A Busy Month of May

Here is a recap of the more exciting things we did this month.

A VERY busy weekend

My parents came to visit for part of the weekend. My brother graduated on May 2^nd so they wanted to see him walk. After my doctors appointment/sonogram we net up with my parents for lunch at Atlanta Bread Company. I took the day off for the appointment and to visit so the whole family was able to enjoy our time together. After lunch we chatted at my parent’s hotel room for a little while and then went home to nap. Josh is loving this pregnant stuff because it means we take naps at least once a week if not twice. Later Josh went off to finish a job and I went with my parents to see my brother walk. It was so weird seeing my brother graduate. It is still hard to think of my little brother, who tagged along with me and my friends for so many years, growing up and being ready for a career. The next day, after Josh and I did a little grocery shopping we met up for lunch again. We went to my brother’s favorite, TGI-Fridays. This visit was so relaxed. Most of the time when we go home it seems like we never have enough time to spend with anyone. Between seeing both of our parents and our friends we are worn out by the time we head back to Gainesville. After lunch we said our good-byes.

Our day was no where close to being done though. We got home got on our swim suits and went to Jen and Joel’s Cinco De Mayo party. Ashley and Matt were in town. They had stayed with us earlier in the week but it was nice to see them again. We didn’t really get to do much other than swim but it was nice hanging out with everyone for a bit at the pool. We left early because Josh’s family was coming into town.

We had a handful of visitors the first weekend in May. Dad Williams had a Barber Shop chorus competition in Jacksonville Friday and Saturday, so the family decided to spend the rest of the weekend with us. We went out to eat at a favorite, Joe’s Place. They have the best salad bar and sandwiches. After a yummy dinner we came home to settle in and watch a movie and eat ice dream. It was a very busy but fun day.

Sunday was a big picnic after church. After service, the congregation went out to the church lawn for a pot lunch picnic lunch. The seating wasn’t the best, since we didn’t bring something to sit on but we still had fun. After the picnic we went home so I could get ready for the Pampered Chef party.

I hosted a Pampered Chef with Ashley as our consultant. Josh and I were able to stock up on some great needed and maybe not so needed kitchen supplies. Ashley had us make YUMMY tiramisu brownies.

Mark moved out the second week in May. We have started converting it into baby’s room, since we will be in this house until December. It has been weird and fun to start. Now our family will grow by one more and this time it isn’t a furry body. My dad said after we ended up with Chang that he wanted the next family member of ours to be pink with soft skin. Looks like he got his wish.

Josh and I went to Janeen’s wedding. She and her family go to church with us. The wedding was gorgeous. She had a garden theme with lots of flowers and real trees and bushes.. Janeen was beautiful and looked so happy. We had a blast at the reception. We sat with Vernine, Mike, Mekayla, and the Crowe family. What great company, we laughed almost the whole time. We, luckily for my tummy, were one of the first tables to hit the food. We had a great waitress. Plus after all the food, Josh and I got to dance. I love dancing. Josh use to take me out almost every month to go dancing. Unfortunately, most of the places around town that you can dance are clubs so people are smoking. Pregnancy and smoke don’t mix well. The great thing about wedding is no smoking! Even though I didn’t have any where near the stamina I normally have we did get to dance for about 2-3 hours all together. I am going to miss not going out and dancing this summer since we normally go out a lot during the summer. This helped me make it a little longer. I know the first mom/dad alone date we have is going to be dancing!

A happy couple

A happy beautiful family

What a cute brother and cute but silly sister

Mom and daughter dancing away

Ready for the bouquet!

Who is going to catch it?

This was my first Mothers Day I could kinda consider myself a mommy. I can’t wait until next year and the years to come. Josh and I were in the nursery with all the babies at church. It made gave us a good glimpse at the future. Three babies… hopefully our four are more spread out in age than the little ones in there with us. After church Josh took me out for lunch. He also gave me a very sweet mom to be card. I also got cards from a couple of my students at school plus two of my friends mailed me cards. I felt very loved this Mother’s Day.

May 14^th was the last Family Fellowship Dinner at church. We will start back up in the fall. To end it with a bang we all met up at a local park/playground and had a cook-out. It was a lot of fun. The weather was nice too. A couple of the guys played basketball against the local kids. It was so funny watching the adults play those kids. I don’t know what the final score was but the whole time I was watching it was tied. Our Bible study group is still meeting but I will miss getting together with everyone for dinner.

Playing basketball- the old guys versus the boys

Goofy kids! I stole these from Kera's Facebook. I had seen them taking taking these pictures while I was watching the guys play basketball. I thought they were so awesome I had to steal them and share.

We had the Bainters over for dinner the next evening. We have been trying to have dinner every other week to plan for the mission trip. Last time we met at there house, this time the came over minus Taylor (she was at a school play or something). It is really neat talking to them about when they first started their family. It is encouraging to see such a wonderful family and think that in years to come ours can be such a faithful and Christ centered as theirs. I have gotten a lot from our dinners and time together. I even have 2 great recipes that I can wait to try out from Linda.

Thailand mission yard sale went great! With all the donations from our church family and friends we were able to make a little over $600. That is enough to pay for half of one ticket. Josh, Linda, and Taylor were out there setting up at 6:15 and the people started coming. We keep selling until around 2pm. Darrell and the Fairrows came over to help with the garage sale. They helped us back up the little remainders. I am still very thankful for the amazing outcome.

We invited the Nate, Michelle and their sons over for dinner. After we picked up the lawn Josh started the grill up. The Fairrows are a new family to our church. We really enjoyed spending some time together and getting to know them better. They have such well behaved children. Their boys are very polite and respectful. I think they will be a great influence like many of our other friends when it comes to raising a family.

Alex is a friend of mine at work. We actually are from the same town and Josh and Jessica went to high school with her. I didn’t know her until I started working at Westwood. She is getting married this summer so I gave Alex a surprise bridal shower along with the help of 2 other friends. I was pretty hard to keep a surprise at school and make sure everyone knew about it. She is an ESE teacher like me which means she goes all around campus to different classes throughout the day, this makes it that much harder. She tutors a student twice a week after school, so I had him and his mother help in making the surprise work. He kept his normal tutoring hours after school with her. Instead of pulling out homework for her to help with he pulled out a riddle. When she read the riddle she realized this was not for him to complete but for her. I also got a hold of her mom and she drove down the 4 hours to add to the surprise. The riddles took her all over campus and finally to the media center where we were all waiting. She was so surprised! Instead of most of us getting her gifts we chipped in to help them pay for their honeymoon. Check out the pictures for so great pictures of the bridal dress show we had.

Surprise Alex, its your bridal shower!!!!

Reading the clues to everyone

My team's TP bride- isn't she just beautiful?

Our sexy brides!

The unbiased judges- Taylor (the son of Susan Shrum, the lady behind the boys) and a friend of his

Our brides.. Blow them a kiss goodbye

Memorial Day weekend

Friday night, we went on a double date with Mike and Vernine to movies. It was so much fun hanging out with them. We watched the new Chronicles of Naria movie and then went to our house for many hours. We stayed up talking until 12:30 1 o’clock. We had so much fun!

Saturday was a pool party at the Strodes. Brian and Brandi invited people over for some fn in the pool and snacks. The pool was the perfect temperate. Half of the pool was in the shade so you could get out of the sun if you wanted. The weather was so nice, warm but not too hot.

Sunday, we spend a few hours at the pool with Jessica and her friend, Thomas. The weather was really nice. The pool felt so good. We played with the beach ball Jessica had bought. After cooling down we came home took a nice nap and then got ready to go over to Chris and Jason’s for dinner. We hadn’t spent much time with Chris and Jason in the past month and was long over due for a visit. The guys love it getting together because they like to talk about politics. Chris and I join them occasionally but typically talk about psychology stuff or how life is going.

Monday, Josh and I cleaned the house, he played video games and I scrapbooked. That evening we invited Jimmy, Katie, and Isaac over for dinner. We always enjoy their company. I can’t wait until our little ones are old enough to play together. Later Josh and Mike had a late night video game session. Memorial Day weekend was a great time to catch up with a lot of our friends we had not spent time with lately. Josh and I were starting to feel that drag that can happen. This weekend made it go away. Jesus knows us so well. Fellowshipping with friends is such an important part of having a healthy life and marriage. Josh and I have noticed in our few short years (almost 4!) of being married that our marriage really starts to dip if we don’t make an effort to spend time relaxing and hanging out with our friends, especially our Christian brothers and sisters. We are so blessed to have so many friends who share our love in Christ. They help us grow in our faith and help keep our marriage strong.

A couple of friends of mine got together at work to have little baby shower surprise for me. I felt very loved. We got so great gifts to help with baby when he/she arrives. When I get the pictures I will post them. A friend took them and I am waiting for her to send them to me. .

In other exciting baby news, Josh and I signed up for our birthing classes. We are taking them in July. It made baby coming seem even closer. Oh, I can’t wait to meet this little one that dances around inside of me all day (and night!). I am trying to make sure I keep getting the baby room organized so that with all the traveling we are doing this summer I won’t be caught at the end scrambling.

Sonogram

Sorry everyone this is so late. Once school is out I think I will be better at getting these posts up in a timely fashion.

On May 2, I had my big sonogram. To many of your disappointment we stayed with not finding out the sex of our baby. I know I know, you will just have to wait. It is only about 12-14 more weeks though. Josh and I were with the sonogramist (is that what they are called?) for about 45 minutes to a hour. Baby was being a little difficult for her and not wanted to show his/her face. She snapped the pictures quick we we actually got a good look. I think she got some really great pictures. I laid on my back a little too long and started to feel pretty nauseated and almost passed out. Josh went and got me some water and I rolled on my side for the rest of the time.

Holding on to the umbilical cord.



Baby was very active during the sonogram. It was awesome seeing what I have been feeling.


Hello my beautiful baby!





A little baby foot!

This is my Baby belly bump the day before the sonogram.


And the close up


After the sonogram, we waited for my doctor appointment which was scheduled about a half hour after we were done. Dr. Marichal was called in for an emergency surgery so we were unable to see him. They sent us to see a midwife instead. She was very nice. I feel bad because I don't remember her name at all. She said the baby look fine but she did see an abnormality in the umbilical cord. Normal umbilical cords have three vessels, 2 arteries and 1 vein. My umbilical cord only has one of each. She said that there is about a 20% chance of something being abnormal with the baby. That was a little scary to hear. She said we shouldn't worry because right now baby looks very healthy. The heart looks well developed and pumping blood properly. Everything else on baby looked healthy as well. She said she was going to send the report to Dr. Marichal and make sure he agreed with her. Later I found out he did agree with her. He is going to perform a sonogram himself at 36 weeks to recheck everything. When we got home I looked up these abnormality to find out a little more about it. Of course while we was in there I couldn't think of anything to ask. I found out that the largest percent of the problems with this condition result in a slightly to fatal complication with the heart. Another huge percent of the 20% comes from abnormalities in the GI tract. The other issues are small normally not very significant deformities in the rest of the baby. I understood now why the sonogramist spend such a long time looking a blood flow, the heart, size of the hands/feet(which are normally indications of problem, if they are not normal size), and the brain. There is not much we can do to make any difference with the baby other than pray that we will have the strength to deal with what God presents us. We are very hopeful for a positive outcome. The midwife also said that many babies could have had this abnormality and5-10 years ago we would have never known about it. I guess with technology come good and bad, or at least worrisome. No matter what happens I know God have a plan and we need to be faithful in trusting Him. He blesses us with so much already. We just ask you will share our prayer.

A busy week

Pool
Josh and I spend some time at the pool. It was nice to sit and relax. It is a like to cool to spend the whole time in the pool but I did swim some. I can't wait until it gets warm enough to go swimming everyday. I love swimming and then being pregnant it is that much more enjoyable.


A baby shower
A friend of mine is pregnant, well actually quite a few of my friends are pregnant, but this friend had a baby shower. LeAnne is having a little girl. I made her a picture with Abby's (her baby girl) name on it. She got lots of great stuff including 2 diaper cakes. Lucky for my tummy a couple of our mutual friends are amazing at making dessert. They rest of the food was quite yummy as well.




They hung all the clothes on a clothes line as she opened the presents. This is such a cute idea.


Carrie with the yummy food


The girls


Potato Painting
A couple of friends from church got together to paint. I had a blast. It was so nice to be able to spend some time with friends. We used potatoes to make stamps. All of have children or children on the way. We made pillow cases, onesies, and shirts for our little ones. Vernine even made a matching set for 2 baby showers she is going to. All the projects came out great. I made a gator, turtles, and ducks (although maybe they look more like chics). Here is a picture of my final products. I can't wait to do some more potato painting!

Here are more pictures of the potato painting play date. Thanks Julie for posting them and thanks again for having us all over!

The kids playing while the mom's painted



Zachery "helping" Mommy Vernine out


Mekayla making her masterpiece


The gator potato stamp Desiree and I made.


Brandi hard at work


Some of the finish products

Our little dancing baby!

The most exciting things about being pregnant so far is feeling the baby move. I have felt the baby move inside of me for about 3-3.5 weeks. Last week, I could feel the baby with my hand on my tummy. It is so cool feeling the baby. For about 5 days now I feel the baby almost every single day. Some days it feels like he/she has to be redecorated my tummy with the amount of movement in there. The second, and maybe even better than the first, exciting things about being pregnant is Josh being able to feel the baby. Josh has been super exited to become a dad but until last week the only thing he really was sharing in was the downsides of me being pregnant and taking very good care of me. The look on his face when he felt the baby move was a look I don't think I will soon forget. It was one of those looks I will keep for a long time, just like the look when he said, "I do." I just wanted to share my exciting and mushy news with all of you.

Precious one,
So small,
So sweet

Dancing in
on angel feet
Straight from Heaven's
brightest star

What a miracle
you are!

Spring Break!

Being a teacher some some great benefits. Teaching kids and having an impact on their lives, plus the vacation. Last week was my spring break. It is so nice to get paid to have a week off. I was able to spend some time with friends, eat lunch/dinner with several different friends, work on stuff around the house, spend some relaxed time with my hubby, relax, and visit home to see family, friends and go to a friend's wedding.

While we were home we didn't get a lot of time to spend with family but we got a chance to go out to eat with each family. We went to each families favorite place. My parents and us went to this little French bistro restaurant on the water. It is a really cute little restaurant and everyone ones my parents there since they go so often. We went with Josh's parents to the local Chiese restaurant. I am not sure if this this their favorite or it is Josh's favorite that he always makes everyone go to. ;o) We also helped my parents pick out some stuff for their kitchen. They are remodeling their house so it is all torn apart. It was so fun going to the different stores and lots to pick out granite and tile and such. Josh said he has the designing bug now. He can't wait until we have the chance and money (of course) to do that to a house we own. Josh spoke at our home church in Niceville about the mission on Sunday. Overall we had a great time for our rushed visit.

Jeff (Conan) and Gail's Wedding
Jeff has been a great friend of Josh's for many years. Jeff, or Conan as we all know him, actually got his nickname because of Josh. Jeff is such a great guy. I have know him for about 7 years now. We met Gail when we visited around Halloween. Mark's father married them in his church, well the church that he preaches at in Niceville. It was a really nice wedding not too long but a message everyone can gain something from who is married or thinking of getting married. Even Josh thought the wedding was enjoyable.





After the wedding we all headed to the local Veteran's lounge for the reception. They had reserved a room for the reception. They had a live band, which was good but WAY too loud. Gail's dad played sax (Which is my fav. instrument!) with the band. It was a lot of fun and it was great getting to see a lot of our friends we haven't seen in a while.

Frogs and Duckie

Duckie in my computer chair.




Mark and Josh with the HUGE bull frog.


I thought this would be a great post since Josh and I have decided to do the nursery in a pond theme with frogs and ducks. The duck was made by a friend of ours that I work with. I love the fact it is such a huge stuff animal. The frog was found in our ponds when Josh and Mark were doing the spring cleaning of the pond. He must be doing his job of eating all the insects in the backyard to have gotten that big. Hopefully he lives much longer and keeps up the good work.

Josh raised ducks as a child. They even would sleep with them since they thought he was their "mom" and would cry if they didn't know where he was. I think that is the cutest thing. I have always loved frogs. I decorated my first college bathroom all in frogs. Josh and I also grew up catching frogs and other critters all the time. In the nursery there will of course be green and yellow but there will also be blue and purple. If it is a girl, we will incorporate a lot more dragon flies and butterflies, more of my favorites. If it is a boy, we will have more insects and blues in the room.