Quick Summary of what has been going on

Okay, so I know I am a horrible blogger. I haven't written anything in months. So I will try to give a short summary of what has been going on with us.

Addison had her 15 month doctor's appointment. She weighed 24lbs 4oz and was 32 inches long. She is still in the 90th percentile for height. The doctor said that Addison was doing great and was impressed with the number of words Addison knows already.

Addison's list of words at 15 months: back, bath, dog, duck, nose, eye, mouth, thank you, banana, night night, no, more, momma, dada, hat, shoe, and book.

She may be saying more words, but these are the ones we understand.

We took a crazy trip just before Thanksgiving. In five days we went from Raleigh to Savannah, to Florida, to Myrtle Beach and then back to Raleigh. Addison did great. Thanks to a friend (thanks Trish) who let us borrow a DVD player, Addison was entertained for hours by movies.

For Thanksgiving we went to visit my family in the mountains. I was sick the whole time. I think I had a stomach virus. I lost 5 pounds over one week, which normally would not be a bad thing, but since I am pregnant, it is not good.

This coming Friday (Dec. 5th) we get another ultra sound and we should be able to see if the baby is going to be a girl or a boy.

I have added some new pictures to Addison's website, so check it out.

So, that is a quick summary of our lives right now. I will try to be better about blogging.

First Doctors Appointment

We had our first doctors appointment today. We got to see the baby and listen to it's heartbeat. It was so exciting. While we were looking at the baby, it started to move it's arms and legs. It was so cute. The doctor said that as of this coming Thursday (Oct. 2) I will be 10 weeks. My due date is April 30, 2009.

So far my pregnancy is going pretty well. I am having mild morning sickness. I didn't have any morning sickness with Addison, so I was hoping not to have any this pregnancy as well. But like I said, it is very mild, so I can't really complain.

I am already wearing maternity pants. Apparently your body starts getting bigger faster the second time around. I am looking forward to being pregnant during the winter this time, as opposed the the summer. Being pregnant in Raleigh, in the summer, is not fun. Hopefully winter will be more comfortable.

I will keep you posted on how the pregnancy goes.

We're Back!

Addison and I spent the last week in Marion with my family. I was hoping we would get to swim all week, but we didn't. This past week was the coldest week Marion has seen this summer, and the water was too cold to swim in. But we still had a great time. We had a birthday party for Addison, which was lots of fun. Once I get pictures from Tate, I will post them.

I don't typically watch much TV, but all week I got hooked on HG TV. Luckily we don't get HG TV here at home, otherwise I might not get anything done.

Also, I ate more junk food during the week I was in Marion then I have all summer. I ate ice cream, chips & dip, cup cakes, soft drinks, pound cake, peanut butter cookies, pigs-in-a-blanket, sausage and cheese ball with crackers. And that is just the snack food that I ate. That doesn't include the food I ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So I will be going through junk food withdrawal this week.

So to summarize, while we were in Marion I watched HG TV and ate junk food. :)

Perspective

Today Addison and I were in the car and Addison was making very loud noises. She was happy, but she was being very loud. This situation reminded me of a story I read recently. This story was about two different moms. One mom walked by a window and noticed her daughter's figure prints all over the glass. This mom quickly went to the task of cleaning the figure prints off, annoyed that, yet again, she was having to clean figure prints off the window. Another mother walks by a window and sees her daughter's figure prints. Instead of cleaning them off though, she cherishes them. See, her daughter died recently and these figure prints that she used to clean off, she now wants to preserve.

As I was driving with Addison in the back making loud noises, I realized I could get frustrated that she was being so loud or I could cherish it. I know that there is a mom out there somewhere who would give anything to be in my situation and to hear their daughter or son making loud noises again.

Thank you God for blessing me with Addison and help me to never take her for granted.

I LOVE LOWE'S

So, as I mentioned in my blog yesterday, we bought a fan for our living room. Yesterday evening Daniel worked on getting it installed. Because this fan has a remote control and therefore there are extra things you have to install to get it to work, the installation was a bit time consuming for Daniel. Once he got it install we turned it on and the fan worked great, BUT. . . the light did not work. We looked up online how to open the light portion of the fan. Try as we might, though, we could not get open the area where the light went. Daniel even went through the trouble of taking the fan back down (AHHHHHHH!) so that we could try to get the light open while it was on the ground. We still could not get it open.

At this point we are very frustrated, so I decide to call Lowe's and ask for help. Vince was the WONDERFUL Lowe's employee who answered my call. I told him the model number and he said he would look it up and call me right back. In less than 10 minutes Vince had called me back and explained how we should open the light. We had been doing it wrong, but when we tried doing what Vince said, we still could not get it open. I told Vince we still could not get it open. He then asked where we lived. Apparently we live in the same subdivision his sister lives in. Vince said that he would drop by today (Sunday) and see if he could open the light.

At this point I am a little bummed. I still really like the fan, but it would have been nice if the light worked. It is not the end of the world though, because we do have a lamp in the living room. Since Daniel and I really did try to open the light, exactly like Vince told us to, I am very doubtful that Vince is going to be able to do it either.

Sunday at lunch Vince shows up at our door. On the first try, he gets the light open. To our surprise, there is not even a bulb in it. He says he as one in his car and he rushes out to get it. He kindly installs the light for us and puts it back together. We thank him and ask how much we owe him. He said nothing. We asked him a few times, was he sure, we didn't mind paying him for the light and his time, but he insisted that we not pay him.















After Vince left Daniel installed the fan again and everything works and it looks great. If I was to buy a fan brand new from Lowe's, this would have been the fan I would have bought, if money had not been an issue. So, we got it for half of what we would have paid for it new and it works great.

It is so rare to find someone who is so willing to go out of their way to help perfect strangers. I hope Lowe's knows what a valuable employee they have.

Thank you God for making everything work out perfectly, when it so easily could have turned out badly.

A Great Morning!

This morning was wonderful. Early this morning the whole family headed over to a new playground near our house. When we got there, we had the whole place to ourselves. Did I mention that we went early in the morning. :)

Addison had never been to a playground before and this one had lots of activities for just her age. She was able to swing and go down a small slide (with daddy's help of course) and they had these drum like toys that she played with. Click here to see pictures.

On our way home from the playground a guy who was selling a ceiling fan on Craig's list called us back. I have been looking on Craig's list everyday for over a week hoping that someone would sell a ceiling fan that we would like. This one was perfect. It was black and very modern looking, which is what we need for our living room. The guy was asking $75 for it, which was a good price considering the fan, brand new, cost $128. We offered him $60, just to see what he would say, and he agreed to sell it to us for $60, YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!! At 10:30 we meet him at Lowe's to get the fan.

We got home a little after 11:00. We gave Addison a bath, which she loved. We feed her lunch and then put her down for a nap.

And that was our morning!

"The Last Lecture"

Randy Pausch died last Friday, July 25th, 2008. ABC News with Diane Sawyer did a tribute to Randy Pausch Tuesday night. While watching the tribute, I got extremely upset emotionally. The next day, I still felt very emotional. During my lifetime there have been many people who's life stories or accomplishments have been in the media, who I have considered great people, whom I have highly respected, who have died and it had not affected me this way. Why was Randy Pausch's death different? Why was I so emotional over his death and not the others? After considering it for a while, I realized it was not his death that upset me so much.

The difference between the other great people and Randy Pausch is that we got to know Randy's family and we witnessed his love and passion for his wife and children in a very intimate way. I realized I was not sad that Randy had passed, because all of us die at some point, I was sad because the Pausch family will no longer get to experience first hand their wonderful husband and father. Even more than that, I am sad that his children were as young as they were when he died and that at this age they can not quite grasp what an incredible man he was.

I do think that his children are truly blessed with what they do have though. How many kids who have lost a parent can say that they have recordings of what that parent would have wanted them to know about their life. How many kids who have lost a parent have such intimate videos of how much their father loved their mother and how much he loved playing and spending time with them. How many children who have lost a parent can say that I know stories about my father's life because he recorded them for me before he died and therefore I know my father through his own words.

So in a way I feel his children are greatly blessed, but they have also had a great lose that no amount of recordings can replace.

In the course of a few days I have been able to work through my emotions and come to peace with Randy's death. And I did not even know him. I know from my own experience the hard days, months, years that are ahead of the Pausch family. I also know that the emotions they are feeling now, though they will lessen in intensity with time, they will never completely go away.

I pray that God will surround the Pausch family with comfort and peace.