headed to "The Underground" Atlanta. I had been here once before but it was a long time ago. We were so disappointed. We walked from one end to the other and decided it was time to leave. It was nothing but cheap kiosks that sold junk, and nothing interesting. We did stop by the dairy queen there and I got a blizzard though... :)

So we talked about options, did some research online and decided to head to Little Five Points atlanta. Another shopping artsy area that I had been to when I was back in school. Again, we drove through the area and knew it was not what we wanted to do. Maybe this was all cool and fun when we were in school but it just looked like a bunch of junk to us now.

So we talked about options, did some research online and decided to go to our old standard The Lenox Mall in atlanta. We knew we would not be disappointed by the Apple store, Banana republic, Crate and Barrel, and a few other favorites... and we were so right. It was wonderful. G got some clothes and BR, I got some jewelry, a cool (and non-maternity) t-shirt at jcrew, a lamp for our patio and a few other odds and ends. It was fabulous! We stayed at the mall until it closed and then headed home.

It was a wonderful weekend and I avoided going into labor (which was the goal). :)

Since I'm not wanting to do posts without photos anymore here is a picture of some earrings that I got at BR.

And in case you missed my tiny little post below... Ella Grey is my little girls name. :)

Ella Grey that is... :)

2009-06-30T20:44:00.001-05:00

Her name is Ella.

2009-06-13T08:30:00.001-05:00

We decided the name of our daughter at 33 weeks and 1 day of pregnancy.

We love you little girl!

(Middle name to be announced soon - still finalizing but it's a good one! :))

33 weeks doctor visit

2009-06-13T08:15:00.003-05:00

I am so happy to report that I measured right at 33 weeks this time! I also gained 2 lbs. which is perfect at this stage. This does not mean I can go back to my old eating ways, but confirms that my diet changes are right on. I'm getting enough food but not too much of the wrong kind that makes her get big.

To celebrate I had a Dairy Queen Blizzard and it was wonderful! :)

We also talked to our doctor about the breech issue and I was so happy to hear his normal procedure on breech babies. He likes to wait until about 39 weeks and schedules the procedure that turns them and then immediately breaks my water inducing labor. He said the breaking of the water pulls their head down further and going into labor right away usually prevents them from turning back to breech. I've read a lot about how woman have their babies turned and then they turn back and still have to have a cesarean. I know a cesarean is always a possibility but I feel much more like our changes are a lot higher now of me being able to deliver her.

After we had the ice cream we did some shopping. We got a circle mirror for the nursery and also ordered the pleather glider/rocker/recliner for the nursery pictured below. Then we went and saw the move UP. It was a little sad, but still a great movie.

Here's the chair - I know not the traditional glider for the nursery - but I love this chair!

That's all folks!

Work Shower and Birthing Class

2009-06-13T07:40:00.004-05:00

So a lot happened between week 31 and week 33. Last week we had my work shower that I wanted to write a little about here, and then we had our birthing class the Saturday afterwards.

My shower was so very nice. The people throwing it know how I feel about pink and know my personality enough that it was perfect for my non-traditional having a (girl) baby ways. First of all - check out this invitation...

Is that simply not the coolest baby shower invitation you've ever seen!!! I almost cried when I saw it... probably more from hormones but still. In case you didn't notice the circle pattern on the left hand side is my bedding. The lady that did this had seen my bedding online but like 3 months ago so I was shocked she remembered the pattern.

I also loved the decor of the shower - like the one we had here it was circle themed and nothing had little pictures of babies or ducks on it. :) The third best and probably most important thing was the cupcakes. We had the same cupcakes that we ordered for my other shower and there's no way to put how incredible these things are. Even though I've been watching my sugar I thought it very important to enjoy my shower and eat the cupcakes!! Yum.

Everyone was so very generous. I would say we probably had about 40 people come at one point or another and I got everything from my pack n' play to diapers. This little girl is definitely well provided for!

It was a nice change of pace at work and it was so nice that for a few hours we could sit, talk, eat and just have a good time. I don't think anyone from works reads this blog but if they do or do in the future - thank you for everything!!

.......................................................

So a week ago we had our birthing class. It was suppose to be a week FROM today, but we ended up getting a small job that day and making money is a priority so we rescheduled it. (No this is a job I do not have to work - only G). :) But changing the date was a little sad because it was suppose to be our first Saturday that we did not have a wedding or anything and we could have slept in. Oh well. We slept in today and it was wonderful!

Anyway, the class was interesting. We took the one that was a crash course - 9 to 5 on a Saturday and learned it all at once as oppose to regular classes. This made for a very long day and even though we had snacks and took lots of breaks - it was exhausting! There were probably 7 couples there, all having their first kids and it was nice to be with people that are going through a lot of the same things we are. I was happy to see that at least when it came to girls - no one in the group had picked a name yet. I think that says something about how hard it is to pick names these days. I think with all of the books and websites on names it's actually harder. Before you could think of a name and like it and go with it. These days people (or at least us) feel like they have to a big process to pick the best name. I know we probably extended this process more than others but still - it's hard!

The class covered everything thing from basic pregnancy stuff, to how the baby comes out and then went in to what to do when the baby comes and all that could be involved with delivery. It was nice to hear about cesareans and I also found out that our doctor is one of the best for cesareans. The lady doing the class also talked about how they turn breech babies so it gave us some hope. The girl who was sitting next to me said she was breech too but her baby's cord is around her neck so chances are they will not turn that baby and only do a cesarean. Speaking of the girl next to me... I've been clumsy lately always dropping things and I managed to drop my open bottle of water right on her foot. That is a great way to get to know a stranger - spill water on them!! I felt so horrible. I don't think she cared very much since she was in sandals and it was just water - but I felt like an idiot.

Anyway, after class we went to the hospital and got a tour of it. It's very nice and both the old rooms and the new rooms are roomy and nice. This is a hospital that they do everything in the room so the baby is born there, stays there and there's a couch for dad. They only go to the nursery if something goes wrong or if you really want a break then they can go to the nursery.

The class made the whole thing more real. Now that we've gotten ourselves into this - she has to come out. I hope things continue to go well so that we can deliver at this hospital (if you are high risk you can not) and that everything goes okay in general.

Sorry for the long post - but I wanted to get caught up!

33 weeks and all is well

2009-06-10T17:45:00.006-05:00

So I've been meaning to post a lot lately, but have not taken the time and now this post is going to have to address a number of things because so much has happened!

First of all. Here are some belly shots taken at 31 weeks.

The real Caslon does still exist all though she's having a hard time with the transition of getting a sister.

We had an ultrasound right at 31 weeks to check a few things and it was nice to be able to see her as a bigger baby. She was pretty lazy during the ultrasound, not wanting to move her feet from her face. I can see how that position is comforting and you wouldn't want to move?!!? She's in a ball and seems to like things that way. She's also breech which isn't an issue yet, but I have a feeling will be considering she's been that on every ultrasound we've had and now that I know it's her head that keeps sticking out on my upper stomach I know that she's like this most of the time. I had thought it was her bottom, but no, she likes to be head up. So much in fact that I've noticed when I lay down, she turns so that she's side to side in my belly - again so she's head up. We'll see how things play out. If given the option I think I'd like to try turning her because I'd like to deliver her, but if we don't have that option or if we turn her and she goes back - I'm totally fine with a cesarean.

Interesting fact #2 from this ultrasound is her size. She is big. They measured her at 4 lbs. 5 oz. Now my nephew was born at 31 weeks and he weighed 2 lbs. 14 oz. so when the lady doing the ultrasound told us her size our jaws fell to the floor. She measured almost 2 weeks big.

We met with the doctor afterwards who was very happy to see that my fluid levels were so good and that everything looked so good and when he got to her size you could tell he was surprised and doing some calculations in his head... and the laugh that came out was not comforting to me. He put it diplomatically by saying "that would put her bigger than normal". He looked back at my sugar numbers and I guess I was 2 points away from coming back for the second level gestational diabetes test and was pretty much borderline on that. Considering that along with her size we talked a little bit about my diet and how I could watch my sugar and carbs more to try to slow her growth some. All I can think about now when I see ice cream is 10 lb. baby and that's enough to keep me away. I would not be surprised at all if like the first couple weeks after she's here I have a huge calorie feast before I worry about losing weight because I'm missing the simple pleasures of pregnancy now (ice cream, brownies, ice cream on top of brownies, Dairy Queen blizzards, chocolate at work) I could go on and on.

So I have a big breech baby who is still untitled. G's starting to like Untitled as a name, I have to encourage him that it is not a suitable name. I'd consider Lorem as a name (Lorem Ipsum is what placeholder copy is called in the design world) but if she went into the design industry, she would never live it down.

So we'll see how things play out. She needs to turn and not get too big for me to be able to deliver her the way I'd like to, other wise it's a cesarean for us and that's totally fine.

I think I'll leave this post as is and do another one for some of the other events the last 2 weeks. I'm getting tired! :)

Pictures from the Shower!

2009-06-01T19:37:00.005-05:00

I finally have some pictures to put on here! I was looking back and old posts and realize how I used to always have photos when I posted. Somehow I got out of the habit... how boring! Anyway. I'm going to do much better about that!

Here's a preview of our houseful last weekend when everyone came for the shower.

Since the whole family was able to come on both my side and G's - we had lots of kids! Here's M putting rings on my head. I think this is actually the day before the shower.

M & A playing ball together. M is our niece on my side and A is our nephew on G's side. I'm not sure if this makes them second cousins?
Oh the cupcakes!!! These are simply the best cupcakes on earth.
Here's what our living room looked like for the weekend. A holding sister R and E (niece on other side of family) hard at work on the wii.
L did a great job with the decorations. I loved the circles and bright colors!
Our living room before all of the people showed up.
Our living room taken over by family, friends and presents!
Some of the kids found out it was fun to hang things from the balcony.
What is a party without a pinata?
Of course some adults can't help themselves from a pinanta either!
And another picture of the cupcakes, well because they simply are the best cupcakes on earth.

30 weeks and a Great Shower!

2009-05-26T09:46:00.004-05:00

So we made it to the shower! Our list of things we wanted to get done was cut slightly because the deck took so long to stain. It's still not all done, but at least G got all of the main parts done. The great thing is we got things ready for everyone to come in and we had a great shower.

We finished cleaning the house Friday - luckily I got off a little early which was nice because I was starting to feel sick and as the day went on my energy ran low. Then on Saturday we started welcoming family. G's parents and sister's family got here first, followed closely by my parents and then my siblings and family came shortly after. Before we knew it the house was taken over with folding chairs, kids, and tons of food brought for the shower - luckily we turned my laundry room into an extended pantry.

We took a short trip to the store to get flowers and a few things saturday before we ordered pizza for the crew and had yummy ice cream cake for dessert. We wanted to celebrate all of the birthday's in may while everyone was here. Both my brothers, G, our nephew A, his dad, and one of my sister in laws birthday all run within a month of each other. There were a lot of names on that cake!

Sunday felt like a whirlwind. We got up and the ladies (sans me) started cooking and getting the food ready. We came up with a backup plan for seating since it was raining outside, and put that in place only for the rain to stop about 30 minutes before people came. We went ahead and set up tables outside as well so that if people wanted to go out they could. Plus at least the kids could go out and play with bubbles. We were disappointed though - especially for the kids. We had lots of fun yard things lined up for them, but with the grass so wet it just didn't work out. We did get to do the pinnata for the family though so that's good.

The house quickly filled up with more people than I ever thought we would have in this place and I was trying my best to talk to people that I knew didn't know anyone else. The food was absolutely delicious! Everyone that contributed to the menu and the preparation deserves a medal because it was wonderful. The cupcakes we got for dessert were fantastic! Thanks to G's sister for the very early drive to Dalton to pick those up. And before we knew it me and G were sitting there opening a plethora of gifts. People were all very, very generous and so very thoughtful with the gifts. We are well taken care of that is for sure!

After that people started to leave and then the clean up began. I was surprised how quickly so much furniture in our house ended up in our bedroom to get it out of the way, and then how quickly things were all back in place. We relaxed the rest of the day and then on Monday we seriously crashed because by then we were feeling pretty sick. All family left by noon on Monday and I don't think we left the couch other than to get some food.

I can not say enough how grateful we are for everyone's hard work, preparation, and gifts for this shower. It turned out to be a much bigger thing than I initially thought it would but it was so very very nice. So thank you all for everything! This little girl - yet to be named either Ella or Campbell is very lucky to have such a wonderful family.

luv you all!

29 Weeks and needing to take a picture!

2009-05-16T06:20:00.005-05:00

So it's been way to long since I updated this page! I keep thinking I'll do it when we take another belly picture but since that hasn't happened and since it may be a little bit with our schedules lately I thought I'd at least write about all that's been going on.

I'm on a major countdown... not the baby countdown, the "I don't have a million things on my list and have to push myself so hard countdown". This morning we are preparing to shoot a wedding which will be approximately 11 hours. I love shooting weddings but 11 hours on my feet is starting to feel like a lot. Tomorrow we'll be spending the day working in the flower beds and outside trying to get things ready for the shower next weekend. Every night next week we have things listed that need to be done in preparation for everyone coming. We're mostly focused on getting the deck done (it's halfway stained), the flower beds weeded and mulched, and then the house picked up and cleaned. We have 2 things left to do in the nursery - finish painting the birds and put up the new ceiling fan and we'll be done with that. Then the saturday after the shower we have another wedding and after that is when I can relax. Needless to say I'm counting down these next two weeks looking forward to a couple months of slower life before someone changes everything.

I know you are all wondering how the name thing is coming... well we are close. Very close. We are down to 3 names yet and I have a feeling we are both leaning to 1 of them. Last night I dreamt about her and her name all night - and it was the one I'm starting to lean towards. I was introducing her to people and sorts. It feels weird to be so close to her name. Different than I anticipated. Although that's what this pregnancy has been all along - different than anticipated. Nothing bad, just the reality of it is different than I imagined it.

So, the pregnancy since 25 weeks. We had a little drama but again, everything seems fine now and soon we'll know for sure if everything is fine. Two weeks ago today actually I passed out twice after having breakfast. It was pretty scary never having passed out before. I didn't like loosing the ability to see or speak. After I came to the second time a short phone call to mom made it clear we should head to the ER. So we did. We were there about 8 hours before coming home. They first sent me up to labor and delivery to make sure I wasn't in labor and that the baby was fine... I was not in labor and the baby was fine. :) Actually she said the baby was perfect... something a mama loves to hear! :) Then we were sent back to the ER where they started running lots of tests. They hooked me up to monitor my vitals for a few hours while they took an eternity to get my blood drawn and the blood results back. Everything seemed fine until the blood test came back and that my D-dimer was high. This indicates that I might have a pulmonary embolism. Normally they would send me to have a CT scan but being pregnant they left it up to us because of the radiation exposure. After the doctor talked to the OB he came back and said he learned that the D-dimer is thrown off because of pregnancy and that the OB would prefer to just check me out the next day. We went and everything looks okay - my blood pressure is a bit low and I'm borderline anemic. That combined with being dehydrated was probably the cause of things. Nonetheless they drew my blood again yesterday to double check my D-dimer hoping that it was not so high. We'll see how that goes.

Other than that things are good. Baby is measuring about a week big... which I'm not sure if that means she's coming early or she's going to be big. I'll find out next time. She's always measured about 3 days big on ultrasounds so I guess her measuring a week big now is not that much of a difference. I'm just curious as to what it means. Her heart-rate is always good and her activity is great. I can start to tell what body part is what, and even a little bit of how she is sitting in me. Lots of fun. On the flip side I can no longer bend over without losing my breath, grunting, and having to hold on to something. Plus sleeping lately has changed - I don't sleep as well as I used to because I have a hard time getting comfortable. Oh the joys of pregnancy.

That's all for now folks - belly pictures soon I promise!

25 weeks and still growing!

2009-04-20T20:44:00.002-05:00

So I'm 25 weeks and 4 days today and considering I feel how big I feel, I still feel pretty good. Baby girl is very active and today for some reason she's active very low which is not very comfortable.

I'm definitely looking pregnant now considering how many strangers say things about the baby or me. Last week I was in a store for work and the guy that worked there offered me half of his sandwich. I found this pretty funny. I could not believe a stranger just offered me half of his food just because I'm pregnant! Today I had lunch with a few other ladies from work and one of them is also pregnant. She's due any day now so she is also obviously pregnant. Some lady stopped her car in the parking lot as we were all getting into a car and commenting on how "cool" we looked being pregnant, wearing nice work clothes, having lunch with ladies, and climbing into a Jeep. ??!?! Seriously? Short of climbing into a Jeep that did not have handles in it, having lunch with people I work with and dressing appropriately for my job seems to be a pretty normal thing and didn't warrant someone stopping their car to comment.

No new progress on the nursery since my last post. I've working on the design for the walls on the computer but we've not moved to the walls yet. We are making progress on the name front. We now have an official list! It still has like 35 names on it (down from 67) but hey it's a list! Our goal is to have the name and nursery done by Memorial day weekend for the shower.

That's about it for now!

Praying for Stellan

2009-04-20T19:54:00.002-05:00

So I've been following MckMama's blog for a few weeks now and I'm beginning to use Twitter as well and have been following her on there - which really just means I get to see lots of updates on how little Stellan is doing throughout the day.

Outside of family and friends there are only a couple blogs I've been following but this one is at the top. Little Stellan was diagnosed with severe heart problems when he was just 20 weeks old in the womb. Through the grace of God he was born perfectly heathy - his little heart had healed. Now that he's 6 months old he's having lots of heart problems all of a sudden and tomorrow or even possibly later tonight depending on how bad he gets they are doing a very risky surgery on him.

If you go do her blog check out her name gallery and you can see that people all over the world are praying for this little boy.

I am one of them.

The Crib

2009-04-05T20:57:00.007-05:00

Here are some pictures of our crib and the bedding! We had a wedding yesterday that we recovered from today and so the only thing on the agenda was putting the crib together. We were a little concerned because so many people have talked about how hard it is to put a crib together but we were excited to have it all done in about an hour. I went ahead and put on the bedding even though none of it is washed just so we can get the full effect. I think it looks nice and am very happy with how the nursery is coming together.

Thank you SO MUCH to those that contributed to the purchase of the crib and bedding. It was very kind and we really love them!

We also bought a couple things online today: a very modern bouncer which is supper cool, a lamp that will match the bedding, and the monitor. I left the monitor up to G to pick out since I had no idea which one I wanted and since it involved technology I thought it could be something I just let him pick out. Well after all of his research he decided on one that is technically not a "baby" monitor but a surveillance system! It's actually pretty cool. It's the same price as video monitors and functions the same, but with better range, video quality, and apparently the frequency of communication is different than our other wireless stuff so there won't be any interference. Leave it to a guy to pick out a surveillance system over a baby monitor! I love it.

Here's some pictures of the nursery & bedding.

Here are some pictures of the lamp and bouncer we ordered. We got them from AllModernBaby.com which does not let you set up a registry!?!? Other than that I love this site which is also where the crib came from.

Pictures!!

2009-03-31T21:03:00.004-05:00

Finally as promised... here are some photos.

Here's a picture of the nursery. The wall is not quite as bright as this photo... but very close. We did 3 walls in the light brown and 1 wall in the red/raspberry color. You can also see the antique dresser this photo that I've been debating on keeping. I think since we are having a girl I'm going to keep it in here and use it for her.

Here I am at 17 weeks. These are the first 2 pictures I posted on FB when pregnant. I was just starting to feel like I looked pregnant rather than fat.

Here I am at 22 weeks and 3 days. I've grown a lot and definitely look pregnant now. I'm to the point that when I see or meet people who didn't know I was pregnant are brave enough to ask if I am.

This is my favorite belly photo so far. I think I look like my mom here... or maybe I feel like a mom. :)

The past 2 days

2009-03-27T20:21:00.002-05:00

So some of you may have heard that I've had a bit of a scare the last 2 days. Yesterday I felt fine while getting ready and actally remember thinking to myself that I was so greatful this pregnancy has gone smoothly because I know how quickly things can change. Well on my drive to work I started noticing some pressure/tightness and pain that I had not felt before and was concerned about. It was low and did not feel like "belly growing pains" that I've felt from time to time. When I got to work I talked to the girl who sits next to me and is also pregnant about what I was feeling - she thought I might be having Braxton Hicks. Anyway the day went on and it didn't get worse so I didn't think too much of if. That is until about 4 or so it started getting worse and I decided to call the doc.

I talked to the nurse - actually 2 nurses and they felt like it was round ligament pain aka "belly growing pain" and as long as nothing else was out of place or I was having contractions that it was normal. She encouraged me to try to get the baby to move around a little. She's been banging me in one specific spot (very low) for the last day or so and may be making that area sore. She also encouraged me to stay off my feet as that tends to help round ligament pain.

So I left 30 minutes early somewhat upset because talking to her did not make me feel better and I couldn't concentrate any longer on work.

I had a very lazy night on the couch and when I woke up this morning it seemed quite a bit better. As I was getting ready though and on my way to work I could tell the pain was coming back but it did not seem as bad.

Shortly after lunch I found that I was actually bleeding a little bit and this pushed me off of the edge. I called the doctors office again and had to leave a message for the nurse. I was really freaked out and between texting mom and talking to the girl who works next to me decided that I needed to leave and just start driving north since I work about 40 minutes from the doctors office. Once I hit the interstate the nurse called me back and said to come on in... she didn't have to worry I was already on my way! G met me at our exit and we went up together. It took a little bit to see the doc since they were squeezing me in but we saw him around 4.

I had felt her move all morning and even on the way to the doc's office I felt her so I knew she was at least alive and I had a feeling that she was okay but my body was not.

Anyway, her heartbeat was good at 160 bpm and after a full exam everything checked out okay. Doc said that I have some blood vessels that are breaking on the outside of my cervix causing the bleeding. He said it's actually good that there's such a strong blood supply to this area and that the blood vessel thing was nothing to be concerned about. He said I may see some more spotting because there was another one that looked like it was about to burst. As for the pain... he thinks that is just "belly growing pain" and it was just a coincidence these things happened at the same time.

I'm going back in a week to have another ultrasound done just to double check fluid levels etc. but he thinks everything seems okay.

I still have a fair amount of pain but feel tons better knowing everything looked okay. A little bit of a scare but all turned out okay. I was glad to be able to feel her kicking through out the ordeal. If I couldn't have felt that I would have been a basket case.

On another note I realize I still have not posted any belly pictures - I promise to have some this weekend!

Our crib was delivered today so that is exciting. Although I'm not ready to put it together... I was hoping to have the room painted but I don't know if I can stop G. He's ready to put this thing together. We'll probably do a little painting tomorrow depending on how I feel so I'll put pictures of that up too.

That's all folks!

21 weeks and progress is made

2009-03-22T10:43:00.005-05:00

Yesterday we bought the paint for our little girl's room. We are going to do a light cocoa brown on 3 walls and then a "red" on the wall where the crib is going. Below are the colors we got.

Then on the walls we are going to paint lighter and darker shades of the above colors in different size circles and circle like shapes, like radiating dots and rays. It's hard to describe but I'll post pictures once we have the design done. I think we also might get her name done in thin vinyl letters and put it on the wall. I'm really excited. The variations of the circles and the name were G's idea and I loved it as soon as he showed me what he was thinking. We probably won't start painting until later this week or next weekend. I'm hoping the red goes okay - the guy at the paint store said we did not need a primer. I'm hoping since this red has a lot of white in it that 2 coats will do the trick.

In addition to buying the paint we got new bamboo blinds for the library- now- guest- room. G accidentally did something to the blinds that we had in there and since he doesn't really like plantation blinds we used it as an opportunity for something different. I think they'll look nice in this room since the walls are a gold color and there's a lot of dark furniture in there. Here are the blinds we got.

We also want to do a different window treatment in the nursery but are going to wait until the paint is all done to decide what we are going to do. We ordered the crib and changing table yesterday which was very exciting. The crib should ship soon but the changing table is back-ordered until may. Hopefully it comes in in may and is not pushed out any further. It was suppose to be in next month but the date was moved out a month. We probably won't be using that one upstairs in the very beginning anyway so if it's later on it'll be okay. We are going to get a bassinet and small changing table to keep in our room for the first few months. I figure I'll turn the changing table into a station that'll hold things like diapers, wipes, blankets, burp cloths and onesees. This way while the baby sleeps with us I don't have to run upstairs for the essentials. That's the plan at least - we'll see how things go.

We have a lot to do but I feel like we are making good progress. Now that I know it is a girl I'm thinking about keeping the dresser that is in that room. It's definitely more feminine so I think that's why I want to keep it now. I think we can make everything fit.

We are going to take some more belly photos either today or the next couple days. I'm going to put on here the one's we took before as well as the new one's since this is pretty much turning into a pregnancy journal. I've definitely grown and actually feel like my belly is bigger than others at this stage. I think it has a lot to do with my size. I'm short so she doesn't have a lot of room to go other than out. This also means I'm going to be very big by the time this is all said and done... yeah!

No names yet but we are working on the list. I'll be sure to post as soon as it's decided. :)

20 weeks and embracing Pink!

2009-03-14T18:47:00.003-05:00

So I'm 20 weeks and 2 days today and yesterday we found out that we are having a girl!

I think I was geared up for a boy so it's hard to say how my reaction was. I'm happy, but apprehensive. For so long I've been very anti-pink/frilly/girly and I know we are about to embrace so much pink that it's going to come out of my ears.

I can control what we buy, but I can't control what others do and as she gets older I'm sure she'll want pink everywhere. I think by the time she is asking for it/wanting it though I should be over this - plus like all parents we will want to just make her happy.

We went to target after the ultrasound to pick out an outfit for her. There was this little section of Dwellstudio clothes that were supper cute and modern. I liked them but there was a problem - even modern there was still a lot of pink. G picked up a top and was like - this is cute and I agreed even though it was pink. :)

So after we picked out a few cute pink things and I came to the realization that we are having a girl which means pink.

Outside of the color I'm very excited about having a daughter. Even though I was leaning towards boy, I've always been able to visualize what my daughter might look like and be like which I've not been able to do with boys. I'm sure she'll be different than I imagine but I like to dream about playing with her, reading with her, teaching her to shop online, and paint. G will have to teach her how to draw - I'm not really that good at it despite the art degree, and I'm sure she'll learn how to use a mac at age 2 and all about typography. Before we know it we'll have our own little photographer as well I'm sure.

So writing this has shed some light on how I feel. I'm excited that I'm going to have a daughter, but not so much about having a "girl" which when they are baby's = pink.

We picked up some paint swatches for the nursery today. I think we are going to do a cocoa color on 3 walls and something else on the wall where the crib will be. Probably a shade of red and I'd like to do something with circles since the bedding has circles on it. We have the bedding already which is kind of funny. It went on clearance at Target and not wanting to not be able to get it if we did have a girl, I went ahead and bought it knowing we could have returned it if it was a boy.

Everything else on the ultrasound looked great. Her brain, spine, organs, heart, blood flow, face all looked good. She was supper active during the ultrasound probably due to the chocolate I ate before hand. :) We saw her sucking her thumb and even holding her foot up to her face. I'm sure she was trying to put a toe in her mouth since it was right after she did this that she put her thumb in. It was supper cute and we are figuring out a way to post the ultrasound online for you all too see. Her heart rate was 162.

I'm feeling okay in general right now. I've gotten over the fact that it's hard to get up etc. I figure it's part of it so just deal with it. Well take some more belly pictures here in a week or so - I've definitely grown. I did have a couple of dizzy spells this week which the doctor thinks was a drop in blood sugar since both times it happened it was an hour after I ate and after I just had cereal which has a reputation of making your blood sugar spike and drop. I'm going to get a different type a cereal and try to make sure I get more protein in the morning as well.

Here are some links to some of the stuff for out little girl.

Bedding

Top that G picked out at Target

Sweater that I picked out at Target

18 weeks and slower than expected

2009-02-27T21:13:00.003-05:00

Greetings! So 18 weeks has brought surprising changes. Even since last week I've noticed a huge difference in my ability to get up out of a chair or off of the floor and my feet are moving farther away from me so that makes it harder to put shoes and socks on. I can also tell a noticeable difference in my belly in just this last week so I guess this is what happens as the baby grows.

One really exciting thing is that I'm pretty sure now that I can feel the baby move. I thought I felt some things for the last couple of weeks but was never convinced it was the baby as opposed to other bodily functions. Now that I'm starting to feel tiny little pops I'm pretty sure that this is baby because I've definitely never felt these things before. Lots of fun!

So even though rolling over in bed is a job... I'm happy. Only 2 more weeks to find out what we are having!! :)

16 weeks and all is well

2009-02-14T17:37:00.002-05:00

So Thursday was 16 weeks for this little one and I had my appointment yesterday. This appointment was short and sweet. I only gained 1 pound which is okay at this stage especially since I gained 8 last month. After measuring me and listening to the baby's heartbeat we were out of there. The heart rate was 150-160 and doc said it was perfect! It was a sweet sound since the last few days I was nervous and anxious to hear it.

We opted out of testing for downs, spina bifita, and some other disease I don't know the name of. We had decided since knowing changes nothing for us it was better to enjoy the pregnancy and cross what ever bridge is ahead when we get there. I can't speak for G but I left wondering if it was the right decision. I've always said that I wouldn't test for those things but now that I'm pregnant it would be really nice to know that everything is okay. The decision is made though and I'm going to stick with my instincts on it.

I'm excited about our next appointment since it will be 20 weeks and we get to find out the gender! We'll also have a nice long ultrasound and be able to leave with a dvd of it. I'll try to figure out a way to post it on here.

I'm starting to look a little more pregnant now rather than just a girl with a gut... which is nice. I need to post some pictures on here so you can see the growing bump. I can't feel the baby yet, but hopefully I'll feel some flutters soon.

Today is Valentine's day and I'm so happy because our house is finally back to normal - meaning all Christmas stuff is down, put away and we've cleaned up from the mess. G is also making a wonderful dinner tonight and I'm really excited about it. I believe it is pineapple and teriyaki chicken with rice. I'm doing dessert and am making chocolate fondue with strawberries, bananas, and pound cake... yum!

Hope you all are having a great V-day today!

14 weeks and counting

2009-01-31T09:51:00.005-05:00

Well, I think I'm out of the darkness of the first trimester now. I haven't been sick in weeks and my energy has definitely come back. However, I still having hit that "extra burst of energy" that I've read about that comes in the second trimester. I'm just not falling asleep the minute I get home from work anymore! I've started excercising too which is nice - prenatal yoga and my elipitcal make for a fairly good workout.

Now the goal is to start getting this house ready for a baby. For those who read on FB about me leaving Christmas decorations up... that's really the truth. Every year I think we'll take them down earlier, and every year then end up still up February 1. This time I'm leaving them up an extra weekend since G's parents are coming over and always love to see how we decorate the house. They are coming over next weekend so I guess it will be valentines day when we take this all down... which seems about right for this house! I think part of this is made worse by my work schedule since every year at this time I'm traveling a lot.

Anyway, I'm not going to tear the guest bedroom apart until the Christmas stuff is put away since that always makes our house a disaster area and stresses me out. I think we've figured out what to do with most of our furniture except for the dresser I have in the guest room. Right now I use it as a linen closet and am afraid I'd regret getting rid of it. The finish of it was ruined during our move here - but if re-stained or painted it could be really nice. Or I could just sell it on Craig's List and buy something new that would match the nursery. Not quite sure yet... feel free to share your thoughts on the matter!

I'm excited that I get to pick out a new bed spread for the guest bed since it's moving rooms. I want to get something more masculine, with browns, and maybe orange. My floral quilt will not look good in it's new home. I have a few bedding collections picked out for the nursery but don't want to choose one until we know what we are having. A lot of them are gender neutral, but still - I want to know what this kid is before I can visualize a nursery. We have the crib and changing table picked out - here a link: Baby Miro Modo Collection. Happily we agreed on this decision very quickly which if you know us we tend to spend months deciding what to buy.

Anyway, That's about it for now. G's at a photo shoot this morning so I get the house to myself for a bit. Cleaning here I come!

Good 12 weeks

2009-01-16T21:40:00.002-05:00

I had my 12 week check up today and everything looks really good! We were so excited to see this little one squirming around jumping and so on. The size and everything looked really good - about 6.1 cm from head to rump and a heart rate of 176. I thought that was a bit high but she said since it was so active at the moment that it was probably due to the activity and that it was a fine heart rate anyway. I tend to have a high heart rate so I guess it's possible this kid will too.

All of my labs look good and I found out I have a blood type of O Positive so that's good.

2 months to go until we find out what this baby is. I'm having a hard time not saying "he" or "him" so I'm kind of feeling like it's a boy - but who knows!

I managed to gain 8 pounds since last month which really surprised me. I didn't think I had gained that much especially since I had been monitoring my gain. I guess I need to cut out those fried food cravings... and get off of my butt and on to my elliptical more. Now that I'm starting to have more energy again I'm going to start exercising.

Anyway, I just wanted to post an update. Meanwhile it's freezing outside - even in Georgia!

A few pregnancy thoughts

2009-01-10T21:31:00.005-05:00

So I was pulling out of Chick Filet and about to go on a hour long drive to a meeting I had and grabbed one of those yummy fries they have and I thought for a moment, I want to write the company and thank them for having such good food. The thought made me laugh and it got me thinking about a number of different things I've been experiencing so far in this pregnancy that are solely pregnancy experiences - some good and some not so good. So here's a list of my thoughts as of late.

You Might be Pregnant If:

- You want to write the company of your favorite craving restaurant to thank them for having such yummy food.

- You can get up in the middle of the night to pee and not really wake up because you do it so often.

- You swear those fat pants that you dig out of the back of your closet will fit you in this "transition" stage... and they do... as long as you don't button anything.

- Those elastic bands that hold your hair up now hold your pants up too.

- You are the first one in the office to start asking who has lunch plans and who wants Mexican.

- When people state that you must be thrilled to be pregnant, you think, I would rather not feel the way I do while saying "yes we both are!"

- You consider how much it would cost to pay someone to pretty much do everything that you are too tired to: cook, clean, buy groceries, do my toes, do my nails, shave my legs....

- It makes your day when you declare that you are craving soft chocolate chip cookies and 1 hour later someone walks in with a cookie cake for a colleague... and you don't feel guilty for having 3 pieces!

- You realize that pregnancy feels more like a strength competition between you and the baby and lately the baby has been winning!

These are all the thoughts I have for now - I'm sure I'll have more later.

11 weeks, 3 days and counting

The News is out

2008-12-28T21:17:00.003-05:00

So,

I haven't posted on here in a while and that's because it was easier to say nothing than what I really wanted to talk about. I'm pregnant! I found out as soon as I got back from Canada so that's pretty much taken over my nights since I've been back. Actually it's the tiredness that's taken over my nights. By the time I get home from work I'm dead. G's been good about making dinner for me and breakfast since I found out pretty early that I need protein first thing in the morning. I have to say - he's been a fabulous husband during this pregnancy, and the rest of the time too. :)

I'm 9.5 weeks along and everything is going well. We are due July 30th. We saw the doc at 8 weeks and got to have a small ultrasound. We saw the heartbeat and the size of baby was good. I've not been feeling too bad. Mostly tired and hungry. If I get too hungry I start to completely break down - I get weak and feel sick. So I've been eating something every few hours which keeps me feeling okay but concerned about weight gain. I haven't gained a lot yet, but more than I wanted too this early. We'll see how things go, maybe once I get past 12 weeks I won't have to eat to keep off the nausea.

I have another apt. at 12 weeks and another ultrasound so we are looking forward to that.

We've started taking a couple photos - we took one when I found out I was pregnant, and another at 8 weeks. We'll do another at 12 weeks and depending on if I'm actually "showing" or just gaining weight I'll post them. I seem to be gaining the weight only on my waistline which is good - maybe people will start to think I'm showing when it's really just fat. :)

Anyway, now everyone knows so I can talk about it. I'm sure over the next 8 months I'll have lots on here about pregnancy, getting fat, and so on.

So here it starts....

Oh Canada

2008-11-22T12:06:00.002-05:00

So despite riding through a snow storm from Buffalo, NY to Toronto Canada - I really loved being up there. At least I didn't have to drive in it. :) It was so beautiful and since they have some lights up it was like I got on a plane and landed in Christmas.

Canadians are great - seriously, I think this group up there is one of the best groups in our company. They are all very serious about their jobs, very hard workers, but also very friendly. They welcomed me with open arms and even gave me a "tuque" which is a hat. I had a great time with my new Canadian friends and even though January is a bad time to go to Canada - it looks like I'm going to go back. Not many people from Georgia like to fly up there for there big convention in January but since I liked being back up North I said I would. I also could tell they felt a bit neglected. They seemed so grateful that I was there it makes me wonder how many people go up there to help them.

It's good to be back home though and today we are going to go look at a specific car that I'd like to buy... we'll see how things go. The bank I want to use is not open on saturdays so it may be Monday before I have this car in hand, but we'll see. Nonetheless I'm excited... eh? :)

Some of my new music

2008-11-02T19:21:00.003-05:00

If I find in myself desires nothing in this world can satisfy,
I can only conclude that I was not made for here
If the flesh that I fight is at best only light and momentary,
then of course I'll feel nude when to where I'm destined I'm compared

Speak to me in the light of the dawn
Mercy comes with the morning
I will sigh and with all creation groan
As I wait for hope to come for me

Am I lost or just less found?
On the straight or on the roundabout of the wrong way?
Is this a soul that stirs in me,
is it breaking free, wanting to come alive?
Cos my comfort would prefer for me to be numb
An avoid the impending birth of who I was born to become

Speak to me in the light of the dawn
Mercy comes with the morning
I will sigh and with all creation groan
As I wait for hope to come for me

For we, we are not long here
Our time is but a breath, so we better breathe it
And I, I was made to live,
I was made to love, I was made to know You
Hope is coming for me

Speak to me in the light of the dawn
Mercy comes with the morning
I will sigh and with all creation groan
As I wait for hope to come for me
For me

C.S. Lewis Song

By Brook Fraser

Getting my Music Back

2008-11-01T18:17:00.002-05:00

So. I got a new computer last weekend. I've been so busy I forgot to mention it. I've been using G's for almost a year now and last weekend when we were in Atlanta I convinced him it was time I have my own. :)

I've enjoyed getting all of the settings the way I want it and organizing things the way I want them, but the best part is my music. Having an iphone is great, but I wasn't using it to it's capacity because I didn't have much music on it. Having all of my music on it meant downloading all of my cd's on to a computer and G's hard drive was full on his computer so I wasn't able to have that much on my phone. Well now with my new computer I've gone through and downloaded ALL of my cd's and set up different playlists, one of them being for my phone. I now have all of my favorite music on my phone that I can play at work, and when I get a thing for my car, I can play them in my car too. I feel like I got all of my music back. I've had all of the cd's but kind of set them aside and only listened to a few in my car. Plus I got to organize all of them on the computer and you know how much I love to organize!!

I also had a fun morning shopping at Kohl's early bird sale this morning. I really needed some new shirts and now I have them!

Kohl's is great.

Goodbye Vicki

2008-10-27T17:33:00.003-05:00

My friend Vicki died on Saturday afternoon. Around the time we were celebrating Hannah's 3rd birthday she took her last breath in her sleep. The night before had been bad and the hospice nurse told them that morning that she would probably pass away that day.

I got to work this morning and was making my way to my office when I ran into someone I knew and said good morning. She turned to me and said "you knew Vicki right". I knew immediately with her use of past tense that she had passed away. I passed another person that saw me talking to her and wanted to confirm that I knew. So on this Monday morning I hadn't even got to my desk yet before I was in tears. My old boss came over because she knew I was close to her and came and talked to me for a while and I was able to break down a little. I found out the funeral is tomorrow so I got permission to leave for that and tried to concentrate on work.

I feel selfish. I think about her, and I keep thinking about what I'm losing. I've lost the friend I could go to for a hug whenever I needed one, and the lady who makes the best strawberry cake I've ever tasted in my entire life, I've lost a friend. So is morning nothing more than coming to terms with what has been taken away from us? I guess that's what "loss" is... having and then losing. It just sometimes feels so selfish. I think about her family, and her only child--a 23 year old who was raised solely by her and is hurting so much more than I am and I tell myself to suck it up - my pain is nothing compared to what they are feeling right now. We tell ourselves we celebrate their life, but it feels more like we only long for them in ours.

So I guess that's what we do. We give of ourselves to others in return for what they give to us. And when they pass, the cycle is broken but we want it back. I would love to give to her, and I would love to receive, but I can not.

I pray she knew how much I cared for her even though I didn't get to say goodbye. I'm grateful to God for minimizing her pain and the longevity of this disease. I praise the Lord for giving us people with such big hearts, and I trust Him for the bigger picture. We don't know why - but we know He's in control, and He has reasons.

Thank you for your prayers for her, if you think on it please pray for her son Chance and her siblings who are all very close to each other.

The last few weeks.

2008-10-23T19:53:00.005-05:00

Have been crazy!!

I finally feel like we are getting back to some sort of normality. We still have things to do around the house but at least my huge piles of things to go though and put back into place are gone. Replacing over half of your flooring is a big ordeal and I see why people only do it before they move in! We do love our new floor although we haven't had a chance to enjoy it to the fullest yet since putting things back have been the priority. G's office is beautiful and I'm so glad we opted for wood in there and are carpet is definitely soft underfoot but the shagginess has taken some time to get used to. It also lays over a little more than we would prefer, but it comes right back up so it's all good. Overall - we are happy.

We had a great weekend last weekend going to Kingsport for G's class reunion although we wanted to stay longer at his parents. We had already bought tickets to see Wicked in Atlanta though so Saturday morning we drove from Kingsport to Atlanta, had a great Italian dinner next to the theater and saw the wonderful play Wicked. It was a very different experience this time having just read the book. I had to let the book go pretty early into the play though because it was so drastically different. I wanted to enjoy the play for what it was - and it is wonderful. The book was good too - just different. We loved staying literally across the street from the theater and then went shopping on Sunday at our favorite mall in Atlanta.

Things at work are getting better, slowly. We are past our big meeting but now we are trying to get things into production for the show season and we are past our deadline so now we are having to have lots of mockups made. We also now have to run everything we do through the legal department which at first I thought was a crazy extra step, but have come to really like it. They catch things we didn't and I love having an opinion that can not be questioned. We have too many cooks in the kitchen at work at times and it's nice to have 1 person that has the final say. By Thanksgiving all projects should be in production and our first show is the week after Thanksgiving and my first show is the first week of December. Oh - and I'm going to Canada!! How crazy is that! I get to go to Toronto for a product tour. They want a representative from the marketing department and my boss asked me to go. I know it's just Canada, but I'm excited!!

Attached is some photos of our new floor... you all need to come see it!!

Some pictures

2008-10-04T12:22:00.006-05:00

We now have the files from our wedding and engagement so I thought I'd put up a few. The red felt sure looks good!!

Thanks to Holritz Photography for the great images.

Happy Anniversary My Love

2008-10-01T11:42:00.002-05:00

Three years ago today we said "I do" in a beautiful ceremony with very pretty red felt underfoot. (thanks to the fam for that! :) ) It was the easiest thing in the world for me to say those words to G, and the past 3 years have been more wonderful than I ever imagined.

Thank you G for your love, personal strength, for the fun we have and for the friendship we share.

I am truly blessed.

Cancer Sucks

2008-09-19T17:27:00.002-05:00

I don't often ask people to pray for things but something is very heavy on my heart and this situation needs prayer. So if you don't mind, please keep my friend Vicki and her family in your prayers.

My Friend Vicki:

My first 2 years at the company I still work for I worked very closely with 2 wonderful ladies. We each had 1 part of procedure and everything we did circulated between us. We got along wonderfully and made more progress in that department than had been in years. My friend Vicki was one of those ladies, and at work you find that the people you work with are either people you have to work with, or you become friends with them, and then occasionally you get someone you really care for. I became very close to her. I always new when I needed to vent, or just to get out of my cubical I could go over to hers and just chat. Even when we no longer worked together I would go to her if I ever needed a hug or someone to talk to. In a lot of ways she reminded me of my own mom, and I often felt like she was my mom away from mom.

About 4 months ago she became very sick, lost a lot of weight, and had stomach problems. After much testing and much concern it was decided that she had Crones disease. Once she started treatment for it she put on a little weight, felt much better and was back to work. Not long after that she started having horrible back pain - convinced it was her medication, her doctor changed it to something else. 3 weeks on the new medication and the same back pain came back. This time the doctor wanted to check out her back. This was about 2 weeks ago. She went on medical leave about this time because her pain was so bad she could not go to work (if you knew the work ethic of this lady you would know the pain had to have been very severe). When they did a back scan they found 2 fractures in her spine that could not be explained, and the doctors were concerned it was cancer. After some tests but no biopsy yet they found a mass in her liver and that became the primary focus instead of her back. Well, the test results from the biopsy in her liver came back on wednesday and we found out yesterday that it was indeed cancer in her liver and that it was secondary - meaning they don't know where it started.

Today I found out it is also in her Gallbladder, Lungs, and they do believe it to be in her lower back. Her pain is so severe she is taking morphine and is in a wheel chair because she can not walk. They have started her on chemo and radiation but still do not know where the cancer started.

Vicki is about 55 I would say - is a single mom to a boy who just graduated from college this spring. She has a lot of brothers and sisters that are taking turns watching her full-time.

Obviously things do not look good. This has happened very quickly and I'm scared of how quickly she could leave us.

I'm sad.

We all know that there are things on earth we don't understand and that we can't change, but I do believe our hearts change when circumstances do not - so that is what my prayer is. I'm praying for comfort, for peace, for faith, for angels to wrap their wings around this woman that I love and to comfort those who are hurting around her.

This time of year

2008-09-13T08:11:00.003-05:00

Well, it's the time of year again at my job where I have this looming deadline and everyone is stressed out about it. We are announcing all of next years major initiatives in just 3 weeks and things are getting rough. This last week I've been writing my own copy on projects which isn't necessarily a good thing. I do an okay job but would prefer a professional to do it. I stayed late to help a client on Thursday until almost 7:30 and I even have work this weekend. Tensions are high so there's more at work complaining than usual and I was accused of some things yesterday that I feel were not fair and even though the only thing I can do is let it roll off of me and forget about it, it was hard and it hurt. The good news to all of this is that it's only 3 more weeks. Once we get past this deadline we move into production mode to get all of these things produced in time for the beginning of show season in December, and then once that starts it's quiet for a couple months.

I'm very happy to have a relatively relaxing weekend - even if I do have some copy to write - we have no other jobs this weekend which is really nice.

I Surrender

2008-09-06T09:47:00.000-05:00

I'm on Facebook.... I've given in. :)

Back to Reality

2008-08-02T11:56:00.003-05:00

Well we got in almost a week ago and are just now starting to feel like we are back to normal. I started the 8 loads of laundry we have this morning and it took us over 2 hours to do the yard last night. We are happy we don't have anything going on this weekend and we can just relax. It was hard to come back and get thrown into a crazy week of work. There is a lot of "restructuring" at work and there is more to come. I'm not worried about my job considering the same guy that let 5 people go yesterday had a 2 hour meeting with me and the lady I work with giving us the long list of things that need to be done by Oct. 1st. They are moving a lot of responsibility from other departments to ours... which I'm grateful that I still have a job, but we are taking on a lot more which can be stressful.

Europe feels like a dream now. We got into Paris about 9 am on the 17th. After finding our hotel in the beautiful streets of Paris we were able to leave our luggage but could not check in until 3. We we started walking and stumbled upon these beautiful gardens with rows of trees that were in front of this Palace. I'm not sure which palace it was but it was beautiful and everyone was enjoying the gardens. There were picnics everywhere, people taking naps, kids playing - I loved how these grounds and the grass was open to enjoy. We hung out there for a while and then had lunch in a small cafe near the park. We walked around a while and then found our way back at our hotel a little after 3. We were so tired so we unpacked and took a nap... waking up to the dark. We ended up sleeping 3 hours. So we got up, got dressed and a map and made our way to the river. We were at the river and looked up to see a big church, and looked at our map to find out it was Notre Dame. I wish we could stumble upon things like this in Ringgold!! Anyway, we had cheese fondue in a sidewalk cafe there near the river and enjoyed watching the people of Paris. While in Paris we saw the inside of Notre Dame, the Pompidou center, the arch de triumph, the eiffel tower, the Musee d'orsay, hung outside of the louvre on the lawns, saw the inside of the louvre (including the mona lisa), Santre Croce (another church) and the hill of Montmontre all the while having great food and wearing our feet out. I found a great little painting on Montmontre - all of the artist hand out there and sell there work.

After 3 nights in paris we were on an overnight train ride to Florence.

We arrived in Florence around 8 in the morning and again found our way to the hotel. The streets of florence were nothing compared to the streets of paris. They were tiny, smelly, and a little shady. We were so happy to finally find our hotel and that it was a nice one. The one we had in Paris was also very nice - very modern and perfect. Florence was more romantic. We had a 4 poster bed with curtains and a beautiful marble bathroom. Again we could not check in but we left our luggage and got a map. We were pretty uncomfortable considering we were wearing what we were the day before plus had slept in them on the hot train. I never really slept, which also meant I was very tired. Anyway, we got a map and looked for a park... but soon found out the parks in florence are just like the streets, run down and disappointing compared to paris. Nonetheless we sat down for a while after having a small breakfast and tried to figure out our game plan. We wanted to try to work in a day trip up to Venice and after reviewing the map thought we could if we did some things that day. So we got over being tired and smelly and started site seeing. We saw beautiful churches in florence, went down to the river and all the while shopped. The shopping in florence was fantastic. The leather and jewelry were incredible. I got a bracelet and purse. We had reservations to the Accedemia museum which has the David in it for the next morning. We got there and that museum was very disappointing. The David was not - it was beautiful, but the museum was tiny and not kept up very well. So since we had extra time we decided to try to go to the other museum as well - the Uffizi. The Uffizi is the busiest and largest museums in italy so we knew it would take a while to get in. We found out we could either stand in line for 2 hours to get in, get reservations to come back in 2 hours and go in, or come back at 8:30 pm and have an hour to walk through the museum free. Hmm, exchange rate... money going out everywhere - we go with the free option! So we saw the gardens of the Medici family which again... were run down and disappointing. But after a nice dinner we got the museum and got to see almost the whole museum in an hour with barely anyone there.. for free. Quite Exciting!!

The next day we went to Venice. It was about 2 1/2 hour train ride so we arrived about noon. We got a map and made our way to the other side of the city to San Marco Square - where all of the action is. We had a nice lunch near some famous bridge right on the grand canal and were in San Marco by mid afternoon. The shopping there was great as well. I got some glass jewelry and got the pendant that Mom asked for at this one particular shop in San Marco. G got a real nice pen as well there. After taking our time going back, including a fun little Gondola ride we got back to the train station at around 8 pm. Only to find out there were no more trains back to Florence!! So after a small breakdown we got a ticket for the next morning and found a hotel reservation desk at the train station. Luckily we got a great room right next to the train station for a great rate. Plus we were right on the grand canal so we could open our windows and see & hear the canal. We had a nice dinner right on the canal as well and end up having a nice night in Venice while our luggage enjoyed our room in Florence.

The next morning we had a 6:45 train to florence which gave us enough time to get to our room, pack and be ready by checkout. We were on our way to Rome by noon.

Rome was great. We got there and found our hotel right away which was a nice change. We almost could get to our room, but still had to wait an hour so we left our bags and walked around and got something to drink. We got to our final room on the trip which was also very nice. Nothing fancy but large and clean. We recouped a little then went out and went to what we thought was the Trajan column, trevi fountain, and ended at the Pantheon. We had dinner in front of the pantheon and got to see it with the lights on it in the evening. After we made our way back to our hotel we figured out our game plan for the rest of the trip. The next day we spent the day in Ancient Rome which was pretty cool, and ended at the Colosseum. We ate just a block down from it and came back in time to see it with the lights on it and G got some great pictures. Our last day in rome we went to the Vatican city and saw st. peter's basilica. Then we went around and went to the Sistine Chapel. We loved walking through the rooms that Raphael painted and ended our trip in the Sistine Chapel. Short of the people working there yelling at people for taking pictures - it was the perfect ending to our trip. Truly spectacular.

We did some shopping on our way back and had a couple hours to relax in our room before we got ready for dinner. We dressed up and ate at a roof-top terrace which gave us a great view of rome at sunset. We had a great dinner and got the treat of some fireworks in the distance too!!

We left the next morning and are pining to go back already!

It's good to be back to the US dollar, water that is free, and our own bathroom and bed, but we loved Europe and had a great time.

Pictures!!

2008-07-12T16:50:00.006-05:00

Here are pictures of our new lattice-work and flower-bed around the back deck. It took me a while but I'm so happy it's all done and really like the way it looks. Our next project is to stain the back deck... we'll have to wait until it's not so hot.

Here are pictures of the new cabinet above our washer & dryer. We moved the shelf that was there behind the door and I keep all of my cookbooks on it and store extra hangers there. This way we can get all of our unused towls off of the dryer where I used to store them since we moved in. Much improved. Thanks to G and G's dad for installing this!

It is done!

2008-06-23T20:32:00.003-05:00

I finished our flowerbed tonight with G's help. I was tired and didn't want to work outside but tonight was the only night this week I could do it. I have some time Thursday night so I'll take some nice pictures to post plus a picture of the new cabinet and bookshelf in our laundry room. Hope you are all well!!

Back to blog world

2008-06-21T09:21:00.002-05:00

Sorry for being gone so long. We've had shoots every day that I wasn't working or we were traveling or had company since... I think April...

We did have Grant's parents here last weekend and had a wonderful time. We relaxed and had a nice weekend together.

With all of the shoots and such we are still not done with the latticework/flowerbed but we are almost there... :) The latticework is technically done but we have 2 pieces we weren't very happy with the cuts we made and since we had some left over we are going to replace them. The flowerbed is 90% done. I have 1 small section to put in monkey grass as a border and then mulch and then do the same around the gazebo and then we are done. I'll definitly take some pictures when we are all done. We may get it done today before our shoot tonight.

I also now have a cabinet above our washer and dryer to store my towels in. I'll take a picture of that too. eventually. :)

With all of the shoots we have we are a little behind in getting the Wisconsin pictures ready. We'll get then done and somewhere for everyone to seen as soon as we get a chance.

Hope you all are well. We are looking forward to being together on the 4th.

I promise to get flowerbed & deck pictures up soon!!

Happy Mother's Day!!

2008-05-11T19:23:00.002-05:00

To all of the mother's in my life... Mom, CRT, Lauren, Betty, Beth & Grandma.

You are all amazing people and should be proud of the wonderful children you are raising and have raised.

love you all!!

still planting...

2008-05-04T19:57:00.003-05:00

I now have 3 sides of the deck done, and the 4th has the plants where I want to plant them, but I'm waiting on that side because the lattice work right there will require quite a bit of work. We have the lattice work now and soon will be putting that up underneath the deck to cover up the open bottom. After we put that up I'll mulch and plant monkey grass to form a border. Our neighbor has a whole bunch of monkey grass and has told me I can have it.

On the left side when you walk down the steps I've planted a couple ferns, an azelea, hostas, and a gardenia. On the front part I have a couple hydrangeas, coneflowers, black-eyed susans, dasies, and a couple indian hawthorn shrubs. Then on the right side not yet in the groud I'm planting rododendruns, hostas, and a new to me plant - helleborous. Yesterday I got 6 Clematis vines for 50 cents a piece that I'm going to plant to climb up the posts on the gazebo thing

This has taken a lot out of me and I'll really be happy when they are all in the ground and it's done. I've been wanting to do this since we moved in and I wanted to get these in the ground here before it got to dry this summer. So I'd say we are 85 percent done - at least with the planting. The lattice work is another project but we plan on doing that soon.

Yesterday was mostly committed to our other project - the garage. We failed to take a before picture so I'll try to describe it's state. You know those tv shows where they come in and organize people's disaster areas? The one's when the camera walks through the house you say... people don't really live in those kind of messes! Yea, that's our garage, or at least was. We spend most of the day taking everything out, we actually never got EVERYTHING out because the sun was setting, but most things out and floor swept. We also got our shelves up and a lot of the big tools hanging. This week is going to be focused on the garage, and hopefully the lattice work on the side where I need to put the plants in the ground. G's parent's are coming next Sunday and we want to have the brunt of this all done by then.

Anyway, so to say the least my body is tired and I'm gaining weight at some crazy rapid pace. I think the hard work makes me so hungry and I just don't care about what I'm putting in my mouth right now. Don't worry... I'm only eating for 1. I don't want to give anyone ideas here! :)

So, we'll definitely take after pictures of the back flower beds and garage and hopefully we'll be done with some of these things we never thought we would get to. Other than this we've been having a lot of shoots, and a lot more on the way especially this month.

That's all for now!

Planting

2008-04-17T20:10:00.002-05:00

Tis the season!!

We started last Saturday with our bank in front of our house. We planted 70 tiny ivy plants on the bank in hopes that they will take over and in the future we won't have to mow or weed-eat this impossible bank. I ordered them online since we needed so many and were able to get them pretty cheap - they were just tiny one's in 1 inch pots but they seem to be doing well.

Then after our freeze I headed to Lowes and bought a handful of new flowers. The project this year (other than the front bank) is to put in a flower bed around the back porch. I got a bunch of hostas for 3 & 5 bucks, some purple sage flowers already on clearance for 2 bucks a piece and 4 butterfly bushes to dress up our woods for like 6.50 a piece which for BBushes is cheap. Plus Lowes had a 10$ off coupon so I was very happy to get all that I did for what I spent. I"ve put in all of the butterfly bushes and dug up 1 side of deck. It'll be a process since I'm working on the evenings and have to stop when it gets dark. It's like therapy though - I love it.

Everything seemed to survive the freeze alright. I covered some things but everything looks fine. It was not near as bad as last years late freeze.

Not too much else going on here. We've been busy with photo shoots and our other jobs, but all is well.

Can't believe it

2008-03-30T10:44:00.002-05:00

We have our plane tickets for our trip to Europe this summer. :) We are flying into Paris, spending 3 nights, taking an overnight train to Florence, Italy for 3 nights, and then going to Rome for 3 nights and coming home from there. Even though we've been talking about this since we met practically, it doesn't seem real. I'm so excited!! We are going in late July for 10 days. My boss approved my extended vacation, we've marked those days off of our business calendar and are making the rest of the plans for the trip now. It's a lot harder planning a trip to a different country but I know everything will turn out great.

We had a sweet wedding yesterday in Knoxville. The couple met in PT school and were reffered to us by another PT couple we shot last year. We found we really like this group of people. They are a lot of fun and all seem to have their priorites in order. I loved the fact the bride put on her garter and said "I don't like how this feels, I'm not wearing this" and she took it off, that was it. So many brides would freak out and make someone go try to find her a new garter last minute or something.... They had some of the sweetest vows I"ve heard (they wrote their own) and they both had most of the congregation crying with them during the ceremony. It was the type of couple and day that really makes us feel lucky to do what we do. To share a day with people when love, family and friends surround them and get to document those emotions for them feels like such a previledge and more meaningful than sitting behind a desk all day. Even if we did get home at 1 in the morning this morning. :)

That's all for now folks.

Happy Easter!

2008-03-23T16:36:00.002-05:00

Hope you all had a wonderful Easter. We've had a nice relaxing day taking a nap after church. I have yummy food in the crock pot for dinner and am enjoying the beautiful weather.

We found out friday that G's sister is having a GIRL!! We are all excited. Now we just have to wait for Lauren's announcement and we'll know what's on their way in August.

Yesterday I felt like making cookies and doing something different so I spent a while flipping through my books. I remember making pinwheel cookies with mom one time and I wanting to make those, but the only pinwheel recipies I could find included dates or nuts that couldn't be excluded so I decided I would come up with my own recipie. I used a pinwheel date recipie for the cookie part but for the topping I combined brown sugar, cinnamon, and a little nutmeg and ground cloves. I spread it over the cookies and rolled, then put in the fridge just like I had put down a date topping. Well a couple hours later when i got them out to cut them up something dawned on me. All of the recipies that involved pinwheels had a wet topping and I had created a dry one, so when I was cutting them everything was falling apart. I did my best to salvage them and my second log was not quite as bad. They actually did better after I cooked them - they stuck together more, although barely. They taste good though, kind of like shortbread with cinnamon. Anyway, that was my adventure for the weekend.

Talk to you all later!

Some new favorite lyrics from my new Nicole Nordeman CD.

2008-03-18T17:09:00.002-05:00

Someday all that's crazy
All that's unexplained
Will fall into place

And someday all that's hazy
Through a clouded glass
Will be clear at last

And sometimes we're just waiting
For someday

We are born with a lingering hunger
We are born to be unsatisfied
We are strangers who can't help but wander
And dream about the other side

Every puzzle's missing piece
Every unsolved mystery
More than half of every whole
Rests in the Hands that hold you for someday.

Someday...

A funny book, A new space, Recycled books, and being on tape

2008-03-18T16:24:00.002-05:00

I haven't had an update to anything in a while so I'm combining all my latest events into 1 email.

I'll start with the recent book I finished. "Julie and Julia" which is this funny book about a woman who is 29, married but no kids, working a temp job as a secretary and feels like she's in a slump in her life. So she decides to cook every recipie in Julia Child's "mastering the art of french cooking" in a year and starts a blog about it. It was pretty funny and by the end of the year she was becomming famous and ended up with a book deal. A lady at work handed it to me one day and told me I needed it to read it. Language is not that great in it so I wouldn't recommend it necessarily - but it was amusing.

We rearranged our living room! We decided we wanted a change so we rotated our couch and rug so that when you walk in the door the little chair is in that corner and our couch now separates the living room from the dinning. It's nice to face the front window now that it's getting prettier outside and we have more light. It's a nice change. I'll get some pictures and post them.

Las weekend we also cleaned out mt. boxalot in our garage. We were barely able to get all of the boxes (broken down) and the stack of books that we were taking to the trading book store into both of our cars. We made it to the recycling place in time before they closed and filled up their cardboard container with all of ours! Then we went to McKay's book store which is fabulous! We took in the equivalent of 2 boxes of books we didn't want and got 80 bucks! If we just wanted store credit we could have had 140 bucks in credit, but we'd rather have cash. We also bought the second and third Pirates of the Carribean - both under 10 bucks. Used, but in good condition. I also got Nicole Nordeman's new CD which I've been wanting for a while for only 8 bucks. A very sucessful trip!!

Being on tape. Okay, today I was suppose to drive to NC for a meeting but my boss went instead so I was sent to have a video shot about some of our new products. My boss wrote the script which was about a minute (although felt like 5) and I got to this fancy studio where I had someone do my makeup, help me pick out which shirt looked best and then ran through like 15 takes before I did it with no mistakes. I was soooo nervous. I had a hard time calming down and getting into what I was reading, but over time I got better and I think it turned out alright. It was my first time in front of video so hopefully if I have to do it again I won't get so nervous. Once it's done I'll send the clip to you all.

That's about it. We are busy with photo shoots, and spring cleaning/organizing but looking forward to nicer weather. We are also enjoying all of the rain. I may be able to keep my flowers alive this summer. :)
Hope all is well with you all.

Got Shoes!

2008-03-10T17:18:00.006-05:00

Saturday I took Lauren's advice and headed to the store, which you all know I love so much. I figured I can research online all I want, but I want a shoe that feels good on my foot so on I went.

I ended up buying a pair of Clarks. These were candidates a number of times, but it wasn't until I tried them on did I fall in love with them. Sooo comfortable.

Then I headed to the clearance rack and ended up with 3 more pairs!! They all were under 20 bucks (except for the clarks). I think this will take care of my shoe needs for quite a while! Maybe this is why I don't go shopping much... I have no self control. :)

pulled the trigger

2008-03-05T20:36:00.004-05:00

I ordered 5 & 6 and will try them on and keep the one I like the best. I ordered them on Zappos which has free shipping and free returns... makes it easy to try them on and send them back!

Thanks for all of the input!! Even though I didn't pick them, I do like bows on shoes. :)

looks alone

2008-03-03T23:50:00.006-05:00

What do you think?

not much

2008-03-02T21:50:00.002-05:00

going on here...

We shot a wedding yesterday - it was very pretty. The ceremony was at Berry college at the Frost chapel which is like 100 years old and all stone. It was very pretty however we didn't have much time for photography, but we did the best we could. The reception was downtown and reminded us a lot of our reception. It was all done by 6 so we went and had Japanese there in Rome before we came home. Today we've been recovering and I did laundry - nothing exciting. Oh, I did fix one of those "just dump it in your crock-pot and it's done 8 hours later" and it was pretty good - chicken and noodles. I made biscuits to go with them and the combination was really good.
I've spent a couple hours researching comfortable dress shoes today. I need something with a heel, but not too big of one, and dressy for weddings. I also don't want thoses that look old-looking, some of those comfy one's look like grandma shoes. I found some Clarks, naturalizers, and some new one's called Fitzwell, Ecco, and Born. If anyone has any experience with any of these I'd love to know. I'm willing to spend a little more on these because I'm on my feet sometimes 10-12 hours shooting weddings, but need to look nice so they are a work investment for me.
That's about it for now!!

1 more on the way

2008-02-20T18:28:00.002-05:00

I found out today our cousin Linda is expecting. She's due in October - no date yet, it's still early.

They seem very excited and I know she feels like she has what's she's always wanted.

A year of babies!!

Happy Valentine's Day!!

2008-02-14T08:26:00.001-05:00

Done traveling

2008-02-12T21:07:00.000-05:00

I've finally recovered from coming home from Vegas sick as a dog and I'm very happy that I have no trips on the calender! :)

I got groceries tonight... I think the first time I've been to the store for serious groceries since before new years. We had made a few small trips but just to get by. We've had a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches lately!

Vegas was fun. Despite being sick I saw 2 Cirque de Solei shows that were absolutely amazing, had lots of delicious food, but after a couple days there I was so ready to go home.

I don't have much to post about. It's raining outside and G's grading classwork. It feels good to be home.

Change

2008-02-06T21:12:00.000-05:00

Glad you all liked the cut & color. I'm still getting used to it - so are others I think. I get a lot of compliments but it makes me a little self-conscience. I feel a little dramatic... I used to like that, but I guess I'm getting older. :)

News Concerning G's Sister

2008-01-24T08:20:00.000-05:00

Please read this exerpt from G's sister's email. She sent this out yesterday to the family and worded things better than I ever could. Please keep her in your prayers as things have changed some with her pregnancy.

"Because of the difficulties with my last pregnancy, I am working with a high risk ob group. They have been doing a number of tests to determine what might of caused the problems last time and what might be done to prevent them from reoccuring.

In the process, we found that I have a genetic defect, heterozygote prothrombin gene mutation, which causes clotting problems and has been linked to preeclampsia and premature birth. It is a clotting disorder that impacts the vein system and as such does not appear to have anything to do with the history of stroke and heart disease in our family. It is linked to blood clots forming in the lungs and legs.

As for me, they have started me on twice daily blood thinner injections for the remainder of my pregnancy. They feel as though, along with the blood pressure drugs I'm on, this should help prevent what happened last time from happening. It's still considered high risk, and I will be monitored closely. But I feel good about things, and we're very excited to meet this new little person."

I'll keep you all posted on things - I think the general consensus is that we are all glad they found the cause of the preeclampsia and feel like they can prevent an early birth this time around. It's a little bit scary, but the more informed she and the doctors are the better.

No Phone

2008-01-21T08:11:00.000-05:00

Mine Died. :(

I'm getting a new one tonight - but until then if you need to get a hold of me leave a message or call G - I'm checking my messages periodically.

No Computer

2008-01-18T11:39:00.000-05:00

Mine Died. :(

So I can either take my work one home every night or share G's. We are looking to buy a new one but until then my internet time is limited.

Some News... Wandering Heart is due August 21st and G's sister is due August 24th! It looks like August will be a busy month!
We also found out the reason G's sister developed Pre-eclampsia with her first child and their is a chance she could develope it again with her second. Apparently she tested positive for a genetic disorder which causes the blood to clot. This explains all of the heart attacts they have on thir dads side of the family - there's a good chance G has this disorder as well. I guess she only talked to the nurse at this time and is going in to the specialist Tuesday - I'll keep you posted. From what we heard this does raise her chance of having complications but since they know this early there are things they can do to lower those chances. Please keep her in your prayers.

That's about it for me - we had some snow 2 nights ago and it looks like it's going to snow tonight as well - we'll take some pictures.

Whirl-wind

2008-01-06T18:46:00.000-05:00

Our Booth...

We survived another bridal show yesterday! After family left on Tuesday we knew we needed to get our act together to get ready for the show. We wanted to change a few things about our booth and only had a few days to pull it together. Wednesday we bought the bookcase but couldn't take it home since it didn't fit in the car. It also would not fit on Thursday with G's car (his back seat folds down), so G had to pick it up with the truck we rented on Friday. Also on friday I was able to get some old carpet samples - enough to have carpet for our booth. So Friday night we drove up to the convention center with only 45 min. of set up time left. We had Sat. morning but we were worried about how long the carpet would take and how hard would it be to put together the bookcase. Luckly we had enough time to do both before we were kicked out. That night we put together all of our photos in frames, a bunch of new albums, and a few new printed pieces as well.
Saturday morning we were up early and on our way to the convention center with another truck load of stuff. We worked hard for a few hours and still had enough time to change and have something to drink and eat before the doors opened at noon.
We felt the show went well. We had more traffic than we did at the last show and we hope to have a few bookings from it. We'll see! We both agreed as did others that our booth looked great and we really feel we have what we want it to look like for a while.
It took us 2 hours to get everything taken apart and before we were able to get a cart to get our stuff out to the truck. Then we had to unload everything into the house and return the truck back in chatt. that same night.
I was upset because we use G's desk-top as a table there and since it's a solid door we've stained and finished, it's very heavy and almost more than him and I can lift. Last time we had a friend help us so they did the door. Anyway, when we were setting it down here in the house, just inside the door it slipped and hit the floor pretty hard. Luckily it landed flat so the damage was minimal...
This morning we got up sore and tired and after we recouped some we worked most of the day on putting everything back in it's place.
G has his first day teaching tomorrow so he's getting ready for that, and I'm debating on laundry...
Anyway, that's our weekend.

A Post

2008-01-03T11:35:00.000-05:00

Well, before my blog gets highjacked I thought I would write.
We've had a busy but great Christmas and New years. I went to California to travel for work a few days before the first group of family came in and G was a huge help in helping me get the house ready. G's family came in on the Friday before Christmas with a big announcement. His sister is expecting in August. We had a few days of eating, playing games, watching movies, and enjoying being together before Christmas and then had a nice Christmas eve dinner before Santa came. We were also worn out from playing with "A" who is in a stage of requesting his playmates, place, and of course "now". Lots of fun though! Christmas day was fun - it was the first one we've spent at our house since we usually are traveling to others so that was nice. Then before we knew it the house was empty and the cat was grateful to be let out of our room.
I worked a couple half days while we got the house back to clean and ready for more family. Mom & Dad, and Wandering Heart's family came over on Saturday with another big annoucement - that she too was expecting in August. August will be busy!!
We enjoyed being together, eating, playing games, watching movies and a little shopping. Plus we got to play with Bear who was a joy to have over. New years eve we had a nice meal and stayed up late playing Apples to Apples - a great game! And then welcomed in the new year with a toast and a kiss.
Before we knew it again our house was empty and I was on my way back to work.
We picked up the "Furminator" last night and got rid of most of Caslon's loose hair. She liked it - the way she likes getting brushed. The only problem is we couldn't use it around her neck becuase she has some scabs. Once those heal though we'll clean that area too. We were amazed afterwards that we could pet her without getting a handfull of loose hair in our hands. I think it really made a difference.
We also picked up some things for our booth at our next Wedding show on Saturday. I think we learned from the last show what we needed to do to step it up some and I think we feel that we will have a better presentation this time around. We have to get ready for that tonight and set up tomorrow night with the show saturday.
Then I'll have a couple days of down time before I fly out to Dallas for work for the rest of next week. We have a very busy January, and the rest of the winter is starting to fill up too.

Anyway, I know this is nothing exciting, but at least there's an update.

Christmas is here!

2007-12-02T20:42:00.000-05:00

Here are some photos from our weekend of decorating. We bought the tree Thursday night, I wanted a bigger one, the one we've been putting up was the one I had in my tiny apartment. We got a Wispy Willow pine which has some of the needles frayed and when lit looks like there's snow on it. Very pretty. We put the tree up Friday night, and did other decorating and the outside yesterday. I'll post a picture of the outside once we take one. :)

Full Circle, and then...

2007-11-05T20:38:00.000-05:00

So after almost 2 years of trying different churches here "in the country", about a month ago we decided we would go back to the church we went to when we were dating & engaged. The minister there is also the one who married us. We always thought it was too far to drive, but lately we've felt like it was worth the drive. We have not joined yet, but we feel certain this is our church home now. After all that, we came full circle.
We were there yesterday morning and it was a great service. The minister's message was powerful and the whole time I was thinking, yea, it's definitely worth the drive. Then the service ended and he got up and when he saw that the broadcasting light was off he said he wanted to speak just to the church family. He read a letter stating that he was accepting the position as President of Reformed Theological Seminary.
I was so sad. We are going to continue to go there, and feel confident they will find a good replacement, but we are disappointed.

ISTJ

2007-10-16T19:05:00.000-05:00

Another good, but sad movie

2007-10-13T17:24:00.000-05:00

After having a lazy morning I finally started cleaning and doing laundry. We also put in the movie End Of The Spear. I know Tech mom remembers when this actually happened and we all know the story, but this movie is worth seeing. It was so well done and just really good. G looked up the story online and said the movie was extremely accurate.
Highly recommend.

Busy Day

2007-10-06T20:45:00.000-05:00

Today we got the lawn done, laundry done, organized the attic and....

Did anyone else know you can put a shower liner in the washing machine??? I read it on the label but thought that was crazy until it got all mildewy right away and I'm tired of replacing it so often.

I went on line and read that you can if the label says you can and to put it in the washer with a couple solid white towels for balance and add a cup of vinegar and a cup of bleach. Do the load all with cold water and then run another load right after that with just detergent. Hang it back up to dry and not only does it look like new... it smells nice too!

Good Movie

2007-10-06T20:38:00.000-05:00

We saw this movie last night.

Sophie Scholl

CRT, I think I liked your play better. They were so similar but the movie was almost too much to see. I cried straight for the last 15 minutes. There's nothing like seeing someone getting into a guillotine in the 20th century.

What's your next play going to be?

The last few weeks

2007-10-02T20:47:00.000-05:00

We've been busy!

Let's see, the weekend after the show G's parent's came for the weekend. We went to the Battlefield and learned more about the battles that happened around here during the civil war. Then we went to downtown Chat. the next day to walk the artsy district. We had lots of fun and enjoyed the visit. We also talked about the piano that may reside in our house sometime in the near future... :)

The next weekend we had a wedding on saturday. It was a beautiful wedding - a few challenges - we were not able to enter the sanctuary during the ceremony, but it turned out really nice and we have great images. The next day I flew out to Greensboro, NC for a whole week for work. I spent the week and this huge photo studio that shoots rooms (for the carpet). I worked with a great team of designers, photographers, and felt it was a very productive week.

I got home Friday night and we left Saturday morning for Asheville for our Anniversary. 2 Years!! We stayed in a hotel right in the artsy downtown area. It was fun to walk out of the hotel and see shops and restaurants all around. Saturday we pretty much just enjoyed downtown Asheville. Sunday we went to Chimney Park which was just 30 minutes away. We hiked, saw the waterfall there, had lunch and went to the top of the rock which was a gorgeous view. Then Monday we went to Biltmore. That place is something else. It was so beautiful. Talk about money being spent right and left. Quite the experience!

We got in late last night and I went back to work today. Work is very challenging right now. After next week it will be better but we are in the face of a lot of deadlines and we are cutting it close on some projects.

G just finished making some popcorn so we are going to snuggle or cuddle (it's the same to me Grace:)) and watch a movie.

That's about it. Thanks for the notes on my last blog and for the happy anniversaries!

First Show

2007-09-09T19:22:00.000-05:00

Today was our first Wedding show. We set up our booth yesterday - which we started designing just last week - we procrastinated big time! We changed designs a few times because of time limitations, but felt we had a decent looking booth. It wasn't the fanciest or the most expensive of looking booths - but it looked nice, classy and most importantly - it felt like us.
The show was good - not a ton of people but we talked to a lot and a number of them seemed really interested. We'll see how things go, but we feel like it was worth it. We also met some other great photographers and had some great conversations. We are going to start getting more involved in the photographers community now that we have debuted.

I was standing in heels for 7 hours so my feet are up, we ordered pizza, and are crashing on the couch tonight.

Vacation Photos

2007-08-31T12:17:00.000-05:00

Here's a gallery of the photos that you can download high resolution versions of. It's a little slow...

Vacation 2007

Here's a fun slideshow of splashes!

Splash!

Our Room

2007-08-25T09:55:00.000-05:00

this is cool...
It may take a minute to load but it's neat. You can zoom in & out as well as spin around the room. The "double take" words are just the watermark for the software.

Room VR

Birthday Present

2007-08-25T09:35:00.000-05:00

Something I've always wanted... finally we found it at an affordable price.
G had this all set up when I got home from work the first day back from vacation.

Yummy...

2007-08-22T18:57:00.000-05:00

Today at lunch I went out with 8 people from work. 4 of us got to the Mexican restaurant we meeting at and sat down, got our drinks and started munching on the chips and salsa. About 3 or 4 chips into it the lady to my left said "something just crawled out of the chips - what was that". We moved some things around and there was a roach on our table that came out from the basket of chips. We got up so fast it wasn't even funny. After eating at another restaurant I called the Health Department to report it.
fun fun... Needless to say that place is off our list of places to eat!