Sweet Baby=17 weeks

We went for a ultrasound yesterday and saw one very healthy and sweet baby. He/she was flip flopping all over the place it was hilarious. There was strong evidence of a girl but the tech was a little hesitant to "call it" at 17 weeks. I say we are having a "don't paint the nursery yet girl!" But Adam says, "now she said that we still have to confirm that in 2 weeks." Anywhoo.....exciting time all around. Traci (the xray tech that I work with) spent so much time looking and taking pictures, it was really neat. It is crazy to see how much she has grown over the past 6-7 weeks. Enjoy the pics...get ready because they are too sweet:)

Bye Bye Baby

We have had the best time with Garrett this week:) Pretty uneventful but I did take him to the doctor at the beginning of the week. I promptly called Mer after the appointment and informed her that "we both did very good!" He has been so funny and
oh my goodness does he love Adam (I know who doesn't:) Every time Adam even walks in the room, Garrett starts flipping out..it's pretty funny. If it's not obvious, the puppies loved him too and followed us everywhere!

A Week With Garrett

Em and I are keeping our nephew, Garrett, for the next week while his mom, dad, and two big sisters go skiing in Snowmass. What can I say, we need the practice! He's incredibly easy to take care of and we're having a blast. We've only had him for about a day so far, but trust me, that's been plenty of time for a nice handful of throw up, snot, and poopie diapers! But it's ok, because all the laughing and playtime makes up for it. Hope you guys are having a great time on the slopes. Garrett misses you, but he's in good hands. See ya next week!

Happy New Year!

So once again, Christmas came and went in the blink of an eye. I can't believe it's already been over a week! Em and I went to Crossett to spend the holiday with her family. We had a blast hanging out with all the kids and the 3 new babies. Here are some highlights from the week.

I think I should point out that there is a certain "opening presents" aspect of Christmas that still makes me giddy. But I was pretty surprised on Christmas morning when I was pretty sure I was more excited than Olivia and Maxwell. Those kids came out, with the rest of the family watching, and stood there and stared. The first thing Maxwell did was walk right past, and over, all of the Santa presents, which included a Wii, and check to see if Santa ate his cookies and took his signs. Of course, Santa did not disappoint. After some encouragement from the grown-ups, they finally dug in and started opening their presents. We had a great Christmas lunch with all the traditional goodies and enjoyed some much needed rest and relaxation with our family. 5 days of sleeping in (if you call waking up to children giggling at 7:00 in the morning sleeping in!), eating good food, and too much of it, playing Wii with the kids, and sitting by the outdoor fireplace. We also celebrated Memaw's 80th birthday with more food, family, and fun at the Pope house. Happy Birthday Memaw!

A big highlight of the week was on Friday after Christmas. Emily got another sonogram and we got to see the baby. It's amazing how much it has changed in the 2 weeks since her first one. Although it looked a little alien-ish at the time, there were eyes, arms, and legs as clear as day and that kid was moving like crazy! It was very surreal to see the baby moving around, surreal and amazing. See?!

Most people that know me know how much of a Star Wars nerd I am. So you can imagine what a proud uncle it made me to learn that Maxwell has begun learning the ways of the Force! I was envious of most of his Christmas presents, and might have played with some of them more than he did. Fortunately, I was able to get some great footage of Maxwell in his Star Wars garb. I prize the following video as one of the funniest I've seen. I call it "Jedi-In-Training" and I must say... the Force is strong with this one.


We came back to Longview last week and finished out the holiday season with a very low-key New Year's celebration. Our friends, Chip and Kirsten had us over to their house for fajitas and some Trivial Pursuit. Chip's fajitas were awesome and Trivial Pursuit is ridiculously hard! At 11:30, all of us were falling asleep on the couch, struggling to ring in the new year. Em and I left and got home just in time to watch the Ball drop. On New Year's Day, we slept in and then laid around watching movies all day.

Emily and I are blessed to have such wonderful family and friends. We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and wish you all a Happy New Year in 2009!

Great Friends

I've been meaning to write this post for a long time. Marc and Dana are some very good friends of ours that we met when we lived in Shreveport. We were in grad school with Dana and she and Em hit it off immediately. I met Marc through her and it didn't take long for us all to become close. When we graduated, Em and I moved to Longview and Dana worked in Shreveport while Marc went to grad school. Once he finished, they both moved to Longview. We were pretty much joined at the hip with them during their 2 years here and they have become some of our best friends. Marc is one of the funniest people I've ever known and Dana has one of the biggest hearts there is. Most of our weekends were spent together, we had "dinner night" several nights a week, and we were all fortunate enough to work together. We took trips together, ran 1/2 marathons together, worked out together, watched movies together, pretty much did everything together... so Em and I were saddened to see them leave when they moved to Phoenix at the beginning of October to be closer to family. About 6 months before they moved, Dana found out she was pregnant and on December 2nd, baby Jake joined the cast. Em and I flew out to Phoenix on December 4th and spent about 4 days with them. He's a great looking kid with a head full of hair and he performs all his baby "doodies" well! We wanted write about Marc and Dana so we could share a little about them with those that don't know them, and to let them know how much they mean to us. We miss you guys terribly and can't wait to see you soon! Here are some pics from their going away party and our trip to see them last month. Enjoy!

Party

Phoenix

My Brother the World Traveler

For anyone who is interested or doesn't know, I'm the oldest of 3. My sister, Clare, is the youngest and lives in Conway, AR. My brother, Charlie, lives in Missoula, MT; however, he and his girlfriend, Oriana, spent the last few months in Oregon working on her family's ranch. They did this so that they could save up enough money to spend the next few months in Asia. Charlie has always been quite the adventurer and he and Oriana left last week for Bangkok. If anyone is interested in reading about their journey, check out their blog at gonethai.blogspot.com or click on their link under my Blog Buddies titled Sawadee... It's been tough over the last few years to see him very often, and the last time I saw him was in May of '07 when my dad and I went up there for his college graduation and a week of man time. Below is a picture from that trip. Love you bro, you guys be safe and keep us posted!

Wake Up, I'm Pregnant!

So it's been 3 months since my last post and a lot has happened in that time. I kept meaning to post some updates, but the longer I waited, the harder and more overwhelming it got. Leave it to a life altering event to provide me with the proper "kick in the pants" I needed to finally get after it. I know I tend to be wordy, and people have always said that I make a three ring circus out of everything... well, I have no intention to do anything different here.

It was Friday morning, November 7th, and I was asleep. Emily was up getting ready for work, which is typical. What was not typical was the way she kept asking me when I was getting up. I still had like an hour to sleep and she was all "hey when are you getting up?" "I'll get up in a little while." A few minutes passed... "so, when are you getting up?" "Babe, I'll get up in a few minutes." Another few minutes pass and she says "Hey, are you gonna get up?" "Seriously, how many times are you going to ask me that question?" Then the light comes on and I opened my eyes and saw this:


Then, after I rubbed my eyes, I saw this:


Needless to say, we are both very excited. Emily told her family pretty much right away because she knew that she wasn't going to see them until Christmas, but we waited and told my family over Thanksgiving. We told Dad and his wife Deborah, my sister Clare, and the Walkers (Dad's sister Debbie and her family) when they were here in Longview, and then we went and had brunch with Mom in Tyler and told her. My brother Charlie lives in Montana and we called him with the news. Everyone is very excited. This will be Emily's parents' NINTH grandchild, my parents' first, and my Aunt Debbie just became a grandmother too. In fact, she had just flown back from England where Abbey and Clark had Caleb.

It's been really fun over the past month as we gradually got to tell more and more people. We've definitely started the "preliminary" stuff. Our friends Marc and Dana just had their baby, Jake, in Phoenix and we visited them last weekend. Emily is doing great given the situation, although I don't think she tells me how she's really feeling most of the time. In her case, the whole "morning sickness" thing should just be called "sickness" because it seems to be pretty constant. She's a trooper though and isn't letting it keep her down too much. Last Thursday was her first official check-up with the baby doctor. I met her at the office and he came in and did his thing. After some questions and a little calculation, he said we were at about 8 1/2 weeks, when we were thinking it was more like 7 1/2. We weren't even sure if he was going to do an ultrasound, but he was all for it. When he gelled her up and put the transducer on her belly we could immediately see it. It looked like a little jellyfish and in the middle was the heartbeat, as clear as day. I've heard all the stories about how having a baby will change your life and I think I have a healthy respect for that concept, but nothing can explain the feeling I got when I saw that little thing fluttering away. Total joy and emotion. When I got to the doctor's office that day, I didn't even know if we were going to have an ultrasound, much less see a beating heart! What a surprise!

So here we are now, almost 9 1/2 weeks into pregnancy. It's so weird, because it seems like we just found out yesterday. I made a comment to a friend of mine tonight about how it was still pretty early, and he said "not really, you're almost through the first trimester, that's 1/3 of the way". WOW! Time really does fly by. July will be here before we know it. By the way, July 16th is the projected due date. My birthday is the 24th, so it should make for an exciting month. I told Emily she might have to hold out and have the baby on my birthday... she didn't like that idea. People keep asking me if I want a boy or a girl and my response is that I just want a healthy baby... and when he gets older he'll be the best big brother ever. Wait... um... I mean she'll make a great big sister. We'll know somewhere around 19 weeks when Em has her first full ultrasound. Until then, the doctor has said that everything looks 100% perfect and all we can do is pray that the baby continues a healthy development. We'll keep everyone posted on the latest goings on. Please keep Emily and the baby in your prayers.