Drum roll, please

The much anticipated Cinco de Mayo ultrasound was completed yesterday. Within 10 seconds, the doctor said, “You’ve got ONE healthy baby.” “One? Are you sure?” asked David. “Why don’t you look around a bit more?” Sure enough after all the mental preparation for multiples, we were much relieved to know that we will be having one beautiful baby. "Isn't that what you ordered?" asked the doctor. "Don't go changing your order on me now!":)

For those who don’t know, my HCG levels were remarkably high at my six week blood draw and we knew there were multiple eggs, so our mental preparations were not unwarranted. We are so thankful for all of your thoughts and prayers. We feel immensely supported and loved. Here is a picture of out little dinosaur (that’s what David thinks it looks like). The due date is December 17, 2008.

One of these days…

Since David and I have been married, we have found ourselves on occasion saying, “One of these days _____ (fill in the blank with any item/action that does not lend itself to our current phase of life/budget).” For example, one of these days: -we’ll buy ‘dry clean only’ clothes -we won’t have to adjust the rabbit ears every time we change the channel -we’ll tip generously -we’ll fly on an airline other than Southwest (and use the skycap service even though they charge a fee) -we’ll eat out at a restaurant for which we DON’T have a coupon -we'll run the ‘dry’ cycle on the dishwasher without worrying about the added energy expense -we’ll hire a legitimate landscaping company rather than using our “amigos”

Well, we had another one of those moments this week. David needed to send out his graduation announcements and rather than buying labels which are expensive (“one of these days we’ll buy labels for our envelopes”) we decided to print the addresses directly on the envelopes. I’ve done this for the last couple of years with our Christmas cards and it works pretty well as long as I don’t feed more than 5 envelopes at a time into our ghetto printer. Well, David’s envelopes were a bit fancier, made of thick paper, and half the size of the envelopes I’ve printed on in the past. We couldn’t get the printer to feed them through and kept getting a “paper jam” notice accompanied by an obnoxious error beep each time we tried. After 10 minutes of hearing that annoying beep from the printer, the tension was mounting.

David wanted to just hand-write them, but I was bound and determined to get it to work. “Ah-hah! I have just the tool!” I went to the kitchen and grabbed a fondue fork. The two-pronged design lent itself beautifully to shoving the envelope through until the printer caught it. However, each of the 49 envelopes (50-1 that was destroyed in the trial and error process) had to be fed individually. The sequence: David clicks on the mail merged address, opens the print function, clicks ‘print selection’ and hovers the cursor precariously over the ‘OK’ button awaiting my signal. In the meantime, I load the envelope and position the fondue fork precisely in the center ensuring a balanced feed and give the signal, “Go.” And on to the next envelope.

So, in summary, one of these days we’ll have a printer that doesn’t require use of a fondue fork to feed the envelopes! In the meantime, we’re having some good laughs.

A photo capturing the intricacies of positioning the envelope. What concentration!

My future career as a window washer

A couple of weekends ago I decided it was time to wash the windows. After all, we’ve lived in this house for almost four years and now that we’re selling I thought it was about time. My mom gave me a killer recipe for a homemade washing solution (vinegar, dish soap, water) as well as tips on how to do the job well. I spent all day removing screens, washing screens, scrubbing windows, squeegying windows, replacing screens, etc. I must say that they look pretty darn good and I think I might have a future in the window washing business if this whole speech-pathology thing doesn’t work out.

Now, to 3 days after the window washing extravaganza… David was opening all the blinds in the morning (part of our morning routine now that the house is being shown quite a bit) and found something most peculiar. Outside of our guest bedroom widow, which looks out to the side of our house where there is a very narrow stretch of DG, was a dove, beak down in the DG and totally dead. It looked like it had been sitting on our fence and then just keeled over. “That’s weird,” David and I thought. He did the manly thing and disposed of the dove corpse to save his pregnant wife from dry heaving for the 10th time that morning.

Now to the next morning…Due to the surprise of finding the dead dove on the ground the previous day, the blinds never made it all the way up. The next day, however, David pulled the blinds completely up and suddenly I heard uncontrollable laughter coming from the guest room. “Jenny, you’ve gotta come see this. I figured out how the dove died!” I hurried into the room only to see this:

Taken from the inside of our guest room.

What I couldn't capture in the photos were the little feathers that were stuck to the outside of the window. Use your imaginations:)

So I guess mama Costley’s window washing solution is a good one…just not for the birds!

Another blossom...

Once upon a time a beautiful Christmas cactus grew in the home of my great-great-grandmother. She gave a start from her cactus to my great-grandmother, who in turn gave a start to my grandma Costley. Grandma Costley gave a start to my mom when she married my dad and now each girl in my family receives a start from the cactus as she is creating her own home.

David and I have grown quite fond of our cactus (the only plant I haven’t killed since we’ve been married) and affectionately call her Hermione because her unkempt appearance resembles Hermione Granger’s hair. Not only is this cactus a link to ancestors and present family members, but it has established a reputation for being somewhat…how do I say this?...psychic! Our cactus traditionally blooms in the winter. During the rest of the year, it’s just green with no flowers. However, on certain occasions this cactus has been reported to bloom at unusual times, seemingly in connection with important life events. Suffice it to say that the week before we received the news about David matching to an ENT residency, we discovered a solitary blossom.

Well, last week we found one more blossom. “What could it mean?” we wondered. The results from blood work done this week confirmed what we hoped…we’re finally pregnant!!! Whether or not the cactus is as intuitive as we believe it to be, we are overwhelmingly excited about this news. It’s still really early, but we’ve waited for years to be able to make this announcement and we can’t hold back. Thank you so much for your prayers and support. It looks like 2008 has all kinds of changes in store for us. Below, find a photo of Hermione. The big blossom is from Match Day, the smaller on the far right side is for baby Ludlow.

Two blossoms in the Spring...see the small bud on the right?

A close-up of "baby bud!"

Close up of "Match Day bud."

Match Day

“Create a family blog” has been on my to-do list for about a year now. It’s going to feel great to finally check that off! For our inaugural post, I thought it would be fitting to give a recap of the most exciting day we've had in the last several months: the much anticipated March 20, 2008…Residency Match Day! It was a huge deal at the medical school and the fourth year medical students invited spouses, parents, and friends to witness the ado. The theme was an “election year” and each med student had a campaign poster with their residency program (in our case Otolaryngology ’08). After a speech from the dean (to prolong the anticipation), the fourth years charged the envelope table searching for their names (as a side note, the envelopes were NOT arranged alphabetically…an ingenious endeavor to further increase the anxiety level, no doubt). We took a deep breath, David opened his envelope and our home for the next 5 years was revealed. After numerous cross-country interview trips, thousands of dollars, countless prayers, and many sleepless nights, we found out that David matched at an Ear, Nose and Throat residency program at LSU Shreveport. Louisiana, here we come! We're thrilled for this new chapter in our lives. We've had enough life experiences to know that prayers aren't always answered just the way we hope. But we're thrilled that this was an exception! Sneaking a kiss from the most handsome ENT resident known to man!
David pinning his name to a US map. Bible belt, here we come!
The "ballot results" in our envelope.