Posts from — October 2008

Of course we are from Texas and even though we live in Tennessee, we have not and will not forsake our Texas heritage.  Thankfully there are many Texans out here and we still feel right at home in many ways.  In fact we have a bumper sticker that a friend gave us that expresses our sentiments exactly:

Songs like “How I wish Dallas was in Tennessee” and many more express the same types of sentiment about wishing Texas and Tennessee were somehow in the same location.  I thought my side of the family was going to disown us completely when we left the Lone Star State over five years ago, though.  And now that we are expecting a child, it is a little strange to know that she will not be born in Texas.  It is not that I’m not proud to live in Tennessee (and love living here), just that Tennessee is more accepting of outsiders than Texas, and there are certain inalienable rights that belong to a Native Texan that do not belong to anyone else in the world.

So, rewind a few weeks back.  Daniel and I were at a company dinner enjoying a nice meal with several of his clients.  I was finally starting to look pregnant and half the table already knew we were expecting so it had become the topic of conversation.  One of the ladies whom I had not previously met immediately piped in when she found out we were from Texas to tell us she lived in San Antonio and that her son and daughter-in-law had just had a baby in Michigan.  The whole table discussed us crazy Texans and I told her I was sad that our child would not be born in Texas.  She went on to tell me about her Texas Birthing Kit idea and what she had done for her grandbaby and how she was going to send us one.  We got it in the mail yesterday.  I think she has a business idea on her hands.

Native Texan Birth Kit

1. Place the Official Texas Dirt under Mother.

2. Put a yellow rose by the bedside.

3. Just before birth, the entire delivery team will sing the “Eyes of Texas.”

4. Upon birth of the child, everyone in the delivery roon to yell YEEHAW!

5. Have physician fill out the Official Native Texan Birth Certificate: On this date, said baby was born on Certified Texas dirt and is herby officially granted the extreme privilege of being A Native Texan.  This will give him or her all the bragging rights and privileges of a Native Texan.

6. Use Texas Print Cloth as the covering in the nursery so no one will mistake the child as a Tennessee baby. (This is very important as the accent could start early!)

So there you have it.  Our child will be deemed a Native Texan…if I can remember the dirt when we leave for the hospital.  And before my brothers get all upset that we have University of Texas memoriabilia in our household, she made a mistake about that and I need you to find a store that I can exchange this little onesie for the right school.  After all, Texas Tech will be beating Texas this weekend, right?

As I promised yesterday, here are some updated pics of the projects we have been working on:

New Master Bedroom

This was the media room/office/red room.  Daniel put in crown, can lights, and a ceiling fan too.  The bathroom/closet will be where the ironing board is.

You can still see the remains of our screen and the spot where the bathroom door will go.  I love our window.  The old room was dark (perfect for a nursery, though!) so it is a nice change.

The old doorway was between the bed & the closet.  The new doorway enters from the utility room.  The closet will become apart of the kitchen…when we get to it.

The new living room arrangement (still some slight changes to be made).  The clock is where the old doorway used to be into the media room.

The new french doors from the dining room onto the deck.

The new deck and the exterior work in progress.

Maybe by the time we finish with all of this, the market will come back up.    Next…finish the drywall/painting in the nursery, finish the exterior (almost there!), put in the new bathroom.

…when you forget how to log into your blog.  Or maybe its the pregnancy hormones that are taking my brain cells.  Either way, I’m sad once again because I am now forcing myself to write a “review post” rather than my thoughts along the way.  And what’s funny, is there are a lot of things that are worthy of their own post but alas, I have not the time.

*  So definitely not last…is the fact that we did decide to find out what this little one is going to be and…It’s a Girl!  I truly did not care but am very excited that we are going to get to raise a little chica first.  The day we found out, we asked the tech to put it in an envelope and we opened it up later that afternoon with two of our close couple friends.  It was way fun to get to celebrate with people who know and care about us.  We immediately left for the RHS football game (It was Senior Night!) and got to tell all of our FSM kids after texting our families.  We just didn’t have time to make phone calls.  The girls were way excited…especially since most of them were convinced we were having a boy.  We also were a little overwhelmed by a group of 50 8-9 year old girls who were there to cheer at halftime.  We both had the sudden thoughts of prom and weddings and everything else….slightly overwhelming.  I feel confident in the baby stage and even the teenage stage but the elementary school, super girlie phase is a little much to comprehend.  I think Daniel was just seeing $ signs.    And we have not named her yet and have no clue when we will.  It could happen next week or the day she is born.  Who knows!  And the ultrasound showed that everything is where it should be and that she is “perfect” according to all of their little test, scans, etc.  I didn’t really ever think about all of the “what ifs” because I guess I just was focused on the fact that God created this child and knew what He wanted to give us and what this child needs.  So it was almost a little surreal to hear them call her “perfect” and was interesting to put that into context.

* We started our new community group out in The Ville and are very excited to get to know some people who actually live within 5 miles of us.  So far, so good…we just haven’t had as much time to invest in these new relationships as we’d like.

* We welcomed home The Wheeler Family of 3 from Guatemala with their new daughter in tow!  It has been a crazy whirlwind for them and we are grateful that they are reunited and finally “home”.

* Emily M came to visit too!  It was really fun to get to show her our house and where we have been living.  She has not been able to come visit because we were more than two hours from the hospital but she promised me she would come before they moved back to Texas.  She moved 1.5 weeks after she came to visit which is absolutely crazy.  I almost felt guilty she was with me and I was not at her house packing boxes with her but I definitely took advantage of our time.  She helped me register and we watched Father of The Bride 2 (a movie I have never seen).  It was way fun!

* After that, my body decided to get super sick with some allergy/cold/bronchitis stuff.  I was pretty miserable for about 10 days and sounded like a man for almost two weeks.  Daniel also got sick so we were pretty lame for awhile.  I’m so glad to finally feel better.  I absolutely hate being sick.  And, of course, we had a hard time slowing down so I went with Daniel to Birmingham for work, and we continued to work on the house.

* And for the house update….I’ll need to add pictures soon now that things are finally getting completed. Here are the projects that we have been working on in the last month or so:

1. Tear out exterior dining room wall & install french doors

2. Seal up backside of house (a big task in an old house).  Paint entire back exterior.

3. Build deck.

4. Drywall interior doorway and add new doorway for new master bedroom.

5. Build wall for new master bathroom.

6. Paint, crown, drywall, install lighting & ceiling fan in new master.

7. Build temporary master closet.

8. Tear out windows in old master/new nursery – dry wall & paint.

Ummm…understatement of the century:  We’ve been busy working hard, and are very crazy.  But, when you are leaving town for a month, heading into the holidays, and entering your third trimester by the time you get back….it lights a fire under you to get some things done.

* We also held the largest bonfire we have ever had.  You might recall the pile from earlier pictures of the deer in our yard.  Well…it got even bigger and we invited all of the Seniors in the Foundry to come over during Fall Break.  When Daniel lit it, the flame was as big as our tallest tree.  Thankfully, I had not made it home yet or I might have called the fire department on him.   This was also significant because we finally figured out parking so that we could have a big group over.  I think we had about 50 people and fit over 30 cars on our property without any fender benders or damaged property.  Yeah, more Party @ The Tardys in the future!

So I hate that this post is so factual when there is so much more that I’ve been processing and would love to have the outlet to blog about it.  These next 10 days are extremely busy as we both try to get ready to leave for 4 weeks straight which makes me think I won’t have time to blog any time soon.  Daniel’s event in Mexico is coming up really quickly which means he is especially busy and since we are driving to Texas over Thanksgiving, I’m adding pressure to my life by trying to get all of our Christmas shopping done so we can drive it and deliver things early to save on shipping.  Much less spending time with everyone before we duck out of life here for a month!  So if you don’t hear from me for awhile again, at least you know why this time.