she surfaces to blog a little blog...

I'm alive... just a little crazy. observe:

see? crazy. I'm writing thank you notes in this photo, btw. I'm not done yet, but I'm getting there.

the cliff notes:

we're slowly getting things unpacked and put away. I've really tried to not just shove things somewhere with the idea of dealing with it later - why would I want to deal with it later when I have a baby to think about?! this has caused us to find actual homes for most things, donate many things, throw away some things, and banish the rest to the garage to be sorted as we feel we can tackle it. curtains have been made for the baby room and bathroom, and I have one more set to make for our bedroom. we hung curtains in the living and dining room, which made me really happy. I'm telling you, curtains make a room feel radically different. I'm willing to concede that I might be a little obsessed with them.

I'm feeling pretty good. I'm very large. duh. I'm outgrowing everything and my left hip still hurts most days in a way that's impossible to ignore and makes me sad. boo-hoo, I know it must get old to hear about such things. I'm starting to really look forward to our (currently hiccuping) baby arriving, instead of being afraid she'll come early. I'm still trying to rest as much as possible and drink the water. at my last visit, Dr. H said everything looks really good - my body seems to be appropriately preparing itself for birthing a baby, and our girl did really well on some non-stress test that monitors accelerations in her heart rate (it totally stressed ME out... every time her heart would ramp up I thought something wrong was happening, but apparently that's what nice, healthy, non-stressed out babies' hearts do when they're active). I see him again tomorrow, and our specialist again on Monday just to make sure everything's still copacetic. I'm starting to get what I assume are Braxton Hicks contractions - I've noticed them at night mostly, when I wake up and my whole stomach is tight and feels like a hard rock. it goes away, but it's sort of fun to know that my body is rehearsing to play it's part the best it can. oh, and my fingers felt a little puffy one day so I decided to go ahead and take my wedding ring off - Jenny T, your story is burned in my memory! I feel a little nutty and incredibly scattered, and I go through bouts of being tired and moody, having spurts of energy and peak efficiency, and then wanting to hide away, be very still, and not talk to anyone. do you feel for my husband yet?

speaking of husband, thanks to craigslist he achieved his dream of owning a smoker. here's his first experiment, duck legs (that thing coming down is the thermometer... he has a super-cool digital one):

the somewhat blurry outcome. they were good, just a bit too salty. we decided the delicious cure he used had too much salt. oh well, it was still a great first run.

round two - a big honking slab of brisket.

with the rub. after this, he rubbed it with mustard, too.

it's a messy business.

welcome to the family, smoker. we shared our brisket with friends on Memorial Day, which I got absolutely no pictures of. lame.

and here's a before and after of our most recent baby room project. we found a wall art decal we really liked on etsy and it came in the mail yesterday. here's the room last night, before:

husband, working on applying our cherry blossom branch:

and then making it sprout cherry blossoms:

the finished product this morning...

I really love how the blossoms are 'blowing' across the room:

we also had the etsy dude make us these letter decals... we weren't shooting to have a total bird theme all over the room, but we did agree early on about liking the idea of birds on the walls and this Bible verse fitting in somewhere:

nope, we don't have doors on the closets yet. and yep, those are MY shoes in the baby's room. she needs to learn to share, yo.

I hope this isn't in bad form, but I found it a welcome sight this morning. I told M that the last month left me feeling really haphazard when it comes to our budget - not that there's any problem, but we've grown accustomed to being pretty disciplined and May was a wonky, wacky, month for me. I just didn't feel as connected to our budget as I normally do, my brain doesn't seem to have as much room to care about details and that makes me feel sloppy and disorganized, and we had a lot of odds and ends that were needed/wanted to set up house. thankfully, my husband is on top of things. I'm so glad one of us is. anyway, seeing our little piles of cash on the table to put in envelopes for the month of June made me happy. it's a new, fresh month! two new categories were added this month: Christmas (which we usually start saving for in June... it's worked out really well the last two years), and a special diaper/baby essentials envelope, to start figuring out how much we're actually going to need to plan to budget for that kind of stuff. it might look a little weird and seem like kind of a pain to do things this way, but using cash has helped us so much with keeping track of spending and staying on course we don't really mind.

I just got back from doing some Fiesta price & item voice overs, and feel it would be wrong to not mention how blessed we've been. God has sent me some really interesting, wonderful work lately that's not been too overwhelming (like the trips to Dallas can be... I don't miss that at all right now). it's more than I could have hoped for, honestly. I still have a tendency to stress a little about wondering what's going to happen after I have a baby and my priorities shift, but I'm trying to stay in a place of faith and just focus on gratitude for what I've been given right now. I'm thankful for these recent gigs, for the blessing they'll be to our family's budget over the next couple of months and for the shot in the arm they've given my confidence as I anticipate these big life changes. thank you, Father!

have a good day, peeps. prayers for our little one as she gets close to delivery are much appreciated... we'll be 38 weeks this Saturday, and I'm getting anxious to see her and assure myself that she's real and okay. :)

-m.y.