Don't Be Fooled ;)

My wonderful husband is working every waking (and sleeping) hour for the next month in order to make sure we stay covered on insurance while he transitions jobs. His "transition" is actually just him working both full time jobs. I am still having to work my normal schedule (minus a day here and there) which is making us have crazy hectic schedules...anyways, long story short, one of Garth's very limited days off this month (I think one of only 2) was today and since I had to work, the "boys" had a wonderful Saturday together.

I didn't hear anything from them until 11am, since that is around when they woke up and right before they went to the golf store to get Daddy's new golf bag. Garth texts me about 1:00 from IHOP and sends me this picture:













Sooooo cute I was thinking, what a healthy late late breakfast/lunch for the little man (minus the hot chocolate...well it probably has calcium in it). I called him up and asked why they decided to go to IHOP and Garth told me in a 'duh' sort of voice that "Garth Lee wanted pancakes" (he is soooooo not spoiled). So obviously IHOP is pretty much the only place to get pancakes at 1 in the afternoon....then I asked the obvious question after receiving the above picture: "but didn't he have fruit?" Garth told me to wait, he just sent me another picture...

Oh yeah, that's more like it...well at least he didn't fill up on that calcium laced hot chocolate so he would have plenty of room for the pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream with a side of bacon ;)

For Garth Lee's Future Wife...

There are times when kids talk (most times) that no one is really listening to them...I don't think I am alone in being guilty of this. I find myself often giving in to the "uhmmm, hmmm"s and the periodic nod. I don't do it on purpose, I just find myself mindlessly doing it on an almost daily basis...but there are those times that I not only really listen, but I may just egg his elaborate stories on a bit--something I learned from my mom.

I get sad sometimes because Garth Lee talks a lot about when he grows up and moves away, just nonchalant like as if we were talking about the weather. Maybe this is normal for kids to talk about, but I really don't enjoy that my 5 year old is already looking forward to getting out of the house (remind me about this when he is 30 and he still lives in the basement). Along with talking about moving away, he often mentions things about his "wife" that I find terribly cute and I am always thinking I need to write down so I don't forget, so here are a few things that Garth Lee has told me about his future, specifically about and to his future wife:

1. He is going to let you pick the house that you live will live in (and the city)
2. He is going to be the best husband a wife could ever have
3. He will try really hard not to make you mad
4. You might yell at him when you are married, but only maybe 2 times and it will just be because he made you
5. He is going to have a little boy and he is going to name him Garth 5
6. He's not sure if he has met you yet, but he thinks he hasn't, that he will meet you later

Another thing that is interesting that we have noticed is that Garth Lee is "attracted" to dark-headed girls with glasses. He has had a couple of "girlfriends" at school and at church and they both have had dark brown hair and wear glasses. There is also a cute 'girl' who works at my Mom's salon that Garth Lee is quite smitten with and she, too, has dark hair, but no glasses. Not that I think he does or should have a "type" at this age, I just think it could be interesting to look back later.

Not that my opinion counts or will mean too much when the time comes, but I would like to state, for the record, that I hope that Garth Lee's future wife has all of the qualities that he seeks, and I hope that she is someone that he can look up to and that he will want to be like. I hope that she feels the same way about him, like I do about his daddy. I hope that she is strong but kind and that most of all she will be a wonderful mother to my grandchildren. I hope for them both to be happy and to care about what I hope for them, but to ultimately depend on each other and love each other and do what they know is right for them after counseling with the Lord.

Ok, enough of that! Hopefully we are looking at AT LEAST another 16+ years before all of this comes to fruition. In the meantime, I'm just going to enjoy being the woman in my little man's life.

Family Pictures

This is sort of embarrassing, but we have not had professional family pictures taken of just the 3 of us...ever. I figured that we should probably go ahead and do that since our family of 3 is very soon to be a foursome. I had the best plans to do these pictures back in November, you know, when I had a cute little pregnant belly and you could only tell I was pregnant when I turned sideways...well fast forward some 2 more months and I am now also pregnant in my bum, thigh and face area as well as quite impressively pregnant where I should be ;) It just so happens that my sister-in-law's best friend Heather is a very talented photographer and she was so gracious to take some pictures of us and I think she did a fantastic job. Of course I am super critical of myself but overall I am very pleased with how they turned out and I don't think they could possibly be better (considering what she had to work with---I am of course referring to myself, not my handsome boys). I know that Garth Lee will be thankful to have at least one family portrait representing the first 5 and a half years of his life that he was our one and only...plus I know that I will be thankful to have them as well--I can hear us now: ahhh the good old days, remember that, Honey, when we only had one, remember how easy that was...Well, I hope y'all like them too...don't forget to go by Heather's blog to check out her other fabulous work and a few more of us: http://www.heatherwitt.blogspot.com/. Here are my favorites:

Catch Up

I downloaded our pictures from the holidays and the only thing that did for me was make me cry a little and realize that my camera was a big fat "on-sale-but-still-rather-expensive" LESSON. The pictures are all horrible. How can a 12 MP camera take pictures worse than my 5 year old can take on a 1 MP camera? Anyways, I am going to try to figure it out and use some other settings...so no pictures from Christmas, just memories ;)

We had a restful and COLD Christmas. It snowed quite a lot and we had 60+ mph southeasterly wind gusts creating some pretty impressive snow drifts especially with our northwesterly facing house. We are at the end of a block with our house exposed to the north and west giving us close to 6 foot snow drifts blocking our driveway and our front gate (we still have remnants of the drifts in the driveway and by the gate almost a month later which is unheard of somewhere snow never sticks more than a day). Thank goodness Garth had to work the night the storm came in so the car was out of the garage or there is no way we would have been able to leave the house except on foot (or sleigh)...it was pretty though, and a treat for us in this part of the world to have a white Christmas. Garth Lee's favorite gift was a SpongeBob recliner that my parents got for him, it has a cup holder in the armrest and it actually reclines with a footrest that comes out. It was one of the first presents he opened and the rest of the evening we had to bring his presents to his Highness so that he didn't abandon "the chair".

We did have a rather interesting "visitor" to my parents' house Christmas Eve after we had opened all of our presents. The weather was so bad that most of the family wasn't able to come into town, so it was a cozy 3 couples (us, my parents and my uncle and aunt) plus Garth Lee. We were sitting by the fire chatting, charging batteries, etc. when a nice-looking young man, about 21 or so walked right in the front door. We all looked at him and he was very cordial, said hello, was asking about how the night went, told us how his was going...this is when I left the room...you see I don't do embarrassment well, I can't watch people make fools of themselves, it is painful to me. Reality shows are like torture for me because they are pretty much just us watching people make fools of themselves, I can't stand it, it is physically painful for me and I have somewhat of a 6th sense about it and I could feel it rolling in. Once I saw my Dad look at me with questioning eyes and I looked back and shrugged, I knew there were 2 possibilities to this situation 1) This is some really stupid kid that is about to bust out some magazine subscription he wants us to buy to fund his "mission trip" or 2) This is a really confused kid that just walked into the wrong house. My spidey sense was telling me the former would result in my dad chasing this kid off with his pistol (if he was lucky) and the latter would be almost more paralyzing if it were me. Either way, I had no choice but to flee to the back bedroom and hope for the best for this boy. The rest of the story is pieced together from accounts of the happenings that I did not witness myself. The boy walks in and sits on the step to the kitchen and is shooting the breeze with my aunt and he casually asks where everyone else is. She looks up and tells him that this is everyone. He asks for Jamie, which happens to be the youngest daughter of my parents' next door neighbors, and the mystery is solved. From the accounts given by those that could bear to see this boy tortured, it was pretty humorous when he realized his mistake. He hadn't met Jamie's parents yet and tonight was a big night for him, and he was trying his hardest to make a good impression, he was just at the wrong house. My dad patted him on the back as the boy pleaded for him not to tell Jamie's parents what had happened and my dad walked him to the right house and I'm sure he was very nice about it when laughed the whole way across the lawn. The boy should look on the bright side, how many people get a real live practice run at meeting the folks? It was pretty funny and a Christmas memory we won't soon forget...thanks random neighbor boyfriend for that and I hope you had a Merry Christmas and that your aim was better for your New Years kiss.

I've decided I REALLY like having Garth Lee in school and I finally know why my parents weren't nearly as excited about school vacations as I was growing up. Our first week off for Christmas was great, pretty busy and we all got to sleep in...the second week I started to notice in Garth Lee how much he has benefited from the structure that Kindergarten has provided him and we (including Garth Lee) were quite happy to get back to school this year. I can't believe that Garth Lee will be in middle school when Gavin starts kindergarten...crazy how time flies.

Speaking of Gavin, we had another ultrasound this week, probably our last since everything is going well. We were supposed to get awesome pictures for this one but he wasn't having it, he was face down and was covering his face with both arms. He wouldn't show us his boy parts either, so Garth is convinced he is now a she...but we have been reassured in 2 previous ultrasounds that the "equipment" is indeed male. Good news is, he finally turned, we are head down and we have an approximately 80% chance that he will stay that way for the remainder of my pregnancy. My bladder noticed he turned the middle of last week when he stopped kicking it. The weight of a baby pressing on your bladder is bad enough, but it is quite another issue when it is compounded by random direct kicks to it...it's a relief that he is now vertex and no longer breech. The weight estimate for him was 3 lbs 9 oz, which is about the 44th percentile. I was a little disappointed that he wasn't bigger, but I'm not sure why. Hopefully I will have a better chance of this delivery going better if he is and continues to be an average sized baby. But it is also hard for me to ignore the fact that Garth Lee's size estimate was 2 pounds off, so like most things, only time will tell. We have right at 7 weeks to go before we get to meet this little guy, it has been a long road, but a pretty speedy pregnancy...I'm sure these last few weeks will drag into years, but maybe they will fly by, I feel ready to meet this little one and I know Garth Lee is excited too.

Still Here

Sorry for not blogging in a while, I actually even have pictures but I haven't figured out how to download them yet from my new camera so I will figure it out and hopefully will be posting some meaningful stuff soon for all one (or so) of you to read. Until then...Happy New Year!