Newsworthy

Let this art teacher brag on her students for a moment - Yayyy! We're all so excited about our trip to Abilene later this month to check out the exhibit at The Grace and ACU's art department.

Big Floyd's Big Shower

First of all, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my wonderful mom, who is 52 today and still looks beautiful. I hope I inherit both my parents' aging genes...

I think it's time for a non-blob related post. This past weekend I went to Belinda's wedding shower in her hometown of Kaufman. Koby and I headed up a day early and spent the night with our friends Layne and Candace (Candace is also a bridesmaid in the wedding). It was really refreshing to visit friends and eat great food. I'm so excited for Belinda's wedding this summer! I am NOT excited for her to move to the Metroplex, although yeah, yeah I guess I'm happy for Clay that he has an awesome job or whatever.... still. People should move CLOSER to me, not farther away! Especially best friend people.

Here are some pictures from the shower including Belinda with her mom, sister-in-law, Clay's mom and step-mom, Belinda's house party and bridal party. And a pic of the blushing bride-to-be and her handsome beau, Clay. Also, a pic of Belinda opening what was approximately her fifth box of wine glasses. (Think I'll be visiting after the baby's born!)

The Secret of the Sonogram

Written inside this card and in the possession of Elizabeth Andrews is the GENDER of our first child!

We had our 'gender' sonogram today... I can't believe how much our little tot has grown! The first thing the technician said this morning once she got us going was "Here's a leg" and my immediate thought was "Um, how's that?" and I began to worry again that I would have no idea what the blobs on the screen were telling me. But THEN she showed us the baby's little head and I could SEE IT! He/she was wriggling around after some gentle encouragement from the technician and I could see it all - elbows, tiny feets, little legs and a round tummy. Personally, I'm still going with my first instinct, which is that our little blob is a wee little man. Koby, who has refused to guess until this point, asked one of his best men what he thought it was and decided to go with that opinion as fact. (So much for listening to a mother's intuition.)

But what do you think? Here's some headshots to get you thinking...

Rolly Poly, Daddy's Little Fatty

Here is the Blob in all its Bumpy glory. Since I'm wearing a dark shirt, I don't look as ginormous as I really am/feel. Believe it, I'm huge. This picture was taken yesterday, on Wednesday the 2nd. Today I am officially 20 weeks along, which means HALFWAY DONE Y'ALL! Or, as I tell my students, my baby is half-baked. One week from yesterday we'll have our gender-revealing sonogram... I can't wait to find out what the Blob is. Time is really flying.

Oh, and it's kicking! I think. The Blob is definitely doing something. I keep telling Koby "I think it's kicking! I think it's kicking!" and he has yet to rush over to see if he can feel it too. I asked him about this last night (I always imagined fathers-to-be are really enthused by this) and he confessed, "I think you just have gas or something." But I promise, people, it is NOT gas. The baby is moving.

Things have been really busy lately - one great thing that's happened is the Grace Museum's Youth Art Month show, which opened on the 1st and will hang until the 31st of this month. Twelve of my students have pieces in the show and they are EXCITED about it. Other students are very jealous and I have been receiving the 'cold shoulder' from a few whose pieces weren't selected (by me) to go to Abilene. The students have already been interviewed by a reporter from the local paper and we're hoping to take a trip to The Grace sometime this month to see their work while it's still up. I took some pictures of the opening - I think there were over 700 people there! And the band that played, comprised of AHS and CHS students, was awesome. Definitely something I wish my students could have all attended, but as we live about an hour away it just wasn't feasible.







This last picture shows a man looking at our school's artwork - you can't read the sign at the top but it says "COLORADO CITY HIGH SCHOOL" or something like that. A proud moment for a first-year teacher!

: - (

These things made me very sad/angry while watching the Super Bowl (and no, it wasn't Christina Aguilera's lyrical woes, nor was it how utterly awful Fergie's voice is)...

Whichever car commercial it was that advertised a new car that could be programmed to scream out streaming Facebook updates... wow.

The Best Buy 'buy back' program, which fosters our materialistic urges to the max.

Blaaaaaahhhh.

Hope the Blob likes Frosting

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN


THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON PREGNANCY



I feel that the above illustration and reference to early 90's television commercials should speak for itself, but in case you haven't gotten the hint, pregnancy is making me stupid.

On a daily basis I find myself forgetting things, losing things, jumbling words, confusing myself during conversations, and most likely confusing others who pity the poor crazy pregnant woman gibbering in circles and don't say so. Despite my deadened brain cells, frumpy appearance (maybe I'll do another blog about what pregnancy does to hair follicles) (and the fact that Koby accidentally threw away my last pair of contacts), and still the occasional upset stomach, I really do love being pregnant. I feel less wound-up about things, and even though I don't necessarily feel like 'myself', it's not in a negative way. (Remind me to read this entry next time I'm pregnant and still in my first trimester. Or maybe this pregnancy, in my third trimester.)

In other news, the above 'brain' became one part of a strawberry cake with cream cheese icing. On Friday the 'home economics' teacher (for lack of a better description, and actually I don't really know the accurate description) asked me be one of the judges for the cake decorating contest her classes were participating in. An innocent request, but I for one will tell you that it is hard for a pregnant woman to judge a contest involving food when 'judging' does not entail 'consuming'. And thus I found myself buying the ingredients for this sub-par cake. For future reference, strawberry cake mix out of the box is not as delicious as it may sound. But cream cheese icing out of the can is. Especially when slightly heated in the microwave and eaten with your fingers.

Look, "C" for cooking. Or Christie. Or craving.



Now, before you judge my prowess in the kitchen, I want to tell you a few things.

Thing 1: Icing a bundt cake is a risky business. There must be a trick. **Now that I have googled 'icing a bundt cake' I see that this 'trick' is to lazily drizzle icing over the top, which I believe is an ineffective use of scrumptious frosting. (This coming from a girl who has always hated frosting. And yes, if you must know, I am getting sort of fat. I only just stopped myself from eating a piece for breakfast, but only just.)

Thing 2. It's a bundt cake because I was mistaken in believing that we had cupcake pans, which was in fact my true craving. (I have also never been especially fond of cupcakes.)

Next time I want to get a lemon flavor. After I use the Funfetti mix I already bought.



I am really getting excited about the next few months - I know my stomach will *really* start to show AND we'll find out the gender of our little baby! At the same time, I'm trying to soak up this time before Blob makes his/her appearance, when I can still think of Koby as just 'husband' and not 'husband and dad'... although we've had over three years to ourselves, it's flown by and will forever be changed before we know it. It's hard to believe that just a little bit over 7 months ago we weren't yet married, we had no idea where we would be living, I didn't have my job and I had never even heard of Colorado City. And now we are living in a beautiful house, I love my job, we love being married AND we're having a baby? I have to pinch myself when I stop and consider how much we've been blessed in such a short amount of time.

*** Ahem, an addendum. ***
Koby doesn't remember the "Your Brain on Drugs" commercials and scoffed when I said, "Maybe you're too young..." (I am two years older.) After consulting Wikipedia, I have decided that the commercials ran for a few years after their debut in 1987 (how much t.v. was I watching as a 2-3 year old? Apparently, a lot) and this is why Koby (b. 1988) does not remember them, but I (b. 1986) do. Here is a link to one of the commercials for those who need a reminder, who need to see it for the first time, and for those who would like to take a trip down memory lane.

Little Sister on TV

Perhaps one of the last pictures where I am still taller than my sister. Melissa has been interviewed a lot lately for her accomplishments on and off the court. I'm so proud!

Click here to watch a recent t.v. story about her.

Inches of Ice

Hello, first snow of 2011 and first snow of this entire winter. I can't believe on Saturday it was around 75 degrees outside. In fact, it was so hot it made me feel sick after standing in the sun and "helping" Koby put up part of our new privacy fence. This cannot be a good omen for what is to come as my belly grows, as does the nasty summer temperature.

Koby and I were both supposed to work today, but after slipping and sliding around on inches of solid ice before even getting to the interstate, we decided it just wasn't worth it. Koby is the designated sub for the Ag teacher, who will be gone for most of February to stock shows. I feel a little bit guilty because I had NOTHING set up for a substitute, but my students are (fairly) trustworthy, and the ones that are actually there (no bus routes today) should know exactly what to do.

Speaking of the students, they finally know the big Blob News. Turns out there were 'rumors' going around that I was having a baby among the student body, and some guys (too chicken to ask me) finally broke down and asked Koby during second period last Friday. After being assaulted by not-so-covert 'Congratulations' from some self-satisfied students who finally were "in the know", I told my own classes. Their reactions were among the most dramatic of anyone we've told yet - there was applause, gasping, and literally shouting when they were told about the baby. Many were audibly disgruntled that I had not told them when I first found out in November ("You LIED to us, Mrs. Andrews, you LIED! How could you do that? How could you not want to tell us the moment you knew?"), most were deeply offended that they wouldn't be invited to any family baby showers/parties and insisted that we have parties at school, including a replica of the 'Gender Revelation' party we are planning for March, and all began asking uncomfortably personal questions so as to make educated predictions about the gender of the baby. (If they guess right, they receive bonus points on... something. I haven't decided yet and they were too excited to ask.) They are very curious to know about the symptoms I am experiencing, how much I have vomited to date, and what we will name the baby (all are suggesting their own names). Every class period demands to be the very first to know the gender of the baby - it all feels nice. It's good to feel supported (in a manner of speaking) by my students. Through their ridiculous requests ("Bring your baby to school!") I hear, "I care". Maybe I'm reading too much into the hoopla, but I'll keep hold of my wishful thinking.

Koby says no one will read this entry because it's too long, so with the aim of brevity, I'll leave you with this picture of our new (built in 1925) house in Colorado City. More to come!

The Best Things in Life were Made in the 80s (or 70s)

Let me just begin this blog by telling you what I thought was a story worthy of Paul Harvey.

Driving home from work a few days ago, I was about to pull onto our street when I noticed a coffee mug lying tilted on the pavement by the curb. I've always heard and read about single shoes left stranded on the side of the road, but in my 24 years of living I have yet to see a specimen of these alleged shoes and wonder why so many people talk about this phenomenon, when I have never seen any evidence to support these 'unique' occurences. I see weirder things, like ceramic mugs. I even thought to myself, "How weird," and then realized that the strange mug on the side of the road was a strange Andrews-household mug on the side of the road. Being the thriving metropolis Sweetwater is, I checked the speeding traffic (there was none) and put my car into reverse, picked up the mug and took it home. How did this mug come to be filled with dirt and resting atop the pavement on a road that is relatively speaking, not that near to our house? I asked Koby about it, and we discovered that he had been using a mug in his truck (coffee addict that he is), but neither of us have any idea how it came to be outside of his truck, much less how the glass sustained a trip from any height (probably thrown from a moving vehicle at speed, if you have any experience in riding with Koby) to the pavement.

Let me tell you a little bit more about our mug. It is part of a Noritake collection that was given to Koby and me by my parents, who registered for and received the set when they themselves were married in January of 1980. I feel certain that this is evidential proof that things were made better back in the day; music, people (yours truly is a product of the particularly good year 1985), and yes, even coffee mugs.

In other news, I have been slacking and have not told you about another Grace Academy experience. I taught a holiday camp at the Grace Museum on January 3rd. It was fun and I feel like our projects were for the most part successful. We made silhouettes on shaving-cream marbelized paper, embossed metal encaustics (yeah, with 1st-5th graders!), cork/wire sculptures, and custom magnets. Here are some of the fruits of our day-long labor. (Sorry for the picture quality - my pregnant brain forgot to bring the camera on this particular day and I was forced to use my iPhone.)











If you have kids anywhere from 1st - 6th grade ages, or know people who do and live in the Abilene area, you should definitely check out the camps that the Grace Museum offers. Not only do they bring in, ahem, phenomenal teachers, they have a great, safe set up and I yet to meet a Grace camper who did not enjoy themselves during their stay.

In Blob news, I have been incorrect in some of my reportings. Eager as I was to end my first trimester, I did not pay attention to my baby books/apps... I am NOW beginning the final week of the &$@#!@# first trimester. Needless to say, I am eagerly anticipating the "renewed energy levels" and cessations of "normal levels of nausea/morning sickness" that the second trimester is fabled to bring. I have started having dreams about actually delivering babies (in plural, yes. I imagine this to be because I do not know the gender yet, and so in my dreams I have boy babies and girl babies) in addition to other, um, interesting dreams, all of which is indicated "normal" in my copious amounts of pre-natal literature. For instance, last night I dreamt about wizard cats that tried to kill me with the dreaded 'avada kedavra' bite. Although this is not a far cry from normal for me, I have (in my pre-pregnancy) dreamt about evil vampire-spider-cats...

Also, we are moving to the BEST house in Colorado City on February 1st. We feel like we have won the lottery of houses. Maybe I am building it up too much, but you will see what I mean when we post pictures in posts to come...

Fawns and Foxes

Koby is on a varmint hunt this weekend, so I pulled my easel out of the closet and set to work on some paintings for the blob's nursery. Not completely happy with them (lately I feel like the blob has been draining my creative energy - do we have a little artist on our hands?) but it felt really good to paint.

In case of XY chromosomes:



In case of XX chromosomes: