Let's Add...

...a Bookshelf...

Let's hope that Maddy likes to read... or at least collect books... because she's the proud owner of a bookshelf... Check it out:

Currently, she owns 2 books. Bryan's mom (not too sure what she'll call her yet) bought her these books, so her collection is started!!

We bought this bookshelf at Target this weekend, but didn't have a chance to assemble it until tonight!! We think it's grand!!

We'll keep posting pictures as we go along...

Love you guys!!

CRIB

Well, the first big thing came today for Maddy's room... Yep, the crib came today, and Bryan assembled it tonight!! Check out the pictures:
























This is one of the convertible cribs. It's a crib now, then, it came with another piece so that you can take the front piece off and put the extra piece on to make it a toddler bed. Finally, my parents also bought the side-rails for us, so it can then be a full size bed. The front and back of the crib will become the headboard and footboard of the full size bed. WE LOVE IT!! Thanks, Mom and Dad!! Can't wait for you guys to get to see it in person!!

That's really all I have for tonight. I just wanted to share our excitement!! Thanks, again, Mom and Dad!!

Love you guys! :)

Week 30...

Good evening everyone! It has been a very busy weekend in the Williams household!!

Friday evening Bryan and I taped off the walls in Maddy's room. After we finished with that, we went to the Bonzai Japanese Steak House. It is, as my dad so affectionately calls it, a "cutty uppy" place! It is new here in Abilene, and it was EXCELLENT! I even got to eat some sushi. Don't worry, though, everything I ate was cooked... I promise! After dinner, we came home and Bryan put the first coat of primer on the walls. When he finished (it was already about 9 PM by this time), we headed to the grocery store. We finally got home around 10, Bryan put a second coat of primer on the walls, and we headed off to bed.

Yesterday, I had a meeting to attend at work, so I got up and went to that. While I was gone, our friend Angela came over to help Bryan start painting. When I got home, I quickly got started on Southwestern Egg Rolls for lunch. I promised that when they painted, I'd thank them with this treat. We had lunch, then Bryan and Angela finished up while I worked on some laundry, etc. When they were finished, Angela headed home, and everyone got ready to go to the movies. We saw the new Batman movie last night. It was pretty good, but it was VERY intense.

Today, Bryan and I were exhausted, so we opted to sleep in and miss church... Oops... After we got up, we ran a couple of errands... Including going to Target to get a bookshelf for Maddy's room. I decided that with a grandmother that's a librarian (Bryan's mom), she'd need a place to put all of her books... She's already starting quite a collection for us! Then, we went to Petsmart. Nash has been having a problem with getting blisters/tearing the pads on his feet when we take him for walks. We bought some stuff to put on them that's supposed to prevent that from happening. We also got a couple more little things to finish Maddy's room (painter's tape, new switchplate covers [the old ones were blue], etc.). We came back home and Bryan finished up her room... Check it out:



























I think you can tell, but just in case you can't, the room is pink with a brown stripe and pink polka dots on 3 walls and the reverse (brown walls with a pink stripe and brown polka dots) on the remaining wall. I think Bryan and Angela did an EXCELLENT job!! We have textured walls, so the dots are not perfectly round, but Bryan is going to touch them up by hand in the next day or so... I LOVE IT, though!!! It's exactly what I had imagined!!!!!

Once we took all the tape down and cleaned up a bit, we did a few more household chores. Then, we started creating our "to do" list. We have some home improvement-type things we'd like to get done. The first thing on the list was to get the sprinkler system working again. We started that project tonight. I got to stand outside while Bryan was in the garage turning on the different zones of the sprinkler, and I'd give a "yay" or a "nay" depending on if the sprinkler heads popped out of the ground or not. For the most part, everything was working very well. There are a couple in the backyard that will need a little TLC, but we feel confident that we know how to fix them, and plan to do-so this week sometime!

Last, but not least, this coming Friday will be 30 weeks of the pregnancy... That means only 10 more weeks until we're full term, and have reached Maddy's due date. Maddy and I are still doing VERY well!! She's more active than ever. She makes sure that I know that she's getting cramped by pushing on my ribs almost constantly. I'm sure this is one of those things that will get worse before it gets better... No biggie, though... It's all part of it!! So, that being said, here are this week's pictures... Be warned... It's finally happened... My shirt and pants no longer meet. LoL. I COULD make them meet, but once I pull them together, I'd have to stand perfectly still. Any movement whatsoever causes the shirt to slide up. Oh well... It's not like I wear that outfit out to dinner or anything!! Here we are:



























Have a great week everyone!! Love ya!! :)

Week 29...

Hi everyone! I just wanted to share my week 29 pictures with you!! Friday marks the completion of our 29th week. 40 weeks is considered full term. I'm no mathematician, but that sounds like only 11 more weeks!! Scary, huh?!?! We have a lot to do before those 11 weeks pass. Surely we'll get it all (or at least the important stuff) done before then, right?!?! :)

Oh well... Enjoy...








































Here is a picture of Bryan and me standing in front of the condo in Florida as we were getting ready to leave!


I hope that everyone is having a good week!!

Tomorrow (Wednesday) is my glucose test to check to see if I have gestational diabetes. Wish me luck!!

Love you guys!! :)

Alert the Media!!

Yep... I'm blogging... AGAIN! We took a couple of pictures today that I thought would be nice to share with everyone... I'll put the picture, then a caption after it...



This is a small octopus that someone caught and had in an aquarium on the beach yesterday. That is Bryan "petting" it. He wanted me to pet it, but I had absolutely NO desire. In the picture, the octopus is in a cooler. He "inked" in the aquarium, so they had to change the water. Go figure... he got angry and felt threatened in the aquarium where people were looking at and poking at him. Wouldn't you?!?!





This is just a picture of me sitting on the beach today. I think Bryan was just playing with the camera and I got in the way... Oh well...


This was our picture as a couple we took today. One of Bryan's parents graciously took this for us. Don't worry Towheys... We were "representing" with our opaqueness!!! As Uncle Mike would say, we were "basking" in our opaqueness. Poor Maddy... She is destined to be pale. At least she'll fit in!! :)




Well... Those are the only pictures I have to share at the moment. Tomorrow, my friend Catherine is coming from Tallahassee to visit for the day. I am THRILLED!!! I can't wait to see her. I hope to take a few pictures of the two of us to share on a later blog!!

We head home on Sunday sometime. While we enjoyed our little "detour" on the way down, we can't afford to have another on the way home. We are both expected to be at work early Monday morning!

Until Next Time...

:)

Oops...

...it's been more than a week since I last blogged, and boy has a lot happened!!!

Last week at work was a pretty "normal" work week...

Saturday was a pretty good day. We dropped Nash off at the kennel, and he did EXCELLENT!! For the first time, he just walked off with the guy that works there with no complaints. As we were leaving, we could see him in his kennel. He was wagging his tail and NOT barking (a rarity). When he saw us driving off, (I turned around to watch him as we drove off because I was sad) he laid down in the shade in his kennel with seemingly no complaints. This is the very first time this has happened. I attribute this to the simple fact that we took him to a different kennel than we've been to before. These people seem to be EXCELLENT with animals!!

The rest of SaturDAY was spent cleaning the house. Bryan helped and we got the house pretty spick and span. I was pleased.

Saturday EVENING took us to Bryan's boss's going away party. Lt. Col. Willett is moving to Germany with his family. This is a great opportunity for them, but they will truly be missed!! After that party, we found ourselves at the "after party" at Lt. Col. McIntyre's house. We LOVE the McIntyres. He is the commander of Bryan's squadron, and he and his family are WONDERFUL people!! We had a great time there, too.

Once we got home, we went to bed. We got a whopping 3 hours of sleep, then were headed to the airport for our beach vacation. Our neighbors, Mike & Breezy, took us to the airport at 4:30 AM. We left Abilene and flew to Dallas/Ft. Worth. After a 3 hour layover, we headed to Atlanta. You fine folks in Atlanta were having some "weather"... thus we had to divert to Huntsville for a little while. We got BACK on the plane to Atlanta about 30 minutes later. Once we got to Atlanta, we discovered that our flight to Panama City was canceled. ENTER... the phone call... Yes, we called Grandmom and Grandpop for assistance. They gladly came to our rescue. Uncle Mike picked us up, and we spent the night with Grandmom and Grandpop. Thank you kindly for your hospitality. It was a very nice surprise for us!!!

Monday morning Grandpop took us back to the airport where we flew to Ft. Walton Beach. Ft. Walton Beach was much closer to our final destination of Destin than Panama City was, so once we got to Ft. Walton Beach, we hopped in the rental car, and 20 minutes later we were at the condo to meet Bryan's parents.

So, now, here we are! We've done quite a bit of relaxing, but for some reason I'm still worn out. I think it's the combination of being pregnant and the heat. Sitting on the beach is great... minus the heat!! :-)

Here is a picture of tonight's sunset that Bryan just took to share:


Tomorrow Bryan's grandmother will be flying down to spend the remainder of the week with us. On Saturday, my friend Catherine plans to drive here for the day to visit with us. I have not seen her, I believe, since our friend Leslie's wedding, which was almost a year ago!! She is living in Tallahassee, FL and going to/teaching at Florida State University, so it's not too long of a drive for her!! I'm very excited to see her!!

Well... I think that's about all I have to share for now. We'll be heading home on Sunday. Pray for us that our trip home is less eventful!!

I believe I'll leave you with this week's pictures...

Love you guys!!



Yes, I do realize how exhausted I look in these pictures... I PROMISE that I'm feeling well still. I was just, plain tired by the time we got around to taking this week's pictures last night!! :)

Weekly Check-In...

Good evening all!! It's that time again... time for the weekly check-in, so here I am!! It doesn't seem like much has happened since I last blogged, but I feel certain that I'll ramble on about nothing... so here goes!!

We did a 4th of July BBQ at our friends Mike & Breezy's house. They live at the same address two streets over. Bryan got up practically in the middle of the night to start smoking a beef brisket. Nash joined him. They had good male bonding all morning until I got up. About 12 or 13 hours later, the brisket was complete. I had made Ugly Dip, fruit salad and cheesecake dip. Oh, and Bryan also smoked 2 racks of ribs. Once all of our food was prepared, we loaded up the car and drove to Mike & Breezy's house. They had made all kinds of burgers, brats, macaroni salad, etc., too, so we had TONS to eat. There were some other people there... a couple were family members of Breezy's and a few were other families from the squadron. We had a really good time. Once we were finished eating and cleaning up, Mike, Breezy, Bryan, me, and another family all piled into our car and the other family's minivan to go watch the fireworks. I drove since it seemed like the safest option... I have been told that I'm the 9 month designated driver. LoL. I don't mind, though... Safe is always a good option. When we got there, I had TWO (count 'em) TWO backseat drivers... Mike and Bryan were giving me directions on where to park... and I ended up hauling my big ole Acadia up onto the grass... over the curb... That was a new adventure for me!!

Yesterday was a run-around-doing-errands kind of day... We just had a few places in town we wanted to go and get a few things. We ended our day at Lowe's where we chose a couple of paint samples and got some tiny containers of each color.

Today, we put a sploch (how's that for a technical term?) of each color on the wall. We had Mike & Breezy over to get their opinions on which colors looked the best for Maddy's room. We plan for the room to have three pink walls and a chocolate brown wall. We all agreed on the brown color, but both of the pinks we had samples of were a little too "pink" for our liking. We went back to the drawing board, and to Lowe's and wound up with a VERY pale pink. We got a sample of that and painted another sploch on the wall. We're sold! Now, we have gone back to Lowe's and gotten a gallon of each color... and some flat white paint (to use as a primer).

Mike & Breezy have purchased a new truck. The dealership sent a couple out to Dallas to get it for them. It came in early last week, and Mike took one look at it and told them that was not at all what he wanted. It had the short bed, and he really wanted the long bed. The dealership tried to stick him with the truck, but he would have nothing to do with that, and who could blame him?? After searching everywhere, the dealership found the exact truck he wanted in Colorado. The same couple has now driven over the holiday weekend to pick up THIS truck. Supposedly, the truck is at the Ford dealership here now. We are going with them in a few minutes to hopefully pick up the truck and go out to dinner.

I'll leave you with this week's pictures of me and Maddy:





















One last thing... On Thursday evening of this coming week, Bryan and I are going to do a 4D ultrasound. I hope that the pictures turn out really good. If they do, I'll try to post them on here!!! I hear that the pictures are incredible when they do this!! Wish us luck!

Love you guys!!

What an exciting day?!?!

Good evening all... I'm breaking my new "once a week blog" thing because we had some excitement today...

We started out the day with the boys (read: Bryan and Nash) taking me to work... Nash rested his head on the center console from the back seat and enjoyed the ride:


Doesn't he look absolutely thrilled?!?!

So, they dropped me off, and I worked until about 1:30 when Bryan came back and picked me up. Upon picking me up, we ran a couple of errands, including a little lunch, then headed to the GMC dealership to pick up our BRAND NEW GMC ACADIA!!!! Check out the pictures we took this evening:












Even Maddy will be "riding in style"...



This thing has just about every bell and whistle any one could ask for... and then some... It has seating for 7, a DVD system with a fold-down screen in the back, remote start, power rear liftgate, the mirrors automatically tilt down when you put the car in reverse. It has a back-up assistance feature which has lights that come on inside the vehicle as you get closer to something when you are backing up, and if you get too close, it'll start beeping at you (I haven't gotten to try this feature out yet... Bryan won't stand behind the car to let me test it out...HaHaHa). It has the head's up display, so you don't ever have to take your eyes off the road to see your speed, etc. As you can see from the pictures, all the seats in the 2 back rows fold completely flat, so if we needed to put something big in the back, we could with no problems. The list goes on and on... The only 2 features that it does not have are the in-dash navigation system (GPS) and a sunroof. These were both options that we said "no" to. We just bought a GPS and we didn't like the looks of the sunroof.

We are very pleased with our decision. Obviously, this car is bigger than either of the ones we previously drove, but I think that we will adjust just fine. Oh yeah, and it has air bags EVERYWHERE...

Well, after such an exciting day, and taking a benedryl for my allergies, I think I will head to bed now. I'm sure there will be more pictures of the "new ride" in the coming weeks... and I'm sure that there will be stories of other features we learn about. This car is almost too technical for us. I'm sure we'll "manage" just fine, though!

Love you guys!!