Now touch your toes to your nose!

This weekend I flew to Austin for a wonderful baby shower. Thank you to everyone who came and to all the hostesses (Kendal Esteves, Sara Hejl, Kari Schemmel, Courtney Bates, Alethea Dillman, and Sunee Conly) for your hard work!! To my regret, we didn't all get a pic together!! (I'll upload the pics that Ty's mom took soon). Anyway, the shower was so much fun and Colt will have lots of nice things when he is born. He got lots of baseball stuff (b/c I registered for most of it) so I hope he likes the sport!! Also, his Aunt Chez made him a beautiful little blanket. I had fun in Austin visiting friends and family, eating good Mexican food, and walking Town Lake. I was very sad to come back to Tampa, but it had to be done. Hopefully one day God will let us move back to Austin!!!

Also, I had my 28 week appointment on Wednesday. I had a sonogram and they showed us a 4D image. You can see Colt's little foot up by his forhead in the pic! His eyes and nose are basically in the middle of the pic. His ear is at the rightmost side of the image. So... he is in a Frank breech position right now. It's nothing really to worry about, b/c he has plenty of time and room to turn before he gets "stuck" in that position. I've looked up some exercises I can do to get him to turn on his own... so hopefully he'll cooperate. If anyone knows any tricks to get him to move, please let me know! Other than that, no big news here. We found a house to rent and will move in around May 7th... so I'm kinda just in limbo till then!

Don't call our son a Tampon...(A Guest Author's Blog)

Yep, ever since we've moved here, we've foreseen a problem developing that could not be ignored. When we announced that we were moving out of the family-friendly confines of the Great State of Texas, right smack in the middle of Charis's 2nd trimester of our first-born, we knew that he would have to be born a Floridian. : (
As any good Texan knows, that basically repudiates you in the all important categories of ability to consume spicy foods and identify good barbecue. To boot, your state flag is unable to fly at an equal height of Old Glory.
But, "Hey," we thought, "Charis wasn't born in Texas, and she turned out to be alright." So, hope remained in spite of the sad realization.
Then, the real horror of the situation started to sink in. Not only would our son be a Floridian, but he will also be born in the city of Tampa. This begs The Question.
What do you call someone from Tampa?
Someone from Houston is a Houstonian. A man from Austin is an Austinite. But what is someone from Tampa called? Let's just say the answer seemed more than obvious.
We immediately began to search far and wide for an answer that would disconfirm what our hearts knew to be true. Yet, it seemed that every person we ran into and asked had come to the same conclusion we had. A person from Tampa was labeled a "Tampon."
Of course, they usually said it with a big smile on their faces. It was just a big joke to them. They weren't from Tampa. They were from somewhere up North. yankees. They didn't realize the years of ridicule our son would undoubtedly be subjected to on our future trips to the Great Lone Star State.
Texan 1: "Hey, kid, where ya from?
Our son: "Tampa, sir."
Texan 2: (With an incredulous look) You're a Floridian?!?!?
Our son: (Face filled with shame) "Yes , ma'am."
Texan 1: (Guffawing) " Not just that, he's a TAMPON, too!!!
All but our son: "hahahahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahha!"
That's a pretty horrible fate for the poor little guy.
One glimmer of a chance remained. We had yet to run into a single person who advertised themselves as Tampa born, Tampa raised.
Tonight, our son was vindicated.
We showed up innocently enough to the local Ford dealership to have a small scratch on our Expedition painted since the dealer we recently bought it from had been gracious enough to say they would pay for it.
Rainier (like the Mount...seriously) was the only person left in the office. He met us at the door. Everyone else had left to try to avoid all the rush hour traffic that was gnarled out in front of the dealership. The daily grind of the traffic was further aggravated by the hostage situation a few blocks north (at a gun range...seriously). It was there, in the empty office, with the SWAT helicopters buzzing continuously overhead, that Rainier confided in us that he was born and raised here. In Tampa.
With trepidation in our voices, we asked him The Question. Initially, he gave us the same joshing smile as all the others and told us what his yankee brother called him. Our hearts sank.
And then he said the word that was like a sweet oasis in the middle of the Sahara. Tampanian. The word rang strong and true across the empty walls of the body shop.
"Tampanian," we said together with relief. Our son would never be a tampon. He might not be a Texan. He may even be a Floridian. But he will definitely be a Tampanian.

A whole new Molly!

After Molly's great escape last week, Ty and I decided to break down and take her to dog training. We hired a company called Bark Busters, who came out to our house on Saturday for 3 hours and trained us to train Molly. IMMEDIATELY, we saw a huge change in her!! They taught us how dogs speak and their ways of communicating, so we can be the big dog in the relationship. It's funny because the main tool is that you have to growl at your dog when they are doing something wrong. It took us a bit to get used to it (and we sound funny when we are around neighbors), but it works, so who cares!? We used to have problems with Molly pulling on our walks, going upstairs and in/out doors before us, jumping up, whining, getting on the couch uninvited, etc. Well, not anymore! I really am very impressed that after one 3 hour session, she has completely changed!! Of course, we have to do our homework everyday to reinforce her new behavior, and we still have some problems when we see squirrels on our walks, but overall she has done great in the 4 days since her initial training session. If you are debating taking your dog to obedience school, I definitely can recommend Bark Busters (they are nationwide)! We did this just in time for her new baby brother to show up and she be on her best behavior!

No more dog park privileges!

Pregnancy pic at 26 weeks!


Yesterday was VERY stressful for me :( It all began in the early morning when I took Molly to eat breakfast. I was sort of hungry, so I popped some chocolate in my mouth before I went back to bed and started to choke on it. I couldn't breathe!! It was SO scary! I started to freak out, then realized that wasn't helping my breathing at all, so I had to make myself calm down. I tried to walk up the stairs to get Ty who was in the shower and couldn't hear me. But walking up the stairs made me not breathe even more! The whole time I just kept thinking about the baby and that he needed air and wasn't getting it! I think that was the first time that something so life threatening was affecting me, but I didn't think at all about myself! Finally the chocolate started to melt and I started to be able to breathe a little bit. The whole incident really freaked me and Ty out!!



Then in the afternoon, I took Molly to the dog park at our complex and she hopped the fence tying to play with some dogs. She ran away when I tried to get her and was missing for like 2 hours!! I was searching all of the surrounding neighborhoods, and once again freaked out. I mean, besides Ty, Molly is my only other friend in Tampa! Ha! I thought she was eatten by an Alligator! (There really are a number of lakes/swamps around here with gators in them!) It ended up she had crossed this 8 lane road in the middle of rush hour!! She was trying to cross back over it with cars swerving and everything, when this college girl saw her and stopped traffic to put Molly in her car! She took Molly to the pet store and got her food and water and a leash. Then she called the vet in Austin (whose # was on Molly's collar) who gave her our names. She then stopped a sheriff and made him look up our info on his computer. He called my dad who called us and we finally got Molly back! What a day! So now Molly has lost her pet park privileges since she has learned to jump the fence :( The girl, Lauren, was such a blessing in our lives yesterday. Ty even spoke with her about the possibility of becoming his new administrative assistant b/c he was so impressed with her persistence!

Our black night....

Ty and I at the Yankees vs. Astros spring training

Ty and his new employee, Chris and his girlfriend (team building)



A pic of our digs in Tampa

The living room (it's fully furnished!!)

Hey everybody!! I know you are all waiting for an update from Tampa. I've been so busy looking at houses with our realtor, that I've failed to post in a while. Sorry! Our awesome realtor, Tamara, has been showing me all around town, trying to nail down the perfect house for our growing family. The homes here are SO different than ones in Texas! Most of them have this funky formal sitting room right in the entrance and they are mostly stucco also.. yuck! :) But most of the homes here have pools... so that will be fun (not to maintain, but to swim in!)

Ty and I and his new employee went to an Astros spring training game last night. They kicked some Yankee butt! It was fun to heckle all the Yankee's fans. It's sad when you have a home team (Tampa Bay Devil Rays) but there are more fans for the team that only spring trains in your state for one month of the year (Yankees)!! Maybe the Devil Rays will improve one of these days so we can have somebody to cheer for.

Also, our power went out yesterday :( Our landlord had paid the bill, but the electric company applied the bill toward her home address and not the rental property. So all the food in our fridge has spoiled and I just went grocery shopping!! The landlord is really nice and is going to reimburse me for the cost of food. We had to go to our neighbor's house at 11pm when we got home from the b-ball game to borrow candles so we could see. I guess that's one excuse to meet the neighbors!

Other than that, we've been having fun. We visited Christ Community Church on Sunday and will visit somewhere else this weekend. We take Molly to the pet park twice a day.. which she loves. It's a good excuse for me to work on my tan! You can't live in Florida and be as pale as I normally am! The baby seems to be doing well.... he sure does kick alot! I started taking a Bradley method birthing course... which seems like it will be very interesting... very, well, natural. :) More on that later... Until then, Charis

Tampa or Bust!

Ty and I pulled into our new home in Tampa Sunday evening. We had a very long trip from Austin to Houston (to say bye to Ty's family) to Pensacola (to stay with my cousin Sarah - thank you!! ) then to Tampa. It was about 22 hours in all (it didn't help that I had to pee every hour or two). Our "villa" in Tampa is very nice and cozy. It's fully furnished, which made moving in very easy. Molly has discovered the pet park and LOVES it! It is huge and she is able to run around freely like she never has before (except when running from us around the neighborhood after escaping)! Today I went to my new Obgyn. Everything looked great and they are all really friendly. I won't necessarily have my MD at delivery... it'll be whoever is on call that day. So for my next appt I will visit with another MD so I can become familiar with all of them in the practice. Next time (at 28 weeks) they want to do a sonogram (because they haven't seen the baby before with their own eyes... guess they don't trust TX doctors :) and I'll have the much dreaded blood glucose test. Tomorrow I meet with the realtor to begin looking for more permanent dwellings. Ty has been busy at his work getting the phones and computers set up and making Home Depot runs to get office supplies. Last night we met our next door neighbor, who was throwing a wild party/BBQ. They were nice and invited us over for dinner and "beer pong." They BBQ every Sunday night... guess I should buy ear plugs!

Update!

Andrew and me finalizing the deal on my new Expedition!
Andrew has a bumpy ride back to Abilene in my old Mazda!
New porch at Meem's
The insulated roof is supposed to make it cooler in the summer!
Ty and I at a UT baseball game. Hook 'em horns!

So, I'm still getting used to this blogging thing and sometimes forget to update it!!! Just so yall know, our move date got pushed back to March 15th, so the movers didn't come on Feb 28th. It's kinda nice b/c now I have more time to pack and sort through things. It's fun going through all of our photo albums and childhood keepsakes. I've looked through Learning to Lead and Kadesh photos and notes (which is fun cause there are pics of lots of yall in elementary school, etc).

So the latest in our lives is that we got a new car! Well, actually it feels like a huge ship to me! I went from a small Mazda 626 to a HUGE Ford Expedition! I'm still getting used to parking the thing! I'm getting lots of exercise by parking at the back of the parking lot. I've posted pics of my brother (the car salesman) when he drove to Lampassas to do the whole car exchange. For those of you in Abilene, he is working at the Chrystler/Jeep lot on South 1st. Go look him up if you want a new car! He won't try to sell you something you don't want/ can't afford! Congrats to him as he just got a promotion and will be the assistant manager at a new lot opening up in Abilene!!

Also, Ty's grandma (Meem) got a new patio cover put on her lake house in Marble Falls. I posted a pic for the family so you can see the new improvement! Are the Bubbies and wives still up for Labor Day (perhaps in Marble Falls) this year??