Odds and Ends

We've been pretty boring around here this week so I don't have a whole lot to blog about. I thought I'd just do a quick update and post a couple pictures.

Me:
I'm doing much better than I was! I'm 14 weeks along and the morning sickness is definitely tapering off. I'm still very tired a lot but I'll take that over how it was around weeks 7-10. My kids aikido classes start back up later this month. I have scaled back to once a week for the time being. I actually didn't really want to do the toddler class again (just have my older kids class and my adult class) because it's exhausting and I feel like I'm doing a terrible job but I found out that almost all the kids who were coming are coming back--how cool is that? Plus, every time we go to school now Autumn asks, "when we going to my kido class?" :) So, if anyone has any tips or tricks or activity suggestions for toddlers (we don't just do aikido--we sing, count in Japanese, act like different animals, stuff like that), I am all for them!

Oh! And I just realized I haven't posted many photos from our session with Elizabeth in November so...here are some of those:


Mike:
Mike has been very busy with work and side work. He's started working a 7am-4pm shift which means he misses rush hour but also means he wakes up at 5:30am! I am NOT an early riser so I will pass on that! He's also been going to a different side job every night. It's a huge blessing and I'm really thankful for his technical skills and for his clients. Mike has also been a little sick late this week with some sinus stuff. Poor him. Autumn has the same little bug so they are very pitiful together today. Mike is on my happy list because he got me a papa john's pizza for lunch today. I have been wanting one for a couple of weeks now so I am very grateful for that little splurge. Thank you, Mike!


Autumn:
She's a little sicky. Poor thing woke up in the night sick and coughing. She's mostly fine in the day. Plays, then snuggles, then plays, then snuggles. Haha. She and Mike just had some monkey and papa sniffle and snuggle time on the couch watching football. I think she's going to be fine in a couple days. Other than that, she's doing great. Loving her new Christmas toys. She likes to pat "her baby." She'll say, "is my baby still growing in there?" She's talking up a storm and mostly really well. One of my favorite things she says is "very, very" except it comes out as "werry, werry" like, "that is werry, werry pretty, mama." Oh! And she bought me a bracelet. :) Autumn, Aunt Lauren, and Lainey were out and about last week and, I don't know whose idea it was, but Autumn ended up getting me a gift. Lainey says Autumn went up to the sales lady and told her that the door was locked but she needs to see the colors for her mama. Later, Autumn said, "I got you a present! I want you to open your bracelet." Hahaha, toddlers are not so good at surprises, huh? It was sweet.


By the way! Click here and see this pic of Autumn from Donnie and Liz's wedding. I'm going to have to order a big one to hang and like 20 small ones to give out. :D I was looking at it and recognized Landon and Tamara in the background immediately. I didn't realize it was me, too, until I thought, "hey, those are cute shoes...oh, wait, those are my shoes." There's also a blog post with some more wedding pics.

I think that's enough for one Sunday night! I will leave you all with a pic of Autumn having tea with her babies:


Have a great week, everyone!

Snow Day!

The much anticipated Snow Day actually arrived, much to my surprise. I usually doubt it when people get in a frenzy about snow, preferring to be pleasantly surprised over sadly disappointed, haha. Mike got an early start on playing in the snow by walking around outside at, like, 11pm. I was at my computer in front of the warm heater when suddenly a couple of big snowballs hit my window and startled me.


Autumn woke up crazy early ready to roll out. We made her eat breakfast and get dressed first.


I think this might be the first time she was able to make snowballs all by herself.


But, like always, she had just as much fun getting hit by snowballs as making and throwing them.


We had a family effort at making a snowman. Mike made the base and I made the middle. There's no pic of me making the middle (Mike took some video) but I maintain mine was the best. :D


Autumn made the head. She was too impatient to roll it for very long so we have a very tiny headed snowman.


The house looked really pretty. It was painted back in late October and I think I forgot to post a picture. It looks great...if you need a good painter, let us know and we can get you the info for the guy who did it. He also did Mike's parents' house.


This was a funny little snow formation. It kind of ribboned out. There wasn't any support for the dips so I don't know how it happened like this.


We had some little animal tracks all over our front walks. :) Our neighbor has a couple of cats that roam so I'm guessing they did some winter exploring.


Anyway, after a lot of pictures, video, snow angels, snow romping and snow chases, we called it a morning. Autumn had snow in every crevice--hat, hood, gloves, socks, everything. But it was a lot of fun!


I also thought I'd break out some old snow pics. Mike and I have been kind of marveling about how grown up Autumn is these days. Here she is seeing her first snow in Birmingham back in 2008. Not super impressed...


I just love this picture. This is from 2009.


I think that was the year we got like 11 inches of snow. Since we were on the golf course, we had a huge expanse of white to play it. Autumn wasn't too thrilled about it at that time, though.


Last year is about when she started to get excited about snow.


But this year? This year she was anticipatory about the snow coming and just chomping at the bit to go out when it got here. :) Funny how times change!

Christmas highlights

We had a great Christmas and I hope everyone else did, too! Christmas week was so much fun with all of Mike's family here and Christmas day was full of presents and food and both of our families. Over at the Colleys, we had crazy hair:


along with presents and wrapping paper stuck to funny places.


There was a very happy little girl


and a very happy little boy (who said, "oh, my goodness!" a lot).


But the fun wasn't over...after covering their eyes,


there was much rejoicing!


And then much riding and bumping. :D


And the fun still wasn't over! With my family, a pillow pet found a home.


and baby Roxie had an adorable first Christmas.


Oh! And I can't forget Mike's GIANT CLOCK. He will always know what time it is.


All in all, it was a great day and no blog post will be able to express how thankful we are to be so blessed with family, friends, and, most of all, a savior to celebrate.

Merry Christmas!

Happy Christmas Eve, everyone! I hope everyone is having a great holiday so far. We're wrapping things up here, getting ready for my family to come over tomorrow and for church tonight. I thought I'd post up a some pics and a short video before Christmas. :) First, we had Autumn's Christmas program last week. SO CUTE. At the end of this post, I'll put up the kids singing "Happy Birthday, Jesus." You'll be able to see Autumn in the bottom right from time to time but, really, it's just so darn cute that if you aren't in the Christmas spirit, this will get you there! I've got a couple of shots from that, too. This is day one:


and day 2 where she was a little more visible:


I'm still sick some but I've been feeling good enough that with lots of help from Cherie, my mom, and Lainey and Mike, I've been able to get the house in good shape and all decorated for Christmas. One fun thing is that Autumn is now the proud owner of her Aunt Lauren's pink Christmas tree!


Such a big girl now! We ended up doing our gifts to each other and our stocking stuffers this morning (I got Mike a coffee sampler and he got me a bluetooth earpiece, yay!). We didn't get Autumn much because she has approximately 204849058 family members so we figure she's in good shape, hahaha. I hit the jackpot, though, on my gifts. I got her a Leo from Little Einstiens plush doll. Leo is her imaginary friend, too, so I thought she might like to have him around in person sometimes. :P


They have already started their adventures...they camped in the kitchen, pretended to nap in the dining room, played in the pillow cave on mama and papa's bed, and now they are about to be woken to go to church together.


I hope everyone has a fantastic Christmas. I leave you with this video...special thanks to Aunt Penny for braving the crowd and sitting down front to record.

So...

Here's a shot from our session with Elizabeth Wiggs last month:


Zoom into the book why don't we?


Some of you guys get it but if the responses of the various family members we did the book to is any indication, a few of you miiiight need a little help:


:D

Yep! We're expecting baby number 2 sometime around July 15! How cool is that? It was kind of a long journey, punctuated by things like counseling for me to deal with how rough my delivery of Autumn was and fertility treatments both eastern and western and lots of people have been waiting on this for a long time and it's finally here!

I'm actually only 9 weeks along but a lot of people already know. Of course, our family is huge so like 20 family members have known for about 5 weeks. I also told the people I train with for obvious reasons. We don't want unexpected kicks or punches in less than ideal places, right? So, now we're telling you!

I have a few prayer requests, too. First, please pray for me. I had about 3 weeks of absolutely debilitating morning sickness. I even had to go to the emergency room for IV fluids and medicine. That kind of helped me reboot my body and things have been improving. I also have continued acupuncture which is think is also helping. With the exception of a sinus problem (this crazy weather), I've been doing remarkably well this week. A friend of mine told me yesterday that I'm actually experiencing "normal" morning sickness but that it feels like "good" to me because of the last few weeks and because of how things were with Autumn.

So, you saw that I had an ultrasound, right? Well, apparently, I produce inferior umbilical cords. :) If you remember, Autumn had a 2-vessel cord which was the source of all of our delivery drama--she stopped growing at 34 weeks. Well, this little one has a cyst in his or her umbilical cord. It should go away before the first trimester is over but they still want to do some monitoring. If it's still there in a couple weeks, I'm headed over to the same high risk doctor that I saw with Autumn. Everything else looks super healthy so that's great news.

Last but not least, please keep Mike and Autumn in your prayers. Mike has been so awesome. He's grocery shopping and cleaning and just being generally awesome in addition to his normal job and side jobs. There's a lot of time left so I hope he doesn't burn out!

Here's Miss Autumn:


She's sick today. That was her yesterday after I got her from school. She was running a fever, poor thing. Papa D and Lainey rescued her, though, so she slept on the aikido mat before the kids class while we waited on them to come get her. Autumn sick is truly one of the saddest things in the world because she just kind of lays there and is so, so sweet.

Anyway, that's a lot of updating! I know I haven't been on the blog lately but now you know why! I've seriously been going to bed between 7:30 and 9:30 almost every night but things seem to be normalizing a little bit. How are you guys? Getting ready for some great Christmases, I hope!

Almost the last of the October pics!

Apparently October was a busy month! One thing that went by in blogland unmentioned was our anniversary. Mike hit the gift jackpot this year! He did the one small gift a day thing--a card on our actual anniversary, flowers the next day (for facebookers, that was the same day we found a dead, decomposing chipmunk in the garage), and the big, awesome gift? Tickets to Wicked! I was pretty pumped. I read the book last year and wanted to see the musical (I prefer the musical, much less grim!). Even better, he bought the tickets around my birthday in September and kept it a secret. AND EVEN BETTER, he got the tickets on the front row of the mezzanine so I didn't have to try to look over and around some tall person's head. It never fails. I always end up behind the tall person.


Nanny and Boppa watched Autumn that night. Because great grandparents get to do this, they kept her up until she totally crashed out on the couch. So cute.


Here's a random "Autumn is a cat" shot.


Back to Halloween, Autumn and I usually do a little visiting. This year, our first stop was to see Aunt Penny's unit at Baptist East. Penny actually just won The Daisy Award for Extraordinary Nurses! I am very proud of her and completely not surprised. The person who nominated her was someone that she stopped to help on the side of the road.


Our next stop was to see Stephan's mom. She just loves Autumn so I try to bring Autumn by whenever I can.


Then we went to Ridgeway's Fall Festival which was really great. This was by far Autumn's favorite game. She was totally enraptured by the disk falling down the board...it was actually pretty funny.


Here we are looking somewhat perky. :D


Here's Lainey...


And Boppa...


And look! Mike left the cave and came with us! With almost no fuss!


Funny enough, Autumn was kind of weirded out by the vest that Papa D had to wear to direct traffic. Mr. Shackelford is there in the back. His son Fred was voted vp of the Tennessee Baptist Convention. How cool is that?


And, last but never least, Nanny!


Definitely one of the best halloweens ever!