The Million Dollar Question...

Are we going to be in the new house before the baby is born?

Here's a long answer...We visited the doctor today for my 35 week check-up. It's a busy time for the doctor (apparently everybody wants to have their babies before Dec. 31 for some strange reason), so we actually saw his nurse practicioner. All is well with me and the baby--blood pressure=good, heartbeat=good, everything else=good, and baby's head is down. As the NP was leaving the room, she told us with a smile we could plan on having the baby anywhere from one to six weeks from now. (Meaning that at 36 weeks they wouldn't stop labor and they wouldn't let me go more than 41 weeks.) Well, that certainly gives us a lot to go with and helps with our planning, doesn't it?

So the big problem is that the only person who knows the answer to the million dollar question is tucked away safely inside my tummy. Bummer. If she comes in a week (unlikely), we definitely won't be in. If she pushes it a week overdue, it's a possibility. The race is on! Which will come first? The baby or the house? Your guess is as good as mine.

The sheetrockers (I guess that's what you call them) just finished today and now we can get started on trim and then the painting fun begins. *If anybody likes to paint and is totally bored and looking for a service project, please give us a call.* HAHA! ;) The place is looking great and is really taking shape now the sheetrock is done. I might actually remember my camera one of these days and get some pictures to share.

Thanks to some awesome babysitters, Greg and I were able to visit a billion stores today and finish picking everything out after the doctor. Here's a pic of the color scheme. (Obviously it's hard to get a good pic of everything, but it will do.)

One more thing...the baby is still nameless at this point. We had zero trouble choosing a name for Garrett, but this one isn't going so well. Any suggestions???

Feliz Navidad!

Well here it is...the delightful and much-anticipated Christmas post!


We spent Christmas Eve with my family at the 55th annual Maughan/Wright Christmas party. (Okay, I'm not really sure it's the 55th, but this party has been going on since my mom was a kid, so it's close.) I was too busy chasing Garrett and visiting to take many pictures, but we did have a great night and was one of our best parties in years.

One tradition is to have all the kids dress up and act out the Nativity. This was Garrett's first year participating. He was a shepherd (and a darn cute one), but he spent most of his time running around the stage hitting things with his shepherd's crook. We're really glad he was so touched by the spirit and message of the pageant. :)

We came home to my parents' house where Aunt Chelsea helped Little G open his Christmas jammies. Unfortunately, he wouldn't hold still long enough to get a pic in them that night, but you can notice them on the pictures from Christmas Day. (They were awfully cute!)

Santa delivered this awesome tool bench for Garrett and was just loading up his sleigh at about 1:30 AM when Garrett woke up. (He must have heard the reindeer on the roof.) He was up until about 5:00 AM (apparently he was really excited for Christmas). We woke up a few short hours later at about 8:30, so our family was a little tired this Christmas.

When he woke up, Garrett just wanted to sit on his daddy's lap and didn't even notice his tool bench for awhile. He finally discovered it and you can see how intrigued he was by each of the pieces. He really analyzed the thing and then thankfully decided it was okay and loved playing with it.

The classic present opening picture! Garrett really got the hang of it this year and was so fun to watch. (Despite the fact he was a bit grumpy from his lack of sleep.)

Brooklyn and Gracie gave him a new "doggie" movie (he's currently obsessed with dogs) and Garrett opened it right up and ran right to the recliner and settled in to watch it.

We had a delightful breakfast of baked french toast, eggs, ham, bacon, and potatoes (Thanks, Dad and Mom!) and then headed to SLC to celebrate with Greg's fam. As previously mentioned in other posts, Garrett LOVES to vacuum. Grandma Jan found this vacuum that really works (YEAH!) and is just his size. He is absolutely thrilled with it and has spent a good share of the day vacuuming.

Grandpa Willy bought Garrett this M&M's dispenser while they were in Vegas for the Maaco Bowl. Garrett has been able to take a break from his vacuuming occasionally to put a coin in and get some treats. (Willy wanted me to be sure and let my family know this is BYU blue and not Aggie blue.) :)

We've had a fun Christmas day just hanging out. Garrett is loving his little cousin Annabelle and keeps saying her name over and over. It's the cutest thing and cracks me up every time.

Greg and Mal are currently watching Saturday Night Live videos online and really wanted me to post a picture of them, so here they are!

Now for your viewing pleasure...

Here's Garrett playing with his present from Santa.

Sorry for the sideways video, but here's Garrett using his new vacuum for the first time. You're even favored enough to catch a quick glimpse of my round tummy when I walk in front of the camera.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!!! My 3 hours of sleep last night are catching up with me and I'm T-I-R-E-D! (I guess it's good practice for the new baby. Only a month to go!)

At Least It Wasn't My Car...

If I haven't previously mentioned this, we live in a very small town. Like more cows than people and it's rare to pass another car on the street while driving. (The town joke is that the only time you will ever get two cars at an intersection at the same time is the last day of the month when people are getting their home/visiting teaching done.) With this in mind, I am proud to announce we are joining the elite group of people who can say they have gotten in a wreck on a road that probably 10 cars drive on per day.

Yep, flash back to Tuesday night. Greg and I had just dropped Garrett off and were on our way to meet some friends for a birthday celebration. As we were leaving, my mom asked us if we would drive her car and fill it with gas while we were in town. Always willing to help others (and use their gas instead of ours), we agreed and were on our way! It had been a snowy and cold day and the roads were solid ice. For some strange reason, I was driving, which is weird because Greg is usually our designated driver. To make a long story short, I stopped at an intersection and the car behind us slid on the ice and rear-ended us.

Nobody was hurt and the cars got dinged up a bit, but that's about it. Greg and I were in the car laughing about how funny it was to have gotten in a wreck in my mom's car in such an unpopulated place. It was even funnier because the people who hit us had just left our next-door neighbor's house and are cousins with our friend whose birthday party we were going to. In fact, they were on their way to babysit her brother's baby because her brother and his wife were also coming to the birthday party.

We didn't quite make it to the party and I called the OB/Gyn on call just to report what had happened and see if I needed to watch for anything specific. I could feel the baby moving and wasn't the slightest bit worried, but he said I needed to go to Labor and Delivery and have the baby monitored. I guess I should have figured he would have had to say something like that to cover his tail, but I was surprised. So, Greg and I spent some thrilling time at the hospital hooked up to a baby monitor. The baby was just fine and Greg enjoyed getting acquainted with the Labor/Delivery floor, since he pretty much missed that entire ordeal when Garrett was born. He was impressed with the snack room and was even able to snag a DC out of the experience, so we'd call it a success.

Here's a lovely picture of the car. You can't really tell much, but the bumper is cracked underneath the license plate. I hope you like the Christmas stickers I added to protect my sweet mother's identity.


Earlier in the evening, before all the fun and excitement, we visited Santa Claus at the town library. Garrett was very interested in Santa and gave him a pretty good stare-down. (His hat covers his face in the picture, but you can kind of see how serious he was about the whole experience.) He got his candy cane from Santa and was out of there. It was pretty funny!

It's 1:30 in the AM...

And Garrett is watching Baby Einstein, Greg is eating an egg sandwich (double eggs, lots of cheese, extra mayo--just how he likes them), and I'm blogging.

'Tis the season for fevers, coughs, runny noses, and sick kids who don't want to sleep. Joy to our world!

Baby Update

We visited the doctor today for the ritual check-up. They had noticed a cyst on the baby's brain during an earlier ultrasound and the doctor wanted to check it again today. A few highlights from the experience.

1. The cyst is gone. Good news!

2. I asked the Ultrasound Tech to make sure she was still a girl. She said she would and proceeded to tell us they've caught a few gender "changes" during 3rd trimester ultrasounds. Greg got excited for a few minutes thinking there was a chance "she" could be a "he," but no such luck. Still a girl--looks like our family is going to equally split for now. (Greg's family had four boys before having a girl and then had another boy, so he was really hoping to repeat the pattern of male dominance.) :)

3. Towards the end of the ultrasound, the Tech said, "Oh cute, you can see she already has some hair." Greg jokingly asks, "Can you tell what color it is?" She jokingly replies, "Red." Greg and I both start laughing and tell her she's probably right.

The general consensus is that the baby looks great and all is well. I'm already into my 31st week--YIKES! It's going so fast!!!

PURE

We're moving into some unchartered territory with our little guy. As we get ever nearer to that famous 2 year old mark, Garrett is getting more and more independent. With it comes a lot of attitude and spunk. (Remember the red hair.) He is generally a happy and fun little guy, but has recently started whining, yelling "NO," and throwing a few fits. This is obviously frustrating for Greg and I as first-time parents. It's easy to wonder what we're doing wrong and think our kid wouldn't be acting like that if we were better parents. Do we need to be stricter, firmer, kinder, more loving and understanding? We're not sure. This parenting thing is tough sometimes.

Thankfully, we were blessed with a sweet reminder today of the goodness of our little guy's heart. There is a young man in our Church congregation with some sort of mental disability. It is my understanding he has autism, but I'm not sure. He generally sits apart from his family on a row by himself and doesn't seem to ever associate with anybody. I think most people are intimidated by him and just don't know how to respond to him, so they avoid him. (Myself included.)

This young man came in and sat behind us today. As soon as Garrett saw him, I could tell he was deeply concerned. He kept looking at the kid and then back at me with a very concerned look on his face. I tried smiling reassuringly at him and telling him it was okay, but he was very worried about this boy sitting behind us. He got off my lap and got some toys out of his bag. I thought he was just going to play with them, but before we could grab him, he was behind us and trying to share his toys with this young man. The poor kid didn't know quite what to do and reluctantly took the toy from Garrett. He handed the toy back to me and we tried to keep Garrett with us, but he was determined to share everything he had with this young man. I could tell it was making the kid uncomfortable and did my best to keep Garrett away from him, but Garrett didn't stop looking at him or worrying about him for the rest of the meeting.

As I watched Garrett looking at him and trying to make him smile, I was touched with the goodness of his little heart. Sometimes it's easy to get frustrated when he's whining or throwing a fit, but it was a sweet reminder of how pure he really is. Most people just ignore this young man at church, but Garrett noticed him and wanted him to be happy. It made me stop for a minute and realize what a blessing it is to have this sweet little spirit in our home and what a great responsibility we have to teach him to be kind and always keep his heart pure.

By the way, what good is a post without a picture? Here's my fellars after they got in from feeding the animals tonight.

Time for an Update...

Here's the latest and greatest from our clan.

Our house is moving right along. (I think I say that every time.) It's all framed, the windows and doors are in, rough plumbing is finished, HVAC is almost done (or maybe they finished yesterday? Not sure...), Greg said today the electrical is about 2/3 done. Good old Greg is working there every night until about midnight. If he looks a little tired the next time you see the poor guy, now you'll know why. I wish there was more I could do, but my current "condition" and Garrett make that a little tough. It's all coming together now and we are getting so excited. I'm really hoping to be in by the first of the year. (Greg laughs when I say that, but I still believe it's possible.)

They have started bricking the outside and it looks great. Here's a lovely picture of Ryan the brick guy on the basement patio. (I really need to take more pics. I have a few, but pictures of framed walls and electrical wires just aren't really that exciting.)


We had our first big snowstorm of the season. The G-Man was absolutely enthralled with the white stuff falling from the sky and couldn't wait to get out in it. He was relentless until finally Grandma caved in and took him out. (Please disregard his attire.)

I've mentioned this before, but Garrett is OBSESSED with the vacuum. I'm not kidding when I say he would spend all day, every day vacuuming if we let him. I've started hiding the vacuum and trying to distract him with other things for the pure reason that I don't think it's good for my trusty old Hoover to run that much.

The highlight of Garrett's day is undoubtedly our daily visits to Greg working at the house. He goes straight to the 4-wheeler and sits on it until we take him for a ride.

Uncle Mike is in town from NC, so we headed down to Grandma and Grandpa's for our first Thanksgiving dinner of the season. FANTASTIC meal! Garrett especially loved Grandma Jan's birthday cake.

Cousin Annabelle looked smashing in these lovely camo cowboy boots. Great look for her, don't you think?

Garrett and Uncle Mike had some good times playing on the stairs. (We're always so grateful for a new and energetic person who is willing to chase the kid around.)

When he isn't vacuuming, Garrett is most likely spending time with his second love--Clementine Cuties. He honestly eats at least 5 of them a day. He discovered where we keep them in the pantry and drags the bags all around the house. He also loves to take them all out of the bags and put them back in. Every orange I've pulled out recently has some suspicious looking bite marks and is usually missing a big chunk. Hopefully this Vitamin C overload will keep him healthy (and happy) through the next few months.

A Fabulous Weekend

I started off the fun Friday by going to the Collin Raye dinner show at the Desert Star Theater with my mom, her BFF Susan, sister Emily, and cousin Jan.


My mom and Suey LOVE Collin and paid the big bucks for front row seats.


Jan, Em, and I got the cheap seats in the back.

The front row paid off for these gals, though! Here they are proudly displaying their hands that had been kissed not once, but TWICE from Collin. He even said to Susan, "You're awesome." They were flying high the whole way home!

I had to run some errands Saturday morning and Greg was working at the house, so Garrett helped Pops rake leaves and clean up the yard.
The lawnmower breaking down was a big bummer for Sparky, but a major score for Garrett who was then able to have it all to himself!

Aunt Chelsea took Garrett down to the house to visit his dad and the boys. They had managed to catch a little pheasant hunting in the morning before starting to work, and Garrett apparently found a new friend. So sad I missed all this...

Chelsea said he hauled it all over the place and just kept saying "Ruff" and petting it. Oh Garrett...

We headed down to Grandpa and Grandma Phillips' house on Sunday for dinner and haircuts. Uncle Eric is Garrett's official haircutting buddy and gets the privilege of stripping down so he can attempt to hold Little G still.

It was getting rough and we had to call in Daddy for reinforcement. After a few tears and many treats, Garrett lost his mullet and is looking fantastic. I haven't gotten a picture of him yet, but he looks great. Thanks, Grandma Jan!

October 31

Our Halloween this year wasn't full of ghosts and goblins, but hammers and nails! We had multiple people volunteer to help us on Saturday, so we decided to take them up on it and threw together a major Halloween "party" at the house. Greg's dad and brother Brian, my dad and brothers Brett and Brian, my uncle Ric and cousin Tyler, and our friend/Brett's father-in-law Chad all spent the day helping us and oh boy--did we get a lot done! They started roofing and got lots of electrical work done, along with hanging windows and a bunch of other random things. By the time this house is built, we are going to be indebted to many, many people. We are already planning a big party once the house is done to begin the insurmountable task of trying to pay everybody back!

Now on to the fun stuff--Garrett the Dog! As previously mentioned in other posts, Little G LOVES dogs and as far as he's concerned, all animals say "ruff," so we decided a dog was the perfect choice. I had mentioned this to my aunt Paula, and she got right on it and found him a cute (and very affordable) costume on Ebay. (She actually ended up with 3 costumes, but that's another story for another day.) Garrrett has loved his costume and has worn it pretty much all day, every day this whole week. He would bring it to us as soon as he woke up and want it on. When he wasn't wearing it, he would play with it and drag it around the house.

Here's our little doggy...
I forgot to mention--he loved the costume, minus the hat part that actually makes it look like a dog and not just brown pajamas. Oh well. (He did like the hat when he was looking at it in the mirror, but that was about it.)

My cousin Kami and her new husband Kyle came out Saturday morning to check out the work on the house and volunteered to take Garrett with them for the day. I felt a little bad not spending Halloween with him, but it was a good opportunity for me to work at the house and it's pretty tough to get much done with him there, so we took them up on it. Garrett had a great day with them and we got much more done at the house than we would have chasing him around, so I guess it was a win-win. Thanks guys!

Kami and Kyle were hosting a Halloween party Saturday night, so once it was too dark to work and we were worn out, we headed to the big party to pick up our boy and enjoy a Halloween feast of chili, cinnamon twists, and homemade root beer.

Garrett's favorite part of the night wasn't the candy, but chasing people around with some kitchen tongs.

Brett and Chelsea showed up as Alaska and Hawaii (or something). Great costumes!

A rare happy moment with the dog hood on...

This scary guy showed up and started hitting on Chelsea.

The kids had a nice ride on Sean. Little did he know he would end up being a horse for Halloween!

My dad found his old army coat in the basement and dressed up as a younger version of himself.

It was a busy, but fun Halloween! We went to bed totally exhausted and were very grateful for an extra hour of sleep today. Greg said he felt like an 80 year old man when he got out of bed this morning. I guess that means I felt like an 80 year old pregnant woman...

Naptime Fun

Today while Garrett was supposed to be napping...

He took off his socks and pants (we had no idea he knew how to take off his pants), threw everything out of the bed, and folded up the mattress...and then laughed, played, and had a grand time.

We could hear him in there laughing, but figured he'd go to sleep eventually because he usually does. Not today! In fact, we tried putting him down THREE different times for a nap, but each time ended with pretty much the same results.

This is slightly disturbing--Garrett usually has about a three hour nap every afternoon. This time has become sacred to me. I know it won't last forever, but I'm not sure I'm ready to give it up yet. Let's hope today was just a fluke!

One good thing did come out of the no naptime, though. The poor kid was so tired tonight that he climbed onto my lap and cuddled with me while I rocked him and sang to him. I honestly can't remember the last time he slowed down enough to let me do that, so it was really sweet. In fact, we both dozed off and it felt so good to just have my little buddy snuggled up against me, just like when he was a tiny little guy.

Now if only I could get him to do both: Naptime in the day and Snuggletime at night! (Surely I should have my cake and eat it, too. Right?)