Return to work

This has been a busy week, and I've only worked 2 days! Our county took a mandated "furlough" day on Monday, one of 3 we have to take by the end of the year per our beloved Governor. I wonder if he is taking a furlough day....

Any-hoo, I have moved up in the teaching world and have my own trailer this year. I had no idea it was so hard to move! Not only did I have to move my stuff in, I had to move other stuff out! My back is killing me! I'm not even close to being ready for the first day on Monday. Between meetings and getting my room ready, I haven't had time to prepare any lessons to teach. I'm also the head of my department (Title I) so there's a lot that I have to do and people I need to assist. The whole school knows I'm pregnant now too. I wasn't planning on making the announcement at a faculty meeting, but a co-worker did it for me! I'm not sure how I should feel about that!

Little Pecan is starting to move about now. For the past few weeks I have felt her move when I lay down to rest. Now I feel her even if I am moving about. I remember it took a lot longer to feel Chasen move, but I think with the second kid everything happens a lot sooner. I'm glad for that. Feeling her move around is really fun. Of course, I'm saying "her". We will find out next week for sure if it's a girl. If it's not we are in a lot of trouble! I've already been shopping for girl's clothes!

Make sure you check out http://www.justinandjacinda.com/ and look at Justin's blog. He made the coolest video of Chasen playing with his birthday gifts. He said there's more to come too! His blog is now ALMOST as cool as mine! Ha ha!

Monkey Madness!

We had a Curious George themed birthday party for Chasen this weekend. We had (including kids) 27 people over for a cookout! The kids played in pools and blasted each other with water guns. We also had "dry" toys of sand, fishing, and an art easel. I can't believe how hard and long the kids played! I thought they would get tired, but we couldn't get them to stop playing! Chasen was shy when we sang him the birthday song and surprisingly had to be coaxed into belying out his candle. He usually blows at all candles (even when they aren't lit)! He got lots of fun gifts, and of course wanted to play with every toy once he opened it! We had a really good time but are really tired today. It was more work than we expected getting ready for the party, an all day affair. (Not to mention the weeks of prep work and yard work!) Both of our moms helped out and brought food for the party. Silka really helped us out as well. She came over and worked for 4+ hours in the hot sun AND helped set up AND clean up the food! Our party would have been a bust and not a blast if it wasn't for Aunti Silka! Thank you everyone!

Trying to turn a brown thumb into a green one

Justin and I are pooped! We have been working today in the yard to get our house ready for Chasen's birthday party! If I knew that we were going to put this much work into it, I might have decided to celebrate at Chuck-E-Cheese instead! We are putting more time and effort doing yard work/finishing house projects than actually preparing for the party. Though don't get me wrong, I think we'll still put on a nice show. Today we finally said "I'm done!!" with our weed gardens. We bought some landscaping fabric mesh, laid that in our gardens, and covered it with red mulch. We thought mulch would be the cheapest ground cover. I'm glad we went with it instead of rocks. We ended up needing 3 times as much mulch as we anticipated! We will have to make a third trip to Lowe's to finish up all that we have started so far. We will post pictures of our beautiful yard the day of the party so you can see all the fun the kids are having.

On another topic, thank you those who posted on our blog. It makes us so happy when people comment! It means you like us, you really like us! So, the ultrasound technician thinks we are going to have a girl. It won't be 100% for three more weeks, but she was pretty positive about her prediction. Justin is happy, he really wanted a girl. Of course if it ends up being a boy, I will have to come back and edit this blog!!

Boy or Girl?

We had a 14 week ultrasound today. Two bits of good news. First, my doctor gave me the "Cervix of the Month" award. He thinks I have the longest cervix of any of his patients! Whoo hoo! For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, the length of my cervix is why we are are seeing the specialist. I'm at risk for having an incompetent cervix, but right now it looks like I have a high-achieving cervix! The second bit of good news is that we know what we are having! We would hate to ruin the surprise for anyone, so if you want to know if Pecan is a boy or a girl...MAKE A COMMENT ON OUR BLOG and we will email you the answer!!!

Fabulous 4th

Happy Birthday USA! We celebrated the 4th of July by going to the Conyers 4th festival at the horse park. It was the first time we have ever been to this celebration.

Chasen and I rode a large model train. He was shouting "All aboard!" and "Choo Choo!" the whole time. My mom might recognize the passengers in front of us! We might have a future engineer on our hands! He also loved the fire trucks. Perhaps a future fire-fighting engineer? We actually couldn't get him away from the fire trucks. Finally, after 30 minutes we had to rip him away kicking and screaming. We then went to the bounce houses that they had-that was a big disappointment. They charged $3 for each bounce house. And the guys taking the money would just sit there and count the cash so it was a little creepy. I've never had to pay for a bounce house at any festival, and it was the only thing we had to pay for there as far as kids were concerned. Chasen didn't understand that he couldn't go to every bounce house so it was a little sad....

It was really hot and we couldn't imagine waiting an hour for the fireworks so we invited ourselves over to the Miller's house. We all went out on the flat top boat pulling the canoe and enjoyed some really awesome fireworks on the lake. I was really surprised that the fireworks were that nice. They were like the professional ones! I didn't feel like we missed a thing leaving the horse park early. And the best part happened when Joy fell out of the boat into the lake as we were getting out! She was OK, just really wet! The whole time we were worried that Chasen was going to fall in, we never imagined Nana would nose dive into the lake!

Catching up with an old friend

Justin, Chasen and I met up with an old friend today who was visiting the US from her home in Israel. Atarah and I knew each other 6+ years ago when we worked at McCormick & Schmicks together. Back then, we would go party and dancing all night. Our get together today was nothing like that, we took our kids to the Children's Museum and to the park to play in the water! Her daughter Tayla just turned two. Atarah and her husband Eran are expecting a baby girl December 6th. One month exactly before we are due! Maybe we can all meet up again when she comes back to the US for the second baby's citizenship. It is amazing how having a family changes a person, but yet so many things stay the same as well. Even though we weren't "painting the town" we still enjoyed each other's company while our kids painted on the walls of the museum!