Surprise, surprise!

This year my parents celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary.  In honor of that, we wanted to do something as a family to help them celebrate such a big milestone.  In August Mom and Deddy took a trip to the midwest and visited Rocky Mountain National Park and Yellowstone.  They had the best time and we wanted to add to that.

In order to get everyone in Wilmington, Leslie + Will came up with having Anna’s birthday party this past Saturday in Wilmington.  Her birthday is on September 12th and so on September 11th we had a party down at the beach.  Some pizza, swimming, great cake, and some precious present opening!  Even though Anna’s birthday was a blast, it was all just a rouse to get us all in Wilmington without it being suspicious.  Then mom started talking about dinner Saturday night.  Leslie told her not to worry about making anything.  She and Deddy needed to be dressed in black up top and ready to go at 5:30 and that is all she needed to know.  Well then the wheels started spinning.  Her first questions was, ‘Is Jeff getting married?’  Even though this so sounds like something he would do, we assured her that was not happening.  What was happening was we all jumped in the car and headed down to the Oceanic, one of their favorite restaurants on Wrightsville Beach.  Waiting for us was Greg + Michelle and a dear family friend, Jack Upton, who also happens to be a fantastic photographer.  For mom’s 50th birthday we got all the siblings together and Jack took our picture to give to mom for a present.  Well this time, we had the entire family together, all 14 of us, and Jack was ready to snap a few pics.  We went on the Oceanic pier and hopefully got a really great shot of the entire family.  We then had a magnificent dinner and some delicious Apple Annie’s cake!

So all in all it was a great night.  We were able to surprise my parents for their anniversary, get a great picture of the entire family, and get to spend some good quality family time together.  Happy Anniversary you two crazy kids!!

Happy 3 – 0 Jason!!

Ja and I have birthdays that are 3 days apart.  Mine is Sept 2 and his is the 5th.  This year I turned 26 and Ja turned the big 3 – 0!!  He is such an old man!!  Not that four years is that much older, but it is fun to give him a hard time about it.

We were quite spoiled on our birthdays.  Leslie, Will, and Banana Pants took us out to dinner for our birthday.  Then I went to dinner with my friends Sherry, Dinah, and Brenda and I was not allowed to pay for that meal either.  Then Mom and Deddy came up to keep Anna while Leslie + Will were in Atlanta for the big Carolina football game and we had a big slumber party!!  Mom and Deddy loaded Anna and Miller up and headed over to our house and stayed Friday and Saturday night.  We had a great time at Jason’s game on Friday night and then Saturday we went shopping for maternity clothes while the boys played golf and then had a good dinner Saturday night.  It was fun to have lots of people and animals in our house!

Ja’s big party is coming up next weekend and I’m sure it will be a blast!!  A keg of Dos Equis, that I will have to smell all night in envy, and a low country boil with lots of great friends.  Not a bad way to start his big 30’s!!

Football Widow

Let me first say that I love my husband with all of my heart.  He is my best friend and most certainly the man I was supposed to marry and have babies with.

But…every year from July until November, I am a football widow.  Some women are widows to football on TV, but I am a widow to the actual real thing.  Every night they have practice until 8 o’clock.  They have games on Thursday and Friday.  They have discussions about the games on Saturday.  They have more discussions and planning for the next game on Sunday.  They have film watching at night when they do get home early.  When they aren’t planning, practicing, or watching, they are thinking about it and dwelling and plotting.  Then in addition to all of that, there is an entire college football season AND an NFL season.  It never ends!

In all of this, there are a few things I’ve learned.  The first few weeks are always an adjustment.  When you get used to having someone around and then all of a sudden they aren’t any more, it sucks!  But after a few weeks of being sad about it, I realize that the less we see each other, the less we have to argue about!  I am not one of those wives that is going to make him feel guilty about being devoted to football.  I don’t want him to half ass anything and if he would rather be on that football field than at home, I’d rather him be there.  I am very proud of his hard work and his dedication to his team.  So in response to me being so understanding about the whole thing, all of my requests get fulfilled.  Laundry gets done (sometimes without me even having to ask), trash gets taken out, etc.  Anything to let me know that he still loves me and thinks about me and appreciates me being supportive.  So it really is a winning situation for me even if I do miss my husband sometimes!  It just makes the times we do have that much better!

Freedom!

When I was in high school, I knew I wanted to either be a sports medicine doctor or a high school math teacher.  So I decided that I would try out for the North Carolina Teaching Fellow Scholarship and if I got it, that would mean that I would be a teacher.  So I went through all of the rounds of interviews and I was awarded the scholarship at UNCW.

For those of you not familiar with the scholarship, it is valued at $26,000 and is awarded to high school seniors that want to go into the teaching profession.  You get $6,500 a year to pay for everything you need to pay for college.  You then have to participate in the Teaching Fellows program at your school which was a class that met weekly and you had tutoring hours and observation hours that you had to fulfill.  You also had summer requirements you had to fulfill and all sorts of other things.  If you graduate and stick with teaching in North Carolina for four years, you don’t have to pay back any of the $26,000.  The program itself, especially at UNCW, is terrific and gives you a lot of opportunities that you don’t get in a regular education program.  There is a lot of pride in the Teaching Fellow program for preparing excellent teachers and I certainly feel like I had the best background to make me a great teacher.  I am very proud when I say that I am a Teaching Fellow.

I always said that I would teach for four years and pay my scholarship back and then I would move on and do something else.  Since I majored in mathematics with essentially a second major in secondary education I could very easily do anything math related.  I could go into accounting, banking, or anything else that has to do with numbers that will make more money.

Well last year I completed my four years.  And this year I started my fifth year.  And I can’t imagine doing anything else.  I have no desire to go back to school and I love where I am professionally.  I am getting better each year and I love my friends that I get to work with every day and the high school kids that constantly keep me on my toes and can handle anything I throw at them.

One of the big days we have been waiting for is when my payoff letter came and there was a big $0 balance for that huge $26,000 debt.  Well that day came and Deddy and I had the burning party that we always talked about having!!

 

  

 

 

Now I have the freedom to whatever it is that I please.  Right now it’s looking like I would be pleased to be a mom and a teacher.  I’ll probably be around until my 30th year when I can retire with some pretty sweet benefits when I’m 52!

 

Side Note:

One thing that does make me upset about this is that I had a few VERY deserving friends that did not get the Teaching Fellow Scholarship and should have and they are now dedicated teachers in their 5th year and should be burning their letter with me!!

Hello, again!

My blog has been very sparse lately and I have a really good reason.  The 2010 – 2011 school year coincided with being 11 weeks pregnant.  Talk about something knocking you on your ass.  Everyone is exhausted those first weeks of school trying to get your body used to 8 hours of consecutive anything after the summer, but throw a growing fruit in your gut in there and you will not win.  So my life consisted of going to work for 8 hours, coming home and instantly being asleep on the sofa, waking up to eat, and getting into bed to do it all over again.  I used to use the word exhausted and now I know the true definition.  And yes, all you Negative Nancys, it will only get worse.  I know this and I’ll discuss that and my new definition of exhausted at that time. 

We’re getting our baby!

I know that doesn’t look like much in there, but what we have is a kidney bean with a little flickering heart!  164 beats per minute to be exact!!

So how it all happened – without all the dirty stuff!
They tell you to wait until you’ve had two periods after a miscarriage before you start trying again.  Well after my first one we said, ‘You know what, I’m tired of thinking and worrying about it.  Let’s just stop thinking and worrying about it and see what happens.’  So we did.  Our summer was getting into full swing and we did what needed to be done and stopped worrying about it.  The week after my beach trip with my girls, it was time to check it out and see what was going on.  I was already a few days late, but I just wasn’t sure.  So I took a pregnancy test on Monday and got a faint line.  Maybe it was just too soon.  Took another test on Tuesday and got a faint line.  Maybe it needed to be in the morning.  Took another test on Wednesday and there was a faint line.  (That sounds obsessive and like I was worrying about it now that I write it, but it seemed totally rational at the time!)  So I figured if I wasn’t pregnant, I’d get my period.  It is now 8 weeks since my last period and no period yet!  There must be something going on in there.

Last time I made it to 6 weeks and 6 days.  You better bet your heart that on my 6 weeks and 6 days this time, I was nervous.  Every tweak and twinge I just knew was starting the badness.  I walked around all day squeezing my boobs and making sure they still hurt.  Sorry if that is TMI.  Yep, they still hurt. 

I made my appointment for 8 weeks and some change so that I would be able to hear a heartbeat and feel 1000 times better.  No need to go in any earlier when they can’t tell you anything.  So Saturday leading up to the appointment I had a complete freak out.  I wasn’t having heartburn as bad and my boobs didn’t hurt as bad as they had been.  That was it.  It was all over.  I sobbed and sobbed and my sweet, sweet husband was right there telling me I was crazy and that he was sure the extra stress would not be helpful on the BABY that was in there!  We finally got up and headed to dinner and I was back to myself in no time.

I never thought Monday at 2:10pm would get there.  Sunday drug on like nobody’s business and I didn’t sleep a wink Sunday night.  Monday morning I woke up and immediately called Leslie.  I headed over to her house and was able to be distracted by Anna and a great Skype with our cousin, Kristin, who lives in Minnesota and had been a little detective all the way up there!  Finally it was time for me to head home.
I took a shower and got ready to go.  I was so nervous I felt like I was going to throw up at any second.  I was ultra talkative and I think Jason knew to just keep on going and don’t stop and ask me about it.  Neither of us needed another freak out!

We got there and had to wait.  Dear God – how can you make us wait at a time like this!  After what felt like forever (but I'm sure it was 10 minutes) we finally went back there.  Our NP (Leslie’s favorite) was AWESOME.  She said everything felt good and looked like it needed to.  She knew we needed to hear that heartbeat to be able to get through the next 4 weeks, so she tried with the Doppler and nothing, which was not unusual this early.  She then told us that she was going to sneak us into the ultrasound room because there was a little bit of a break.  She warned me that once the tech heard something I had to get out quick!  So not even putting my underroos back on under my dress we quickly were whisked to the ultrasound room.  We were lucky enought to get the same tech that was with us the last time.  She popped me up on the table, squirted the lube on my belly and started a-searching.  And there it was.  The most beautiful tiny like kidney bean with a flickering heart.  164 beats a minute.  And with that, she cleaned me up, I put my roos back on and out we went.  We had what we came for.

Since we have made it to 8 weeks and saw a heart beat, there is a 95% change of this one making it.  The next hurdle is twelve weeks and after that the percentage goes up even more!

Through all of this I have learned several things -

#1 – Be sure you marry a man who is going to be willing to hold you when you are sobbing uncontrollably for a complete irrational reason.  They may ask you later to explain, but they know just to hold you no matter what.

#2 – As our NP said, ‘If you don’t get what you want, sometimes you just have to cheat!’

#3 – I had no idea that something that itty bitty and tiny could make me so happy!  I can’t wait to see what this watermelon does when it pops out of me!

#4 – Even after a miscarriage and me being so afraid that it would never be the same again – it is.  I am just as excited, if not more so because this one is sticking.  It was just as exciting when we called the whole world and Jason and I are just as excited about being parents to this little bean.  We know we are not out of the muck yet, but we are staying positive.  We are going to believe that the first one didn’t stick around for a reason and that this is ours.  Here’s to keeping your fingers crossed and praying with all you’ve got that this one sticks around until he’s ready to come out and meet us!

#5 – Doing everything right is apparently boring.  With this little bean I have ridden roller coasters in Disney World, drank with my college roommates for a week, been to the beach and body surfed in some pretty big surf, and hung out at a Tim McGraw concert.  This bean thinks he’s already at a party!

#6 – We are so not in control.  Everything does happen for a reason and everything ends up working out like it’s supposed to.  Now this bean is going to have a cousin in October (Jeffro and Johnna) and another one in February (Leslie + Will)!!!!  I could not be more excited to be pregnant with all of the fam and be apart of watching this family grow!  We knew once this family started growing, it wouldn’t stop!!

Sexy, sexy men in soaking wet t-shirts!

For the past couple of years, Leslie, Will, Jason, and I have all gone to a country music concert.  We saw Rascal Flatts a couple of times and this year we moved on to Love + Theft (we had no idea who they were, but they were good!), Dierks Bentley, and Tim McGraw. 

We loaded up in Will’s car and headed to Raleigh.  Will + Leslie were nice enough to use their hotel points and get us a suite so we didn’t have to worry about driving back late.  Leslie did some awesome driving and we pulled right up to the parking lot and were able to get an awesome parking spot right down for the entrance.  It kills me how people think it’s ok to get to a concert at 8:30 when it started at 7:00 and think they’re going to get a good seat.  People kill me.

Anyway, we all stood in line waiting for the gate to open.  We saw people sitting around the front of the line, but didn’t think much of it.  All of a sudden, when the line started moving, they stood up and started to move with it.  Leslie and I were not going to have that.  She screamed out ‘Cheaters’ a few times and I Bon Qui Qui’d their ass and ‘Rude’ed them.  We continued to yell for a little bit and got a few people to take a step back before they got their face busted in – by our burley husbands, not by us.  After we both calmed down we made our way into the amphitheater and managed to get great seats.  Once we sat down, the breeze was blowing and it ended up being a great night.  Once we all got a good coating of sweat on us, we were good to go!

The concert was amazing!  The songs were great, the people watching was fantastic (plenty of jorts for all to see), and those two sexy, sexy men in their sweat soaked t-shirts were worth every penny.  Don’t worry – the boys had plenty of skanks to look at.

Love and Theft

Will + Leslie

Dierks – no shot is ever going to do him justice.  He was so sincere in his thank you for all of us being there.  He said he fondly remembers the days of playing for tips – I can’t even imagine how wild it is to be him and remember those days and then to look out that night and see ALL of those people there. 

Timmy-Boys stage.

Faith is a lucky, lucky woman.  I wish I could have been the chick that got to grab his butt.  Scared the shit out of him, but I’m sure it made her life!

Will, Leslie, Ja, and me.  Thanks for a great time, guys!