Our road trip west

We left after my 20 week dr's appointment and headed out on 1-40/Rt. 66

We drove through OK, TX, NM, and then AZ. It was really flat in NM but as we got closer to Arizona it got a lot prettier. We spent the night in Albuquerque and enjoyed good Mexican food.


The next day we made it to our bed and breakfast at the Desert Rose in Arizona.


They had turkeys that made fresh eggs for breakfast.


Awesome water feature in the back garden.


After we got settled we went out for a hike in Sedona.


Looking out from Cathedral Rock


The next day we drove to the Grand Canyon. We stopped at some smaller national parks along the way.


We finally made it!


The vastness of it all was incredible. It couldn't justly be captured in pictures.




We stayed for the sun setting over the canyon and then drove back.


The next day we spend time in Sedona. At the look out point of the chapel of the holy cross


I thought this sign was cute.


Sun setting over Sedona




Our delicious meal our last night at the barking frog grille.

We had a great time! We had lots of great talks, good food, saw amazing things, and both felt really relaxed after being away.

Celebrate!

A couple of weeks ago my parents took us out to celebrate me getting my license. I love to celebrate things, especially when it involves great deserts!


I just picked it up from getting it framed this week. Finishing my license is almost better than graduating to me. I am so relieved to have it done, and glad I finished before having kids. I will now have to start accruing continuing education hours every year, but that is no where near as strenuous as being under supervision for licensure. YAY!

21 weeks

I am past the 1/2 way mark! The diaper bag I ordered came in the mail while we were on vacation. I was excited to have one *tiny* thing to check off the list of the MANY things to do to prepare for our baby. I look so tired in this picture, which is due to waking up at 3:30 and staying awake for the rest of the night. The receptionist at work (who tells it like it is) told me this morning, "You don't look very perky." Well, it turns out, this pregnant girl with little sleep, and a hacking cough doesn't look too "perky" at 8AM!
I am off to the store to buy some of my current favs- OJ and natural peanut butter. When I woke up this morning I was wishing I had some hot peach tea to soothe my throat- so I better add that to the list too. :)

That guy...

Michael has been super sweet and encouraging to me throughout my pregnancy. A couple of weeks ago I randomly mentioned that a nutella crepe sounded REALLY good.


Luckily we have nutella on hand and he decided to try to make some. I just supervised the process, but it turns out they are super easy to make, even though we don't have all the "crepe making" tools.


It was SO GOOD!! :) I am very blessed to have him.

We are headed out of town now to go to Arizona for a few days. I wondered if I would dread being the car for that long, but I am not. It has been a really long last couple of weeks. With check out in the apartments for a week, and other things we have had going on, we have had something pretty much every night after work plus busy weekends. I am ready for some stillness, quiet, and downtime. I am looking forward to spending a few days alone with my best friend, seeing beautiful places God created, and checking off another place that is on our list of places to see.

Week 20

According to babycenter.com, our baby is the size of a banana this week!

It's a...

A couple of weeks ago, we went to our 18 week ultrasound with great anticipation. We could not wait to find out what we were having. Such a special moment- to see our baby again after 10 weeks and to find out if we were having a boy or girl. But to my great disappointment- our baby would not cooperate. The baby had its legs closed, put its hand down covering the area we wanted to see, and crossed its legs. The technician worked with me for a long time, pushing and poking me, but our baby was not having it. We had lots of phone calls, texts, and emails from people waiting to know the outcome. I just went to sleep after the appointment because the news was so anti-climatic! After my nap, I decided to call a place that does ultrasounds and see about scheduling another one there. My next one at the doctor would not be for a couple of months and I wanted to know. (I should note, that everything else went well. The baby's organs were all developing properly, the brain development looked good, all the things that they were really checking for! :)
We were able to get an appointment the next week. Our baby was still very "snuggly" with its legs closed and crossed for this appointment. But it was confirmed that we are having a baby girl! Michael wore a pink shirt and socks to the appointment, saying he knew all along.

Here is our baby girl at 19 weeks.


Leaving the appointment with our "It's a girl" water bottle. We have been talking about names over the past several weeks. I have loved the name Isabella for a long time. We are calling her Isabella, and still working on a middle name. (And NO, there is no connection to twilight.)


A snapshot of my maternity clothes and the clothes we have been given for Isabella this week.
I have no reason to have her clothes hanging up, as she won't be needing them for several more months, other than I just like to see them when I open my closet. :)


Mother's Day 2010


When my mom was pregnant with their first baby, my dad gave her an eternity band to symbolize his "forever" commitment to her and their baby as they began this new stage of life. I always loved that and had told Michael about it a long time ago. He remembered. This morning when we woke up he said sweet things about his commitment to me and our children, and then gave me my very own eternity band. So sweet! I love it!
I am happy to be feeling better and starting to feel her fluttering around!

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven."

It has been a long past two weeks. Thinking about the losses people in my family have experienced this week, I hear my dad's voice quoting Ecclesiastes 3.

A Time for Everything

¹ There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:

² a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,

³ a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,

⁴ a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,

⁵ a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,

⁶ a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,

⁷ a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,

⁸ a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

We have had times of weeping and laughing in the past week. Life seems very bitter-sweet right now. We are full of joy for our sweet girl that is growing inside me and brokenhearted by other things that have happened recently. According to Ecclesiastes, I suppose that is just life. There is a time to mourn and a time to dance.
Praise you Father for carrying us through the times of grief and also blessing us with joy.

I called him Gramps

His name was Ferrill Morris White. I called him Gramps. Before retiring, he was an executive of some sort at AT&T during the day and a beekeeper on the weekends. He taught me the difference between real backyard honey and the stuff that’s mass produced. He had a wood-shop and could fix or build just about anything. After we bought our first house, he helped me hang new cabinets with the greatest of precision and ease. He served in the Navy during the Korean War and had a lot of funny stories about life at sea on a Navy ship. When I was little, he took me fishing and showed me how to make pancakes. He was one of only two men I’ve ever let call me Mikey (the other is my dad). He’s gone now and I will definitely miss him.

My grandpa passed away this week after a long fight with pneumonia. Last November (two days before his 77th birthday) he went in for a “routine” heart surgery. The surgery went extremely well and the doc said he’d need to be on blood thinner for the rest of his life but that he thought he had several good years left. Then, while he was still in recovery from the heart surgery, he had a stroke that left him unable to speak and all but paralyzed on one side of his body.

Ever the fighter, he spent the next 5 months working to get better in rehab. Even though he’d had a few minor setbacks, he was starting to figure out how to walk again and his communication was improving a little bit every day. Then he had a bowl obstruction. Then he got pneumonia, and despite the best efforts of his medical team, his body just wasn’t strong enough to fight anymore.

The last few weeks have been a roller coaster of emotions for my entire family. We’ve spent a lot of time together by his side and in the waiting room at the hospital. We’ve celebrated as things seemingly got better and we’ve comforted each when things got worse. He’d been non-responsive for a few days and was supposed to go home on Wednesday of this week where hospice was going to take over his medical care. The doctors had prepared our family that he probably wouldn’t last much longer at home. Everyone was a little worried about making the decision to send him home, not sure if we were doing what we would have wanted. Somehow he must have sensed all of that because on Tuesday evening he simply stopped breathing and passed from this life into the next before any decisions had to actually be made on whether to send him home or keep him in the hospital.

The funeral is tomorrow and my brother and I will be pallbearers. Somewhere in my mind, I always knew this day would come, but I just never expected it so soon. My wife is pregnant with our first baby and I had always hoped he would make it long enough to hold his great grand daughter. After all, he was the chief culprit and source of most of the “When are you going to have a baby?” type questions that we’ve so frequently received the last few years of our marriage. We never quite knew how to answer those questions and they always caught us a bit off guard, but as I think back now, I can’t help but smile about it as we look forward to our daughter’s birth.

I will really miss my Gramps. I was very fortunate to be able to know him so well and get to be around him for so many good years of his life. Through his words, his actions, and even his demeanor, he taught me so much about what it means to be a man and I’m so grateful for the life he lived.