Monsters

As I've mentioned before, the decor of choice for Rye's room will be monsters. Not scary monsters mind you, rather the lovable friendly characters that make you hope that such a creature will appear in your closet or under your bed so you can make up stories and play games together instead of sleep.

Those kind of monsters.

Step 1 in the monstering process, was creating wall art. These guys were hand drawn using "kid-friendly" media (ie, crayons, markers) and then framed and are now hanging on the walls.

Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, i give you....the monsters.
(cue the theme music)

Pregnancy--animated

One of my favorite sites is http://www.explodingdog.com/ I really like his sense of humor and the robot/dog themes of most of his work.

So...I have decided to sum up my pregnancy (obviously up until this point-- 2 months to go!) through these carefully chosen cartoons.

Some of these will make no sense to you at all, but then again, sometimes i make no sense to you either, so we'll just leave it at that. They mean something to me and this is my blog so there it is.


Finding out we were pregnant:



Anticipating Morning Sickness:



Experiencing Morning Sickness:

more..

more...




This sums up morning sickness the best:



How I feel about my growing stomach:



Finding out that the baby was a boy:



The transformation from bladder to bean bag chair:




Throughout the journey:

Discovering all the pregnancy "side effects":

Overall body/baby feelings:

Becoming a giant whale:

Just because:

My experience of being pregnant:

Decreasing brain function:

Dreams (and yes, it is possible for them to get weirder):

The final stretch:

That brings us up to date. If I find any more that deal with sore backs, internal karate chops or heart burn, I'll add those later.

Hope you enjoyed it, even if you might not have understood it.

Florida Keys: 09

Finally pulled the pictures off our other camera of our trip down to the Keys with Trev's parents.
We had a great time and Trev enjoyed his one and only break from the renovations--immensely.

Here's our "album".

Trev driving the boat with his mom and dad in the front...


Trev driving (again) with me chilling in the back--the least bumpy part of the boat-- since I have developed a heightened sense of motion sickness these days. (oh the joy)

Trev's cousins, otherwise known as the "Tampa Taylors" (I'll let you guess why) were also down for the week so we had lots of extended family fun which included dinner out.



On Friday we headed down to Key West for the day. Here's Trev and parents at the Audubon house.

The highlight of every trip (at least for me) is the trip to Louie's backyard. WONDERFUL food right on the water. Oh, I had been looking forward to this since January... me and Mom in front of Louie's.

Trev and me on the back deck of Louie's

Another exciting thing that happened...well, exciting if you aren't FROM Florida, was the view I saw when I glanced behind me at the pool. They have foliage that lines the pool area and this "little" fellow came over for a visit. Mind you, this is about 3 feet from me at the time.

Also worth noting is that this "little" fellow is about 5 feet long! Yes, so naturally I jump up and yell to Trev (who is across the pool getting drinks at the bar) "Trev! Come here! Quick! You have to see this!!" Trev ignores me, partially because he's ordering at the time, partially because he's across the pool and not the type to yell back, and partially because he is from Florida...and this is not a big deal if you are from Florida. Which, apparently everyone else at the pool was as well since no one was 1/10th as impressed/amazed/slightly scared as i was at this giant man-eating iguana 3 feet away. So, I grab the camera and take a series of "close-ups" (thank goodness for "zoom"). Then Trev moseys on over and goes, "Huh, an iguana." Then sits down with his drink.... sigh.

Senor Iguana continued climbing all over the trees and eating the leaves for about 20 minutes before heading out to scare other non-natives.

Another noteworthy from the week was that it was open season for lobster. Trev and his dad and cousins went lobstering and caught a couple that were big enough to keep. (I stayed at home due to aforementioned motion sickness).

Here's Trev with his catch.

You may have noticed Trevor's shirt which much to my chagrin he is wearing in Florida (one of the hardest hit states by the mortgage crisis). I got this shirt at this mortgage luncheon that I went to for work. The back of it says "2009?". Yea....very insensitive (and funny) and insensitive.

On one of their trips out lobstering Trevor got attacked by a barracuda. True story (although it sounds worse then it is). They were pulling the boat back in the marina and there were ducks swimming all around the boat. A barracuda jumps out of the water and lunges for the ducks, however he apparently is not the best judge of distance or aim since he missed and landed right beside Trev in the boat! (man, i wish i had been there to see this one). So he flopped onto the floor and the guys had a photo-session with him before returning him to the water. Good story for everyone involved, though I doubt the barracuda will be impressing his friends with it.

Dad, holding the attacker

up-close shot of the beast

Another highlight from the trip was our massive reception of presents. Among other things Rich and Missy (Trev's sis and brother-in-law) gave us a crib. They had 2 for the twins and gave us one of them for Rye (wahoo!). Here's the one that Autumn's in currently, but they look the same so just picture this but w/o the pink and green. :)

Trev managed to steal this belly shot which i think is hilarious. I'm making my "giant belly!" face. I've been making that a lot lately...

And finally, to wrap up the trip, here's a shot of Trev and me in Key West.

Ah, another successful Florida vacation. It's weird to think that this is our last one with just the 2 of us (yes, I know Rye was there too, you know what I mean)...

Here comes the change! Hold on to your horses, it's a big one. ;)

Catcher in the...

Man I've been a blog slacker lately. Sorry friends. Well I think this post will make you excited enough to forgive and forget.

What are the 2 most exciting things about having a baby? (besides finding out that you are having one, and besides them actually getting here). First of all, is finding out the gender and second of all, is finding out the chosen name. These are 2 of the most important and defining moments, I'm sure you will agree.

Why do i bring this up you ask? Oh, no reason. Just thought we should establish that. Ok, so you want to hear about how the house project is going?

What? No? You were expecting something else? A revelation of some sort? Perhaps a long anticipated declaration?

Fine. But there are rules.
(side note: as most of you know, i hate to follow them but love to make them ;)

Rule # 1: if you don't' like the name, i don't want to hear about it. We've already decided, this is final, there is not any room for negotiation so please kindly keep your disparaging comments to yourself.

Rule # 2: if you have some sort of negative memory or association with the name, again, keep it to yourself. I don't want to hear about how your neighbor's evil Doberman was named this and he ate your left arm when you were 7 (although that would be very traumatic).

Rule # 3: We will not be revealing any back up names or girl names so don't bother asking. They are staying in the vault for future reference.

Is anyone still reading? :)

ok, here we go, drum roll please

(insert drum roll here)

Our little guy's name is....

Rye Caedmon Taylor

which means:

Rye: is Irish for "King"
Caedmon: is Gaelic for "wise warrior"
and unfortunately, Taylor means: "one who makes clothes"

so he will have some career options it seems. ;)

there it is, take it or leave it but it's here to stay and we are super excited about it.

Teaser for your Eye Balls

Ok, just sent 3 new paintings to my web master (my how official that sounds). So hopefully in a couple days they will be up on the site. But, since I couldn't wait (who me?), here's one of them for your viewing pleasure.

I'm calling it Blue River and it's about 24" x 36" and yes, it's for sale. :)

It's a night-time view of the Tennessee River that runs through Chattanooga.


Haven't done much painting at all this year with the baby-growing and the renovations and work and... so these guys will have to hold you over for a while.

word to your mother.

these are a few of my...

...NEW favorite things.

1. Do It Yourself Magazine from Better Homes and Gardens

I found this gem while waiting for Trev at Home Depot, bestest "bored" hour I've ever spent.

Love it, love it, love it. I bought the magazine and then immediately read and reread the whole thing, then started planning the 45 different projects I had to copy immediately. (like we need any more projects at my house!) A subscription to this sucker is going on the Christmas list, for sure.

2.ImageSpark

This very cool site where you can store images that you think are rocking and want to remember for later. Great for brainstorming ideas and being inspired. Love it. See my library here.

Ok, well you guys take some time and enjoy these little beauties. Love them and love them well, my friends.

3 french hens

Here are some update pics from our trip to Florida and miscellaneous 'around the house' photos.

Pictures from Aunt Bri:
Here is my beautiful niece Sammy...



and my handsome nephew Caleb...


and my cutie-patooty niece Autumn...


Around the house pictures:
I was laying on the nursery floor after moving too much furniture (ok, only 3 pieces but they had to be tried in every possible arrangement before i was satisfied with them and no, i could not wait until Trevor was home, honestly...) anyway, laying on the nursery floor in restful exhaustion and looked over at Zoe who was keeping me company. Her position/expression led to me bursting out laughing (which as you know it is 87% easier to laugh when you are lying on your back). Which led to this photoshoot....



love it.


Trev and I brought back these 2 soft stuffed soccer balls for Zoe and Mia. Mia immediately began tearing hers to shreds (her idea of "playing" with toys). So I walk in the room and see this...

what's funny about it is that it's Mia's mess but she left Zoe in there to take the blame. haha.

Pregnancy pictures:
ok, here is a much anticipated "belly shot". Actually I think this is the quintessential "pregnancy" picture.
All the critical elements are included
-laying on the bed...check
-wearing comfy clothes...check
-stuffing your face full of doughnuts...check



I had 2. and yes, they were delectable.

ok, that's a little bit of what's happening here. On the home front our countertops were NOT installed today as promised. We got a call Thursday that oh, by the way, they can't find that color anywhere in the country! Yea....so we went today and picked out another color, slightly darker which i'm not ecstatic about but was Trev's first choice (sidenote: i swear he has managed to get his way on EVERYTHING with this project. Tearing out the wall, redoing the drywall on the stairs...redoing the ceiling, placement and quantity of all outlets, appliances, countertops, cabinets you name it and it has miraculously worked out that we go with what Trevor picked out...not sure how that happened...) anyway. So, not sure when the countertops will be here but I made some strong suggestions about them rushing the shipping/production to account for their "oversight" with the other color. We'll see how effective that is.

ok, more updates and pics from vacation after i get the pictures off the other camera.

love to all, and to all a goodnight...