Family Alive

Are you still eating leftovers from Turkey Day? None left at our house, but I do have all kinds of tidbits that I’ve been wanting to post. I’m sitting here procrastinating from laundry/finishing up Christmas decorations/figuring out what to do for dinner. We’ve got severe weather blowing through the area, so the main TV stations are in full-coverage of the weather, and the weather sirens have gone off 3 times now. Don’t worry, I’m keeping my ears on James Spann with ABC 33/40 and an occasionally eye on the radar that’s permanently on the TV.

The Real Reason for my Lack of Blogging
So my dear hubby posted our exciting news about the newest Toone-to-Be:) I’m officially 13 weeks along, and maybe starting to feel better. I felt pretty lousy from about 6 weeks until a week ago, so that’s the real reason for my severe Lack of Blogging. Terrible, I know, since it’s not so hard to sit at the desk or curled up on the couch with my laptop and type, but it’s honestly taken all my energy to keep Analise fed and clean and the absolute bare essentials of my home in order. Thank goodness my sweet girl is a trooper, and we love our naptimes together! Anyway, early pregnancy is notoriously hard for me, but I think we’ve turned the corner. January 6th is the big date to know if this little Toone-To-Be is a girl or a boy.

A Day of Thanks
Our Thanksgiving was a great success. I wrote a blog in my head during a few quiet moments of Thursday morning, but I was super busy Tuesday night-Thursday cleaning, washing dishes, cooking, baking, and setting up the guest room. Our friends from Mercy Ships, Michael and Heather Drown and their 3 year old son Jason, came to spend Thursday and Friday visiting us. Brian’s parents, brother and grandmother also came for dinner, and it was my first year of hosting a big Thanksgiving dinner. Thanksfully, Beverly made the majority of the food – turkey, ham, sweet potato souffle, stuffin, asparagus casserole. I made cranberry relish, corn casserole, rolls, pumpkin and apple pies, and a cheese/sausage/spinach dip platter as an appetizer. It was a lovely meal, and it looked beautiful on grandma’s china! It was so fun to use it, and now I’m trying to figure out what to do with it so I don’t have to pack it back into a plastic bin. My Christmas dream… a china cabinet:) Anyway, just before all the Thanksgiving cooking/eating/cleaning up/dishes, we noticed that our dishwasher was leaking water onto the hardwood floor. Not only that, because that’s happened a couple of times before, but there was a waterstain on the basement ceiling. AG. We’ve tried to fix the dishwasher before, yet we’re back to the same problems. Thankfully, we were able to put some pans in to catch the water, and it’s not leaking much, so maybe we’ll wait on the new dishwasher until after Christmas. And wonderfully, the dishwasher functioned the whole busy time.

Analise and Jason
Analise had such a fun time playing with Jason. I’ll have to post pictures soon, but if I try to right now, this will never get posted tonight! He was a bit of a whirlwind, so she tended to stay just out of his way, but he was very good about being gentle with her. My favorite moment was the morning they were leaving, and Analise and Jason were playing in the leaves out on the front sidewalk. She was walking through them, and he was running full speed through them. I called out to Analise, “Watch out, sweetie!”, and a few minutes later, I heard Jason call out to Analise as he came barrelling by, “Watch out, sweetie!” Cute. Analise cried and cried when Jason left. She likes having a playmate. I hope she’ll enjoy having a little brother or sister!

Christmas decorations
I finally had the energy and the motivation to start unpacking our Christmas decorations earlier this week. We have our little 32″ fiber optic Christmas tree up. It’s not quite strong enough for the handful of ornaments on it… When Brian reached to turn it on to show off the fiberoptics to our home church last night, it toppled over at his gentle touch. We’ve got so many ornaments that we haven’t even put up yet, that I think next year we’ll have to have bigger tree. Note to self: get out for the after-Christmas sales! I set up my beautiful Willow Creek Nativity set (like above) and Advent candles on a shelf that is within A’s reach. She’s learning that it’s just to look at, but she just loves the little wooden sheep and can’t resist taking them down every now and then to play. I don’t even have to be watching her… I’ll know from hearing her little, “Baa, baa!” She even added Noah and his family of animals to the Nativity set one day. Quite a familiy reunion!

North Country
Brian and I had a chance to see the movie “North Country” before Thanksgiving, courtesy of Samford. A group of students and professors were invited to go, and since my hubby is great at finding free date options at through Samford, we jumped at the chance. Unfortunately, no students showed up, just 2 other professors, including one from the law school to lead a discussion about the sexual harassment issues in the movie. Anyway, all that is to say that we give the movie a definite TWO THUMBS UP. Charlize Theron was excellent as a woman who goes to work in the mines of northern Minnesota, not a woman-friendly environment. She faces a variety of sexual harassment, and eventually takes the mine to court, in one of the first class-action sexual harassment lawsuits to be won in the nation. It’s an intense movie, but very well done.

I hope I can come back and post some pictures later, but no promises. We’ve got a New Members Dinner at church tomorrow night, a baby shower on Sunday, and then Samford Christmas events start the next week. ‘Tis the season! Hope y’all are well!