Marc & Tiffany's Reception + The First Week

This week, Micah began orientation at Georgia Tech. I went up to campus with him on Wednesday while he worked on getting some stuff done, like getting hiring paperwork done, getting a student id card, getting advice on registering for classes. I got to meet Dr. Gaylord, his advisor. He was a very soft spoken old guy. He has set up an office and computer for Micah already and the student who shares the office was pretty nice and told Micah basically what he has to register for. It was a stressful week of waiting because as soon as he signed up for one class, he had thousands owed on his financial account and they said at orientation that tuition waivers didn't cover all of tuition, which is what his offer seemed to say. ANYWAY! Once he finally got signed up for the correct number of credits, the tuition and fees on his account were paid as we expected. WHEW! So, we don't have to sell our kidneys to pay for tuition... at least not this year.


On Saturday we got to enjoy Marc and Tiffany's Georgia reception shin-dig. It was lovely! It was the first time that I met most of Micah's family friends from GA and it was the first time that I had seen many of his aunts and uncles since our wedding reception.

We were excited to make some fruit boquuets to serve. Micah helped me a lot with these ones. Thus, they look a lot nicer than my first attempt at a fruit bouquet.

It also provided an excuse to make a bazillion sugar cookies! YUM!!!

Also over the weekend, Micah and I enjoyed our 2-year anneversary. We ate at the Cheesecake Factory and mutually decided to never go back except for the cheesecake. Hahaha. Both of our meals were overpriced and not that good. But the cheesecake was AMAZING! Micah got me these flowers. Why, yes. That is a milk carton. And yes. We are very classy people.

As a mutual gift, we finally bought a mattress. The air bed thing is getting very old. We got a great deal online and hopefully it will be delivered within the next week or so. We also got sick of not having anywhere to sit or put our clothes, so we got a table and dresser at Ikea last night. Photos of the assembled furniture will follow soon. I was just very impressed that we were able to fit the table and 4 chairs and the dresser in the car. They were packaged flat, but they were still just barely small enough to fit. A few more inches on any of the boxes and it probably wouldn't have worked!

Today I met with my new doctor and had all my records transfered to the new OB practice down here. My doctor was a pretty cool guy, he wanted to take a quick look to just verify what the other ultrasound had reported. So, he double checked that it is a girl. He also moved the date to 12-31 but stressed that it's not abnormal for babies to come long before or after the due date. He also showed me a few of the shots in 3D. Here's a neat picture of Angela's face at a 3/4 view.

Hanging the Travel Coat

We finally are in Georgia for good. Micah will be off at Georgia Tech every day this week for orientations and stuff. Classes start for good on Monday.

I'm already bored. It has been really nice visiting family and having so many people around. It has been a lovely summer and it will be quite an adjustment not having as much of Micah's attention. Sammy has been extra sad and cuddly. I think that he misses having everyone's attention too... as well as having another dog around. Just look how he lights up when I say her name!

Pink Everywhere!

Micah called this afternoon from Ashboro, where he is chaperoning youth conferance, to see how I was doing. Okay, so he CLAIMED that he was calling to see how Sammy was doing, but I'm sure that he cared about me too!

I told him about project runway last night, the GOP cantidates' debate, mentioned that LeAnn got me pink flowers.

"Flowers?"

"Yeah, pink roses."

"Why?"

"SOMETIMES when you LOVE SOMEONE and you are HAPPY for them or want to SHOW YOUR LOVE.... you buy them flowers."

"oh..."

Anyway, here are the gorgeous flowers.

I've been having some strange dreams lately. Last night, I had a pretty detailed one about making sugar cookies and woke up really wanting them. So, I whipped some up, ate 2, and now have 48 cookies to figure out what to do with. At least Gabby will help get them all eaten when she returns from youth conferance on Saturday and I can always bring leftovers to Young Womens on Sunday.

LeAnn gave me the footsies along with the roses. The other onsies I grabbed to use up some store credit at a maternity and children's clothing store. It's cute now, but I'm sure I'll get enough of the color pink through the next few months and years though...

And because I am SURE you were wondering- the birdfeeder turned out great. Works just like its supposed to. Bring on the birds!

It's a...

Human! Yep, we had our fetal anatomy scan done today and were able to confirm that the baby is most definitely not an alien.

Peanut was in a really inconvenient position for most of the scan, facing the back. We tried poking around, but it wouldn't move it's face into view. This was the best mugshot we were able to get.

It's a profile view of the head and chest. The dark part on the chest is the heart, all 4 chambers I believe. It was flailing its arms and legs this way and that, so I don't have any good pictures of those either because they all came out blurry, but we definitely saw 10 fingers. I didn't count the toes, but, eh, who really needs all 10 of those. We saw the insertion point of the cord, the heart and diaphragm, stomach, bladder, kidneys. The spine, arm and leg bones are all developed.The brain still looked like a butterfly, but it was cool when she measured it because front to back the head is now about as long as the whole baby was 7 weeks ago. Everything looked normal and good!

At one point, peanut crossed its arms in front of its face in what Micah deciphered as a certain sign that peanut will emerge from the wormb doing P90X.

I didn't catch the exact length they measured, but the measurements put me at 19wk4d instead of 18wk6d. The difference wasn't great enough to cange my due date, Jan 5. BUT, it did give us a glimpse of hope that it will be born 5 days early so we will have a 2011 tax baby. Plus, 12-31-11 is a pretty cool birthday. Not as cool as 1-2-12, but definitely cooler than 1-5-12.

Oh yeah! We got to see the gender today too. And...

Homemade Bird Feeder

Just wanted to show off the rockin' bird feeder that I made today. I've been saving the bottles and formulating the design for a couple of days. Most of the how-to videos seemed too complicated, so I looked at a bunch of different pictures of various home made bird feeders and took ideas from a few of the simplest ones.


The bottle that is upside-down fits the neck of the larger bottle so that the bird seed can be poured from the top. Then, it will fall through the small bottle opening and build up a layer for the birds to eat from, being replenished from above as the seed is eaten. Tomorrow I need to pick up some seed to make sure it works as it should. Just need a wire or string to hang it up and viola.

The Last Stretch of Summer

We are back in Wilmington now to spend the last week before Micah begins orientation at GaTech. This drive from Atlanta was one of the worst by far. Before we even got to the interstate, the a/c stopped working. Then we drove through a crazy rain storm. Then we got a flat tire, had it replaced in Florence and continued on to hit another huge storm before arriving. The 7 hour drive ended up lasting over 9 and a half hours and was unbelievably hot and stressful. I'm trying to convince Micah that we should drive in the middle of the night on the return trip so it won't be so hot.

On Friday I hit the 18 week mark. Two people made comments about me looking bigger at church on Sunday, so I guess it definitely shows. On wednesday, we go in for the mid-pregnancy ultrasound and will probably find out the gender. Woo hoo! Time to start painting the spare room bright pink! Actually, I think that there are more people rooting for a boy. I'll be excited either way. This week, Micah will be going out to chaperone youth conferance in Ashboro while I hang out here with the puppies. Here they respond to my watch alarm:

Home Sweet Home

Our closing Thursday went GREAT. It took 3 hours because the closing attorney was really long winded, but everything went smoothly from the seller and the lender. We got the keys, had the electricity turned on and spent the rest of Thursday trying to dust and vaccuum out the tons of spiders who made this place their summer abode. We have our air mattress up for now, and it has been pretty exciting being in our own place.

There is tons of work to do to put this place in order. On Friday, we moved all of our stuff inside and spent the day putting it away. Without bookshelves and dressers, that mostly meant deciding which closet to stack the different boxes and suitcases in. With the unit being absent for a while, everything needs a good clean. I wiped down the essential surfaces but am going to put off the less necessary things like scrubbing the tub, washer and dryer, dish washer and such until we come back in late August to stay for good. We´ve also had a number of little chores like putting up the shower curtain.

Micah replaced an electrical breaker for the a/c that was the wrong amp and fixed an outlet that wasn´t working. he´s so handy. We made a priority of putting up blinds on our back door. I am very proud to say that I installed these blinds all by myself. Okay, maybe I had Micah drill the holes, but everything else I did!

Marty and Charlotte gave us this bed from their storage on Friday. Yay! Our first piece of real furniture! It´s in the second bedroom so if people come to visit in the next few months, we will have a place to put them. It still needs pillows and a blanket, but it´s better than nothin´!Eventually, probably a few months after the baby is born, this will be a nursury and we will take out the bed and put a crib and a glider in here.

Here, Micah begins hooking up the TV system that were also a gift from Micah´s parents. I think Marty has been waiting a long time for an excuse to replace theirs with a nicer one :)

It has been really fun to notice the charming little details that make this place homey. For example, this tree in the patio out back right outside the kitchen window is going to be perfect for a birdfeeder. Micah´s also excited about all the wall space in the stairs. He thinks we´re going to put up tons of framed pictures. I think we´re going to hang a 2´x3´ Jackson Pollock style painting that I have in my Dad´s garage. We´ll see who wins.

So all in all, we´re very happy and are trying to make this place comfortable. It´s been exciting but tiring and we are all pretty pooped out.