Give Thanks

 




 I'm remembering today to be grateful for all the blessings in my life. Traffic was just awful this morning, and people seem to be ruder than ever this year. I'm trying my best to smile through it and remember my happiness doesn't depend on them but on me. I'm making it a goal to not get irritated by Holiday craziness this year my mother did a great job of spreading Christmas Cheer when I was younger I remember being in awe of her and her ability to let little things roll off her back, I learned from her that Christmas craziness wasn't a reason to let my spirits die and I hope I teach the same lesson to our sweet girl :)

   I have so much to be thankful for this year:

 Wonderful doctors who've helped give my mom another year of Holiday celebrations with us.

Family who although drive me crazy are mine and I wouldn't trade them for anything.

Mr. A my wonderful thoughtful caring husband who daily I look at and wonder how I got so lucky. I cannot wait to see him become a daddy :)

Amazing people I'm blessed to call friends

a church home where we are not judged for who we are but accepted: broken, bruised, tattered, and torn though we may be. It is amazing to know that no matter what struggles we face the bonds we've created in our church home will be there to support us through it.

a home of our own to spend the Holidays in this year and looking forward to many years to come of watching our sweet baby girl grow up in that home

my relationship with Christ and being secure in the knowledge that I am His child and no one can take that away from me

the sweet baby girl growing inside me who daily reminds me with her playful kicks, and sometimes crazy dance parties, that I am not alone and no longer am I just a woman contemplating my future, but I'm a momma with the chance to leave a legacy by being the Light to my baby girl and teaching her about our Heavenly Father who already loves her so much so that she may also become Light to a broken world.

My little piece of the internet in which I'm free to write my thoughts however often or sporadically I choose it's my place, my private little oasis where I can be alone with my thoughts and whatever comes to my head is what usually goes on the screen :) the wonderful relationships I've formed with so many other bloggers is an added bonus :)

There are so many more things I have to be grateful for but these are just a few. My prayer for myself as well as all of you reading is that you will remember your own gratefulness list when your in the midst of Holiday chaos and it will make you smile regardless of how many times you just got cut off in traffic or how long of a line you have to stand in to get those Holiday purchases made.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Later Alligators....

Mrs. A

22 weeks and wow Thanksgving is close.

Wow this pregnancy has really started flying. I'm so sorry for posting the name and then basically leaving my blog un-attended for a long period it wasn't intentional life just took a turn for the crazy. Thanks for all your comments regarding Lil Miss's name we love it and we know she might have some mis-pronunciation and we're ok with that. We fall more in love with our little Carys every day :)  We've had some sweet moments in the last couple of weeks including Mr. A getting to feel our little girl move for the first time that was a sweet moment I won't ever forget. He talks to her every night with his hand on my belly and one night he was talking and I felt her move but didn't think he could yet but his eyes got really wide and he looked at me and said "she kicked me"!  It was very special. She has fallen into a pretty recognizable pattern of movement in that she is mainly still during the day and then around 11PM she thinks it's time for a dance party.

I can't even begin to fathom that Thanksgiving is so close it's like I blinked and my beloved October was over. I can't believe we only have one more full week after this one and the following one is Thanksgiving week. Mr. A and I are hosting this year and I am so excited about that. It's been a dream of mine since I was a little girl to host my very own Thanksgiving Dinner in my home and this year I get to fulfill that! So as you can imagine the Mr. and I are busy bees preparing our home this week we've been focusing on cleaning out and organizing our fridge and pantry in preparation for the shopping to come.

In other news our baby girl's nursery is starting to come together in my head. We've decided on a sweet pink and green color scheme with cherry blossoms and birdies as a sort of unofficial theme. We're excited to go start our registry this weekend. I'm also busily planning my bestie's baby shower that is set for December 04th. We're doing a winter wonderland theme with sweet pink, silver, and white colors. I'll be sure and post pics the more details I get pulled together. I can't wait to throw her shower she is such a blessing to me and I really want to give her a shower to remember.

Ok this is sort of a hodge podge post and it'll probably be more of the same in the coming weeks but I promise to not leave the blog completely un-attended for an entire week at a time again. I wish I was a better blogger but sometimes life just takes over.
Later Alligators...
Mrs. A

You named her what? and other reactions we've had to baby girl's name.

Oh my goodness I knew revealing the gender would bring on the name questions and comments, but I just can't believe the number of people who have a comment on what we should name our baby girl. Mr. A and are non-traditional we don't like to be ordinary and we want our little girl's name to stand out. Here's just a few of the comments I've heard:

1. don't name your daughter after family members unless you want to curse her with their problems

2. you should give her a name that means something to you and Mr. A (edit I really liked this one and we did)

3. don't name her something off the wall or hard to spell

4. you should give her a plain name so she'll fit in once she gets to school age

5. and my personal favorite just don't name her something stupid!

So without further ado our baby girl's name is going to be

Carys Kaylenn

Carys is pronounced : (kaw-riss) and is the welsh word for love. Mr. A picked out this name because he has a Welsh background and wanted to honor that.

Kaylenn is pronounced Kay Lynn but spelled the way it is because it is a hybrid of my mother's middle name Kay and my mother in law's middle name Glenn.

So there you have it our little girl officially has a name. When we told our family the name they instantly fell in love with it but in telling other people we've noticed that we get a mixed reaction some people like it and some people think we're crazy. But we love her name and in the end we're the only two that matter.


Later Alligators..

Mrs. A

finally some house updates

so it's been almost 6 months since we moved into our cute little house and we've been slow getting updates done but we finally do have the living room sort of how we want it and remember that table shopping excursion we had so many months ago well we finally went back and bought the one we liked best. Yay for our house starting to look like grown ups live there instead of two broke college kids.



here's the living room the day we moved in.




fireplace after we painted it white and flanked it with our two large bookcases; if you look closely at the one on the left you can see Baby Girl A's toy collection already started. We still need a screen and fireplace tools but hey we're all about baby steps. Oh and sidenote for all the pregnancy police that glass has sparkling grape juice in it which has been my replacement for wine.

and the new dining room table and Finnegan says hi :)

We did opt to paint our trim white and we're finished in the living room and hallway but still have a ways to go. More pictures to come soon and of course now that we know little miss is on the way we have a nursery to work on :)

Later Alligators.....

Mrs. A







and the verdict is.....

Our extended Anniversary weekend was a blast :)

we started out at the OKC Baron's game on Tuesday night this outing was a surprise planned by my sweet man. The  best part we had seats right on the ice :)

Then we headed out Wednesday afternoon to the ultrasound that we had oh so much fun at staring at our sweet baby, then the hard part came since we weren't telling family until Friday we had to keep our news to ourselves.

Finally Friday came and we were able to tell the world :) we chose to do a cake with the middle tinted the color of our sweet kiddo.

we let the grandmother's to be cut into the cake :)

we had asked our family member's to wear the color of the gender they thought little Baby A was, and the blue way outnumbered the pink.  Surprisingly enough both Grandmothers got it right :)

our baby GIRL will be gracing us with her presence in March. Mr. A and I although surprised as we both thought we were having a boy are over the moon excited to meet our little lady!!

The tinted cake after we devoured it :)

The next day this mommy had a blast shopping at our local craft fair and came home with this adorable little outfit for our Little Lady.



Why yes that is a green tutu  Baby A wouldn't be Baby A if her first outfit didn't have some green in it since it is her mommy's favorite color :)

Saturday evening we had a fellowship outing with our Sunday school class and I wore my pink proudly :)



Mrs. G and I are ecstatic we're both having Baby Girls and just a few months apart. I love this pic of me and my bestie ;)

Later Aligators....

Mrs. A