Our little girl growing up!

So our little girl was born on May 23rd and has been a great addition to our family. She has been a happy little bundle of joy and is now starting to jibber and jabber at us. Just before Christmas she finally said "dada". It was the best Christmas present ever.
One other big thing since the last time I posted is that I am now in college studying secondary education with a math emphasis. I am hoping to be able to finish quickly and get a job somewhere where we can move and settle down. 

Lydia just had her first birthday. She was so excited to have all of her cousins over. She really loves playing with them and laughing at whatever they are doing. She has such a cute personality and some infectiously cute laughter. 

As a side note Emily had her feet worked on but I will tell you all about that in the next post.

Ready, Set, Nest!

I never understood until recently what "nesting" really meant or why people did it but now I think that I finally understand. For the last week or so I have had this unreal feeling like I need to have every little thing in my home clean and in place for no apparent reason. After getting the main part of the house clean I thought that the feeling might go away but then it got even worse when I realized that it probably wouldn't stop. I have been cleaning and organizing like a mad man for the last week, and now since it is getting warm outside it has shifted to getting the yard looking good and having things ready for the baby.

Whenever I think about being a dad or having a baby of my own I start to have this overwhelming feeling of excitement and nervousness at the same time. On one hand I want the baby to be here and to see her face but on the other I am so nervous because I have no idea of how to take care of a baby. I have so many things that I want to make sure I do as a father and so many things that I don't want to mess up. I just hope that she loves me as much as I already love her.

Emily has been a real trooper with all of her emotions going completely haywire. We have a few arguments over stupid things but all in all things are going well. I love her so much and I am so glad that she is as excited as I am to have her in our lives. She is already such a blessing and we know that she is our little miracle in our lives. We know things might get hard but we will do whatever we have to do to provide for her. (even get up at 3:15 AM to go to work)

A name ... We finally chose a name!

So Emily is now 7 Months Pregnant and she is as miserable as ever but still going strong. We have been working on the nursery and getting it ready though there is not a lot in it right now.

For months now since we found out it was a girl we have been trying to come up with a name for her and we just couldn't come to any conclusion or final name to call her but we finally decided that the name we are going to give to her is "LYDIA GRACE JONES". Emily has actually had that name pick out for a number of years but as we talked about other names she couldn't just decide. I really love the name and am glad that it is not a common name right now. Also we are very excited because one of our friends that we play games with is also having a girl and hopefully they will become good friends.

Well, as I promised I have Photos from the ultrasounds. I hope you enjoy them as much as we are.

Lydia Grace Jones - 29 Weeks - 3D View

Lydia Grace Jones - 29 Weeks - Profile View

Lydia Grace Jones - Heartbeat (139 BPM) - 29 Weeks

I Got Screwed!

So a few days ago we took our car into get fixed because the brakes were being really loose and the guy at the shop said that the master cylinder needed to be replaced. So we had them do it and they then called back and said that it wasn't working still and said that the ABS unit might be out and that it would cost over $1000 for a new one. So we decided that we couldn't afford that and called Emily's dad to come and look at the car to see if he could see what was wrong with it. So they came down a today and he looked at it and decided that all we needed to was bleed the brakes and change the calipers and brake shoes. From his years of working on cars he determined that if they were doing it properly they would have to bleed the brakes. But when he looked at the brake calipers they were all rusted and they had not ever been bled. After he told me this I was so pissed.

So to clarify ... the brakes had not been checked and this guy at the auto shop took us for $270. Even though he did change out the master cylinder he didn't follow any of the procedures that would be necessary for a proper brake check. So tomorrow I am going to go back to the shop and ask him a bunch of questions about what he actually did, and if I find that he is lying to me I may have to file a complaint with the BBB and possibly file a suit against him for fraud.

Dishonesty is running rampant in the business world. Especially in the automotive industry. If you can find an honest person in the world who won't take you for everything you've got then make sure you make friends with them because they will save you a ton of time and money. An even better idea is to learn how to do it yourself and save the cost of labor for a mechanic (Of course this only work if the repair is simple like repairing brakes or brake pads.) I really learned a lot from this and even more from my father-in-law.

Winter finally arrives! ... Sort of

So this morning I woke up to find that despite what I had seen in the news there was about a half an inch of snow on the ground. We had a totally dry Christmas so it is nice to actually see some of the white stuff on the ground. I always am a bit disappointed when we have Christmas without any snow but I guess it is better late than never. hopefully we will get a bit more as the days go on because otherwise we may have a very dry year.

On another note ... I am glad that it has been dry a bit longer because it has allowed me to do a few extra things around the yard before it got too cold. I can't wait for spring now because I will be able to plant and have a garden like I have wanted for some time now. I don't know if anyone else feels like this, but once Christmas is over it seems like it should get warm and be going into springtime. But we still have just over 2 months before it gets warm again according to the calendar. We shall see who is right.

One final note: Baby is growing well and Emily and I are literally "gearing up" for her arrival. We have done most of our baby registry at Babies R Us and we hope that we can also get lots of hand-me-downs from siblings, friends, family, and anyone who has girly baby stuff that they want to get rid of.

A Baby? ... A BABY GIRL!

Okay ... for those who don't follow my life on facebook that much or who aren't in my immediate family, you probably haven't heard that Emily and I found out that we are going to have a girl in may. We are so excited and everyone we know has asked us if we know for sure that it is a girl. Well ... we have been into our doctor for our official ultrasound (20 week mark) and also we are participating in a first time pregnancy study at the hospital that gets us 3 extra ultrasounds over the course of the pregnancy, and to top it all off when Emily hit her 15 week mark we went to a commercial ultrasound place to get the gender then as well. So needless to say it has been checked 4 times since the 15 week mark. We do have a few names picked out but not quite sure which one we are going to use until we see her.

In the next few days I am going to scan and put some of the ultra sound pictures up on this blog for all of you to see.

Emily and I had such a great Christmas this year. We didn't have much to spend on each other but we did get quite a few baby things from parents and friends. We are so grateful that everything is going well in Emily's pregnancy. Hopefully everything will continue to well and everything will run smoothly and normally. 

My new years resolution... Keep my wife healthy and happy!