Cleaning off the front walk and the car

I'm a Southern girl. I mean, a REAL Southern girl. I read Southern Living, I like fried chicken, I say ya'll (and yes, I spell it with the apostrophe in the middle!), I grow tomatoes in my back yard, I have wedding china, crystal, and silver, and I think that every man should have a truck.

So WHY in the world do I know how to shovel snow??? I mean, seriously...I don't even know how to use a lawn mower. We don't even OWN a lawn mower!

Sigh.

I guess that's what happens when you have to live in St. Louis. Behold my morning's labor....of course, right when I finished laying out the salt on the newly cleaned walk, it started snowing again.

Christmas Day

We had a nice day on Christmas. I picked James up from the hospital around 8 in the morning, and he came home and crashed into the bed for a nap. About 5 hours later, I woke him up and we read the Christmas story out of the Bible and had a nice breakfast. Then it was time for presents!

Reading Luke 2














Max opened the first present - a pork chomp!














James wearing several of his gifts - a new waterproof jacket, a MOLLE vest for fly fishing, an underarmour hood to keep his head warm while he drives to work in the mornings (his car heater has been broken), and his new rifle!



















The table set for Christmas dinner - prime rib, potatoes, and salad!














We got a light dusting of snow, for a white Christmas.

Christmas Decarrangements

I decorated the house, and we're all set for Christmas! James was nice enough to carry all of the heavy decoration boxes up from the basement, so all I had to do was unpack them and put things out.

Our little puppy is growing up - Max hasn't tried to eat the tree OR the presents this year! (I still had to put all of his out of reach b/c he knew that they were his, so he did try to eat them...) Here are some pictures!

The nativity scene on the buffet table














dining room mantle














living room mantle














breakfast table



















the tree!



















nativity advent calendar in the kitchen



















Max guarding the gifts (and hoping that they taste yummy)

Interesting Fact

The abortion industry kills as many Black people every four days as the Klan killed in 150 years. Since 1973, legal abortion has killed more Blacks than AIDS, cancer, diabetes, heart disease and violent crime combined.

Think about it.

Daddy's Girl

Over the past few weeks, I've seen something really neat happening. Back in October, we reached the point where our baby girl would have grown enough to recognize different voices, even from the womb. I thought that was cool, but I always wondered - how in the world could people tell that? Are doctors just guessing based on the level of brain and auditory development?

And then it started happening. I promise, it DID. Our little tiny girl started responding to her daddy's voice in a way that she responds to nobody else. I guess she hears me talk all day, so I probably sound pretty boring to her, but it amazes me that of all the other people she hears talk during the day, she knows James! He isn't even around as much as some of the other people in her life, since he has to work all the time. (He's currently in a stretch of 3 weeks with no days off.)

I'm 25 weeks along now, and when I got to about 18 weeks or so, I started to realize that every time James starts to talk around the baby, she kicks. HARD. It's like she's excited that her daddy is here, and she's trying to get her his attention. It's amazing...she sleeps a lot and will lie still for hours, but as soon as James comes home, suddenly she can't sit still.

And now, she's doing something else! As she gets bigger, her kicks have started to hurt more. I guess her feet are bigger, and she wants more room. So when James comes home and she gets excited, I know that my belly is about to get really uncomfortable. Well, a couple of weeks ago, James started trying to calm her down. He put his face right against my belly, put his hands around her, and started whispering to her that she needed to calm down and stop kicking her mama.

AND SHE DID.

I'm not kidding.

I thought it was a coincidence, but it seems to work every time now. It's so cool to get to know this little personality, even before she is born. Of course, James seems to be the one with all the influence, but he's so good with little kids that it's not much of a surprise.

Isn't that cool?

Nursery Furniture

Well, we finally got some furniture into the nursery! My parents got us our crib, and we saved up and bought the changing table, so both of them were delivered this weekend. Now the only furniture that we need is the rocking chair that we've picked out.

James has been on call all weekend, so he hasn't been home since 5:30 a.m. on Saturday morning...which means that I put the furniture together myself. No problem! Here's what we've got so far...

This is our crib! It's a Babi Italia Pinehurst lifestyle crib, which means that it will convert into a toddler bed and an adult bed if we buy a couple more pieces. At first, I didn't care about that, but I'm starting to think that it might be kind of nice. I put some of the crib bedding inside so that I could see how it looks in the purple room, and it's cute!














Here's the changing table. I'm so glad that we were able to get one with drawers for storage, since there really isn't anywhere else to keep this little girl's clothes! The changing pad on top came from Meghan, the wipe warmer from Kathy Greco, and the diaper pail from Patti McFarlin, so things are coming together!

Shower

This weekend, I had a baby shower at the Jacksons' house. It was so much fun, and it was wonderful to see all of the sweet ladies from my hometown of Covington, Georgia again. I have missed them since I've been living in the midwest, so I had a great time catching up with everybody.

The beautiful table, all decorated in the famous style of Sandy Jackson...














Carrie and Linda Parker, some dear friends from childhood.














Rachel Choe with Isabel, who was our tiny little belle of the ball!



















Mrs. Sally Nichols, who as been a close family friend since my earliest memory.



















Mom and Meghan in the kitchen














SO many presents for our little baby girl!!














Sandy Jackson and Kathy Greco














Tiffany Howard with her adorable little Tallis, Me, Natalie Whitworth, and Meghan














Connie Musselman and Carrie Parker with Carrie's sweet little boy.














I loved these little cakes with the pink baby booties on them














Madeline made the baby this soft little pink pillow, and I love it!!














Opening gifts



















A picture with the hostesses - Sandy, Lisa, and Meghan

New Furniture

I have never had a china cabinet, and I always wanted one. We actually use our china and crystal quite a bit, but it has never been very convenient to use it because we didn't have good storage for it. In fact, when we moved into our house, I had to keep our crystal down in the basement because I was afraid that Max would destroy it if I left it out.

But not anymore!

Until now, I had to keep the china sitting out on a bookshelf. When I found out we were going to have a little person pulling up and running around before long, I decided that it was time to invest in something more stable. SO.....I turned to craigslist.

The biggest problem was that I can't pick up any furniture, and I didn't want to have to pay for professional movers. The first china cabinet that I was going to buy never arrived. I had reached a deal with the girl who was supposed to have it delivered, but they never showed up! (Very annoying, but not too surprising.) It turned out to be a good thing, though, because my next deal was MUCH better. I got a china cabinet AND a buffet!!! Take a look!!!

Purple Nursery!!

We've got the nursery painting almost done! The walls look great, and I'm so glad that we decided to paint inside the closet. There are some stains on the walls in the closet, so we're going to have to seal that before we can finish painting it.

Here is our crib bedding quilt.














And look how good the closet is shaping up!



















We've picked out a pretty light switch cover for this room, too.



















Window to the backyard.

Nursery

This afternoon, I got started working on the nursery for our little baby girl! It needs a LOT of work before it will be ready. Today, I had to spackle up holes in the walls, as well as sealing the corners of the closet walls. The closet is HORRIBLE, so I scraped down the closet walls and re-plastered over them.

Fortunately, I had Max to oversee the process!



















The closet walls need some work.














Here's how they looked after I plastered them over again...














We're going to paint the walls purple, so we're trying out different shades.

Some Fall Color

We've decorated our front porch for the fall, and the trees are turning now that it's cold outside. Here are some pictures...

Baby Belly 18 weeks

I had James take some more pictures tonight of my belly at 18 weeks. It's definitely getting bigger, but I'm still not putting on much weight. I'm supposed to be putting on a pound each week, but in the past month, I've only put on about a pound. I'm eating healthy food and staying active, so I may be losing fat as I put on the baby weight.