Happy Birthday Buddy!

In honor of Buddy's 5th birthday (best guess estimate given by the vet when we rescued him about 3 & 1/2 years ago), I figured I'd post a few pics of our first "baby" from way back in 2005 until recently.

One of the earliest pictures of our sweet Buddums:

Always a fan of napping on the chair (or couch):


The hunter-dog:


Attempting to make a break for it out the hole that his pal, Landry created in our fence (which thankfully my dad repaired when he was here at the end of December):


...and of course, having a stare-down with his stuffed squirrel "Nuts" (I believe this might have been Nuts 2 as Buddy is quite a fan of destroying the pesky squirrels)

Happy Birthday Buddy Bear!

Double Digit Days

That's right, folks - This weekend we crossed the threshold from more than 100 days until Baby Shoup's expected arrival date to less than 100 days! There is still so much to do, but my hope is that some of the major projects that we (Joey) keep putting off will get done in the next month.

We're excited to meet the newest arrival to our group of friends. Finley Marie Watkins arrived in the early morning hours on Sunday 2/22/09. We're going to try to make it up there to visit Russ, Dawn, and Finley this evening. They're the first of our friends who go to the same hospital as I do so it'll be nice to get a preview of the digs before we actually tour during some of the classes we'll be taking over the next month or so.

Emerald & Savannah

No, these aren't potential names for our baby on the way! :) Emerald is now Joey's former car :( and Savannah is my new car. :) Yes, I do get the better end of the deal, folks, but then again, my daily round-trip commute to work is less than 1/3 of what Joey's is so it's really the more practical answer. He gets to take over with Ruby (formerly my car) and I get our brand new ride (to us at least - because Savannah is actually an '05 so she's got a few miles on her). We signed all the paperwork on Saturday and today, Joey drove Emerald for the last time on his way to pick Savannah up. I had Ruby cleaned bumper to bumper (waxing, carpet-shampoo, detailing, etc) for Joey so hopefully he will feel somewhat like he got a new car too, but I just thought I would take a moment and reflect on Emerald - who was a great car while he had her (2000 Oldsmobile Intrigue). She definitely had some better features than Ruby, but she also has about 65k more miles so it was time for her to "retire".

We were going to take pictures yesterday afternoon, but just did not quite get around to it so I snapped 1 of her in the garage this morning before heading to work. We'll miss you Emerald! :)


...and Welcome, Savannah! (She's an 05 Lexus RX330 and her name comes from the color - which is technically Savannah Metallic) The picture is dark because I took it after I got home tonight, but I'll take another maybe this weekend when it's more light.

Car-shopping, Baby-registering, and hiccups, Oh my

We were quite busy this weekend and boy did I pay for it yesterday. I started feeling a little icky on Friday as the weather started to warm up (and I think I've figured out the south wind brings out the worst of my on-again, off-again allergies), but powered through the weekend.

We kicked it off celebrating Bryan and Meagan's engagement Friday night with a great time at Rick & Brooke's house. We all had a great time (although I'm now sad that I didn't even bother to get my camera out - Please share, Meagan!) and Joey defintely had a great time and didn't want to leave after midnight. Gant & Courtney came in from Wichita Falls & stayed with us so a stop at Whataburger on the way home was necessary.

Saturday started out calm with the guys fetching donuts before Gant & Courtney headed back to the Falls. After that Joey & I decided to venture out to do some car shopping. We were really just planning to hit CarMax to try out a bit of everything, but ended up hitting the nearby Chevy Dealership afterwards spending way more time (and way more of my tissues as my nose continued to run non-stop) as they tried to get us in a car. We're planning to get something sometime before baby gets here - hopefully within the next month or so, but aren't in a rush, although Joey definitely was ready to sign on the dotted line for a brand new car - above the budget we were hoping for. We've asked a few friends with car connections for advice, etc so we'll be looking again this Saturday and hoping we find something just right.

Sunday, the Colvert clan (Jeremy, Jamie, and Connor) helped us out spending several hours at Babies R Us helping us figure out what to register for, etc (only after the obligatory lunch at Hooters - I promised Joey as I knew he was a bit hesitant about all the baby shopping). We might not need exactly the same things, but it was great to get advice from some seasoned pros! Now that we know their new addition will be a little girl, it's time to get even more excited for them too as Baby Shoup will be very close in age to her - even though we aren't finding out what Baby S will be - it's still so exciting to find out for everyone else!

I did have an interesting tummy feeling this weekend and I tried to get Joey to feel it too, but apparently he's still not quite able to feel things on the outside that I'm feeling on the inside. It seems Baby S had the hiccups. I know the feeling all too well and figured that must be it. I've been feeling him/her quite a bit every day and it always makes me stop and smile - I'll be even more excited when Joey and/or Buddy can see/feel the movement.

Hope you're all having a beautiful start to the week!

If I have to...

Since Meagan tagged me, I suppose I'll follow through...

1. Choose a minimum of 7 blogs that you find brilliant in content or design.
2. Show the 7 winners names and links on your blog, and leave a comment informing them that they were tagged...
3. List at least 10 honest things about yourself.

In no particular order: 10 HONEST things about myself

1. I am a lifetime member of Girl Scouts. I had a really great time even though by the end of high school I was 1 of only 2 girls in our town still involved, but I did get to experience a lot of great things for little or no money in the grand scheme of things.

2. I hate that I do it, but I’m a scab picker – often someone has to tell me to quit because it’s a subconscious sort of OCD thing I think.

3. I love trivia and playing games and wish more friends would be willing to have a game night...it always tends to turn into drinking games.

4. I turned down a trip to the Superbowl from a station a few years ago and wonder if I'll ever have that chance resurface...

5. Until about midway through college, I always thought I'd end up living in the same small town I grew up in, or one close to it and as much as I enjoyed my upbringing there, I just can't imagine living there and am glad my life has turned out the way it has.

6. I failed a class in college. That's hard to admit since I was valedictorian of my high school class and think I'm "smarter than the average bear", but I truly believe that foreign teachers can make a (in this case negative) difference because when I retook the class, I had a high B without trying as hard as I coud have.

7. I love to make lists, but sometimes faced with a task like this, I draw a blank on what I actually want to admit.

8. I love Seinfeld and quote it as often as I deem appropriate.

9. I hate those little earbud things for Ipods and such. I have to have the regular “outie” headphones. It's not because I don't like things in my ear - I just don't like the way they feel.

10. I wasn’t able to swallow pills until a year or so into college. I still have a hard time swallowing pills w/o water, but I can take multiple pills at a time and am thankful that I no longer need to crush up children’s Tylenol in ice cream to take pills.

Now I will tag 7 other peeps and they can do the same things and share all their interesting facts! Jaymie, Corri, Lisa/Robin-DallasEats girls, Lisa H, Joanna, Katie, Jeff & Sarah B

Brrrrr!

Yes, I grew up and Kansas (and still have my mad "driving in ice/snow" skills), but holy cow is it cold for the Texas Temperatures I've grown accustomed to! Yesterday was a record day (at least for the last 6 years) with over 300 area school districts closed because of the ice. I worked from home a bit in the morning and headed in around 1030 once a lot of the crazies got off the road, but Joey still had to be to work at 730. Luckily he left about a half hour earlier around 6 and made it just in time. Business seems to be back to normal today with just a few slick spots and a lone school closing in the outer area of DFW, but we're off to Georgia. I know all my Kansas friends and family will get a good chuckle, but these are just 2 pictures I took yesterday that led to the "Winter Blast" in our area.

Yes, those are teeny tiny icicles, but they're there and they cause chaos in Texas! If you think that's bad, one of my Austin area sales reps said that if he dropped an ice cube out the window, they'd shut down I-35 in their area. :)

Hope you're all keeping warm!

We have a match!

Mom went on the hunt for different fabric than the cream we had that previously was going to fill the "gap" between the yellow and striped fabric we had found for Baby Shoup's bedding. I found this green polka dotted fabric online and was hesitant at first, but mom found it in a store and it works beautifully (I think) so she's moving forward to finalize all the bedding. Now we still need to buy a mattress, finish cleaning out the nursery, and find a dresser/changing table. I believe we're also going to try to find a nice leather rocker/recliner as Joey would like it to be his chair after the need for it in the nursery is gone. :) Plus we still haven't been car-shopping and need to get busy with that as the weekends have started filling up quickly.

This weekend I had a baby shower to attend and while I went to that, Joey went to a "Beer & Diapers" party for the father-to-be. I think the boys had a little too much fun, but hopefully they get some of the craziness out of their system as their need for sleep and sobriety will be more abundant once the little bundles of joy arrive! At Dawn's shower I got to hold Riley (Viavattene) quite a bit while Amanda helped out with recording the gifts. He's such a cute and happy baby and is also a big flirt, which is no surprise given who his dad is. :)

We went to my friend Pam's birthday party once Joey got home (and took a nap) and it's amazing to see the difference in people baby belly's because there were 2 other women there who are only 1-3 weeks further along than me and I don't even think I look pregnant compared to them. I suppose that's to be expected since I'm still technically below my pre-pregnancy weight and with the weight gain last month that in time I'll actually "look pregnant" to strangers.

On Thursday we'll be headed to Georgia for the memorial for Joey's dad. I'm looking forward to seeing his mom and sister and meeting some family that I have yet to meet, but of course we know it will be an emotionally draining weekend. It's nice to know that several of Joey's friends will be making the trip to Rome as well. We're so blessed to have such amazing friends and family!