18 Weeks... and War Eagle!

My 18th week of pregnancy has been a really easy (and fun) one!

Baby Smart says, "War Eagle!"

On Monday, school was cancelled due to snow and ice. I was very excited. I began watching the BCS National Championship game, then find out that school for Tuesday is cancelled, making my celebration (by myself, mind you...) of the Auburn victory even longer, since I don't have to get up to go to school the next day. :) I even had a mini Toomer's rolling!

My "masterpiece"

Tuesday was a cold, yucky day, but the roads were fine, so I went to help a friend look at wedding dresses that afternoon. I had to clean up my mini Toomer's before I left... :(

We started back to school on Wednesday for the second week. What are we going to do when we actually have to have 5 full days of school in a row??? School has been fairly easy for me this semester. I have smaller classes and seem to have really good kids... only time will tell, though! We have been postponing and rescheduling dance practice because of the crazy weather, but we did manage to get a few practices in before this weekend.

On Saturday, I went to Samford in Birmingham to watch 4 SSHS Pantherettes compete in the Solo Division at competition. The Junior High team performed there as well, so I, of course, stayed to watch them. All of the girls performed well, and our captain took home the "State Soloist" title. I was proud of everyone! I had the privilege of NOT having to drive to and from Birmingham on Saturday. I drove up on Friday and stayed with Mimi and Tom, got up and went to competition, then came back and stayed again! It was SO much better than having to drive back and forth on Saturday. I got to see Cindy, Joe, and Forrest (Aunt, Uncle, Cousin) while I was there, so that was a bonus!

Today is MLK day, and we're out of school AGAIN! I had my girls meet at the school this morning for practice (don't hate me, it was THEIR idea...), which proved to be VERY beneficial. They work SO much harder when they aren't already tired from being at school all day. I wish I could have kept them all day, but decided that 2 hours would suffice. The band performed in the Inaugural parade in Montgomery today, so Jed had to leave before daybreak to head that up.

Since I've been home at practice, and Jed isn't here, I've been trying to clean out and rearrange closets in our house so that the baby can actually have clothes! I really need less stuff and more storage! This is proving to be very difficult. Would anyone like to volunteer to reorganize my house for me? Anyone???

Well, back to work I go... wish me luck!

Apologies... and Big News!

I am officially THE WORST blogger in the world! I really do apologize to those of you who actually try to follow the blog. I promise I'll try to be better, but I have just been so busy, and whenever I finally get done with everything, I crash!!!

Speaking of crashing, there is actually a reason besides lack of sleep (for once)...

For those of you who don't already know, Jed and I are going to be parents in June! I'm currently 17 weeks along. I actually made my very first maternity clothing purchase today, so I guess it's time to start taking belly pictures! I'll try to get those up once a week, but no promises (my track record isn't so great...)

Okay, now it's time to try to back-track to tell you about our wonderful Christmas. I would go back to Thanksgiving, but I'm not sure I can remember that far back... ha!

This was the first year that we have taken our trip to Pickens County before Christmas.We decided to spend our time a little differently this year because of our New Year's plans. We spent several days just RELAXING at my Mom and Lee's house, which was very much needed! On Christmas Eve morning, we got up and realized that Santa had come early to Mom's house! After we finished with gifts, we got dressed and went to Nanna's for lunch. We had such a good time getting to visit with her! When we got back to Carrollton after lunch, we almost immediately went to have the annual Christmas Eve celebration with Cindy, Joe, Forrest, Mimi, Tom, Mom, and Lee. We found out that Mimi wasn't feeling well, so she and Tom stayed in Birmingham. We took lots of pictures and talked on the phone, but it just wasn't the same without them! When we finished at Cindy and Joe's house, we went to Daddy and Melissa's to spend the night. We got up and found that Santa had come again! We left there just as the snow started to head back home.Before we came home, we went to Jed's parents' house to do Christmas one more time. We had a lot of fun hanging out with his family and opening even more gifts!

We were blessed to get to spend so much time with family over the Christmas holiday, but we were happy to actually have a few days at home to rest. Well, when I say rest, I mean stay busy... taking down Christmas decorations, reorganizing closets, taking things to Goodwill, etc.

When we were finished "resting," we headed to Destin to celebrate with Danny Joe and Ashley at their New Year's Eve wedding. We had a lot of fun hanging out with, yes, MORE family! The wedding was beautiful and we had a really good time!

We had one more day of "rest," then we headed back to school. The break was wonderful, but they never seem to be quite long enough! Back to the real world, I guess...

I'll try not to be so long between posts in the future! Goodnight everyone!

Gulf Shores/Oil Spill

We went to Gulf Shores with my Mom and Lee at the end of June, just as the oil hit. We had a good time, but seeing one of my favorite beaches covered in oil and tar was really sad. There were workers out all day and all night, cleaning it up, but more and more washed in as each day progressed. We still sat on the beach during the day (away from the oily stuff), but we definitely did NOT go in the water, even though there were more people swimming than you would think! We went out for yummy seafood dinners and Mom and I went "birthday" shopping at the outlet mall one day, so it was still a really good trip, despite all the oil! Here are some pictures we took:

Look at the pinkish streaks of oil in the water... :(

Tar balls that washed in overnight

More tar balls...

Yuck!

Jed washing his shoes in the "Tar Wash" bucket.

Some less depressing pictures:

We had  a really great time just spending time together, even if the beach smelled like tar... :)

Katie and Drew's Wedding

We had the opportunity to go to Savannah on our last "free" weekend before football season started. We went for Katie Coan and Drew Farmer's wedding. Katie is a friend of Jed's from high school. They were in the band together at Smiths Station and have been good friends ever since.

I had never been to Savannah before, and Jed had only been to visit Katie once while she was doing her pharmacy residency here, so we were really excited about getting a little mini-vacation in before every weekend was taken up with football games! If you've never been to Savannah, you should definitely go, it's beautiful! It was really hot, so we've decided we want to go back, but definitely NOT in August...

The wedding was held at Whitefield Chapel at Bethesda, which was absolutely beautiful! It was so quaint and pretty, I just loved it! (Paula Deen got married here, too, by the way...)

Jed was really excited to see a lot of his high school friends who came in for the wedding too. Here are some pictures we took:

Clark, Cason, Jed, and Ryan at the chapel, waiting on the wedding to begin.

Katie and her uncle, walking down the aisle

The "crew" again, after the wedding.

This was just too funny not to post... I have no idea what we were looking at! Jed says it looks like an advertisement for something! I told him, if I weren't in it, it could be a Brooks Brothers ad! :)

The lighting was bad here, but this was the only picture I had of the whole group of friends, including Katie.

This one is blurry too, but I still like it. This was taken when we walked into town to get a bite to eat after the reception was over.

We had a wonderful (hot) time in Savannah and the wedding was gorgeous! Congratulations, Katie and Drew! 

The Flood...

Many of you may have heard about it already, but at the beginning of August, just as school was starting, we had a really heavy rain and one of our guest rooms flooded. The water gathered and puddled against the brick for so long, that it seeped through the brick/mortar, into the house, wet the slab, soaked through the carpet padding, and finally into the carpet.

I've decided it was by the Lord's design that we decided that the room needed to be cleaned out. It had been an office/exercise room with an elliptical machine, a weight bench, and a set of weights. We had just gotten rid of the exercise equipment the weekend before, and realized that there was way too much junk in there. So, Jed went back to begin cleaning things out while I was busy doing something else in the house. He noticed that the carpet was damp and called me in there because he assumed that Hammie had used the bathroom in there. We started feeling around and moving things out of the way, and realized it was wet all the way into the corner. I decided there was NO way Hammie could possibly have had that much fluid in his system, recently enough for it to still be wet, so we started assuming the worst... Finally, I couldn't stand it, so I grabbed the corner of the carpet and pulled it up. That is when we found out that the entire pad and even the foundation of the house was wet!

We started moving EVERYTHING out of the room right then (including Jed's record collection, which was mostly soaked).

Jed called Jonathan (his cousin/our insurance agent) to see what we should do after that. He said to take pictures, then go ahead and pull back the portion of the carpet that was wet and to try to dry it out with fans overnight. He said he would check out our homeowner's policy and get back with us in the morning. So, we brought in a couple of chairs from the deck and draped the soaked carpet and padding over them, with fans blowing all over the room trying to dry it out (it smells pretty bad at this point).

Jonathan called the next morning and informed us that our homeowner's policy did not, in fact, cover floods caused by standing water (from outside). If a toilet had overflowed and flooded the house, it would have been covered, but we would have needed a separate flood policy to cover what happened to us. :(

So, we sucked it up and just decided to bite the bullet and purchase all new carpet for the rest of the house (bedrooms, closets, and hall). We had talked about doing it before, but we just didn't "need" it, so we hadn't done it. This, we figured, was a good reason. We shopped around a little, and found what we wanted, for a decent price, that was in stock, that could be installed before we went back to school (with students), so we did it. We also went ahead and decided to have a french drain put in the yard. We had never had problems before with standing water, but we certainly were NOT going to put in new carpet, just to have the house flooded again!

Needless to say, I did NOT get the type of birthday presents I was hoping for, but I got a new drain in the yard and new carpet in the house.. Happy Birthday to me!!! The drain really helps my peace of mind whenever we get a heavy rain, so I'm glad we went ahead and did it, even though the timing wasn't the best. :)

The first of many...

I apologize to those of you who come here to check up on us, but I have been SO busy the past month or so, that I really just have not had the time to post anything new here. I'm going to create several posts about multiple topics to keep this one from being so long! I'll start with this weekend...

I finally had the opportunity to really see Forrest play in a football game this weekend!!! I've seen him stand on the sidelines (only once), but I've never been able to see him "in action!" It was so much fun getting to be at a PA game again. I had someone cover our game for me so that I would be able to go, and after being at 6A public school games for several years, it was a bit of a shock for me to see how small the stadium, the crowd, and the players were! They looked like babies compared to some of the boys on Smiths Station's team, so I was kind of scared they were going to get hurt, but I guess when the other team is "little" too, it's pretty fair. Not only did I enjoy seeing Forrest and the other boys play, I also enjoyed getting to see lots of people from home that I don't get to see on a regular basis. I didn't get to take any pictures, but I had a ton of fun!

Mom and Lee stayed with us the whole weekend, which was a lot of fun too! Mimi, Tom, CeCe, Joe, and Forrest all stayed at Callaway Gardens for the weekend, so they came and watched football at our house on Saturday night. We went and had brunch with them on Sunday morning before they left, in honor of Mimi's birthday! Happy Birthday, Mimi! I made her a strawberry cake, but it was my first try and it turned out a little sad... :( It tasted okay, it just looked "homemade," as Mimi said.

Mom and I made TONS of "tailgate" food on Saturday morning. We even wore aprons, just for fun... :) Please notice that Mom's apron matches the cake and mine matches my Aubie shirt!

I had a really good time seeing everybody and watching the first football games of the season! War Eagle!!!! Oh, and Jed says, "Roll Tide!" (That was really hard for me to type...)

Love you all! More to come!

Sorry...

Okay, okay... I'm finally getting around to writing another post! I skipped the last couple of days of our trip because I never even had time to type them up, much less post them! We had an absolutely WONDERFUL time, but it has taken me a couple of weeks to remember what "real life" is about! I'm still working on getting pictures together to post, but I promise I'll get them up soon! There were 4300 or so of them, so it's taking me a while to go through and "cull" the duplicates and decide which ones are worth posting!

Let's see... what have I been doing? We got back on Friday (June 18) just in time to unpack, go visit Jed's parents for Father's Day, and for Jed to leave again on Monday. He had to go to Orange Beach (darn, his luck) for a band director conference. I didn't want to leave just yet, so I met him in Gulf Shores on Thursday. Mom and Lee also met us down there on Thursday! We had a good time, but it was hot, and the oil/tar situation was kind of gross. We dealt with it the best we could (with the help of an umbrella and an outlet mall). :)

We got back and we were finally able to start doing some things around the house! We've done all sorts of home improvements/repairs this week. I've been doing a little gardening as well... (who knew?) I'm new at this, so everything isn't exactly thriving, but I haven't managed to kill it all yet, so I guess that's a plus! I'm learning (slowly), so I'll do better in the future, hopefully!

We are actually AT HOME for the 4th of July... for the first time in ages! We just couldn't travel anymore! This is the first weekend that we have both been at home and stayed here in months... literally. We're keeping Opal (Jed's parents' dog) while they're at the beach for a long weekend, and we're also watching our neighbors' house and taking care of their dog and cat. It's our turn to take care of the animals who belong to the people who have taken care of ours for the past 2 months! :)

Hopefully I'll be able to post pictures soon. Love you all!