Weekend Visitors

We had quite the weekend this weekend! Some of Jordan's friends from his Academy days came to visit this weekend. Tripp and Carly Johnson and Sam de la Rosa came in on Friday night and just left this afternoon. It was great to catch up with them and spend some time with good friends.

Saturday we had a big breakfast, the guys tossed around the football in the park, Sam and Jordan went to the Space Museum, and that night we went to Casa de Suenos! Today we went to church, had lunch, and then went and walked around Cloudcroft for a while. They left from there and now Jordan and I are just relaxing before church. I wanted to share this video that we took of Heidi and the Johnson's dog Jackson playing together.

Jackson was really cute and really soft. He's a mutt that they got at Walmart a few months ago.

Well other than that there's not much going on around here. We're still waiting on the baby. According to our little countdown thingy there are 8 days to go!

storage room progress report

Tonight I worked on the storage room- one of our "bedrooms" that we are transforming from a storage room to a storage room. It does actually make sense though. Previously lots of things were stored in there over many months as I threw them on the floor; when we finish there will be shelves, boxes, and organization galore.

This room is in an awkward location in our house, so it is a natural for a storage room. It looked pretty bad though, and although I couldn't tell, it smelled pretty strongly of cat pee. After Sarah told me about it we decided to rip up the carpet (it's the only room in our house with carpet) and lay down some new carpet that was not infused with the stench created by years of cats missing the litter box. We were going to do this 2 weekends ago. So 2 weekends ago I ripped up the carpet with zeal, only to discover that it would take a lot longer than I first thought. I have been working on it ever since.

In the first place, as I was ripping the carpet up the smell nearly knocked me over. Gross! Once I had the carpet up I realized that I needed to clean the floor really well with TSP (and floors under carpets are DISGUSTING). That took an afternoon. Once I had clean floors I realized that it would be best if I painted the walls before I put the carpet down, and of course I had to repair the drywall before I painted the walls. I have been working on that for several days now.

Tonight I started painting, kind of. In an effort to keep the odor away, I sprayed some Kilz on the bottom of the walls and on the complete floor. I'm done for the night, so that is all the progress for now.

The Kilz was an oil-based spray primer labeled "odor-free" but the label was not even close to accurate. I kept the window and doors open, but I am still feeling not that great; it takes quite some time to spray paint a whole floor.

So, the process continues, but we are getting ever closer. Someday the room will be a storage/sewing/woodworking/TV room.

Jordan the writer

So yesterday we walk into church to go to Sunday School, and a lady stops us in the hallway and says, "Jordan! I read your thing in the paper!" Needless to say I was very confused because Jordan had neglected to inform me that he had written a letter to the editor of our local paper! He said that he had planned to tell me about it if they contacted him letting him know that they were going to publish it. They never did contact him, so I'm glad that our friend from church told him about it! Otherwise, we may have never known it was there. (We don't get the paper)

It's currently (Monday, Oct. 20) the 2nd most viewed thing on the Alamogordo Daily News website! Jordan and I have really enjoyed looking at comments that people have posted about it. Some people just don't understand satire.... others just want to start talking about politics! I guess that is what is on everyone's minds these days.

If you want to take a look at it here is the link to the letter on the Alamogordo Daily News website:

http://www.alamogordonews.com/opinion/ci_10752151

P.S. Be warned! It seems that whoever is in charge of advertising with our newspaper is a huge Obama fan! (Either that or Obama has just taken over the internet.) At any given time it seems that more than half of the advertisements on that site are selling Obama Biden. ;-)

Sarah is HUGE!

So here are some pictures from the baby shower last Saturday.

That's Kari Haug measuring her ribbon on my belly. Everyone guessed that my belly is bigger than it really is. No one's ribbon was too small... what does that mean??? I'll try not to think about it too much.

This is me measuring myself... I was exactly right. No overlap at all! The edges touched perfectly! It was a lucky guess I suppose.

That's Christie Hall there on the right. She's the one that told us about Dr. Harkins. She's been really encouraging throughout my pregnancy. She and her husband Kevin had Jordan and I over for dinner a couple of months ago and gave us lots of good advice. :-)

Finally, here is a picture from the Halloween party that we went to tonight. Do you get what we are?

Jordan is a speed bump warning sign and I am a (very large) speed bump! Jordan made those shirts this afternoon. He painted my tire with black craft paint and then ran over the shirt.

Well there ya go! More pregnant pictures and pictures from the baby shower. There are a few more pictures from tonight and from the shower here.

We're still waiting for the baby to arrive. I've had to chuckle a couple of times today when people have said to me, "oh! you're looking very... ready!" Haha I know that they almost said big but didn't want to hurt my feelings. It really doesn't bother me though because I know that the bigger I get, the closer we're getting to meeting our daughter. Jordan and I can't wait.

Third long weekend in a row!

So this is Jordan's third (yes third!) long weekend in a row! It's so nice to have him around so much! Two weekends ago was his first RDO (Regular Day Off). Now that he works at the Test Track he gets every other Friday off. They work an extra hour everyday in order to do that. Monday was Columbus day, and today was another RDO! Next weekend I'll be sad that I'll only have him here for 2 short days... Maybe the baby will come next week and we can make it 4 long weekends in a row! I'll have to give her a pep talk and sort that out.

Last Saturday some of my friends from Jordan's old squadron threw me a baby shower. It was a lot of fun. I do have pictures of it that I was going to put up here, but we've already packed the camera for the hospital, and I don't feel like digging through the bag to put them up. Yeah I know lame excuse, but I'll put them up later with the first pictures of our baby girl. I keep hoping that she'll come a little early (thanks to our Dr. saying that she might), but I'm trying to put it out of my mind since she's just going to get here when she gets here. Oh well.

Tonight we went over a to a new friend's house. He works in Jordan's new squadron and his fiancee came in for a visit. We played several games and just hung out for a while. It was a really good time. Tomorrow Jordan is going to continue working on putting down some new carpet in one of our rooms and I will attempt to organize the baby's room a bit. Then, we're going to have dinner with Jordan's BSU director from the Academy and his family. They're in town visiting his parents. After that, we're going straight to a Halloween party! Tomorrow will be a busy day for sure. We just got a new video camera in the mail today from my dad, so maybe we'll post something up from our adventures tomorrow night. :-)

this week

For those of you have not heard, I got a new job. I'm still at Holloman, but I moved to a new squadron, the High Speed Test Track. That has been going well and it seems to be a really fun job.

Last night I had a going away party with people from my old squadron. It was nice to have everybody in one place to say goodbye. As part of that I gave a gift to the squadron. That's the project that Sarah has been talking about.

I made a big (4' x 6') board with pegs on it for the squadron bar; they will put mugs on it. I bought all of the materials last weekend, but I did not actually start working on the project until Wednesday night. I had to stay up until about 1 in the morning both Wednesday and Thursday working on it because I had waited so long to start. It ended up looking really great, but I cannot put a picture of it here. Well I can, just not yet. It's at somebody else's house right now and I have not yet had a chance to take a picture of it. I'm going to help them hang it on the wall of the bar though, and I'll get a picture of it then. When you see a picture you'll understand why it took so long just to stain a board and glue some pegs to it.

Today a couple of friends came over and helped me set up my motorcycle (the carbs were very badly out of sync). I'm looking forward to riding it. Otherwise Sarah and I just relaxed and made milkshakes. Well, Sarah did have a baby shower this morning, but I don't know much about that.

...

I'm looking at that little countdown thingy to the right and thinking... 25 more days? .....ugggghhhh

I was so tired today. I'm sure that I'm still recovering a bit from Tuesday but sheesh. I pretty much slept the entire day away. I'm pretty sure that I slept for 8 of the 10 hours that Jordan was at work today. That's just ridiculous. I'm doing a lot better though if you're wondering. No nausea and yes, I'm drinking plenty of liquids (Mom).

Jordan is still working on his project, and it's looking really good! We finished the staining which he's touching up a bit, and then he just has to put in the pegs! I know you're probably wondering what it is, but I'll let you wonder a little longer until it's finished. It's cool though. :-)

I'm really excited about Thanksgiving. Danielle Anders called me yesterday, and a bunch of Jordan's friends from the Academy and their wives (well those who are married) are going to meet up in Clovis, NM at Cannon AFB, where a good amount of people we know are stationed right now, for a Thanksgiving get together! Last year we were fortunate enough to be able to spend Thanksgiving with Jeff and Sara Johnson some good friends of ours, but they have since moved and we just weren't sure what to do with ourselves. This is definitely the next best thing to spending the holiday with family. Jordan and I are really looking forward to it. (Besides it's a WHOLE lot cheaper than buying another set of plane tickets to NC)

We'll be in Charlotte for Christmas though and would love to see as many of our friends as we can. We'll have our baby girl to show off! We'll be around from 18 December to 1 January. Make plans people! Make plans! :-D

My First Hospital Visit Ever

So, I had my first ever hospital visit. I tried to tell Jordan that it was actually a good thing because now I won't be nervous about being at the hospital when the baby is born, but he didn't buy it... truthfully neither did I. You have to try to find some sort of silver lining though right?

Anyways, I think I ate a bad taco at Taco Bell on Sunday night which let to some food poisoning on Monday. I was feeling better on Monday night but by Tuesday afternoon I was feeling worse. I threw up 6 times on Tuesday (twice at the hospital). I didn't realize that I was in trouble until about 2pm on Tuesday. I figured that I was just sick and I would get better but what I didn't realize was how much more easily pregnant women get to a point with dehydration where it's a vicious cycle of drink, feel nauseous from dehydration, throw up, drink, feel nauseous from dehydration, throw up, you get the idea... So when I immediately threw up my water on Tuesday afternoon, I thought... hmm this isn't good. Luckily we had an appointment with the doctor just a couple of hours later, so I talked to him about it when we got there.

He sent us over to Labor and Delivery and I got my first IV! (feeble attempt at some silver lining...) May I suggest not allowing someone who needs "practice" to attempt putting in your IV... it wasn't a pleasant experience. My blood pressure dropped and I almost passed out. I was also having some significant contractions. After that though I just continued to feel better and better (despite a couple of batches of nausea), but we did end up having to stay the night for more fluids. Jordan didn't sleep well in the pullout chair, but I suppose he did get some practice sleeping in one of those for when our little girl arrives.

All in all I got nearly 4 bags of fluids and didn't really feel like I had to pee the whole time. I suppose by 8:30 this morning though they figured that I was alright and let us go home. Poor Heidi was in her crate from 3:30 on Tuesday afternoon until 10:30ish this morning (Wednesday). We did have a friend stop by to let her out to go to the bathroom Tuesday night but still... That's a long time for a dog to be in a crate! I felt badly for her.

Everyone is good now! The baby is fine, I'm fine, Heidi is fine, and Jordan is fine! We were actually working on a little project tonight that Jordan is putting together for the 586 FLTS. He recently switched to working at the test track (the 846 test squadron) and he has a "going away" party on Friday night! I'm sure he'll be happy to provide some pictures of the finished product before he gives it away.

Thanks everyone for all of your prayers. It's encouraging to know how many people are thinking of us and our little girl.

!

I finally got some news about the Astro teaching position at the Academy. I called, and I was told "Actually, we have decided to," dramatic, disappointing pause, "pick you."

Wow. It was a weird couple of seconds, but now I know that the Astro department picked me, and if everything goes well I will head to AFIT next summer, and the Academy after that. Praise God!