December 24th

Well, this Christmas Eve was none too exciting. I had to leave Weatherford this morning at 7 so I could get to work for our 10 patients... some of which were elective surgeries and could have waited... but either way... I left my wife with her parents and sisters in western Oklahoma. I drove an hour and a half through sleet, but made it to work okay. I did see a couple of cars flipped over though, but the roads weren't that bad. I worked for a few hours and then left work about 3:30pm. I started on a drive home that normally takes me 25 minutes. Fortunately my wife convinced me to stop and get gas. My tank showed I had 50 miles to go until I hit empty. I only had 17 miles to go. Couldn't be that bad. But I stopped and refilled. So now I had 415 miles til empty. I told my wife not to expect a call from me saying I was home in 25 minutes. She said she would expect one in about an hour and a half. So... an hour later... I had gone... 1 MILE! Woo woo! Traffic was ugly. The interstates were closed and everyone decided to try the road I was on. They also decided to block the lanes of traffic, so there was a lot of sitting around. I finally decided to change roads and made it to one parallel to what I was previously on. Then... someone else was blocking a lane and I had to go around him... so I made it... into the snow drift. Now I was stuck for about 30 minutes. I got some help from the guy behind me. We fought with my car for a bit - and got no where. Then we noticed another truck that had stalled in the intersection. We both pushed him back on his way, then we tried my car again. Thankfully, mine started rolling again. Once I got to Rte 66... things were by far better. I covered about half of the trip in the last 45 minutes. Once I made it to my neighborhood, the snow was in drifts up to 2-3 feet. My road had cars on both sides of the street and tall snow in the middle of the road. I floored the pedal and plowed through the snow. Once I got to my house, I could see the snow drifts piled up in the driveway. I tried to plow into that and park in the drive way. This was as far as I got... I think the front bumper was in the driveway. The rest of the car was in the middle of the street. It stayed there for about an hour or so until I decided to go try to shovel some of the snow out of the driveway. It was a bit cold... and some of the snow I did shovel, blew back into the spots I just shoveled. Hmm. Anyway, here are some more pictures of the snow around our house. These had to be taken with the iPhone camera since our other camera was in Weatherford. My plan for shoveling was to at least move the car a little more into the driveway. This was as close as I got on shoveling the snow out of the driveway. This at least moved the car out of the road, but I hadn't intended on parallel parking. Oh well. The last few pictures are of our decorations again. I turned on our Christmas lights and our tree lights. I also decided to put out some milk and cookies "for Santa." However, he didn't show up in time, so I had to eat a couple before they spoiled. The tree no longer has presents under it, but I am hoping that my last Christmas present I get is to see my wife for Christmas. She is still stuck in Weatherford, and we hope she will make it out here tomorrow, but I guess that is yet to be decided. I would definitely rather her be safe than try to make it here when it is still crazy outside. Anyway, my drive home took me a mere 4 hours. My 17 mile trip took almost 100 miles off my gas tank. Not so fuel efficient. Well, it is late and I must get to bed... or fall asleep watching a movie on the couch. We will see. I have a long day ahead of me shoveling snow. Anyone want to come help?

December 25th... I mean 23rd.

Here's a few videos of our "Christmas morning." We had to do this early. Christmas day could consist of tiling the bathroom. Who knows what fun we could have!!!

Start of week 12

Well it has been a few days since I've posted. Tonight we told our third set of parents about our news. (For those who are unaware who the third set of parents are... When I was in college, I had a roommate named Adrian. Since my family lived far away from where I went to school, his family adopted me - they probably wish they would not have at this point, but they're stuck with me now.) Anyway, we had broke the news to Adrian and his sister Alisha the day of our first doctor's appointment. We kept it a secret from his parents. We invited them over to our house tonight for Christmas desserts. Before we ate, we handed out a couple of presents. Anthony got a rattle and Polla got an "I love grandma" bib. We thought Polla was about to go through the roof. She jumped up so quickly and had tears in her eyes. We all agreed that if we had her reaction on video, we could have made money on America's Funniest Videos. We've also posted our ultrasound picture on Facebook. We don't care who knows now... except that guy at 7-11. I don't know that he needs to know about it... so don't tell him. He'd probably pretend to not know who I am anyway.

Right now, my wife is falling asleep next to me in bed... which is par for the course this time of night. Actually we are ahead of schedule. Usually we are just starting to get to bed. Fortunately, Kayla is still not having any morning sickness. No real cravings for anything. She has complained a little more that her pants don't seem to fit anymore. I guess we will be shopping for more clothes pretty soon. We did see a commercial for a maternity store called "Pickles and Ice Cream." Great name in my opinion... although, pregnant or not, how does anyone crave that combination? I tried a pickle flavored snow cone before... that was bad enough.

Anyway, Christmas is almost here. We have the house partly decorated... and partly destroyed. This weekend, Kayla's dad and I tore up the guest bathroom. We tore out the paneling and knocked down the texture and popcorn ceilings (no more of those in the house fortunately). Then he went back and retextured the ceiling and walls. We also took out the toilet so we could get ready to tile in about a week. We decided it would be better to try to retile that shower now rather than wait til later. The harvest gold color of tile doesn't fit Kayla's preferences right now. Mine either. So, we will plan on that too. Someday.

Okay... that is enough for now. I am about to start nodding off. I have had a couple of really busy weeks at work. Monday already is starting off busy, so I am sure I will need my rest. Until next time...

We have a lime

Our "peanut" is growing so quickly. We started on Monday with the picture of a peanut. Yesterday - according to my iphone whattoexpect application - we had a prune. Today... a lime. Eventually it will turn into an orange, a grapefruit, an eggplant, a banana, then a watermelon. If it takes longer than 40 weeks, it will be a pumpkin. I am not sure why, but this kid is making me hungry. Just not for grapefruit or eggplant.

Today, Kayla and I went to my work's Christmas party. I warned her that she would hear two comments from people. Sure enough, the first to comments made to her were: 1. Congratulations, and 2. How do you put up with this guy? We managed to escape the Dirty Santa gift exchange without the tube socks and lotion. We got the Lowes gift card and the Chili's gift card. I think at least one was a regift... but who cares! We will take them both!

As far as the "lime" goes... no real nausea still. A few more missing Oreos, but I don't think I want them back. I have noticed a small bump... but I am told it is just bloating. We could have taken advantage of the expecting mothers parking today at Babies R Us... but I didn't. I didn't think we were close enough to our due date to prove we were expecting. Although... it never says what we are expecting. Kayla and I are both expecting to go to work tomorrow. We are expecting that we will eventually finish the house. We are expecting a lot of things... but I don't think that counts for the parking. Either way - I didn't park there.

Aside from that - we've had a fairly quiet weekend. We did clean out the garage and redecked our attic - so now we are a little more organized and I can now park my truck in the garage. Yay! No more scraping windows this winter.

Again... someone ate Oreos today! Who is taking my cookies? Well, nothing new to update today. I am feeling great and have not had any nausea! Kayla's feeling good too... just a little cold due to our warm 17 degree weather!

Before the first baby appointment

Well... although we are happy to post the latest on the house updates and remodels, our main point in starting this blog was to update more on our latest addition to the house. Here's the news... We are pregnant... Kayla is pregnant... Will is not. We are expecting sometime around July 10, 2010. We are definitely excited. Obviously, more important than being a boy or girl, we pray the baby will be healthy. My brother-in-law thinks the baby will be a girl. A girl I work with thinks the baby will be a boy. I feel like it might be a boy, but really we will be happy with either. We did have this kind of funny moment before the first doctor's appointment.





Once we got to the doctor's appointment, the doctor did do an ultrasound. When she handed the pictures to us, she said, "Here's the picture of your peanut." Okay. Well, so here's the picture.


So far, everything looks great. Kayla is not having any nausea... she also isn't having any cravings. Apart from a little tiredness, things are pretty much like they were before we found out. I have noticed that when I come home from work, that someone or something has depleted our supply of milk and cookies. Kayla assures me that she has no idea where they went. I might need to install some secret video cameras to see if I can catch the culprit. Okay... no more for tonight.

House Renovation Pictures

As you can see, these are before and after pictures of our house. As far as the exterior, we have painted and pulled up the shrubs. The kitchen was the nice '70s harvest gold color on the countertops, sink, wallpaper... etc. So we covered the linoleum floor with tile, changed out the countertops, oven, sink, backsplash, and took down the wallpaper and painted. We also scraped the popcorn ceilings off and Kayla's dad textured the ceilings. The light fixtures were changed out too.













The dining room - also connected to the kitchen, had the same linoleum, strange green and yellow wallpaper, and hideous light fixtures, so we changed all of those too.

The living room wasn't changed a lot. We repainted the walls and changed the ceiling fan, and textured the walls and ceilings in there too. We even kept the same couch they had. When we bought the house, the living room entrance to the dining room had two half walls and spindles. We thought it dated the house, so we knocked one of the half walls and spindles out and walled the other in. This actually made a wider doorway and a longer living room/kitchen wall.









Our master bedroom - changed paint, ceiling texture, and paint color. We kept their furniture.










Guest bedroom - paint, ceiling and wall texture, ceiling fan addition, and eventually the carpet will be changed.










Bedroom 3/Nursery - same story, paint, texture, we will also get carpet in here and new furniture.










Office - same story - paint, texture, necessary VT decorations, and a ceiling fan.

So far we have worked a lot - and learned a lot about what we shouldn't do professionally. We will work on our bathrooms next... and in the Spring, we will start on the outside - garden/landscaping stuff. Anyone want to come and help?

First post

Here's our first post... and there was much rejoicing.