Blog Back Log: Showered with Baby Love

Today was my baby shower hosted by the lovely, talented, encouraging, gracious, kind, and devoted women of my church.  There are many more words that I could use to describe them all but I only have so much time and so much space.  I arrived to quite the spread of food for lunch.  Someone even found out that I am quite the fan of crab and made a hot crab dip - it was yummy! (As was every other little morsel devoured for our luncheon.)  Lunch was then capped off with a very delicious and CREATIVE cake (shown above) that was made by one of my dear friend's mother-in-law who happens to be quite the talent in cake decorating.  As if that needed to be pointed out!  I don't usually leave the pictures on this post so large but you really need to get a feel for this cake.  Yummy and beautiful.  I am glad that I was not the one who had to cut it... I don't think I could have done it!

After cake came the barrage of gifts for our Little Flower.  I was sweating after it was all said and done (in combination with the large amounts of people and hormones, I am sure!)  We received some very lovely gifts.  Many homemade with love, others from our registry, and others still gave things that I really hadn't thought much about.  All in all, the gifts filled up the 4-Runner and we had to give a basket to my mother-in-law and we will pick it up tomorrow.  Other friends and family have written to say, "your gift is in the mail" or "I will bring it by on such-and-such a day."  I am overwhelmed and grateful.  There are still a few "large" items that we need to buy but God in His provision has granted us some wonderful discounts and unexpected financial provisions to cover those costs.  We are blown away by how many things are coming together.

Now, we just need to get it all put away and assembled (if required!)  I have some photos up on flickr of many of the homemade gifts and a couple of my favorite outfits.  Again, if you need an invite to see those photos, let me know and I will get you the link.  Flickr will also be the place to see photos of Little Flower when she arrives.

Blog Back Log: The Day After

While this particular blog is dated November 5th I am really sitting on the couch a month later pondering my thoughts of the day after the Presidential election.  Was I excited with the national results?  No.  Not so much.  Does that change the outcome... not a bit.

I think that this nation is in for quite the roller coaster over the next four years.  I think that some of the proposed policy issues by the next administration are horrific - health care would be one of them.  As I have watched the process unfold over the last few weeks my confidence has not grown.

Locally, I am highly impressed with the fact the Prop 102 (and similar Prop 8 in California) passed with what seems to be a confident declaration of the people.  The people have spoken is what the opposition say of the statute.  But when the people "speak" about an actual constitutional amendment there are riots to be had and churches to be taunted.  On other local levels a conservative march was made here which I think is good.  Now that our (Democratic) governor has been tapped to be Secretary of Homeland Secretary we are saying our farewells and looking forward to Miss Brewer (GOP) to leave her Secretary of State position and move to the "ninth floor" and try to get us out of the $2 Billion state debt that our "beloved" Governor will be sticking us with. 

I'll stop with my rants because they really accomplish nothing.

I find comfort in the fact that all of this didn't take Jesus off His throne.  Nor did it surprise Him.  The gospel is going forth.  While I am not convinced that this is the end of the world as we know it, it may be the end of the Republic as we know it.

Blog Back Log: Election Day

I voted today.  As though you couldn't tell by my spiffy little sticker.  However, this sticker is different from any other "I voted" sticker that I have seen before.  Husband was a little jealous of it when he saw it.

Tonight we will grab some chicken wings from a favorite local restaurant and settle in with Fox News (and other channels) to watch the national results come around.  We are also quite interested in some local races and issues that are on the ballot.

America, where shall we go from here?

Trick or Treat?

Friday, as you know, was Halloween.  Husband and I were pretty excited to spend a fairly quiet evening at home passing out candy.  I got a great deal on some yummy candy - oh about 100 pieces in two bags.  We had a pretty good showing last year.  I thought we would almost run out this year since the day was on a Friday.  We didn't carve a pumpkin but we made sure to turn on lights to let folks know we were, indeed, home.  Neither one of us are super into Halloween but we like to see the little ones all dressed up.  I thought that the little ones would be around about dusk and the older kids after dark... anticipating a slow down around 9:00 PM.

 

Yeah... so what I thought would happen was very different from what ACTUALLY happened.

Our first trick-or-treaters came at about 7:15 PM (about an hour after I thought they would start) and we had two very excited princesses on our patio.  I was excited for the parade to start.

Little did I know that would BE the parade.  Two little ones all night.

Unfortunately, I opened the bags of candy to put in a festive bowl.  So, now we are stuck with all the mostly chocolaty goodness... darn.  hee hee!

On the upside, we got a kick our of making my tummy into a little pumpkin at 30-weeks.

Hands

Hello, my name is Jessica and I am an avid people watcher.

"Hello, Jessica."

It's true.  Sometimes when I go out to run errands I get excited about what kind of things I will encounter with people in society -- whether they intend to be noticed or not.  I watch people in their cars (which I do more frequently these days because my husband usually drives us places), I watch people in the store, wherever.  There are times that I think back to college and if I had to do it all over again and think maybe I would have been a sociology major... or probably not.  I could write a book on people, I think.

It's not that I am staring at people by any means.  I have this uncanny knack to notice things.  Although, one might dispute that when I cannot find my keys and they are laying in plain sight on the counter.  Sheesh.  My husband wonders if I pay attention in church sometimes because I notice what the children are doing or this or that.  When I can then tell him details from the sermon he shakes his head and replies, "I still don't know how you do that."  Such is life.

I tell you all this to set you up for my latest encounter.  Public bathrooms are not my favorite place and not usually a place one sets up to people watch.  Well, I didn't really watch this person but rather observed her actions from within my own little stall.  If given the opportunity, I will usually wait until the bathroom is clear to do my business.  A girl likes a little privacy.  Anyway, I listened as the woman next to me was leaving.  I noticed her fun little shoes and off she went.  Wait.  The door opened.  She's gone.  I missed something.  ARGH!  She didn't wash her hands!!  Now, I am pretty sure she out in the store thumbing through fabrics and spreading the germs.  Yuck.  I may not have thought it so bad had the craft store bathroom been even slightly pristine but that was not the case. 

I am not one most would consider a germaphobic-type.  I could probably handle it if someone "forgot" to wash their hands at home but would obviously prefer them not to forget said step in leaving the bathroom.  I mean, what do you do when you go camping and you forget the "wet-ones" among other things.  Sigh.

With all that to say as I continued my shopping business I was looking for the woman's cute little shoes which would not be hard to find.  It's probably a good thing that I didn't spot her.  It's probably better not to have a face with the action this time.  It helps me to think maybe she left the store without touching anything.

Photo Shoot

So, we have figured out that our little girl will most likely be a little "ham" when it comes to the camera.  Just like her mama when she was little.  This could be entertaining.

We had a fun "family ultrasound" on Saturday.  My dad came in from New Mexico for it and of course Husband's parents were there, too.  It was a fun time to have an extended time to watch Little Flower bounce around, stretch, and even yawn a bit.  The tech said she was fun to watch and she had a great time taking photos of her.  What a delight to see her and know that everything is going well inside.

In this particular photo it seems as though Little Flower is blocking her face from the sound waves.  It was amazing to see some of her facial features in other photos but her long, little fingers amaze me in this one.  We found out that she is breech but we are not too worried about that yet because she still has just under three months to turn herself around.  But it made "taking her picture" a little easier, I think.  If you want to see more of these photos you can log into Flickr to check them out.  Of course, if you need to be invited to see our photos just let me know and I will be more than happy to "let you in."

As if this wasn't enough excitement for the weekend, we celebrated my dad's birthday while he was here which was fun - as he will be in Louisiana (or on the way back from there) on his actual birthday.  We spent a lot of time together as a family, playing games, looking at baby stuff, eating, and enjoying the unusual, yet more than welcome, cooler temperatures.

The weekend was quite grand, I would say.

Belly on Up to the Bar

... almost literally!

Husband and I began the first night of four (over the next few weeks) of child birth classes.  The lady teaching our class was a trip.  She said that she would only be teaching that first night -- which I am kind of bummed and glad about.  She recently retired as a nurse and is a spitfire.  I was pretty sure she was on something - not really, but you know what I mean.

We had to laugh when she was telling us stories of what kinds of things they used to give women in labor back in the day when she started her nursing career.  One in particular was the giving of alcohol and moms would just be drunk as a skunk when they delivered.  I cannot remember if it was to slow contractions or to get them to relax or what.  But she did a great impersonation of what this might look like.  She agonized over the fact that it would tap right into the main IV line.  It was kind of funny.

So, we are thankful that there have been other advances in medicine since then.