thanksgiving

We didn't get to travel for Thanksgiving this year, but the weather was gorgeous and we made the rounds first to Nelia's house and then to Marie's. We had plenty of turkey and stuffing and all the fxins...but we did have to miss out on the festivities in Providence. Here are Ariana and Alison posing at the Rodrigues family gathering, photo courtesy of Mom. Can't wait to see everyone at Christmas.

Justin, bless his heart, has taken it upon himself to finish tiling our floor. I came home last night rejoicing to find several more rows laid. The fridge will be back in its rightful spot eventually!

We did venture down to Canton on Black Friday to do some baby shopping at Ikea. We got a crib and some other necessities, and I'll be going back with Denise in a few weeks to pick up a changing table and rug. Today I'm starting to feel the baby moving around more persistently... she's starting to kick, no question about that!

she's coming!

So I had my 20-week ultrasound yesterday, and... send in the pink, it's a girl! It was so cool seeing her little hands and feet squirming around. She has all her fingers and toes and is healthy, praise God, currently weighing in at just 12 ounces. Justin is particularly excited as he was hoping for a girl. Stephen W. has already offered to buy him a shotgun for when she starts dating. :-) Now Auntie Alison will have a human niece in addition to her canine one, and Uncle Pork Chop will have yet ANOTHER princess to spoil!

Seeing her in there made me realize that she is going to have to come out sooner or later. Now that I'm halfway through the pregnancy I guess it's time to start thinking about the end of it. I'm getting more and more excited all the time.

I'll post an ultrasound photo as soon as I get them scanned.

weekend houseguests

On Friday night, as we opened the garage door on our way over to church, we heard the smallest little meow and in ran a tiny little orange and white kitten! It couldn't have been more than eight or so weeks old.I scooped it up and it was purring like crazy and so, so cute. We decided to leave her in the garage until we could run to Meijer for some kitten food. As we shut the door, we heard another meow... and her brother ran out from behind the bushes! We scooped him up too and brought him inside, where he and his sister promptly snuggled up with me. We eventually made it out, and looked for any more siblings, but it seemed like those two were the only ones.

Eventually we made it back, armed with kitty food and a litter box. They were quite happy to get that chow. Even Matt thought they were cute when he walked in, which is saying a lot for someone who is definitely not a "cat person." Anyhow, we couldn't leave them in the cold garage, so we put Chelsea in her kennel and brought them down to the basement where they had their own little room for the night. They snuggled up together in Scrappy's castoff bed.

The next morning I went around the neighborhood trying to figure out if they belonged to anyone, but with no luck. By this point Justin and I had been playing with them and of course decided that we wanted to keep them... Chelsea and all. Of course that was wishful thinking, especially when we decided to "introduce" them to Chelsea who promptly started shaking - from fear or self control I'm not sure - and then bolted after the brother (thank goodness I had her on the leash.) Being too small to fend her off, we knew they didn't have a chance in the house. So... on Sunday afternoon we sent them off with Gerritt and Marcy to a nice new home with two other kitties to keep them company... sigh...

a breather

The last few weeks have been some of the busiest I think I've ever had. This week the pace should slow a bit, thank goodness - it will be very nice when holiday breaks come around.

I made my bass debut last night for evening church! Garrett lent me his formerly closet-bound bass and I spent a few hours practicing yesterday afternoon. Nothing funky yet, I assure you, but I did manage to produce extremely sore fingers and the ability to play a very basic bass line in the keys of G, E, and D major by the time I was done. Yay! I'm on my way to becoming the new Immanuel Baptist queen of funk! right... We did have another very exciting addition to worship last night. We have a new family at church and it turns out that Karl, the dad, is a really great guitarist. He brought his electric and jammed with us last night at practice. It's amazing... we prayed for musicians for so long and had none, and now they are coming out of the woodwork! His wife Leanne is also learning bass too. In addition to all of that, due to a really generous gift, we were able to buy a basic electric drumset for Mattie to play, finally! He wasn't able to play last night due to some incident with cutting down a tree, but he is so excited as we all are. All of a sudden we're going to have a real band, it's like God just dropped it right into our laps! Leave it to Him to put together the impossible. Of course the band will play just on Sunday nights initially as we had a few suspicious stares at the drumset Sunday morning, but gradual is good. I'm just so excited I can hardly stand it!