Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to our sweet baby boy! Today at 3:57 p.m. Jack will be two years old. What a whirlwind two years it has been! It's hard to believe that we're getting ready to do this again, but it is all worth it. He is such a joy to us and we could not even imagine our lives without him (although we sometimes CAN imagine an evening without him, hee hee).

Today he is outside in the shop (with a nice fire going in the woodstove) playing with daddy, while I am in the house cooking, baking and cleaning. Tomorrow we have our "family" Thanksgiving (although we are planning to go over to my mom's later today and have us a little turkey and dressing), and then a small family birthday party for Jack. Anne and Bryan fly in tomorrow morning, and I promised them we wouldn't officially celebrate Jack's birthday until they got here. Just their being here will be surprise and present enough for Jack, let me assure you! We can't wait to see his face when they get here.

In the meantime, we wish you all a wonderful, happy Thanksgiving day! There is so much to be thankful for, most of all, the gift of God's Son, Jesus Christ, who came to save us all. Blessings on all of you.

First of the Birthdays

Last night Aunt Gigi (Gaylene) came over with a very special birthday surprise for Jack! She is going to be out of town on Jack's birthday, so we decided to have a little "pre-celebration" celebration. She did a great job decorating a car cake, and Jack loved it! He even blew out his own candles (after mommy showed him how the first time and then relit the candles for a second try).

Gigi also gave him a very cool light that has cars running a race all the way around it. Jack was mesmorized, and I had a hard time getting him to go to sleep last night. We finally had to turn it off because he just kept exclaiming over and over "bye bye cars"! It was really cute.

Jack actually turns two on Thanksgiving day, but we are waiting until Anne and Bryan arrive on Friday to celebrate with a big party. We figure he won't know the difference!

It's A Baby!

Today was the long-awaited, once cancelled, ten week appointment! We were a bit nervous and apprehensive going in to our very early appointment, but since we were the first ones there, we didn't have to wait long. We went to the ultrasound room first. Past experience with 10 week ultrasounds taught me to expect a round ball with a flashy light insight (hopefully, being the baby's heartbeat). To our shock and wonder, the image that flashed up on the screen was not an indiscriminate blinky thing, but a marvelous, wonderfully created, moving, wiggling baby! Our doctor's ultrasound machine rocks, and we were not only able to see our babies' head, back, arms, legs, nose, heart and mouth, but we saw it in 4D! It is incredible to see something so small and so perfect. The doc said that everything looked great, and baby Gray is growing at a wonderful rate. As a matter of fact, I am a week further along than we thought. What a blessing to discover that I could skip a whole week of morning sickness in an instant! I am officially in the last week of my first trimester, and they moved my due date up to May 30 (from June 6). All in all, this visit could not have gone better. We know that there were MANY out there praying for us, and we are immeasurably grateful.

We love these little pictures of the baby. The first one is the backside, and the second one is front facing. It's little hand is up by it's cheek, like a little salute, and very reminiscent of every ultrasound in which we saw Jack. No, they were unable to tell the sex of the baby--that will have to be for another day.

Quick Update

Hey! Some of you knew that I was to have my 10 week ultrasound appointment on Tuesday. Well, as it turns out, I had to cancel because I got a horrible case of the flu! It was TERRIBLE. I was very sick and couldn't even get in the car to go to my appointment. I am soooo thankful for Grandma Poo, Memaw and Jeffrey for taking such good care of me and Jack. I couldn't have made it without you. You are the best family ever!

My appointment has been rescheduled for Friday the 16th at 8:15 a.m. (yikes). I'll let you all know how it goes. So far I have no reason to believe that things are going anything but extremely well!

On a much greener note......we finally got our sod laid yesterday! So today my goal is to get pictures of the outside of the house and finally post all of the construction pictures. It has been a long time coming, and it is not finished yet, but I think that this is as far as we will get this season. Jeff has worked SO hard getting all of this done. It really looks wonderful.