big news!

Well, overseas family... we thought you should know that we're having a BOY!

The ultrasound was so fun to watch and he was so cute and tiny, though sooo much bigger than when we first saw him, of course. He has little fingers and toes now!! We watched him try to suck his thumb once but he kept missing (must be mama's lack of coordination coming through). Ah, but we won't fault him he has plenty of time to learn! 

I had the day off work and got some extra ceramics time in and Ron got off early to join me for the ultrasound, then we took a nice fall walk and went out to dinner together :) It was such a nice Monday :)

ron's mug

This was my first project in my ceramics class. We all had to make a mug. Mine ended up very large and too heavy to really hold comfortably with the handle! I'm in good company, however, because Ron thinks the mug represents all that is man. He loves to drink his hot chocolate out of it and has made me feel better by appreciating the big clunky thing I brought home from school :) 

baby bump

getting bigger every day... trying to get a nice picture with the trees in the background, but we also through in our redneck random boards laying against our fence... I'll be bigger yet come Christmas and am looking forward to family talking to my belly :) 

thinking out loud.

Last night when we went to church it was the first time that I felt like I looked pregnant, not just fat. In the past week even, I think my belly has made vast improvements in this area. I will be excited when I'm even further past the "is she pregnant or not?" stage.

Already looking forward to Christmas. I'm getting in the spirit of things because I'm putting together a package for the overseas family, and wish I could be there instead. Also, I will be quitting my job in December, right before Christmas. It worked out that way because I didn't want to fight with my boss about Christmas vacation (since we're coming to Wisconsin this year!) and it's about the time I will really not want to do karate anymore anyway. I already feel out of the loop there because I'm not training for my next belt. Can't fall, can't train. But that's ok. I've learned a lot there, and I have a better understanding and appreciation for self defense, and while I've enjoyed my previous training (for the most part) is was my job not my hobby. I will miss the little kids the most, and will go back to visit them sometimes. I will be glad to be done with the office politics (it's everywhere, I'm still amazed by this) and, frankly, the ego trips of a man with an art named after his family that means "the powerful way of Bainton" (his last name). There's some stories there, but I have been grateful for the job and enjoyed it a lot of the time, my boss can be really nice and I have to respect authority. Enough said. 

So, I'm looking forward to Christmas. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do with my life after Christmas until the baby gets here, and here is what I've come up with. Enjoy sleeping my full 8 hours every night. Design! Feel smart again! Get back into photography and really learn more about it. Take some classes that are offered at my church. Volunteer more. Cook good dinners for my loving husband. Write. Keep up with my exercise. Keep reading. Be better about cleaning the house more often... like folding laundry when it comes out of the dryer... Get the baby room ready! And I'm going to enjoy some time to myself. Oh... and finally put together some photo albums.

I'm open to suggestions. At present I am enjoying my ceramics class, feeling good about being able to express my creativity in some way. I feel like people could look at what I've been doing this year and a half and think I was selling myself short. And to be honest, I feel very unintellectually stimulated most days. Oh, I'll whip out a sudoku (had to look up how to spell that) or listen to NPR. I have enjoyed working with the kids, and won't regret that. I've always known that I would want to be a stay-at-home mom, and after growing up I feel blessed that it's actually an option for me. While I don't begrudge working mothers anything, I hope they won't begrudge me. I want to be with my kids, to watch them grow up, to know their everyday little lives. I want to have the time to nurture and be fun and take care of a household. This isn't meant to be some debate on the merits of working moms vs. stay-at-home moms, of course. More power to you if you can work full time and still be a great mom, as most are. A simple little fact is that you can't have it all. I want the time with my kids. I want to teach a simpler life, family oriented and slower paced. I think a lot of the things I want are not entirely respected these days by society in general. But that's ok because Ron and I are on the same page. I also want to challenge myself intellectually and physically during my days at home. If there is one thing I've learned from my older brother and sister it's that kids shouldn't stop you from doing anything! Travel with the baby, camp with the baby, they're pretty good troopers. And I can still make some time for designing/art. 

Just thinking out loud here, really. 

I will get some pictures up someday. Ron has our digital camera at work with him all the time, and he doesn't bring it home and my scanner is down, and I don't develop film well anyway because I am a Burchell. 

belly pictures soon :) 

h1n1

So, the swine flu is going around and everyone is freaking out about it. I am choosing to not freak out :) I am trying to not get sick, obviously thinking a little more about it these days due to the little one. There's those verses in the Bible that I like to think of:

"I will say of the Lord, "He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust." ... A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you."

Psalms 91:2,7

Maybe that seems a bit dramatic, but I am claiming it for my life, and we are praying for health in our family. I think of other verses that I cannot quote right now about wars and rumors of wars (and plagues, etc.)... There's always something I could be freaking out about. Down here in Texas the swine flu is quite a big deal right now, and we both know people that have it. So I am learning to lean more on God for those things that I cannot control, and am learning to have peace about those things. Since I am a dramatic sort, it is interesting that lately I've been actually pretty calm about it. Of course I should always trust my Savior, God of the Universe. Doesn't that just make sense? :)

All this to really tell you a funny story. Today all of the people at Ron's work got called together for a mass safety meeting where the headlining objective was to tell people how to not catch the swine flu. Great idea to cram all 800 employees together in a tent and teach them about not spreading germs. It just seemed a wild and ironic contradiction to me :) 

tidbit

This morning I got up with Ron and saw him off to work. We won't see each other a lot tonight because we're both busy, so why not play Sorry at 5:15 in the morning while he's eating breakfast?

Also, we discovered a leak in our "great room" (the entryway, that's what we call it :) yesterday, and assume we've never had it leak before because it hasn't rained that hard for several straight days. Cleaned it up, it had stopped raining, this morning it's back. Ron calls me on the way to work (just to tell me he loves me and had a great weekend with me, isn't he the best!?) and I inform him that I put a pot underneath the leak.

"Awww... Just like those people that live in really old houses!" 

"Um... yup, that's us, Ron."

:) 

a rainy saturday, finally!

Well, even Grandma is getting on to me now, I must write something! She said it's ok if I whine, she just wants to read something from me. Hopefully that doesn't mean I whine all the time :) but thank you for the liberty, as it is likely the case here and there. 

Today Ron and I spent a pleasant rainy morning as follows... slept in, then took a trip to Ron's work site. He had to check something important, and I took his word for it, donned a poncho and joined him trudging in the rain through the partially completed power plant. It has grown a lot since I was last there, and it was fun to look up through the structure to see the tower cranes resting on top of the entire building. Ron explained to me what he was doing, and how some things worked (dumbed down the process a bit without making me feel dumb, he's so good at that :) and set off for Mart. Mart is a little bitty town that we first drove through when coming to Texas and made us very sad! Off the main drag, almost every other house is abandoned, and I wish someone would help their roads out. But today we saw a different side. We stopped at the Cozy Cafe for lunch and met Jess, the friendly waitress. Then we went to a couple of antique/not so antique shops. You know how those places are. Some items that are actually old and interesting, plus everything in between. I was fortunate enough to find some old silver spoons that were very cheap, and that was my good deal of the day. I still have to look up the best way to clean them. So we liked Mart today. It's one of those little towns that we like to seek out in order to go to their shops and maybe find some interesting people. The towns that get overlooked, blink-you're-through-it types. 

Now we're off shortly to the gym, and then HEB to do some grocery shopping. Ron and I are very excited about shopping there today because just recently we discovered quite by accident that they have a policy called "fresh or free". If we find an item that's expired, we take it plus a new item to the check out, and they give us the new fresh item for free! It's already worked for us once, so there's no stopping the Goodmans now. Let me tell you, nothing tastes better than free cottage cheese... And even though it's one of their open policies, not a lot of people know about it, it's not advertised even on their website, and you feel a little silly riffling through items to check their dates :) But it's so fun when you have a good find! It's about as close to james bond as Ron and I will ever get, we try to be discreet :)

So glad for the rain, too, and the cooler weather!! I'm soaking it up, This is the first week all summer that we saw high temps in the 80s. Only a couple weeks ago we were happy to get high temps in the 90s! I better not hear any whining from the north about how cold it is :) Of course, I suppose I should check myself now that I have relatives in Kuwait... Guess it's not so bad here :)