Aryanna Lashay Marie

Yesterday morning at 11:09am the world became a little more beautiful! My niece FINALLY arrived. She weighed in at 7lbs 5oz and was 20.5 inches long, she has a very little bit of blonde hair and her eyes are blue! When my nephew, Davin, was born I was a bit of a chicken and didn't watch the birth, I waited in the waiting room down the hall once the pushing part started. But for some reason yesterday I was completely intrigued and wanted to watch the whole thing. Start to finish, I was there (and my eyes were open the whole time). My mom laughs because when the doctor and nurses would tell Shynika to push, I would push too! I guess I thought I was helping! Her delivery was grueling, Aryanna was "sunny side up" meaning her face was up instead of down and it made her entry into our lives a little more difficult. She also had some issues earlier in the morning, she had a bowel movement inside the uterus, which can be pretty serious. But, the nurses were prepared and as soon as she was out they were suctioning her lungs and airways to remove all of the meconium. They were very successful and she didn't even have to spend anytime in the NICU.

She is absolutely perfect and we couldn't be more excited that she is finally here! Mom and baby are both doing great and are expected to get to go home on Wednesday. Big Brother, Davin, just wants to give her kisses!

Q: Where Have I Been?

A: Drowning in this move!

We closed on the house last Tuesday, 8 days ago, and in that short amount of time I seem to have misplaced my life. Luckily, I have a super considerate supervisor and she allowed me to have 2 days off last week to work on house stuff. So, Tuesday and Wednesday I worked much harder than I would have if I had spent the day in the office. Tuesday I painted the kitchen, clean the dishwasher, refrigerator, oven and all of the kitchen cabinets (which I plan to paint soon). On Wednesday, our mothers came to the rescue! Instead of being there by myself for 12 hours I was blessed with the company of Keil's mom and mine. We worked nonstop and actually got a big chunk of stuff accomplished: painted the living room, stairways and hallway upstairs, primed our master bedroom (because Keil wanted to paint it red) and did a ton of cleaning. That evening, Keil and our dad's moved furniture in...that is where it got a little crazy!
In the beginning of this whole house buying process, we decided that we would work on the house and get the majority of the stuff accomplished before moving in a single thing! The original timeline went something like this: closing date, April 30, cleaning and painting until all rooms are ready for move-in (tentatively May 15) and THEN move-in, unpack and live happily ever after! Well, at least it was a good plan! Here is the way it has actually gone: closing date April 27, painting of 2 rooms and living room/dining room furniture moved in along with millions of boxes on April 28...continuous work and moving and unpacking to date! Me losing my mind April 30...I know we will make it but sometimes the craziness is more than I can handle. I just want to know where all of my stuff is and that it is accessible at all times. Is that too much to ask?
We actually spent our first night there on Friday (April 30)...on our mattress in the living room floor. Being a split level house, the stairway going down to our bedroom is not tall enough for our box spring to fit so we've had to special order a queen size, double box spring. They estimate delivery early next week. So for now, our mattress in on the floor in our bedroom (I could only take the mattress being in the living room for 2 days).
The puppies are adjusting well. Toby and Jenna were a little skeptical of the stairs for a day or so, they would just stand there and look at us like we were crazy! Levi never had that problem...he's been full blast since day 1. He even made a new friend, we call him Charlee. He's the cutest little dog and has been camped out on our deck since Saturday...maybe we'll keep him because he and Levi are like 2 peas in a pod!
Little by little it is starting to look like a home and I couldn't be more glad! We took the cover off of the pool on Sunday and have been cleaning leaves and whirly birds out of it ever since. Maybe we'll actually get to open it soon...that'll definitely help my sadness about the chaos! Last night I hung curtains in our bedroom and living room but I refuse to hang them elsewhere until those rooms are painted (only 4 more rooms to go!)
Tonight's task: Paint Master Bath and hopefully I can coax Keil into helping so it will not take as long!
Anyway...here is the new casa (well, the outside anway) More pics to come, I promise!

A FULL PLATE...

This week has been crazy, just absolutely crazy! I feel like every time I turn around someone has added 9 different things to my "to-do" lists.

Yes, I'm a list person: I have a list at work on my desk, one in my planner, and one at home. I seem to be neglecting all of them this week because there are very few check marks next to items on the list. Work is picking back up, all at once! And I'm totally not ready for the events that are upcoming. This week, I'm starting a new program, planning a Girl Scout Camp Clean up Day on Sunday, putting together an awards ceremony, working with Relay for Life and have a mega fundraiser tomorrow night Desserts First on top of my regular things! WHEW! On the bright side, there will be some pretty tasty desserts on display tomorrow night at our fundraiser. We invite local chefs to create a one of a kind dessert using a Girl Scout cookie of their choice as the main ingredient, they put them on display and individuals and businesses purchase tickets to come and see what talented chefs we have in our area. We also have a silent auction and this year some of the items are amazing (2 plane tickets from Southwest Airlines, UK Football tickets, a weekend getaway in the mountains). Here are a few pics from last years event:Don't they look good? I can't wait to see what's in store for us tomorrow night!

On top of all the things going on at work, we're planning a baby sprinkle for my nephew's mom. My niece will be here before we know it! The sprinkle is on April 25th, hopefully, Aryanna will stay in her momma's belly until at least after 4pm on that day! Her actual due dates is May 13 but we don't think we're gonna make it that far. I'm so excited for both the sprinkle and the arrival...but gosh, it's been a lot of work!

Wedding stuff has been put off and put off...because quiet frankly, I had other, more pressing things to get to! Now, we are less than 6 months away and I feel like there is so much left to do. I MUST meet with a florist, asap! But, I cannot seem to find the time...say a little prayer to help me find the time and get that taken care of. In addition to that, we have to select music and finalize about a bazillion other details!

Oh, and did I mention that we're moving?!?

I'm so thankful that we've found a house that we both agree on (which was like finding a needle in a haystack!) and we could actually afford it but, I'll just add it to my list of stuff to do! I've been trying to pack some of the things that we don't regularly use but evening finding the time to do that is hard and then finding a place to store all of these packed up boxes is a whole other story! My computer room looks like box cityWe are supposed to close on the 20th, and hopefully, we will. We'll get immediate possession, so that's a plus and we can start painting. We're hoping (and planning) to paint before moving things in...maybe it's just wishful thinking though!

Just pray for my sanity and that all of this craziness slows down and we can get a handle on things soon!

Finally Friday

This week has been soooo lloooonnnggg! Things at work are starting to slow down a little, for now anyway, it's Spring Break time so if the kids aren't in school, no Girl Scout duties! I've been in the office for 5 days straight and that usually never happens. It's been hard to sit at my desk all day knowing that outside is a beautiful, sunny sky and 75 degree temps! I made it to Friday though, thank goodness!
I'm so excited for the weekend though, it's my handsome nephews first Easter. He really isn't big enough to do the whole egg hunt thing but he will surely be dressed to a T! Mom and I got him a cute little romper last weekend, it isn't very "Eastery" but something he can wear all summer, if he doesn't grow out of it.
Keil and I have planned dinner for tonight at the newest restaurant in Madisonville, #9, which is so good! If you haven't had a chance to check it out yet, you definitely need to!
Hope you all have a bright and sunny weekend :)

MMMMM...GOOD!

So today, instead of taking my lunch hour I took "dessert hour". One of my best friends, Kali, was in town for a lunch meeting and we decided to have dessert together after she was finished with work for the day. Kali said, "dessert is what you have with your pregnant friend instead of drinks!" So true! But one of these days we'll be having drinks again...probably not at 1pm on Wednesday but you get the point.

We decided on Fridays because they have great dessert and that's where Kali wanted to go (in my experience, you just don't question the pregnant lady) There desserts are huge so we decided to share but we got two:

The Brownie Obsession, which is a warm brownie covered in Ghirardelli chocolate-fudge sauce, vanilla ice cream, crushed pecans and carmel sauce...YUM!

And the Vanilla Bean Cheesecake. It's made with vanilla beans and layered with white chocolate mousse and shavings and has a vanilla graham cracker crust. And it looked just like picture with the chocolate drizzle and a strawberry....OH, SO GOOD!

A Big Day for Our Big Day

Yesterday was a big day for wedding planning. And, I'm rather excited about it so I thought I'd share my excitement with bloggerland.
Here is what I accomplished:
Booked our DJ

Decided on our wedding cake (my meeting with the cake lady is at 2pm on Saturday)

Registered at The Gift Horse

Ordered prints of our engagement pics from http://www.abrewerphotography.blogspot.com/

Received our first wedding gift (2 of the cutest single initial monogrammed tumblers)This is an example but the stitching is in black and of course it has a C instead of the T

The thing I'm most proud of is deciding on a cake,I never knew how tough that was going to be! Keil and I looked online for several different cakes that we like, we then narrowed it down to 4.
My favorite:

His favorite:

And two others we both liked:

Since neither of us were really giving any ground I decided to solicit some help from my wonderful bridesmaids (and my mom). I emailed all 4 cakes to all 4 ladies and 3 out of the 4 voted for Keil's cake...mine was a close second followed by the square/round combo cake. The more I looked at it, the more I decided that I really did like it too! It was everything we said we wanted, simple and classic! As I kept flipping from one cake to the other I realized I didn't really like the quilt-like pattern on the round cake and I wasn't a huge fan of the broach on the bow. Yep! I was starting to lean towards Keil's cake too :) So, I asked my mom...knowing that she would have my back! If she voted for the round cake then, that would be it, we would get the round cake! She took one look and said, the first one...the first one was Keil's cake. How in the world could 5 of the most important people in my life choose his cake?!? So, I started thinking and here is what I've decided. This is going to be our wedding cake:

With our monogram of course! The more I looked at it the more I fell in love with it. I love the dots on each layer and the ribbon at the bottom of each layer. We may move the monogram from the bottom to the 3rd layer but haven't decided yet. It will be a chocolate cake with either a Bourbon chocolate truffle filling or a simple dark chocolate filling, iced with butter cream icing (I hate fondant...it's pretty but tastes horrible! Sorry to those of you who had fondant icing)

Hope you all have a fabulous day!

I saw this cute little post on my future sister-in-law, Kelsey's, blog and just had to steal it from her. So here we go...

If I were a month, I'd be October
If I were a day of the week, I'd be Saturday
If I were a time of the day, I'd be 7pm
If I were a planet, I'd be Saturn
If I were a sea animal, I'd be a sea horse
If I were a direction, I'd be south
If I were a piece of furniture, I'd be my oversized chair (gosh, I love that chair!)
If I were a liquid, I'd be sweet tea
If I were a gemstone, I'd be a diamond
If I were a tree, I'd be a Cherry Tree

If I were a tool, I'd be a shovel
If I were a flower, I'd be a gerber daisy
If I were a kind of weather, I'd be cool and crisp
If I were a musical instrument, I'd be a guitar
If I were a color, I'd be blue
If I were an emotion, I'd be bliss
If I were a fruit, I'd be a cherry
If I were a sound, I'd be the rolling ocean waves

If I were an element, I'd be oxygen
If I were a car, I'd be a zoom-zoom!
If I were a food, I'd be ravioli
If I were a place, I'd be a beach
If I were a material, I'd be cashmere
If I were a taste, I'd be sweet
If I were a scent, I'd be fresh vanilla
If I were an object, I'd be a picture frame
If I were a body part, I'd be ears
If I were a facial expression, I'd be a sly little grin
If I were a song, I'd be Just Another Day in Paradise
If I were a pair of shoes, I'd be a pair of black pumps!