great minds

You know the saying "great minds think alike?"

So, Matt and I are having a baby in mid-April- the due date is April 18th.  We found out sometime in August and had a couple months of wigging out to ourselves before we shared our happy news.  Right around the time we spilled the beans, a bunch of other people started spilling the beans as well.  Seriously, there is nothing so Happy as sharing your joy!  Let's see if I can get all the people straight who are having kids in March, April, or May.

Matt was in a Bible study with 4 other guys in college.  It just so happens that 4 out of 5 of them are having kids in April or May!  Two of the guys are on kid #2, and Matt and his friend Reid are having number one.  (The 5th guy already has a baby.)  Reid got married like two months before us so it's fun to be all on the same schedule.

Our mutual friends Dexter and Jenna, who visited this summer, are due two weeks ahead of us.  We've had fun comparing milestones via email as they are far away in Kenya.

So you're like, ok, great, four of your friends are having babies, that's fun.  No, I'm not done yet.  In October I got a phone call from my friend Erin, who told me she was driving home from her first ultrasound!   I about choked because we weren't ready to tell anyone yet because we hadn't told our parents.  She's due two weeks after me, in the beginning of May. :)



There we are looking all cute and young.  Erin and I were both El Ed majors at Taylor and became closer our senior year, and even closer when we lived together for two years in Charlotte.  She is DEAR to me and it is so fun that we can share this time together!  Especially because we were planning our weddings at the same time, it just seems so right to be planning nurseries, too!

But wait, one more.  As I made the rounds of phone calls to announce the baby, my Taylor roommate Kelly was one of the last ones for me to get ahold of.  We lived together for four years at Taylor and one year in Charlotte.  Now THAT is true roommate love.  When I told her about the babe, she paused for a second and said, "I guess this is a good time for me to tell you that I'm pregnant, too!"  Surprise!!  Love that girl!  Hilariously she was visiting her parents for the weekend and was only about 8 weeks along . . . and her mom found out that Kel was pregnant when she got out of the car and threw up in the flower bed.  Poor sick thing. :)  She's due at the end of May.

 Here we are being young roommates. 

 This is my joy the day that Kelly and her husband Justin told me they were moving to Charlotte!  

 This is a picture of my Charlotte year one roommates:

Megan, the little face in the back, is getting married this July.  It looks like the rest of us will have to cart our babies out to Idaho for her big day!

shutterfly flutterby

Shutterfly is generously offering free Christmas cards to bloggers and it is pretty easy to blog about them!  This company is a favorite of mine and really came in handy when I made a bunch of wedding albums to give as gifts to grandparents last Christmas.  Their albums are really nice and it turns out about 8 million times easier than trying to scrapbook.  I also appreciate how my friends could upload their pictures to a Shutterfly album and then I could access their pictures and add them to my album I was getting printed.  Pretty nifty.  I also really dislike the quality of prints at our local drugstore so when I do order prints, it's from Shutterfly.

They offer a very wide variety of Christmas photo cards.  Besides the traditional flat holiday photo card, they also offer folded cards and my new favorite, their flat stationary line.   I am loving some of these designs, especially the square ones- I think they are quite classy.

Hello, cute family. 

I think two pictures of Moosey would really make this card pop. :) 

I’ve also made birthday cards before on Shutterfly.  It’s only about $2 a card to order one, and less if you order multiples.  Even if you’re only getting one, it’s a better deal than Hallmark and you get to add your own personal touch!  I like making cards out of photos anyway, and this is easier than trying to get everything printing in the right spot.  

So, get your Shutterfly products today!  If you're interested in participating in their blog promotion, click here! 

skater boy

People have been asking what will "happen" to Moose after the baby comes.  Moose will be just fine, he's very tolerant of babies and generally good natured.  But I'm sure he won't get our undivided attention any more so we are trying to get some quality time in before baby arrives.  Yesterday we came across a skateboard and today we took Moose to the school parking lot to try it out.  

He's so adorable. 

He had the time of his life and did pretty well!  

He also chewed on the board a lot.

He did sustain a couple injuries.  In the above picture you might be able to see a spot on his paw where we lost a toenail. :(  Poor buddy!

I would like to report that the skater is healing nicely and sleeping well after his 20 minutes of activity.

doggy's best day

I forgot I had these on my camera.  Little buddy's Thanksgiving feast.  

behind the scenes

Thanksgiving is kind of a big undertaking.  I was thankful to have my mom at the helm this year and my brother at the camera, so really I just wandered around and did various jobs all morning.  I will say that I spent far too long on the sweet potatoes this year because of poor planning and all my pots and pans were occupied by other dishes . . . I ended up making them over a 24 hour period and then we had PLENTY, a whole dish of leftovers.  Which we put in the oven to warm up on Friday and then accidentally left in there when we went to the movies, so they were destroyed.  Basically I'm not thrilled with sweet potatoes at the moment.  BUT everything else has served us well in the leftover department.  I've been full for three days.  

Back to Thanksgiving.  Here's a behind the scenes look at our house Thursday morning.  The parade and dog show were playing the background, of course.  Moose had a pretty full day.  He normally sits on the couch all day like this:

But on Thanksgiving day he heard some attractive clanging sounds in the kitchen. . . 

and couldn't bear to be left out of the action for a minute. 

He spent the whole morning on high alert looking for wayward pieces of turkey.

Over to the dining room - looks about ready to go.

Back to the kitchen

Pleasepleasepleaseplease see how good I am?

The table set with care.

And then we were so involved in eating and enjoying and trivial pursuit and digestion, we didn't take any more pictures.

NY, NY

We're all letting the pie settle in our stomachs and watching the Aggies and Longhorns battle it out, so I thought I'd stick a couple more pictures up here.  Matt and I worked Tuesday so my family headed for the city.  Ryan has a pretty fancy camera so I thought I'd share a few of his pictures. 

Taking the train from Stony Brook into Penn Station:

Rockefeller Center:

Subway:

The soon-to-be Grandersons:

Happy Thanksgiving to all, and to all a good night!

gratitude: baby!

The moment of truth!  

Wednesday we had our "sneak peak" ultrasound of baby Yezerski.  Matt and I were so thankful for the day off so we could go together!  The ultrasound technician checked up on a lot of important parts and we're so thrilled to report that they're all there - ten fingers and toes, a four-chambered heart, a big old brain, and lots of other bones and organs she was able to pick out of the black and white mess.  It was so fascinating seeing all those bits and pieces of our little babe that I almost forgot how excited we were to see THE determining factor.  But she did find it, and little babe cooperated to reveal that it is a . . .

BOY!

Snips and snails and puppy dog tails, we love it all!!!  

It is just so FUNNY that we're having a boy.  Matt's family is all boy-boy-boy that I thought it was statistically impossible for us to follow suit but here we are!  And so thrilled that our little guy will have plenty of buddies to grow up with.  

Of course we wanted to be a little fun with how we told my family, who were anxiously waiting news at home, so I made cake pops the day before in pink and blue.  

We made them line up and bite in together and Matt documented the reactions . . .

It's blue! 

 Look at that! 

And here's some proof.

We're so thrilled to know and I am daydreaming about the nursery already.  What a blessing that we could find out this week while my family is here, and just before Thanksgiving!  So much to be thankful for! 

NOT thankful

We are taking a break from our usually scheduled programming to be not grateful for a certain pest that made our morning a little crazier than we would have liked.  

Mousies.

Terrible mice.  Yes, plural.  To the tune of FIVE.  

Last night when putting away my Thanksgiving groceries, I found a disturbing tuft of fur, which led to some cleaning out of the cupboard and throwing away of a bag of flour.  We set a trap in the cupboard and caught one mouse last night.  That led me to empty out all the food from the cabinets and set both of our mouse traps.  

In the morning, I went to get a bowl of cereal but Matt suggested he should peek in the cupboard first.  After opening and slamming the door shut again, he reported the bad news - two mice scampering around my cabinets.  I couldn't believe that they had both escaped the traps, and that's when Matt told me he had some hard news - the traps had done their job, totaling two dead and two live mice.  GROSS.  Matt was able to get one of the live ones immediately with his lightning-fast reflexes, but the second proved a bit friskier.  I'll cut the story short because we're on our way to the airport, but somehow it jumped out of the cabinet and scampered back and forth along the countertop for a while, with me shrieking warnings of it's every move and Matt alternately jabbing at it with fireplace tongs and trying to lure it into a small wastebasket.  Finally we got it cornered and thought we could coax it into a large garbage can, so that we could release the thing into the wild . . . but instead of jumping into the can, it jumped onto my HAND.  I did not respond kindly (I flipped out) and it ended up on the floor, darting all over the kitchen until it met it's demise at the hands of Matthew and went the way of its ancestors.    

Later, Matt asked me why I'd handed him a plastic cup to catch the mouse in.  I told him that's how it was done in The Mouse and the Motorcycle.  Come on, everybody knows that. 

Lest you think I'm a terrible housekeeper, I'm really not, it's just that we live in a very old house in a very remote area.  Our million-year-old house is in the middle of a meadow so all the little field mice are drawn to the cozy warmth of our home.  The little boogers.

Ok, off to get the parents from the airport! Happy Thanksgiving!

gratitude: moose

Oh Moosey, how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways.

You knew this was coming.  

When Matt was describing Moose to me back in Kenya, he would really have a loss for words, just groan, and say, "He's so awesome."  When I asked him to elaborate, he would say something along the lines of, "Not a single day has gone by that he hasn't made me laugh."  It turns out, this is true.  Moose is awesome.  And every day he makes me laugh.  

It's the way his lips get stuck in his teeth.

Or his little tongue sticks out while he's sleeping.

His irrational fears of vacuums, fireplace tools, and paper bags.

His 7 tricks that he does in a row and eagerly for food.

His exhaustion after physical activity.

The way he communicates with his eyes.

(I think he's saying, thanks for making me look so pretty, Mom.) 

His love of human food.

He's so naturally photogenic.

And the way he sleeps!  

He snores like a human, a very old man, specifically.  You would not believe the snores that come out of that smashed nose.  Or my very favorite, when his cheeks flutter like a cartoon character's.  I tried to get a video of it here, but it's just a little "poof" action. 

This one's better . . .

 (fail!)

Oh Moose, I am so thankful for you.  You light up our days and make us feel better.  You never cease to cheer people up (as long as they have a high tolerance for slobber and stinky breath).