Exciting News!

After much prayer and months of waiting, we finally have an offer on our house in Louisville! Yippee! We received the offer late last night, countered today, and they accepted this afternoon! All that is left is the home inspection, and we are not anticipating any problems there. Hopefully we will close within the next month. What an answer to prayer it will be to have the house sold before the baby comes and I go on maternity leave! Thank you to all who have prayed for us over these last seven months. Please continue to pray that everything goes smoothly and that we will close soon. Thank you, Lord, for Your faithfulness and provision. What an Almighty, Sovereign God we serve!

Nursery Furniture... Part 2

Since Mark was on call today, I drove into Greenville to return the damaged nursery furniture. Unfortunately, I had a little surprise (and not a good one) waiting for me at Babies 'R Us. The man who had set aside the replacement furniture for us had acidentally set aside a white crib and white changing table instead of the chocolate brown color we had requested. Sadly they did not have the correct furniture for me to take home today and had to order the pieces. So, my trip into the big city the day before Christmas in the middle of a shopping frenzy did not have the happy ending I thought it would. We will have to return to Greenville whenever the pieces come in to pick up our furniture. The good news is that they did give us another discount for my troubles. Thus we are paying a good deal less than we had originally thought! I still don't think the discount is worth the aggravation, but at least it's something:) At least we're ahead of the game and not due for another four months! Merry Christmas!

Nursery Furniture

Mark and I purchased our nursery furniture last Saturday and picked it up in Greenville yesterday. Unfortunately, it was pouring down rain off and on all day. We borrowed a friend's truck and luckily Babies 'R Us wrapped our cardboard boxes in plastic to protect them from the rain. We made it back to Greenwood without mishap, but we had a surprise when we removed the plastic wrap. The crib box had some holes in it and actually looked like someone had stepped on the box and broken through the cardboard and Styrofoam packaging underneath. Here are a few pictures of the damage.


Obviously we were not very happy because they had wrapped it up in plastic wrap and not told us the box was damaged. So, after an hour's drive home, we discovered that one of the crib pieces below the holes was cracked all the way through! The dresser arrived undamaged so we thought we had better check out the changing table before calling Babies 'R Us today. It was a good thing we started putting it together. While all of the pieces were in perfect condition, one of the ends was missing two pre-drilled holes!

Luckily Babies 'R Us was great to work with and did not put up a fight for us to return the damaged pieces. They are holding a new crib and changing table for us. Unfortunately it is an hour's drive, and Mark does not have any days off until we come home for New Year's. Hopefully Mark can get them loaded into the Jeep, and I'll be able to exchange them on Christmas Eve (since I am off work and Mark is on call and will be at the hospital all day). We'll see. Here are pictures of what the furniture looks like. We had not planned on getting all three pieces but got a great deal and saved a lot of money. Yippee! They look black below but they are really a chocolate brown. Once we get them set up in the nursery we'll post pictures.

Growing...

Sorry I did not post a belly picture at 22 weeks. Here I am 22 1/2 weeks. The belly grows daily!

Christmas Decorations

Last Thursday Mark and I put up our Christmas tree and decorated our little balcony. With weather in the 70s it definitely does not feel like Christmas or December outside! We've done our best to get into the Christmas spirit and have even watched an old Christmas movie with friends- White Christmas. We had never seen it, and we both really enjoyed it. Here are a few pictures of our decorated home.

The Prego Belly is Growing...

I am trying to be better about staying on track with posting belly photos every week. Everyone at work tells me daily that it seems as if this belly just popped out- I predicted that it would happen like this. Here I am at 21 weeks. Enjoy! It grows every day!

21 weeks

Our little man is a very active fellow. Mark has been able to feel him kick and move for the past two weeks. He felt him for the first time over Thanksgiving weekend at my sister's house. I love the look of amazement that comes over his face each time he feels our son move around inside my belly. It truly is a wondrous feeling. God is so amazing! We just can't wait to meet our little man. The first half of our pregnancy has flown by! I'm over halfway now... April will be here before we know it!

Thanks Andy & Ashley

Today in the mail we received a coupon from Mark's cousin Andy and his wife Ashley for 15% off furniture at Babies R Us. We're planning on a trip to Greenville this weekend to buy some nursery furniture so this coupon is perfect! Thank you so much for sharing this special deal with us. Along with the coupon they sent us the cutest foooted onesie in blue dots (I just love polka dots). Thank you!

Gifts from Nana

Our little man received some clothes from his Nana today. It is so fun to get little boy clothes and caps. Here are some pictures of the goodies sent in the mail. Thank you, Nana!

Nursery Chair

While we were in for our brief visit over Thanksgiving, we were able to go to a store in Plainview Shopping center called USA Baby. They had all kinds of cute baby gifts, but we were most excited to find the chair we wanted on sale! We couldn't decide on the fabric so we ordered swatches to be sent to us here in SC. Well, after some thought we've finally decided and ordered our chair in "latte" microfiber- aka medium brown.We really wanted an upholstered rocker that we could use for a long time and that could function in our room once we no longer need it in the nursery (a long ways away). It's a bit of a splurge for us, but we know that it will be around for a very long time. Anyone who comes to visit us and our little man here in SC will get to try it out and see how comfortable it is. Here's a picture of it in a striped fabric but you can see what it looks like. Ours is a solid brown, not striped.

Ultrasound results

We had our ultrasound today - Beth's right at 20 weeks - halfway! The survey of baby's anatomy looked good, definitely growing on track. It is so amazing to see that little heart beating away and baby moving all over the place. Hands and feet with growing little fingers and toes are just awesome. What a blessing to see our child growing and developing well.

But that's probably not what you were looking to see.

After a little searching and convincing baby to move around a little the view was finally clear - we're going to have a boy!! We'll post ultrasound pictures when we can get them scanned. There's also video evidence of boy parts, but we're not savvy enough to get that transferred to the blog.

Here's also a new belly picture of Beth - she definitely popped out over the past weekend. Sorry for the delay to those of you requesting new belly photos, we'll try to stay more on track, especially now that it's growing a little more visibly.

20 weeks

Weekend Trip Home

We went home for a very quick weekend- we left at 1:30pm on Friday afternoon (after Mark finished his Thanksgiving night on call) and got back to South Carolina at 2:00am on Monday morning. Unfortunately Mark had to get up and be at the hospital by 7:00am! While the time home was definitely too short it was wonderful to see our parents and some of our family. We were so grateful for the lower gas prices:)

We went to my sister's on Friday night and played with our nephews and then stayed up way too late hanging out with my sister and brother-in-law. We were able to get up early with the boys and play Saturday morning before heading into Louisville. Here are a few pictures:

Lucas dressed up in the Thanksgiving outfit he made at school.

Knox and Lucas getting sleepy and both wanting to snuggle with Uncle Mark.

I was able to go to a baby shower on Saturday afternoon for Mark's cousin's wife, Ashley, who is due in January with a little boy. It was a sweet shower with a wonderful devotion on Godly parenting by Marcie (actually the wife of the minister who married us and did our premarital counseling). Her three recommendations were to: love the baby's heavenly Father, love the baby's earthly father (aka my wonderful husband), and to include the baby as part of our family but not make the baby the center of the family. She reminded us that having a child was not when our family started, but that it was when we were married that our family was formed. Our children are additions to our families not the basis for it. I really appreciated her simple reminders and can't wait for baby Puckett to get here!

Baby Puckett once again received a little something while we were at home- his or her first Cardinal blanket in support of the Louisville Cardinals from Mark's parents. I also received a surprise from my mom- a Willow Tree figurine. Here are some pictures:

Baby Puckett's first Cardinal apparel

Pregnant woman Willow Tree figurine from my mother, Nana.