Baby Update!

Well, if you haven't already heard, then you are behind!!!  We are having a BOY!  Here's the gender picture... it's pretty obvious!  Do you like how she labeled it with such excitement?! 

These pictures are a slight bit more blurry on here than the originals... I had to scan them, but you can still see what everything is.  This is the full body.  His left hand is up by his head nose and mouth, and his right arm is the VERY white line across the back of his head... so he has both of his arms up.


Another body shot, closer up... and you can see his left hand better, as well as his right hand kind of waving.  He's not actually sucking his thumb, but it's just up by his head.  He was moving around some when she was taking the pictures... Jason was pretty impressed by that.


And another full baby shot.


And then there's his feet.  He has some VERY long feet, in my opinion... but he's measuring right where he should be right now.


So that's the news... and here's the full story of how the morning went (mostly for my own remembrance!).

I woke up at 7 in order to be able to drink my 18-24 ounces of water they want you to drink an hour before the appointment.  I am not a fan of eating or drinking anything when I first wake up... nothing tastes good, so I pretty much had to gag down breakfast and all that water... and then I felt waterlogged.  Well, we got to the doctor's office right at 8, which was our scheduled appointment time, and I already felt like I was going to pee my pants!  At 8:15, they finally called us back.  She started trying to look for the baby, but my bladder was TOO full, so she told me to empty a bit by counting to 20 (at a decent speed) and then stopping.  Who can stop once they start going?!  That was pretty darn hard, but it helped me a little bit... so back out I went to the table.  She then proceeded to take a TON of pictures of everything you could think of for their records, including about 10-15 pictures of his heart.  We could see all 4 chambers of his heart and it beating; Jason thought that was pretty neat because he had never seen a beating heart before.  The baby's heart rate was 134, so he was pretty calm today... the first time we heard it it was 161, and last time it was 154.  I think he was still sleeping when she tested his heart rate, and didn't wake up until she was done with her pictures and turned on the videotape to show us the gender.  Yes, we have a videotape of him moving a bit, and her showing us his gender.  We were worried at first because his spine was faced toward us, but she got him to turn around while she was taking all of her pictures.  As soon as Jason saw the obvious boy-ness, he threw his hands over his head and said "wahoo" in excitement... too bad we didn't have a video of that because it was pretty funny.  So anyway, that was our morning, and we're pretty darn excited and in love with that little guy.  I think Jason was amazed to actually see something in there though. ;)

Good Friday Tornado

This is mostly so I can remember, but it's interesting too.  

So on Good Friday, Tennessee got hit pretty hard with ugly storms, and if I remember right, there were 6 tornadoes that made 9 touchdowns around Tennessee.  As I'm sure a lot of you already know, Murfreesboro was hit pretty darn hard, and suffered quite a bit of damage.  Murfreesboro is only about 3o minutes from where we live, so it was pretty close, and Jason and I both know quite a few people that live there.  Anyway, the biggest tornado was an F-4 tornado that was on the ground for 23 miles, and it was HUGE.  Here's a picture that has pretty much become a token picture for that storm.  Yes, that's the Harley Davidson store in front of the tornado, and the store suffered NO damage whatsoever.  Amazing...

House Picture, Part 3

One last picture... my mom found this picture online and hijacked it from the realty site she was looking at.  This is the outside of the house.  You can see the basement door, the deck, and the window on the right side is the master bedroom window.  Around the right side is where the main door to the house is, and that's where you enter at the utility room area.  Does that help with some visualization?

House Pictures, Part 2

So if you haven't read part 1, go read that first!  Ok, where was I?  Oh yeah... into the master bathroom.  When you walk into the master bathroom, to the right you have a nice walk-in closet, which you really can't tell how big it is in this picture, but it is very good sized.  It extends left when you go into it.
To the left when you walk in the master bathroom you have the vanity, toilet, and bath/shower.  Yes, there is only one sink in there, but we're used to that, and I don't really think it'll be much of a problem for us.
Alright... to backing up to the living room... remember the little cove on the right that led up the stairs?  Well, here are said stairs.
And this is the upstairs room.  It is HUGE as well... hence the futon and tv on the left, and bed on the right.  And the open closet, as well as the open door to the unfinished part of the upstairs... definitely space for more bedrooms or living area.  Eventually we will add on there!
And here's a close up of the unfinished part.  The door swings out into the unfinished part, so you once again can't see how big it is, but this is about half of it, so double that size, and that's the unfinished part.
And back down the stairs we go.  I think that lavender color is going to have to disappear!
Then over to the door in the living room that leads to the unfinished basement... and this is the stairs to get there.  We're going to have to put railing on that eventually, but for now, while we have no children and then small children, they won't be going up and down those stairs unattended!  (Yay for a door to keep them out!)
This is part 1 of the unfinished basement.  As you can see, the current owners have made this the man area, which it will also be for Jason... thank goodness!  All of his hunting and fishing stuff can go down here and I don't have to trip over it all the time!  There is a wood stove in the back left corner, which we will be using to heat the house in the winter so we don't have to use the propane.  The current owners said the wood stove heats the place up real well, so that's good.  The door on the left leads to storage area under the deck.. you'll see that in a bit.
This is the second part of the unfinished basement... if you put the last picture, this picture, and the next picture side by side left to right, you could pan the entire basement.
And the last part of the basement.  That tank on the right is for the water, which is pumped up from the city water line down below.  the inspector was impressed that the pump was at the top of the hill with the house because he has seen some where the pump is down below and the water pressure is not nearly as good... but this house has good water pressure, and the tank is automatically refilled when the pressure in it declines to a certain psi.  The owner showed us how that works too... that way we don't get confused when it's ours!
This is the stairs leading back upstairs... and the door leads directly to outside... so Jason can come directly inside from doing whatever and I don't have to yell at him for getting my upstairs dirty. ;)
And remember the door leading to the storage area under the deck?  Well, this is it.  To the right and to the left of the door.  Yes, it looks a little bit messy, but hey, it's under the deck... not heated or anything, and they will be cleaning it!  Oh yeah, and they kept their dogs in there when they were puppies, so of course it's going to be a bit dirty!

So that's the house!  Sadly, I wasn't thinking clearly and forgot to take pictures of the OUTSIDE of the house, but really there's not that much to see because it's on a hill and you can't get a good picture of it... all you end up seeing is the cinder blocks and part of the deck when looking up the hill at the front of it.  The siding is grey, and has a tin roof.  That's about the extent of the outside you need to know about.  This will be our house... oh, and 13.02 acres that comes with it... which is almost all wooded, and the current owners have killed turkeys and deer this year on it, so Jason is happy.  The owner showed Jason some hot spots too, so he's ready to get out there!

Now if only we could get my car up the driveway!!  Oh, did I forget to mention that??  The owners put some rocks on the driveway intending to help with traction, but in reality it made the traction absolutely horrible, so my car tires spin at the switchbacks.  We have a few ideas, but are pretty sure that getting rid of those little rocks will help me get up there!

House Pictures, Part 1

In order to make sure that everyone is able to download all the pictures in a decent time, I've decided to post more than one post with pictures of the house.  Oh yeah, and if you didn't hear... we're buying a house! :)  We had our home inspection yesterday morning, and the inspector said he didn't see anything that would keep him from buying the house.  I personally think he was pretty impressed with the house overall, and noted it was "very well-built", and "they knew what they were doing" when they hooked up the electrical box... and other similar comments.  So here's the view we couldn't turn down... absolutely gorgeous, if you ask me... and I can't wait to see what each season brings to this view from our (soon to be) deck!
This is to the left looking off the deck down the driveway.  That is a shed down below that will most likely house Jason's boat. 
This is the living room.  To the right is the deck.  The previous owners still live there, so that's all their stuff you see.  The door goes down to the basement, which you'll see later.  And on the right side where that little cove is, is stairs to go upstairs.  Yes, that is sage green carpet... just what I like!
This is the kitchen... which behind me in this picture is the living room.  Yes, there is no dishwasher, but I've already decided where I would like to put it, and it shouldn't be too difficult to install because the downstairs unfinished.  Just to the right of the picture is a door to nowhere... like they were planning on extending the deck around to the side of the house too.  We'll eventually get that far, but not in the next few years unless someone wants to gift it to us. ;)
This is the dining area.  It is technically an eat-in kitchen, but has plenty of space, and once again, out that window is the deck.  I love the HUGE windows... but the drapes will have to go!  Oh, and the flooring is laminate, but it's still in really good condition.
This is the main bathroom in the little hallway off of the kitchen and living room.  This will be the one everyone uses when you come to visit.  I realized it is VERY hard to take pictures of bathroom... but it's pretty basic: bath/shower, toilet, and vanity with sink and mirror.
This is the entrance to the walk-in closet in the soon-to-be nursery.  This room is right across the hallway from the master, so it'll work very well as the baby's room... but the wall color will change because a baby can't have brown walls!
Here is another view of the nursery room.  That gives you an idea of the size of it... two twin beds in there currently, and that tv that's in the previous picture.
This is the back door/utility room/mudroom area.  This room was also hard to take a picture of.  To the left is a nice coat rack area, and to the right of the washer and dryer is a big deep sink, so that'll be nice to have so Jason won't trek in the outdoors when he's done hunting or whatever!  No, that washer and dryer will not stay, but we have our own anyway.
This is the master bedroom from the hallway door.  It is HUGE.  They have a king size bed, and it still looks small in that room, so our queen bed will really look small.  To the left (not in the picture) is a nice open area that could easily be a little office area, or possibly space for my crafting habit.  The door in the picture goes to the master bathroom... which will be in the next post!

Time to catch up!

I've been quite neglectful with updating the blog with pictures.  Between work and being pretty tired from the baby in my tummy, I've not wanted to take the time to do it.  But this week, I've not been AS tired, and I actually feel like doing it, so here goes some pictures!

Back in FEBRUARY (see, I told you I was behind), we went up to Lafayette for the day to spend some time with family again... and Jason decided to go squirrel hunting.  Papa Wayne and Mammer always talk about how there are squirrels everywhere up at their house, so Jason was itching to kill some of them.  he managed to get 3 that day.  They're in our freezer... I told him I was refusing to try squirrel for my first time while pregnant because I knew I definitely would NOT like it!

In March, Jason had his personal interview for Nashville Metro PD.  Doesn't he look spiffy?  We managed to find this suit at the outlet mall for a pretty good price.  I'm trying to encourage him to dress up a little more. ;)
As an update on his hiring process, he is currently under a conditional offer of employment, assuming he passes all further medical and psychological exams, including a voice recognition test (instead of a polygraph).  He has two more appointments, April 27th, and May 4th... and I think that will be all of them.  THEN he goes to the academy in June!  Keep praying that everything goes well with that!

On the weekend of March 19th, Jason participated in the Middle Tennessee Kids Hunting for a Cure hunt and auction.  They do a juvenile hunt for turkeys, and the juveniles have to be accompanied by an adult, so Jason was one of those adult guides.  They also do a live auction to raise money for St. Jude's (I believe).  The night of the auction, they also had a live concert by Buddy Jewell, who was on the tv show Nashville Star awhile ago.  Jason knew who he was pretty well, and listed off several of his songs.  I knew the songs once I heard them, but didn't realize he sang them.  Here's a picture of us with him.  He was a really nice, genuine guy... like many country singers!

And here he is singing.
I couldn't help but put this in here.  The organizer of the event was one of the Jason's friends off of tnturkey, and this is one of his sons.  He managed to get ahold of this HUGE camera, and was trying to take pictures of Buddy with it.  The size comparison just made me laugh.
They also had several other singers at the event.  This is Gina West, who is an incredibly talented singer and songwriter (aren't they all in Tennessee??).  They wrote a song for a veteran who was hit and wounded twice in 6 months by IEDs... he was at the event, and drove all the way from Florida for it.  Gina said she's going to get us a copy of that song because Jason told her it made me cry lol.
Alright... next topic.  I found a new little critter by our house a month or so ago.  I was going to open the front door and put the baby gate across it so we could have some fresh air inside and Taco could look outside (he loves that),until I saw this little guy on our front steps sunning himself.  This was from one of our warm weeks before all the storms came.
We've had a lot of severe storms lately... and we've managed to survive them all.  The rain amazes me, and as you can see... there IS a house back there.  This picture is from the front door looking across the street.  I was impressed that the rain was SO hard that you could barely even see the neighbor's house.  Oh yeah, and this was in the daytime, but the street lights turned on due to how dark it got!
We've had about 3 pretty good severe storms so far... and this week's forecast called for storms 4 of the 7 days, so we have more to come.  Yesterday when I woke up after already being awake from 4-530 am due to the lightning, thunder, and rain, I looked out the front door to see this:
Yes, that is the neighbor's house, and their tree was completely uprooted from the winds.  What you can't see because the angle was wrong no matter how I tried, is the other house on the right.  Behind the very green tree on the right of the picture, is the next house over.  If that tree would have been 5 feet closer to the house or 5 feet taller, the house would have been damaged, but as it is, the branches are definitely touching the corner of the house!  Talk about LUCKY!  We've had several tornadoes touch down within about 30 minutes of us, but none real close to us.  Murfreesboro got hit really hard yesterday, and another one of Jason's friends from tnturkey was 2 streets over from the severe damage from the big tornado... needless to say, he has a lot of debris in his yard.  It was at least an F-3, possibly an F-4, and was up to a half a mile wide.

Ok, now I'm updated on pictures!  I will try to be better at updating the pictures when I have them instead of waiting forever, especially since I have had a little more energy lately.

Out with the old...

...in with the new... mattress, that is.  I finally went and bought a new mattress the other day after Jason woke up one morning and finally admitted that his back hurting was from the mattress.  A few weeks ago, I tried telling him the mattress was bad and that was why his back was hurting, but he didn't believe me... but he finally realized it this week!  SO... I went to Mattress King and bought a Perfect Sleeper Serta mattress and box spring set.  Our old mattress and box springs were SOOOO old, it was ridiculous.  We were the 4th set of people that had been on them, so I think it was about time to get rid of them.  Last night was the first night on the new mattress, and I definitely slept WAY better than I have been lately.

In other news, I just got back from my doctor's appointment... just a checkup.  The baby's heartbeat was around 151 or so, and the doctor said "it's a very strong heartbeat"... so that was good.  He measured my belly, and said I'm measuring big (no surprise), and by measurements I would be around 17 weeks (I'm actually 15, almost 16 weeks).  I let him know my family has a history of big babies, and mentioned I was 10 pounds and the record in the family was 10 lbs. 7 oz, so he was like, "so you guys grow them right!"  Hahah... that made me laugh.  I've only gained 2 pounds this month, so that was nice to know too, because I've intentionally not been weighing myself at home because I don't want to be worried about how much I'm weighing really... just as long as it's not too much. ;)  Next appointment is in 3 weeks, and we'll have our big ultrasound!!!  YAY!  They also told us to bring a VHS tape and they can record the ultrasound, so for all you people in Washington, we'll have something fun to show you when we're up there in May!  :)