35 More Days...

Wow, I can't believe we've only got just over 30 days until Elaina is due to join us! Now that Christmas is over, Steve and I both have started the nesting. Yes, I know Christmas was only 2 days ago, but we've already gotten a lot accomplished in the past two days! Yesterday, Mom and I went and purchased the changing table/dresser. We get to pick it up on New Year's Day. I can't wait! I can then put away all the clothes and goodies Elaina got for Christmas! Can I just say I'm so glad Belk was having great sales on baby clothes! We got several outfits for under $10 each! Today I've been working on getting Emily's room cleaned out and re-organized with all the new stuff from Christmas. I actually came out with 2 bags of garbage from all the stuff that needed to be thrown out. So there's only a few more things I want to get accomplished at the house before Elaina comes. Mainly, organize her room. Also, there's two closets I want to orgainize. And Steve's mom is sewing me some curtains and cushions for my glidder. I can't wait to see it all together!!! I'll post pictures when we get it all completed. I'm so excited!

Christmas 2008...

I have finally gotten all the pictures downloaded from all the Christmas festivities. It really takes a while when you are so backed up on blogging! 2008 has been probably the hardest year for my family. There has been so much negativity and bad circumstances, it seemed hard for my family to get into the Christmas spirit. But when it came down to it, everyone really rejoiced the reason for the season and being able to celebrate the fact that the bad stuff this year has drawn us closer together. Here's some pictures, hope you enjoy!

These two are from Christmas with my sister and family at my parent's house. It was the Saturday night before Christmas. By the end of the night, my feet were so swollen they were red. So, Emily and I just ended up spending the night. Steve had to go home because he had to go to a basketball tournament the next day. By he was concerned about me driving at 10 o'clock at night and feeling as bad as I did, so he told me just to stay. It really helped, and Emily and I just made a weekend of it and stayed all day Sunday. This is from Christmas Eve night, we went back to my parent's house. My aunt Bonnie Jo came into town for Christmas and we wanted to be able to see her and mom open their presents. With the passing of my Grandad this summer, I knew this Christmas would be difficult for them both. My sister and I decided to give them a sentimental gift this year in honor of Grandaddy. I put together a shadow box for each of them with different pictures of Grandaddy and them throughout the years. They really turned out great, in fact, I'm a little jealous. I'm thinking about making one for myself. Here's a picture of Bonnie Jo with her shadow box (somehow, I didn't get a picture of Mom with hers) Okay, so the next picture is not really my favorite, but I have to share just how huge I'm getting. I can't believe how big my belly is!

Emily got a new jewlery box from Me-maw and Pe-paw. She absolutely loves it. We've already filled it with all her jewlery.

This was the scene on Christmas morning. I've never seen so much stuff!

Seeing Christmas through a child's eyes is so amazing! Emily has really enjoyed this Christmas, and she actually sat on Santa's lap without crying! This is the first year - I couldn't believe it.

After Christmas morning at our house, we went to Steve's parents house.

Steve's grandparents sent this table for Emily. It is so cute! It came with 2 chairs and a bench.

This is Steve's dad's reaction to our gift. We had a great day at their house. After opening gifts, his mom sat out some amazing snack food and then Steve and I took about a 3 hour nap on the couch. Somehow, every time we go over there we end up asleep. Then we woke up in time for dinner, prime rib and ham. After dinner, Steve went and got our Wii and we played it for a long time. The girl's loved playing it! Emily played and actually knocked a guy out boxing! It was a great day and the best thing was being able to spend time with both of our families!

A Note from School...

is normally something you would be nervous about, but I have to say the one I received this past week brought tears to my eyes and I just had to share it. This is what Emily's daycare teacher wrote:

"Mr. and Mr. Barrios,

Emily is such a joy to have in my class. She is always making me smile and is a wonderful helper. You guys have an amazing daughter and have taught her well.

Anytime I need a smile I walk in the classroom with her and she comes running to hug me. She brightens everyone's day.

Thank you for being so helpful in the classroom. Have a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Love,

Ms. Heather"

So, I'm thinking I'm going to start a poll as to whether Elaina will be as good of a student as Emily. Going off of how she's been so far, I'm thinking not! :)

Guess What....

I'm back to the blogging world thanks to my sweet husband. I'm sitting here on my bed, in my PJ's, typing on my brand new LAPTOP! I'm so excited because now I can update the blog without having to worry about my work schedule! YAY! I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas! I will update more about the happenings of Casa de Barrios later, right now I have a 4 year old begging me to feed her.

Wow....

Okay, so there is no excuse I can put here that would make up for the time that has passed since my last post. It's been busy and we've had lots of fun. So instead of trying to write about everything, I will just give some quick updates.

First, I'm still pregnant, and still getting bigger by the hour it seems like. So far, I'm feeling good and the doctor says I'm progressing fine. I'm a little tired and have a ton of heart burn, other than that I think I'm doing good.

We had a great Halloween. We did the Fall Festival at the church again this year and Emily had a blast. We also did goody bags for her school party - which she thought was pretty awesome since she got to help this year. She's definitely all about helping out in the kitchen, which I love, well on most days I love it.

Emily was a princess for Halloween of course. And she had to show off her pink high heel shoes she was wearing under her dress (just like Holly at her wedding) she thought she was something else. Which of course she was, because she is the cutest kid in the world.

And here is a picture of the 3 mario brothers. I had no idea this costume would be such a hit with the kids. And yes, my overalls were way too little and my belly was way too big! I had to have them all the way unbuttoned the whole night.

I have more pictures to post and lots more to update, but I just realized I don't have the photos downloaded yet. Dang it! I actually have time and have no pictures....well, I guess I'll have to put it on my to do list for tomorrow.

Let the nesting begin...

It seems I have hit the nesting stage of the pregnancy. This weekend all I could think about was getting the room ready for Elaina and making room for her things. Emily and I worked on cleaning out her toy box on Saturday. I don't know why I didn't do it earlier. She has been so good about keeping all her toys put away and keeping them organized while she has them out. She had a ton of Polly Pockets and Little Pet Shop stuff, so I just put each set into it's own Ziploc baggie. Now all she has to do is get out whatever bag it is she wants to play with and then put it all back in the bag when she is done. It has been a life saver! No more little pieces thrown every where you turn. We ran out of time before we could get to her dress up drawers, which includes make up and purses. So, that is on the agenda for next weekend. This is probably going to be the toughest task probably. Who knew that my daughter would own more bags/purses than me!!! Since I am the queen of bags! And once the dress up drawers are finished, we are going to be moving onto the bonus room closet, which is not only Emily's stuff, but mine and Steve's too. I also worked in the nursery this weekend. I've folded up clothes and put them in the chest. The crib is ready. We want to get a different crib sheet since we're having Elaina and not Elijah. I want a chocolate brown one, but I haven't seen one yet. So, we may have to stick to cream. We picked up my Grandaddy's chest from my parents a week ago, so it's in there. And I've been finding little knick knack's to add some fun to the room. I've got lots of ideas for the walls and stuff, but I haven't gotten that far yet. We still need a changing table. I'm looking for a cream one, so if anyone out there knows where I can find one on a budget let me know. So, here are the pictures:

This is Grandaddy's chest. It was actually his dad's, so that will make it Elaina's great-great grandaddy's. I love the fact that she has a piece of our family history in her bedroom. Especially because I feel like she is God's way of giving my family hope during probably the worst year my family has been through since I was a little girl.

I'm planning on painting the mirror cream and distressing it. The lamp is going to hopefully be replaced with a very frilly, grilly lamp. And maybe a little silver tea set or something else very girly, if I can find it.

These are two of my finds from Home Goods. They have a ton of stuff that I liked for the room. I have a feeling I'm going to be doing a lot of shopping there in the months to come. The funny thing about the giraffe - that's what people used to call me in middle school because of my freakishly long neck. I hated it and it would upset me so much - but now, I just laugh about it and love my freakishly long neck. So, when we decided to use the animal print bedding, I decided we had to have a few giraffe accents to go along with it.

This is the crib, of course, like you couldn't tell that. I'm going to do Elaina's monogram over it. Along with two picture frames on each side. I'm going to try to find some animal print ribbon to hang the frames from and have people sign the mats when they visit her for the first time.

This is an outfit Emily picked out for her baby sister. She was so excited, so I had to share. I hope everyone liked the nursery update. If you happen to have any cute ideas for making it a little bit more girly, I'm all ears.

Third time's a charm....

I guess what they say is true, a picture is worth a thousand words....

My God, so AWESOME...

This is just a quick post to talk about how AWESOME God is! He amazes me with how He works! This takes a little background for the story to have it's full effect, bare with me. As many of you know, Steve and I suffered a miscarriage at the beginning of the year after having tried for a baby for over a year. So, of course, it was a difficult time for both of us. Just shortly after the miscarriage, Brother Dave, our pastor, did a series on praying for each other and out specific problems/issues/struggles. At the end of the series, he gave each of us a slip of paper. Blue for the men and pink for the women. We were to write on it what we were struggling with and what needed prayer in our lives. If we wanted we could write our name and contact information. So, I wrote about the miscarriage and for God to show us what directions he wanted us to follow, and I put my name on it. So, now to the present time. I am taking a Wednesday night class that is "For Women Only". It is all about women trying to learn how to love and respect their husband as Jesus loves and respects the church. It helps us become more aware of how our husbands think, so that we can communicate better with him, which turns into us loving and respecting them more. So, last night as I was heading out of class, one of the ladies was walking with me. And all of sudden she said "Do you know I have been praying for this baby before it was born?" And I have to say, I was a little perplexed with that. And then she went on to explain how she had been the one to receive my slip of paper so many months ago. And that she had started praying for me right then, and hadn't stopped. She even said when she goes into stores and happens to see baby clothes she would stop and pray for me. How cool is that!!! She also said that's the first time she has done anything like that and how amazing it is that it has turned out the way it has!!! I just can't believe how wonderful the power of prayer is! Here's another testament to how amazing our God works and the power of prayer! This is a friend from church's blog. When I saw the pictures from the day she picked her princess up, I was crying like a baby! http://introvertedextrovert.blogspot.com/ I hope you have a fantastic day! And if there's anything you need prayer about, please comment and I will definitely pray for you! Love you all!

So much to blog about....

...so little time to do it in.

There has been so much going on around our house, and I haven't had time to even think about blogging. I'm starting to get into my busy season here at work, so it's definitley cutting into my blogging time. I seriously think I will be slammed at work until after I come back after the baby is born. It's a little crazy for me right now.

We've been pretty busy at home as well. October is a month of lots of birthdays which means lots of fun and parties. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of any of the festivities. Steve, of course, had his week long birthday celebration. Nikki did take some pictures of his actual birthday, so I will blog about those once I get those from her.

At the end of September, Steve was having to work on Sundays, so Mom and Dad took Emily and I to a Titans game. They are so much fun. But I have to say, I did a yard sale the day before the game, and man was I tired after that weekend! We won the game and were 4-0 for the first time in the history of the Titans. We ate lots of good food while we were tailgating, and of course Emily just had to have some nachos as a half time snack. I didn't take the camera into the game b/c I could barely carry myself in, much less adding any extra weight to me. Here's some pictures of the festivities.

As you can see from the picture of Emily and me, the belly is definitely starting to pop out. There is no doubt our lives are about to change drastically! I think it is finally starting to hit us straight on top of the head - we are having a BABY in just over 100 days! It doesn't seem possible!

The end of Steve's weeklong birthday celebration, we had lunch with my parents and then went to Gentry's Farm for some Pumpkin Patch fun. Emily loved it. Her and dad went last year, but this year they wanted to take the whole family. Now, I know why! I can't believe dad could keep up with her by himself while there. There was so much to do and to see! Emily remembered everything that was there from last year. We went on a sort of hay ride -which was Steve's first. I couldn't believe he had never been on a hay ride, but then I remembered - hello, he grew up in LA is there even hay in the middle of Los Angeles? I say it was a sort of hay ride, because there was no hay, there was a wagon pulled behind a tractor with seats on it. But it was a fun ride and it showed a lot of farm land in the middle of Franklin. It's what Franklin used to be, before all the development. And it went by all the old houses on the land, which was right up my alley. And then it took us through a cow field, and we got to see some cows up close and personal. Emily really liked that, she has a fascination with cows because she sees them in the fields around our subdivision. Okay, so enough jabbering, here's pictures. And check out the belly now! WOW!

So, I think that catches us up. We did get the chest from mom and dad's house for the baby's room. And I have the crib out, so I will try to get some pictures this weekend of it all. I had a nightmare last night that Steve and I were at the hospital and I was in the middle of delivery. All of a sudden, I looked over at him and screamed out "We don't even have a car seat yet!" Then I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep for a while, so I think the nesting is going to start happening soon. I swore I was going to have everything started and organized before the holidays, but they are just around the corner. I better get started on it all!

Since we still don't know...

Okay, since we still don't know what this baby is that is growing inside of me, there's a possibility Steve and I just might wait until it pops out to see what we are having. I think it would be kind of fun - and I'm definitely not a suprise kind of person. But I kind of feel like God is telling me just to wait and enjoy the journey and the suprise and definitely not to WORRY about what the sex is.

So, I'm having the struggle of figuring out what to do about bedding. If you remember from my previous post, the baby's room is painted this color:

I had some bedding picked out, but Steve felt it was too boyish. So, I went to Babies R Us during lunch yesterday just to kill some time and to browse a little. It's really hard to browse on the weekends, because I have a certain inquisitive 4 year old in tow. Low and behold, I found some bedding that I fell in love with. Steve still thinks it's a little boyish, but I think it would be precious for a little girl too. We could definitely add accents that would "girl" it up. I think I'm going to have to have help convincing Steve this can be girly too. Here's a couple of pictures of the bedding, what do you think?

Of course, take into account the difference in the wall color and our crib/furniture is going to be a dark mahogany color. Here's some more pictures of the accents:

First Baby Shower...

This weekend a couple of my dear friends asked me if I could get a baby sitter because they wanted to throw me an "unconventional" baby shower. So, sweet Holly kept Emily for a few hours so that I could meet up with Karen and Angel.

Now, many of you don't know my sweet friends, but there is definitely nothing conventional about them, so I was really curious what this "unconventional" shower was going to be like. Especially with them not know what is growing inside of me.

They definitely suprised me! We had such a great relaxing time. We started off by getting pedicures. Which was great! I'm at that point now where I'm not able to sit and bend to reach my toes good enough to paint them, so it was really nice to have someone rub my feet and then to look down and see the toes all pretty!

We then went to Angel's apartment and had an all organic lunch. You see Angel is dating a guy that lives on an organic farm and grows everything he eats. So, not only were the vegetables all fresh, the garlic was even fresh. It was amazing. We started with humus and pita bread, then we had spinach quiche, bruschetta, and a fresh salad. The feta cheese on the salad was even from the farm. It was fantastic!!!

For desert we had cupcakes which were from Whole Foods and were made with all organic ingredients. You would never have guessed it. And they were so cute too!

It was such a great time and exactly what I needed! I was able to sit and relax and catch up with Karen and Angel without interruption. No phone calls, no television, and definitely no questions from a 4 year old! It was heavenly!

They said they didn't get any "baby" gifts, since the baby decided not to reveal itself. So, instead they got the momma something. They know how much I love the beach and all things relating to the beach. And they also know Steve and I were not able to make it to the beach this summer and with the baby coming, they know we won't be getting there anytime soon. So, they brought the beach to me - they gave me a body scrub with the name "Beachside Resort" and I swear if you smell it, it takes you to a resort somewhere in Mexico and you start hearing a faint voice saying "Hola Senorita"! I've already used it and it was perfect!

Thank you so much girls! You both are such awesome friends and I couldn't imagine not having you around! I love you!

Happy Belated Birthday...

I'm just now getting around to posting about Holly's Birthday. We had the intentions of celebrating her birthday and us knowing what this baby inside of me is. But, we all know how that turned out. So, we decided to celebrate Holly's birthday and us having a HEALTHY baby. We all went to Shogun's for some hibachi grill. It was so good!!! Emily had a blast and flirted with the cook (of course, everywhere we go she flirts with someone)! Here's some pictures from dinner.

And here Emily is dancing while they sang Happy Birthday to Holly:

After all the excitement of dinner, I think we were all a little slap happy. We went back to Sam & Holly's apartment for cake and presents. Holly has done so good at explaining everything that happened next, that I'm just going to let her share her story on my blog. Here are the links:

http://theshrewsburys.blogspot.com/2008/09/drunk-off-chocolate.html

and

http://theshrewsburys.blogspot.com/2008/09/where-does-emily-get-it-from.html

We had so much fun! I don't think I have laughed that much in a long time! Love you Holly & I hope you had a great night saying good bye to your teen years and hello to the wonderful world of twenties!

What everyone has been waiting for...

...we are having a....

HEALTHY BABY!!!

You see, the thing I feared has happened. The baby did not cooperate at all this morning during the ultrasound.

We were so excited last night and thanks to Michelle's great idea we made signs last night for a boy and a girl. That way Emily could hold the correct one up and I could let the secret out on the blog without taking away all the dignity the baby had left after the ultrasound by posting it's private parts for all the world to see on the internet.

So we are all piled into the ultrasound room and the technician (who was the same one that did the ultrasound when I was pregnant with Emily and always brags about the fact that she has never been wrong about the sex.). The tech starts with the head and Steve and I are telling Emily what everything is and pointing out the arms, the heartbeat, and then the legs and feet. So, Steve asks the tech if she can tell what the sex is. And she is like, "not with the feet and legs all bunched up like that". So, she goes out and gets Dr. Burch (who by the way, I think is the best OB-GYN in the world). And he comes in and decides to basically jump on my stomach to get the baby to move. Emily thought this was hilarious because I scream out that he better be careful because I just might use the restroom right on his table if he hit the right spot.

And even after all of that - the baby still didn't move a muscle!

So, I was all worried I was going to have to wait another month until my next appointment. But sweet Dr. Burch told me to stop by sometime next week and he would take another look to see if he could see anything.

The main thing is the baby is healthy, the heart beat was great, and the growth was right on target for where it needed to be.

I have to be honest, when we figured out the baby wasn't going to cooperate, I teared up. But then I reminded myself that we know it is healthy and that is the most important thing. I think God is trying to remind Steve and I that we don't make the plans, He does. And we need to learn to just trust in Him and He will get us through this whole thing! Thank you God for giving us a healthy BABY, regardless of what sex it is!!!

P.S. The funny thing about all this is my family has always joked about my Grandaddy and just how stubborn he was. If he got something in his head, he was doing it regardless of what anyone else said, even up until his last day on this earth. So, I think the baby is just doing what comes to him naturally because it takes after Grandaddy!!