"Face of God" by Dave and Jess Ray

This is song and video created by two of our friends Dave and Jess Ray. They just released their latest album a little over a week ago and their music is truly amazing and challenging. Check out their website for the cd and listen to a few of their songs:

http://www.daveandjessray.com/

If you would like a copy, just let me know and I will arranged that for you. You will love it!

Thank you Dave and Jess for putting your thoughts out there to challenge us!

Maternity Pictures: Thank You Larra!

Two weeks ago, Brent and I had the privilege of Matt and Larra (Brent's brother and his wife/my college roommate) to come to Houston and take our maternity pictures. She is a wonderful photographer and truly captures the moment. Thank you Matt and Larra for coming and taking the time to capture this time in our lives as we are awaiting Cole's arrival. We all have been through so much together and I am glad we are able to share this special moments with one another through college, dating, engagement, marriage, and now starting families. How exciting! I am so excited for Brody and Cole, not just to be cousins, but great friends. We love our little nephew very much! Thank you again!

Here are a few of my favorites:

If you need a photographer, then I highly recommend Larra and her work. She is amazing at what she does with a camera. She also is a designer and would love to work with you for your next event. Just check out her web sites:

LPDesignz

Photo Blog

Stationary Shop

Here is Maci!

Here is Maci catching her frisbee over Memorial Day Weekend in Tulsa.

30 Weeks Down...10 More To Go!

30 Week Update:

I am officially in my 3rd and final trimester now, well for a few weeks now. It has passed so quickly it is unreal. Cole is so much more active then my last post which is very exciting and sometimes a little painful, but it is totally WORTH IT! I am looking forward to the day to meet him face to face and I know Brent is as well.

My last appointment at the doctor was yesterday. Just a regular appointment of weighing and measuring. I am going every 2 weeks now and then at 36 weeks I believe I start going every week. I have had a few dizzy spells over the last few weeks and headaches so I told my doctor about all that and she wants me to change my diet in the morning as far as what I am eating for breakfast since they mainly happened in those early hours. Hopefully, that will help, but if not then I will talk to her again about it.

Growing Up with Pets

(this is us with Maci last October)

If you don't know, then we have a dog and her name is Maci. She is a great friend to have around and very playful, but we are trying to get her familiar with the idea of her not being our only "child" anymore. I know this may sound silly but it is very serious. For the most part, she is a very well-behaved dog, perfectly house-trained, until she decided to not like me anymore. That was about a month ago now. She started acting out in the house while we were gone. And not just once, but more like 6 times! We thought something was wrong with her because it was so out of character. I did for about a second think "maybe she is acting out because I am pregnant" but I quickly thought it couldn't be that, surely. Well we took her the vet and had some bloodwork done and everything came back perfectly fine. I mentioned my thought to the vet and he said that dogs can sense the hormonal changes and possibly hear the baby's heartbeat and be reacting to it all. Wow! That's crazy but so what had to be happening. Brent and I decided that I would have to pay more attention then I normally did to her and let her relax more with me on the couch more. So I have and she was still standoffish for awhile but has been slowly warming back up to me. I am glad. It was kinda sad not to have my dog not like me anymore. I expected it to be an adjustment when Cole "actually" came home with us but now, already, I was not ready for that, but am glad she is doing better. Check this web site out:

http://www.growingupwithpets.com/

Belly Shot Update

Me at 30 weeks exactly. I feel like I am growing everyday now!

Cole's Room Update

Cole's crib with his bedding...I think I am supposed to turn the bumper the other way. Does anyone know for sure?? And the curtains are up too!

Cole's bookshelf with lots of little things already on it. I am in Tulsa for the weekend right now and am going to bring home some of my books from my childhood that I think Cole will enjoy.

24th Week Update

Just wanted to give you a short update about what we have been doing and what is happening with Cole. We had our last appointment this past Friday afternoon. I have not been feeling Cole move around too much or like everyone said I "should be" but the doctor said that is nothing to worry about that it is still early to be feeling him all the time or even everyday.

We had an exciting moment this morning: Brent felt him for the first time! So his movements are getting a little stronger if he can feel him. He went to his first Astros game today and we had a few loud people around us and the general noise from the game so he was kicking me alot. It is so funny to me that he can already react to noise like that.

We have been working on his room some more last weekend and this weekend, so below are the latest updates. We are almost finished. I still have not completely decided what we are going to do above his crib and bookshelf yet, so that is still to come.

His bedding (it's construction trucks)

(notice the lamp shade here)

Remodeling Take 2

We have been really busy around our house this last month. We are spending our time preparing our home for Cole. There are lots of projects we want to do, but we had to sit down one night and decide which were top priority before his big arrival in July. I have included lots of pictures in this post so everyone can see what we have been up to, mostly in slide shows. I included one for each major project.

First, here is my latest belly shot. I am at 22 weeks and 3 days today. I am feeling well for the most part. Some nights I wish for a little more sleep but I guess you can look at it as I am being prepared for less sleep in the future? I like a lot of sleep so preparing me for less is probably a good thing. :)



By request (from awhile ago, sorry Cliff), here is the finished product in our master bath for the time being. We would LOVE glass doors, but glass is pricey and other projects needed to be finished first. So for now, we just have a regular shower curtain. Click here to see the master bath remodel complete slide show.

The three main projects we have finished over the last month include the guest bath, replacing the carpet, and Cole's room. When we bought this house we knew it was going to need alot of work, so slowly and we had some extra cash, we have been doing these projects.

The guest bath was an easy one to complete. We had tile left over from the master bath, enough and some to complete the guest bathroom and all the materials that were needed for tiling, so no expense there. We have a wet saw, but with all the work done in the master it required a new blade, we replaced the trim board (some of which was left over from the master), and replaced the old toilet. There were sliding doors on the tub which we took down for the baby and just in general they were dangerous. I won't mention some of the injuries that happened but they needed to come down. When we were looking for a curtain for the master at Ross, I ended up not finding one for that bathroom but the guest bath instead! That was super! It was striped which I love and pulled in all my existing colors in the bathroom. Perfect!

The new carpet was a must and one of the only projects so far we have not completed ourselves or with help from our family. We decided to have this one done for us. We just got it yesterday and it is beautiful!! I love it! Brent picked it out and it is perfect and it fit our budget! If you have not been to our house before, then you will see in the pictures and one of the reasons it needed replacing. It was old, green, and nasty. The second and more important reason to us, (I mean green was a HUGE reason) but we bought the house from smokers. We have done a lot over the last 2 years to remove the smell, but removing all of the flooring will help even more. I don't really smell it anymore, but if we have been out of town for awhile or when there was carpet in our bathroom/closets we could really smell it in our clothes. We did not want to bring Cole into that. It is not good for our health but more so his, and he will be crawling around on the carpet way more then we will be or did until he arrives.

On to Cole's room! This was a two weekend and week between kind of project that was just for the walls! While Brent laid the tile, I started taking all the wallpaper/"hairy" material off the walls. It looked like the stuff on cubicle walls to me. Fine for an office, not for Cole's room, but also another thing that would hold in smoke. This material was in almost every room in the house when we bought it and this was the last room we had to complete and the only room out of all of them that we did not have to TEXTURE! What a blessing! We have gotten pretty good at the texturing business, but it was awesome not having to do that step too. We wanted to get all the messy work complete before the carpet came in so we could make a mess and not worry about it, because stripping wallpaper is a dirty job. Then when Brent was finished tiling, we switched projects. He started peeling the paper backing and I started painting the guest bath. I finished that up and went back to Cole's room. There are so many steps to take to get the walls ready to paint: tearing down the wallpaper, peeling the backing, scrubbing off the glue, washing with vinegar, and then finally priming. The vinegar was for the smoke, a tip I picked up from Larra's mom, Tina. My parents came for Easter weekend and help us alot with the priming and painting. My dad primed early Friday morning and painted all the trim for me. He did not want me on the ladder and the fumes from the primer were too much for me to take in. He also knows how particular I am so he worked very hard at getting the edges just perfect for me. It looks great dad, thank you! We definitely have more work to do in Cole's room and updates will come but the walls were the major project that needed to be conquered before he join us at home. We will keep you updated on the progress of his room and post new pictures.

(If you scroll over the pictures, then it should show the caption.)

The Guest Bath:

New Carpet:

Cole's Room Remodel:

134 days to go or 19 weeks...

Our appointment was moved to FRIDAY instead of this morning, how awesome was that. It was fun because we were able to surprise our family with the news we are having a BOY!!

His name is Cole Allen Palermo!!

We would love for each of you to call him by name and pray for him by name. We have 19 weeks to full-term and my doctor said she does not let it go past 41 or 42 weeks but hopefully he will be on-time or a few days early. We are anxious to meet him face to face but we also want him to be fully healthy and developed before making his debut.

The doctor said for the most part everything looked great. He was moving around so much that is was hard for her to hear any more then 3 heartbeats at a time but she was okay with that. He is very active in there, but I probably will not be feeling him for a few more weeks still. Please pray for his health. The doctor did mention she something in his heart, I think, that she referred to as Trisomy 21, which is Downs Symdrome. She did not say Cole has Downs, but that there is a 1 in 5000 chances that he does. She said she sees it all the time in normal babies and babies with downs. She asked us if we were freaked out by that and if so then she could do an Aminosynthesis test to know right now, but there is a 1 in 200 chance of miscarriage with that test just to know now. Either way it would not change our minds from having Cole, so it was not worth the risk to me or Brent to have that test done to just know right now. Please pray for good health for Cole and pray for us as we prepare for his arrival this summer.

Here are a few pictures from our visit that we wanted to share with everyone. It was so amazing to see him moving around so much and that we could see his little features already. Our first picture of him was a tiny little black dot.

(Cole's profile at 20 weeks and 3 days.)

(His hand waving at us.)

(He likes sucking his thumb already. Super cute!!)

(His arms and legs moving fast.)

I have been tagged...

10 years ago:
I was in 8th grade. It was my first year in Tulsa, Oklahoma and a bit of a rough one. That was a hard age to move, but once I got settled in, I loved and still love Tulsa. I had some really great times there and met some wonderful people, who I still think about often and try to see when I go back and visit. Was I cool? I don't know. I probably thought I was cool. :) We were the only kids in the school. It was called the 8th Grade Center, so it was nice in the sense that was my class and it was easier to meet people since I was new, but the building on the other hand, we considered a prison. There were not any windows in the whole building except for in the commons area, so my friends and I always sat in the table closest to the door at lunch. Okay that was random, but where I was 10 years ago.


Things on my to do list today:
At work: get all my accounts payables in so I can get checks ran and mailed out
After work before Brent gets off: probably a nap in the Jeep (we carpool if you don't know that)
At home: help Brent demo the guest bath so we can start tiling on Friday

What would I do if I was suddenly became a Billionaire?
Invest in retirement, set-up college funds for our future child/children's education, give to the Church, pay off our cars and home.

Three of my bad habits:
1. Always thinking my way is the best way...it's not...

2. Over planning sometimes and then being disappointed when it doesn't go as plan. I need to remember it is not always my plan that is the best plan.

3. My addiction to chapstick. I am so serious about this. I have used the same kind since 10th grade, can't use any other or my lips freak, and can't go even ONE day without using it. Brent has now resorted to ordering online for me because it is rare to find it in stores.

Five jobs I have had:
First job, TCBY at the Woodland Hills Mall, Tulsa

Second, Dizzy's Play Place, like Discovery Zone, I was the kitchen manager, Tulsa

Third, Pepper's Grill, waitress, Tulsa

Fourth, Loupot's Bookstores, College Station, where I met my husband :)

Fifth, YMCA, internship for college, Houston

Five things people don’t know about me:
1. I moved every year or sometimes every semester in college, even if it was just across the yard.

2. My first car was a red Ford Ranger that I named Roxy. It had some character and a very decorated ceiling. I could have lived in that car.
3. I have never had a dream job in mind such as an astronaut like most little kids. I truly have always and only have wanted to be a mom, so that is my dream job. Yes, I went to college for an education because I had that desire and God does grant our desires but maybe not always in our time frame, but it was hard to choose a major when I knew all I have ever really wanted was to be a wife and mother first. I am thankful to be at that point in my life.
4. Brent was the one and only guy I dated in college and that was not until the middle of my junior year.

5. I graduated from A&M in 3.5 years.

Sorry some of these you may know, but it is hard to come up with stuff.

I tag: Larra

MOVEMENT!

I just felt the baby move for the first time! How exciting! Just wanted to share with everyone!!

"RC" is growing and so I am...

(18 weeks and 5 days)


Not much to update. We go back to the doctor on the 17th and find out if we are having a boy or a girl. We are so excited to know and finally be able to call our baby by his or her name. I really have no idea at this point what we are having. I had one of those dreams in the very beginning that you don't really remember all the details and we were having a girl. But about 2 weeks or so ago, I had another dream and it was one I do remember and it was so real. It was about our next appointment and we were having our ultrasound and it was a boy and his name was used in the dream. WOW. I really don't know what to think about that, so I am just waiting and will be happy and thankful either way.

We did lots of shopping this weekend. We are trying to get things around our house that need to be done before the baby comes and we weren't planning on getting this yesterday, but we bought the baby's crib!! I am so excited!! I made a budget last week about all the things we were going to be doing and everything we did yesterday came in UNDER budget! God is so good to provide our needs.