Here's to you, 2012!

Oh my goodness. I stopped reading all the blogs I follow when we moved because we got so busy trying to adjust to things. I just skimmed over a couple and I can't believe I've made it without them so long! It's so great to read stories from other moms my age who are going through the same things as me.

My 2012 New Years resolutions:
1. Use a budget (the one designed by my wonderful man!)
2. Keep in touch! We value our friends and family so much, but we often neglect them because we're so busy. This year, I'm going to try to turn that around.
3. Blog more. I can't make any specific commitments, but I know that blogging and following others' blogs gives me joy and hope. I have put blogging on the bottom of my priority list while I worked on getting settled in to my new life as a mother of one and a family teacher of seven, but now it's time to get back to writing!
4. Stop over-committing! I keep adding projects to my to do list because they are things I know I can do, and I even want to do. The problem is just because I can and want to do something doesn't mean I have time for it!

As for the first few weeks of January and these resolutions... so far, so good. I'm making slow but sure progress! I have finally caught up with our personal email, we're doing great with our budget, and Joe and I have sketched out the whole years worth of travel plans (when you only have about 10 days to yourself each month, traveling to see your family that is spread out between 6 states gets tricky...not to mention expensive!)

And, with that, I will close, because Brenan just FILLED his diaper while sitting on my lap.

Happy New Year!

Winds of change

Road trip ready

I was reading in my baby book that by this time I'll probably have adjusted to "baby time" ...it's like living in slow motion. Everything seems to take longer.

Snoozin'

While our minute-to-minute has slowed down, it seems like our life is currently in fast forward. We moved back to the US in April, from Virginia to Ohio in May, and now from Ohio to South Carolina in August. That's right... we're moving. To South Carolina.

With my brother and his family

Joe's job as a summer program director at Camp Buckeye has concluded with the end of the season, and we're happy to announce that we've been jointly hired as family teachers at Thornwell Home for Children in Clinton, SC. We'll be moving at the end of next week, on August 12th.

Captivated cousins

Our life seems like a whirlwind yet again as we go through another transition. Last week we were driving over 550 miles with a 1 month old (the 10 hour drive took us 12 1/2 hours on the way down and 14 1/2 on the way back up) and visiting with my brother and his family, who stayed with us at the end of the week.

By next Friday night we'll be unloading boxes into a two bedroom apartment. And for the first time in our marriage, or really since either of us went to college, we won't have any future moves in sight. And you know what?

I'm really glad.

Final countdown: 3 weeks to Baby

Thirty-seven weeks.

Sometimes I think I'm still sort of in denial about being pregnant. It still hits me every once and a while that Whoa... this is really happening! Of course, the symptoms are obviously kind of hard to ignore at this point... not being able to roll over in bed without great effort, significant fatigue, swelling... not to mention a belly the size of a beach ball that moves on its own.

Joe and I went to the doctor on Friday. Everything is right on track for this point of pregnancy! He said the magic words, too - "If you go into labor now, we're not stopping you." That's right - I'm finally full term.

I look back on all the transitions that we've made during the course of this pregnancy and think How in the world did we do that? We moved from our host family's home in Bulgaria to our own house in a mountainside village, then we moved from there to stay with our friends for a couple days before traveling back to the States where we stayed with my parents in Virginia for three weeks. Then we moved to Ohio and unpacked the boxes that have been in storage for almost a year now to set up our apartment.

Baby is actually quite well-traveled... During this pregnancy I visited Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and Greece. I have flown through London, Vienna, Sofia, and Washington, D.C. and driven what seems like everywhere else in between.

With all of the changes we've made in the past few months it's been hard to really focus on the fact that we're having a baby. It's just been since we've gotten to Ohio that we've really been able to make the preparations that we've been wanting to make... And only in this past week that we've finally come to the point where we feel like we have a place for our new arrival (more on that later!).

Now we just have to wait for when Baby decides he/she is ready, too!

Car keys and coat hangers

Link to picture source

I'm happy to say that we're FINALLY in Ohio... and as my mom says, "Now you don't have to keep a list of all those 'just in case' hospitals!"

Our drive on Wednesday was mostly uneventful, with one very significant exception - we locked our keys in the car. Joe had just finished walking Diesal and his keys stuck to the leash when he set it down in the car. He stuck his hand in his pocket and had his mouth open to tell me that his keys weren't there as I closed the rear door... oops.

Now, this is one of those "God thing" moments, because the attendant at the rest stop just happened to have an extra metal coat hanger. Yes, that's right, folks, we broke into our own car at a rest stop somewhere in PA.

P.S. - ...I carried a spare key in my pocket for the rest of the trip.

Movin' slow

I got a number of things done Friday, including (but not limited to):

Having an early lunch out with a friend
Researching, choosing, and ordering laundry detergent for our cloth diapers (more to come on that in a later post)
Buying reusable diaper pail liners
Getting an Amazon rewards card (should have done that a LONG time ago... I love Amazon!)
Working on my list of addresses for baby shower invites
Reading some of Babies First Year
Exchanging nursing tank tops at Target for the right size
Reading up on all my favorite mom blogs

Tomorrow Joe and I embark on the mission of repacking our bags for the final stretch of our journey. (We've actually already started so it shouldn't be too bad.) We'll be leaving Virginia Wednesday morning, making an overnight stop in Pennsylvania for a few closing meetings from our assignment in Bulgaria, and arriving in Ohio on Thursday night.

We'll have Diesal with us, who doesn't really like the car all that much, and, of course, pregnant me, who needs to stop and get out of the car to walk every hour. It should be an interesting (and slow) trip.