25 Random things about me...

9:36 AM Edit This 3 Comments »
25 Random Things about me
Renee did this a few days ago and I thought about doing it.  Then I saw a few people on facebook do it too and I couldn't resist!!! =)

1. I love to play video games. Once in a while we will bust out the old Super Nintendo and play a little Yoshi and Donkey Kong.

2. I like all vegetables and fruit but I do not like cucumbers.  I think they are watery and seedy.

3. I was a very sheltered child and home schooled from 6th-9th grade with a very short 8th grade stint in "public school." I chose to leave b/c I couldn't handle the reality that kids actually did drugs and were sexually active at that age.  I thought it was a myth. Huge reality check for me that I was not able to handle.   I am not kidding.   I went to the church counselor for several weeks I was so traumatized!

4. The summer between third and fourth grade I read at least three books in the "Anne of Green Gables" series. I used to sit in the tree in our backyard and read for hours.

5. Traveling is something I love to do. I have been to eight countries in my missionary, YWAM years. During one of those trips my team and I had a FIFTEEN hour layover in the Taiwan airport and it was FREEZING!!!  We barely made it out of there without frost bite!

6. I CAN NOT handle scary movies.  Or really any true, sad movies.  If I know it actually happened and it was horrible, I will just read about it, I don't need the visuals.  I have been made fun of all my life b/c of my refusal to watch movies I am not comfortable with. This proves hard to choose a movie between Sam and I, but we deal with it.

7. In my teenage years I was very spontaneous.  One day I decided to allow my very unexperienced friend to cut my long, golden locks. It was a week before prom and I cried for three days it turned out so horribly!!!

8. BEFORE Jurassic Park came out, I wanted to be a paleontologist.  It sounded cool and I thought it would be fun to dig up dinosaur bones.

9. And didn't every girl want to be a marine biologist at some point?? I ditched that dream after 10th grade Advanced Biology. We had to dissect a cat-YUCK!

10. Speaking of school subjects, I am horrible at Math and pretty much despise it.  No one in my family is "mathematically inclined" We are all artistic, "free-thinkers" if you will.  Math is too boxed in for us, I guess. I am OH SO THANKFUL that I have a very smart, Mathematical husband to deal with that sort of stuff.

11. My dad is an artist of an art form called, Marquetry. (Making pictures out of tiny peaces of wood) So I grew up going to art shows and galleries and all that fun "artsy" stuff. I loved every minute of it.  I think it made me a more well-rounded adult.

12. My dream spot to live would be Australia.  It is so beautiful and WARM! Surfing and having a laid back lifestyle sounds good to me! I would live in a beach cottage and have a separate room for art and yoga.

13. When I visited my sister in Alaska one summer it was 32 degrees on the 4th of July!!!  I met some really cool people who were kayaking across Alaska.  Actually, I met a lot of interesting people there.  I had some crazy experiences in my month in Alaska I will never forget!

14. Waiting tables for the pat several years has tested my character like nothing else could.  When you deal with crabby, rude people day in and day out for several years, it is hard to remain kind and not bitter towards "your fellow man." 

15. I was on the Bible Quiz team for two years at my church.  We had to memorize whole books of the Bible.  It was def. challenging, but a lot of that wisdom sticks with me today.

16. I am a very strongly opinionated person, but I am not confrontational.  So I have strong opinions about politics and religion and all sorts of things, but rarely voice my opinion b/c I HATE debates. Most of the time this means my hubby or close friends and family hear me vent about why others make me so mad!

17. When I was in high school I was determined to be a "career woman." I wanted to be a successful journalist for TIME magazine, and scoffed at my friends for wanting to get married right out of high school and start a family. Now, I want nothing more than just to be a wife and a stay at home mom with my kiddies.  It's funny how differently we view things as we grow older...

18. I was all set to go to college straight out of high school. But the college I was planning on going to was in CA (Biola University) and they called me in the month of June and told me there was no housing for me. Not being able to afford to live off campus in CA, I decided to "take a semester off" Well, I guess God had different plans for me. Instead I spent a year and a half with Youth with a Mission and it was the best experience of my life.  I have no regrets that I spent that time doing that.  Which in turn gave me a change of heart about my "career path..."

19. Everyone who knows me, knows I LOVE to shop!  This is not a random fact by any means. But I am a HUGE stickler for sales at J.Crew and Banana Republic.  Unless my husband is around to stop me, I can not help myself from entering those stores and buying something. It is hard to keep a level head when cute clothes are involved!

20. I LOVE to be tan!!!  It is this crazy addiction for me. If I can't tan in the tanning bed I am researching all the "self-tanning" products out there.  This has been a challenge since being pregnant, I feel so pasty white!!!!

21. I am not a "shoe girl" I am a purse girl.  I LOVE new purses and I can never have enough.

22. My favorite color changes often. Sam thinks this is crazy!!! It depends on my mood or the season, so if quizzed and asked my favorite color, it is okay if it is wrong, b/c I change my mind a lot about this!

23. I was single for two and a half years before Sam and I met. After my last serious relationship, I spent that time praying and asking the Lord to show me and make it clear who I was meant to marry. I knew within one week that Sam was the man I was going to marry. And a month and a half later we secretly tied the not on Valentine's Day at the court house.  We were in the newspaper and everything and still no one knew!  We later had an actual wedding on St. Patrick's Day and much later told our family and friends we were actually married before!

24. I really like Chai. The best chai ever is "real chai" from India. I am pretty sure though, that the chai I drank there was what gave me a parasite and thus stomach problems since then!

25. If I could do absolutely ANYTHING with my life, I would open a yoga/art/intercession studio with a coffee/tea shop attached.  It would be the fulfillment of my life. I feel like it would encompass all that I am. Maybe someday, God will open the doors for this to come true.   

Well there you go!  25 "random" things about me!!!  I thought this would be hard, but once I started I realized I had to pick and choose the things I wanted to say!  If you get a little time some day you should do it!  it's MEGA fun!!!

*smiles, sunshine and stars*,
*heather joy*



Being pregnant/choosing names...

11:55 AM Edit This 5 Comments »



Today I am 21 weeks and 2 days.  I definitely feel like I am in that stage where nothing fits, but no one can tell I am pregnant, so basically I just look fat! :p  So, I am hoping the "beloved bump" becomes more apparent in the next coming weeks.

So far this part of pregnancy has been a lot better than the beginning.  The past month or so I have felt a little unusual action in my belly and associ
ated it with the baby.  But on Sunday, she decided to make herself very well known to me and her daddy and she started kicking like crazy!!!  Sam felt it too and I think it really amazed him. It was amazing to me for sure!  She, of course, likes to kick when I am sitting still especially and while I am doing yoga for some reason!  Feeling her and seeing her on the ultrasound has definitely made this experience"more
 real" to me.


Onto name talk...from the beginning we had our boy and girl names picked out.  First names, at least.  I vouched for "Emma" as a girl name.  For some reason, she just "feels" like an "Emma." =)  I have always said I wanted "unique" names for my children and I thought Emma, while not original, was not heard very often.  Then, we find out it was the NUMBER ONE used girl name in 2008!!!! =(  I am still sticking to my guns on the name though.  I can't imagine her as anything else.  I hope when she grows up she will not have to be one of the children in her class that goes by "Emma C." because there are five other "Emma's" in the class...
Sam and I decided that we would give our children two middle names, like daddy, but have yet to decide on two for Emma.

It is so crazy to think that she will be here in just over four months.  I can't wait to meet her!

The day we found out our babies gender...

11:15 AM Posted In , Edit This 3 Comments »


I am very excited to announce that we are having a little baby girl! (Although all of you who read this already know this wonderful fact)
I can say that all along I "felt" like it was a girl.  I had at least three dreams that we were having a little girl and everyone continued to say they felt like it was a girl too.
I think I would have been very surprised if it had been a boy!

It was a challenge to even find out the gender though!  Our appointment was scheduled on January 12th and of course we were so excited and elated and planned our whole day around the event.  The late morning of the 12th we found out our appointment had to be rescheduled because the ultrasound technician was out sick.  Of course we were sooo disappointed and almost devastated.  We had waited for this day for so long!!! The earliest the ob/gyn could get us in would be Friday, late afternoon.

Seeing how distraught I was, and feeling the same way, Sam called back to see if there was anything we could do to get an earlier appointment or go to another doctor for the ultrasound.  Well, instead of a sympathetic "No" or "I'm so sorry but we can't do that," the woman who does the scheduling laid into him and told him there was nothing they could do and basically we were being selfish for wanting to know our babies gender.  She was very adamant in portraying that they "were not in the business of finding out gender, but cared about the babies health." And OF COURSE we care about our babies health, but what other parent do you know is not SUPER excited to find out the gender of their baby??!!  Needless to say, that conversation just made us more disappointed and upset.

So I suggested looking up places that did the 3D ultrasounds.  We found a few in Charlotte and gave the office a call.  The lady who answered was a sweet, Asian lady who said, "you come right now, we do it for you.." The price was $150 and with that we would get 2D/3D ultrasound and pics and also a 4D (live action) DVD set to music.  Sam thought the price was steep, so being the bargain hunter he is, he negotiated to pay $99.  She told us she had an opening in half an hour, so we jumped in the car and we were on our way.  We were so excited and hoped that this experience could redeem the way the day had turned out.  But we were also nervous and didn't know what to expect...


On the way I told Sam we had to stop for coffee or caffeine of some sort because I was afraid our little one would not be active and we would not be able to see the gender.  So on the way we stopped at a drive-thru Starbucks and I got a yummy, carmel frap.. Mmmmm...it was soooo good!  I have to admit I have missed my coffee since being preggo.

We finally arrive there and walk into this huge building with many offices and take the elevator to "Sunshine Baby." The office was sooo nice!  It was just the Asian lady we had talked to on the phone who was there.  We went into the lobby with lovely couches and pictures of babies everywhere.  We filled out some paper work and then she took us to the ultrasound room, which was beautiful. There was a very large, flat screen television on the wall and then a leather lounge for the mommy to lie on.  There was also a nice couch for daddy to sit too. =)

At first our little one was jumping around like crazy (thanks to the caffeine =) but within minuted the lady said, "looks like a girl!" and I said, "Really???  I knew it, hunny!"  I think Sam was truly surprised because he was convinced we were having a boy.  We both were so excited tho!
 
All I can say is that the experience was WONDERFUL!  Every couple should do it at least once.  We were there for over an hour and got to see our little one do so many things.  She even appeared to be "blowing kisses" at one point.  I would also suggest going to Sunshine Baby.  The woman was so sweet and kind and she was also hilarious!!!  the comments she made about our little one moving around like, "She is saying she is number one..." and "Ohhh... now she is thinking," made the experience so fun and enjoyable. Needless to say, it made up for the day we had, for sure!

I am actually thankful it ended up this way.  We would have never done this if our appointment hadn't gotten canceled, but I am so glad it did.  There are more pics on facebook. More to come soon...
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