My gardens are kinda a big deal… ;-)

This week my gardens got featured on another Murphy Blogger’s site – and I’m loving it!  =)

http://murphyinthemiddle.com  or direct to the post:

http://murphyinthemiddle.com/2014/07/21/magnificent-murphy-gardens-a-floral-paradise/

My plumerias are doing so well this year – I have three in full bloom and another three ready to pop out any day – plus all of my cuttings survived the harsh winter and seem to be doing really well so next year I should have a serious bloomfest going on!

My specialty seems to have turned into container gardening – most everything I have is in pots spread throughout the patio and yard – it’s a lot easier to take care of and the plants seem to do better than in this crappy clay soil we have here!

Weekend Wrap-Up

Wow – we were really busy this weekend!  I was so ready to be done with this week at work that the weekend had been looming for me for what seemed like forever and it was finally HERE.

There is a very small historical cemetery near our house that over the last few months had become quite overgrown.  It really made me sad driving by it 1-2 times a day and thinking about how if those were my ancestors I certainly wouldn’t be happy with the neglect the cemetery was going through.  Finally after contacting the owners of the cemetery and finding out the people in charge had just kind of forgotten about it and would be unable to do anything about it for a while, I decided to do something about it myself!  I organized a bunch of people from Murphy, and we all went out there Saturday morning for the big CLEAN-UP!

I was so excited at the number of people who showed up to help spruce up!  I think at one point I counted 17!!!  I absolutely love living in a small town.  New friends were made, and lots of fun was had, and I LOVED everyone’s kids that came to help as well!  What a really awesome group of youngsters and parents!  ❤

Here’s our album of pictures from McMillen Cemetery Clean-Up Day!

https://plus.google.com/photos/111290182317687401101/albums/6037795749909604929?authkey=CJnNzMi86-yePw

Then after we were done with that, my parents came over and we went over for our first 3D ultrasound of Miss Tatum!  I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but we got some amazing pictures, and a DVD of the entire session!  It really is amazing the clarity of the photographs and video you can get with the 3D.  I think my parents were absolutely fascinated! (I certainly was!)

I really love them all, but the one of her yawning gets me every time.  ❤  Getting so much closer to meeting her in person, it’s really flying by at this point!

Sunday we spent kind of a leisurely day (with the exception of our air conditioning unit going on the fritz, but we combated that by just staying out of the house as much as possible)…  Hit up the local flea market and came home with a second “Tatum” street sign, a new pot for my Aloe plants, and Wade got a new rain gauge.  😉

Once we got home we headed to the pool.  MAN all the rain on Thursday made that water FRIGID.  Wade was making fun of me because once I got my feet in it took me almost an hour to get the rest of me in the pool.  He kept telling me I was freezing our baby, but honestly, it felt a lot better than my hot stuffy house with no AC!

We ended up going to dinner with Dad at Cracker Barrel – it’s his birthday tomorrow and he’s bacheloring it this weekend while my mom is at the beach so we’re meeting up with him as much as we can!

Father, Daughter, and Granddaughter all hitting the rocking chairs 😉  That bump is getting kind of ridiculous for 6 months!  ❤

After that we came home and I tried to do some things to keep my mind off the heat in the house so I ended up finishing Tatum’s nursery letters!  Just need to hang them now!  I’m really happy with how they came out – I think they’re really cute.  =)

And now I’m sweaty, exhausted, and ready to go to bed!

Coming up on July 29….. Maternity pictures on the BEACH!!!!  ❤

Something really weird about me:

I hate books written in the first person. Can’t stand them. And I LOVE to read.

I also love to download the free books from Amazon onto my kindle, however if I open them up and they’re written in the first person, I immediately close them, delete, and move on to the next one.

It’s weird, I know…. Who else has something totally random about themselves they want to share? =)

Today’s Edition of #PreggieProblems

Continuing on my “Preggie Tips” from yesterday =)

Tip #1: Unborn babies feel the best time to complete a rigorous uterine gymnastics routine is at 3am. Bladders make the best spring boards. It’s really disconcerting to wake up because someone is kicking their way out of you from the inside.

Tip #2: You will drink so much water that your husband will tell you dryly “You know there’s more water in the kitchen, right? You don’t really have to chug it like it’s the last water on Earth.”

Tip #3: Pregnancy/Maternity pillows are the BEST (this is a serious tip). Seriously, I have two plus three regular pillows. My husband told my my “nest” is ridiculous, but I don’t care, because it’s COMFORTABLE, dammit!

Tip #4: Pregnancy in the Summer… Be prepared for the number of people who will tell you “Oh, but it’s so HOT to be in your third trimester!” Well hell, I should have planned better. Maybe I can put this thing on hold until it’s more convenient =)

My all time favorite piece of advice so far that I’ve received?? “Make sure you get lots of sleep NOW while you can!”

Um, I don’t think it works like a Savings and Loan, but *smile, nod* Thanks =)

The Bump

According to thebump.com, I have 100 days left to go and Tatum is the size of a cauliflower. Cauliflower?? Feels more like a bowling ball.

I’m going to design my own notifications. According to theJamie.com, you have 100 days left to go, congrats on making it this far with a minimum of whining. You’re currently carrying a bowling ball sitting directly on top of your bladder and your lungs have scrunched up to 1/4 their usual size (which is about the only thing shrinking on you as you well know). Complete strangers are now grabbing your stomach with both hands and screaming about how tight it is. Enjoy the next 100 days, as it just gets “better” from here *grin*

Ancestry

I’ve gotten ridiculously into ancestry and genealogy the last few days and at some point I’m going to have to set time limits on this stuff as preggie women have to sleep at some point.

At first I started out all willy nilly all over the place until I decided I needed a “method” for dealing with the loads of information available to me. I decided to concentrate on one branch at a time, follow the male line and then move on to the spouses after is exhausted the male. So far it’s slow going but that seems to be working well!!

Yesterday I spent a lot of time working on the Houff line (my maternal grandfather’s line). There’s some roadblocks there, but I did follow the Houff name back to Germany which I was pleased with! There’s a lot more in my way with the Duke line (maternal grandmother) so that will require some time.

Worked on the Hanchar line (my husband’s father) today at Wade’s request. The actual Hanchar name I couldn’t get terribly far back on, but Wade’s Dad’s Mother’s line I followed all the way back to Richard II King of Scotland.

There’ll be no living with Wade now, and he claims this makes Tatum “all but royalty” *grin*

I have a box of papers and photographs from my Dad for following the Hastings side, but I’ll probably save that for this weekend when I have more time to dig and sort through it.

Anyone out there in interwebz land have any suggestions for helpful places to look for info? I’m using ancestry.com right now but haven’t delved much into the other resources available out there!!!

More fishes!!!

Two of my four for the evening. These things can suck a worm off a hook in less than 5 seconds… I need to find dumber fish.

Here’s the third!! The first one was too paltry to take a picture of 😉

Red, White, and Bluegills

Happy Fourth of July y’all!!!! ❤

Because nothing says “America” like killing some worms 😉

New Beginnings <3

I know it’s been a long while since I’ve posted, but I’ve missed blogging and I finally have some interesting stuff (I believe anyway!) to add to the interwebz again.

The past two and a half years have been a long hard road for Wade and I as we’ve struggled with infertility issues.  We didn’t publicize that we were trying to start a family, but it was something we both really desperately wanted and didn’t seem to be able to achieve.  After a really disheartening last six months to 2013, we decided to quit the road we were currently on and save up the money to start IVF in March 2014.

You can imagine our surprise (and elation!) when at the beginning of February, I (being the obsessive can’t help it person I am) decided to pee on yet another pregnancy test (I should have bought stock in First Response 2.5 years ago) and it came back POSITIVE!  I wanted to scream our joy from the rooftops, but being surrounded by fertility issues (and hundreds of other women surrounded with the same issues) for years had made me super paranoid.

We’ve announced it on Facebook quite a few weeks ago and are now 24 weeks along as of today.  It’s actually been a fairly easy pregnancy so far, with the exception of severe bronchitis at around week 7 where I thought I might just die, and I’ve actually been one of those pregnant women that other pregnant women love to hate.  Not a ton of nausea, no real morning sickness, fairly decent energy, not many side-effects, etc.  Now that I’ve gone public with all that, I’m sure my pregnancy will turn around and bite me in the tooshie, but so far, I feel great!!!

We were so excited at the beginning we decided to go to one of those boutiquey places popping up for their “Early Gender Determination Ultrasound” and they told us our baby was a boy.  Imagine our surprise when 3 weeks later we had our anatomy scan at our doctor’s office and HE turned out to be a SHE!  I couldn’t stop laughing, and Wade was just stunned speechless (He was SURE he’d seen the bits).  She has since been confirmed a girl twice, so we’re fairly confident this time.

Looks like we’ll be welcoming Tatum Lynn to the family sometime around October 23 of this year.  Around three and a half months left to go!!!

I can’t wait to continue to keep up with our journey over the next several months here.  I think it’s going to be both exciting and terrifying for me as we get closer to “time” – anyone who has known me long knows me and medical stuff don’t mix very well!  I’m keeping my fingers crossed for an uneventful birth 😉

 

Of course, I’ve been obsessively working on the nursery since Day One, and we went with a carousel horse theme which I adore.  I think she’s going to love her room. (I hope so anyway!)

In other news (which seems kind of paltry to that news) life has been moving along very smoothly lately!  Our gardens are blooming, in fact, we’re being featured on a local blog tomorrow for that and I’m looking forward to seeing if the author likes our little backyard paradise as much as we do!  All of my plumeria cuttings made it through the brutal winter we had and it looks like a couple more of my mature plants will be blooming soon, so I can’t wait to see what color they turn out (though I think all my mature plants are the same if I remember right.  Oh well, no surprises this year!)

All of our pets are also doing (knock on wood) surprisingly great!  After two really close calls with Aspen since Christmas, she’s almost completely recovered and though VERY old and starting to go a little senile, she’s in great shape and still trucking along.  Such a tough old lady.  Checkers (our cat) is in robust health as always, and Derby (the sheltie) has been doing great as well!  He turned 8 this year, and I just can’t believe how time has flown!!!

I think I’ve rambled on long enough, so until the next post!!  It feels good to be back and writing!!!  ❤