It's a boy!!!!!

Well, sorry for the delay in posting!  We've had lots going on....

First is we found out on Thursday, May 21st that we're having a baby boy!!!!!!  We weren't supposed to find out until this week, but the sonographer hooked us up last week.  I went to the doctor because I was having some SERIOUS upper abdominal pain... they did a sono of my stomach, liver, pancreas, gall bladder, etc.  Thankfully everything looked OK, so it was probably a horrible stomach bug combined with my body reacting to coming off the Vicodin too quick.  After he was done, we asked if he could tell us the sex of our baby a week early... he said "Sure!"  Our son's legs were WAY up by his head and he was showing off his package!  :)  So needless to say, it was obvious!  My motherly instincts were correct.  YES!!!!!  By the way, he's a very active little child.  I have felt some serious kicking this past week and love feeling it everytime!  (and some hard core indigestion too... little stinker!)

Name for our little boy.... we are about 99% sure of our name, but Carson is hesitant to tell everyone yet.  He keeps saying "he will have that name forever.... what if he doesn't like it.... its a lot of pressure to give him a name.... are we sure that's what we like..."  and on and on.  Well, I love the name we've picked, but when he says it's ok, I'll tell everyone on this blog and Facebook.  Until, just wait patiently like I am.  :)

Of course, after we told our families and close friends... I started looking online for fun baby boy stuff!  Haven't decided on anything yet but definitely getting some ideas.  I found a crib with my mom in Longview that I really like, so I'll talk to Carson more when he gets back from fishing with my dad on the Louisiana coast.  Haven't found bedding I like so I'm leaning towards my mom and I making it.  We'll see.  

I've been in Marshall since Friday spending some wonderful, much needed time with my mom.  I also loved having my cousin's wife, Cara, and their daughter, Madeline, and my niece, Ava stay with us for the past few days... loved the girl time!  We even went to see Carson's grandparents in Carthage for a nice lunch and to tell them that we're having a boy.  My mom has been babysitting me for the past few days and doing a great job!!  

Carson is coming to get me tomorrow, stay Wednesday night in FW, go to the doctor Thursday morning, then off to Kerrville for Andrew's graduation.  Last high school graduation for Carson's parents!!!!!  I'm really excited to visit the fam in the hill country.  I have some cute pictures from the past few weeks, but Carson has the camera with him in Louisiana so I'll post later.

Many of you have been asking about my ol' right leg.  Well, I still don't have a "name" for that rod in my leg.  Any suggestions?  It's ok.  Not great, but better everyday.  I still have pain when it's not at least waist level, but if it's up it doesn't hurt too bad.  I'm able to get around slowly, if someone else drives me, and hobble around on my crutches.  Good thing my belly isn't too big right now!  :)  Only 5-6 more weeks hopefully...

Last bit of good news actually happened a couple weeks ago!  I accepted a pediatric nurse practitioner job to start after I graduate.  I'm so excited!!!!  I will start after I pass my national exams, so that will be September at the earliest or January after my maternity leave.  The new job will unfortunately not be in the oncology department where I've been for 4 years... but it's still at Cook Children's in the pre-operative department.  I know it's going to be a great first job as a PNP, assessing kids before scheduled surgeries.    One prayer is answered.... now just keep Carson in your prayers.  He's still looking for a job, but we have faith that the Lord has something in store for him in the near future.  My prayer, if you so wish to join me... is for Carson to find a job by the end of June!  I'm praying expectingly for Carson to have a job by then!  We have lots of people praying for us and know that the Lord hears us.  So, we double-dog-dare you to join us in that prayer!?!?!?!?

Happy Mother's Day!!!

First off, Happy late Mother's day to all of those mommies out there!! (even expecting ones like me!!) We are getting more and more excited everyday for our little guy to come! Carson is so cute about always kissing my belly, talking to the baby and singing his silly songs that he makes up on a whim... that's what I love about him! I'm constantly reminded about what a wonderful father he will be! My friend brought by this cute little cake last week in celebration of our first Mother's day!!! YEAH for mommyhood!!
We had a wonderful and lazy weekend with our friends, the Henrys. They drove up from Houston and, of course, brought their handsome little son Blake with them for us to love on!! This is a pic of the Henry family...
Nathan is one of Carson's oldest friends and they even went to Tech together so they're already planning the college football games they will take their children to! We didn't do much all weekend except hang out, laugh a lot, watch movies, play board games and EAT! :) Here's me lovin'on that sweet little boy...
So you can see why I gave this little guy lots and lots of sugar over the weekend.
Obviously, we wore him out!
After lots of fun together over the weekend, Ashley and I woke up Sunday morning to a scrumptious and beautifully prepared Mother's Day homemade breakfast! We enjoyed every bite and then decided, humm... our men sure set the bar high for next year!! :) Wouldn't you want to eat this French toast, ommlette, & fruit when you woke up??? You can be jealous because it was goooooooood!!! (the ommelette had thyme and basil from our garden too)
Well, I'm still needing daily pain med control but taking about half the dose that I was last week. I've been dying to get out of the house so we made it to church Sunday night where I took up 3 seats... one for myself and two for my leg! :) But it was great to be back in our community of believers. Then again today (Tuesday) I was eager to get out of the house again... so I hobbled into Target and yes, I rode one of those motorized shopping carts around Target. (Landon, you can laugh at me... because I laughed at myself!) It was thankfully a short trip, because my leg was starting to hurt. But anyone who knows me is aware that Target is one of my addictions!! Loved it! Then my sweet friend Katie called on the way home and brought me some Curly's Frozen Custard. If anyone visits us in FW, we'll likely take you to Curly's because we love it! It's been a great week so far and I have pretty good energy... it just takes me awhile to move around and I often have to stop and put my leg up to ease the pain.
If anyone knows of some good places to find cute baby bedding online, email me cause I've had some more time on my hands recently to surf the internet. And you know that nursery is going to be cute if I have anything to do with it!! :)

Oh- one more bit of good news is my best friend from high school, Kendall Toon, just got engaged about a week and half ago too! I'm so excited for her and wanted to share the good news with everyone who knows her. Here is a picture of the FUTURE Mr. and Mrs. Zach Kent! (How cute will her name be??? Kendall Kent! Love it!)
I visit the ortho dr again tomorrow to see if I can get my stitches out! I sure hope so...
I'll keep everyone posted!

Resting up and eating too much...

First off, sorry if this post is boring. Obviously I haven't moved much except from the couch, the chair, the shower, and our bed... so I've taken a lot of pictures with my cell phone in between visitors to pass some time. I had to entertain myself somehow!!

Well, I've been holding off on the nasty picture but had too many requests for it from all my nursing friends, so sorry if it grosses you out. Here's my leg right after surgery. I only have a few incisions, but all the extra spots you see above the stitches around my ankle are "poke-holes" from where they used these gripper things to hold the bones during surgery.... with lots of bruising as you can obviously see. That yellow thing is just a dressing with ointment on it. But the good thing is that when it heals I should have minimal scarring.
Here is what I looked like for about 7 days after I got home from the hospital. I look pretty raggedy, but looking better now. That tubing to my leg is an "Ice-Man" which flushed ice cold water around my leg in this cool ice pack thing. I used it for about a week and I'm starting to feel better and haven't used it as much. (Thanks Cara for telling me about it) Please excuse all the mess. The basket was a really great gift from my brother and sister-in-law full of book and cute baby stuff, and I'm using it now as a basket to hold all the daily stuff I need. Thanks Laura!!
When I actually got up and went to the bathroom, this is what I came back to (beer in hand)...
Over the past two weeks I've received lots of beautiful flowers. This is a picture of the ones from our best friends Jeffrey and Allison that I got in the hospital.
And ones that the Pediatric Nurse Practitioner school sent me...
So Wednesday I went to the doctor and he said everything is looking great so far. They took off the brace and said to still keep it elevated as much as possible so the swelling would stay down and not stretch out the stitches. That's fine with me cause it throbs after hanging down for only 30 seconds. Here's some pictures I took of the x-rays that show off my new appliances! I was wrong... only 4 screws, not 5!! But as you can tell, they're pretty BIG screws...
The fibula break (smaller bone on the left) wasn't repaired because it will heal itself. Most of the time that doesn't hurt. It's only every once and awhile I move a certain way and it does. The orthopedic dr put me in a walking boot, which I love because I can open it a few times a day to work my ankle and most importantly scratch my leg!!!! After we got home from the doctor I got this awesome fruit bouquet from our friends, the Ozaetas.
And I could not believe the balloon that came with it! I laughed so hard because this little ducky on the balloon broke his right leg too! So YES I seriously took a picture of the cute balloon...
Then that night a HUMONGOUS surprise came. The wonderful, sweet girls that I work with brought me an abundance of food and this huge basket of goodies. I started crying when I read the card from all of the girls who were so generous and thoughtful. That was some seriously good pot roast, chocolate cake, brownies and chicken salad!! This is me excited about my basket (with my new large black boot in front)...
They also brought me these beautiful tulips too!!
Even after receiving all of these wonderful gifts of food and flowers, but sweet husband went out and bought me some more of my favorite flowers, hydrangeas!
I've been very, very spoiled over the past 2 weeks and wanted to say thank you to everyone! One last thing, we went to the OB yesterday and heard the heart rate again. Everything was sounded great! It was really cool because we could also hear our little one "kicking" the Doppler machine!! It made me smile to know that he/she is still ok after the surgery and everything that's been going on.
Thanks again for all the prayers too. Good news, I finished my last final this morning!! It took me awhile to complete it since I was kinda in pain, but it's done!!!!!!! Yippee!! One more thing down and hopefully will be able to start my clinicals in the near future. Off to enjoy our friends, the Henrys, who is here for the weekend! I'll post some pics next week of us with their cute little boy, Blake.

Home and resting...

Hello from our yellow couch! Well, surgery went well on Thursday. It lasted about an hour and twenty minutes. They did a Doppler on the baby before and after the surgery, both were great! My mom has the picture on her phone of what my leg looked like afterwards, so if everyone isn't too grossed out I'll post it later. It's really not that bad, just about a one inch incision at the top and at the bottom and few other small ones where they put the screws in. Oh- and during the surgery they discovered that apparently I broke my ankle too!! A piece of my inner ankle bone had broken off, so they screwed it back on. I now own a titanium rod (full length of my lower leg) and 5 screws. To answer your question, they will stay in there forever. The nurses at Harris in pre-op, post-op and in-patient were all SUPER nice! My dad stayed until about 5pm on Thursday, Carson's dad stopped by and my mom is in town until Wednesday. WOW! She has been a HUGE help around the house, with me, and given Carson a break to get some of his "stuff" done. Carson stayed with me at the hospital on Thursday night... poor thing, I woke him up needing help about every hour and a half. Thankfully since I was able to use my crutches "properly" and able to control my pain on just hydrocodone, they let me come home Friday afternoon.

I'm sleeping more and more throughout the night... not usually more than 5 hours at a time because I wake up in pain. I've tried to be tough and not take as much medicine or take it less often, but I usually end up in pain and go back to the same routine. Besides pain medicine, my other two favortite meds are: food/sweets and visitors!!! I really get some serious spurts of energy and forget about the pain when people come to see me. So thanks to everyone who has already come or is coming in the near future... I LOVE IT!!!!!!! :)

I've had some crazy dreams since this happened since I'm doing my fair share of sleeping these days. But I've have quite a few consistency in some of the dreams... and that is dreams that our little one is a BOY! We'll have to wait of course to find out, but who knows... my mother's intuition may be right! We go to the OB doctor and the ortho doctor both on Thursday just for check-ups and I'll keep you posted on what they both say.

I cannot even express how much your sweet thoughts, prayers, and words of encouragement have meant during this time for our family. We're so grateful and appreciate them more than you can imagine. Carson and I are truly blessed. Speaking of.... he had a great interview last week, no word yet and another one tomorrow with someone else. We'll keep you posted on that too. Until then... I'll still be here on the couch if you want to call and stop by, I'd love to see you!

Break a leg?.... I did!

In case you haven't heard... I broke my leg Saturday! I was at school (last day of class) on lunch break. I went with my two friends, Lindsey & Meredith, to the cafeteria to eat and review our presentation. After I got my lunch and was walking to sit down, I saw a "Caution Wet Floor" sign, so I slowed down. Next thing I know my left leg slipped out in front of me, my food flew up in the air, and I fell down on my right leg (kinda Indian style)!! Of course I heard a "crack" sound and grabbed my leg. My sweet friends came over and took care of me until the EMS got there. Lindsey took off my boot immediately and said, "Don't look but you broke your leg." It wasn't as bad as I thought... of course I looked later! :) Immediate next thought after I fell was... our baby!!!!!!!! Then I held my belly and started bawling! Linds & Mere calmed me down about the baby and reassured me it would be ok. Carson arrived at the same time as the EMS. They gave me a little Morphine and took me to the hospital. Lindsey was able to capture the ride on camera, maybe still a little high on the Morphine???...

Or maybe not...
Either way... very nice little EMS guys. They did a Doppler at the hospital and confirmed that the baby was ok.... praise Jesus! The x-rays confirmed that I had a spiral fracture... broke my tibia in two places a couple inches above the ankle and my fibula a couple inches below my knee. Both complete breaks... bummer. Basically you need surgery, but go home for now and follow-up on Monday. What? Don't even get me started. Did I mention that I was in serious pain the whole time and they only gave me one dose of pain medicine at the hospital in 4 hours? Not cool.

Carson is the best nurse ever!!! He has woken up with me at night and helped me every minute of the day. Basically all I can do is sit on the couch and then use my crutches to go to the bathroom... then back to the couch. I started sleeping back in the bed last night so I could be closer to my love. So I was set home with some pain meds. Here is a pic of my meds by the couch. The front row is mine and second is Carson's! :)
My OB assured me that our baby is in a big pool of amniotic fluid and not at risk from the fall. So this week after two doctors appointments and about a million hours on the phone... I'm having surgery Thursday around 10:30am at Harris Methodist Hospital in downtown FW by Dr. Collinge. My parents are coming tomorrow night to be here and give nurse Carson a little relief. Not sure yet when I'm going to take my finals and how I'm going to do school this summer... we'll see! But rumor is that I have to miss at least 8-10wks of work which I'm NOT happy about. I'm very well taken care of by my sweet friends, family and neighbor. We've been well fed, have lots of pretty flowers to look at and even some homemade ice cream!
Here's a pic of the flowers from Lindsey...
Gross pics for last... so don't look if you don't want to. Finally... here's a pic my gimp leg and sorry this is gross but a picture of my arm where they blew a vein trying to get an IV on me... not very nurse to do this, especially to a nurse! Before I forget thank you EVERYONE for your prayers.... WOW!! I feel incredibly blessed and covered in prayer. I'm tearing up thinking about it.
Love you all!
Not a very good picture of the x-ray... taken with my cell phone camera and then the swelling pic of my foot was taken yesterday at my first doctor's appointment. Pretty nasty huh?? More updates after surgery...

Update of the past month...

I have been INSANELY busy with school for the past month and the next thing I know... it's almost MAY!! I'll be 15 wks pregnant on Sunday and starting to feel a little more energy! Praise Jesus! I have yet to feel sick (unlike all my other friends who are preggers now too). Sorry girls! Here's an update on our little family...

At the end of March I had a little reunion with my old college roommates (from sophomore year at UT). Well, minus Stephanie who sadly lives in Alabama now. Lacy, Tricia and I met up for a little dinner and round #2 of Britney Spears! Yes, Carson hates to admit that I actually attended her concert with these girls when I was 20 yrs old but he was SHOCKED that I went again this year! Regardless what my sweet hubby thinks of Britney... It's was soooo much fun! Thanks girls for a fun time! Love you both!!

As you can see, we didn't have the best seats, but there's Britney coming down from the ceiling. Carson won't admit it, but I guess that's the first concert that our baby has attended! :)

Carson doesn't have a job yet but has THREE (yes THREE!!!) interviews this next week so please keep the prayers coming! He's had some more free time on his hands to to finish some honey-dos around the house. He built us a new back fence to block the view of the apartments behind our house and it turned out great!! Here is a little view of part of it...
And his HUGE project was tackeling our guest bathroom. We're curious to know if the previous owners went to Baylor because it had somewhat of a green and yellow (gold) theme going on in there! Here is what it looked like BEFORE...
Yes that is mauve carpet in the bathroom! Nasty!! For the past three years we didn't have to look at it quite this ugly. We had taken out the carpet (the floor was that dark green color) and replaced the yellow sink and toilet with white ones and just covered up the tub with a shower curtain. Carson and I just couldn't stand to look at it anymore. So his brother Landon helped him demo the 2 inch tile and here they are hard at work on the new sheetrock...
Well the product is not yet complete but here is preview of some of Carson's hard work. This is the shower wall and light/vent fan he installed. As you can see the tape is still up and we will have to pay someone to resurface the bathtub and make it white...
Next he replaced the tile on the wall with beadboard and it looks great so far!!
Finally this is the new tile on the floor that he put down. (which I love b/c it looks old fashioned even though it's new) Please excuse the towel on the floor...
Don't worry, I will post some more when he completes it! Thanks Babe for all your hard work. It's looking great!! But as you can tell he has been working very hard and enjoyed being able to get it done while he's looking for a new job.
In the meantime... I don't have any pictures from Easter weekend (Mom- you need to email me those!) but check out these beautiful flowers that "came" with the house. They started blooming Easter weekend and have just EXPLODED all over the front and back yard. We enjoy driving up to the house and seeing them everyday. Unfortunatley we know they won't last for long but are just a sign of one of God's beautiful creations!
After Easter we celebrated Carson's big 28th birthday on April 14th!! Since we're on a budget he said he didn't want any gifts just to go visit some friends down in Houston who just had a baby in January (Nathan, Ashley & baby Blake Henry). We're going there after my finals in early May and will post pictures after our visit of that cute little boy. So we celebrated that day at one of our favorite little restaurants in FW called Nonna Tata with our dear friends the Kovacs and the Slays (minus Ashley who was sick). I would post a link or a picture but they don't have one. This place is so cute! It's a little Italian lady who makes homemade pastas and yummy food in the tinyest little place. They have about 4 tables inside about 6-7 tables outside, no reservations, bring your own wine... it's just great!! (oh- and very reasonably priced) It's a little European experience right here in FW!! Again, sorry no pictures were taken but we had a great time! I married such a wonderful, Godly man and I'm blessed to celebrate another fun birthday with him! Last time we'll every do that without a child! CRAZY!!!
As many of you know Carson is my personal chef. I've hardly cooked at all in the past 3 years since I started school. He just took over and actually prefers his own cooking. I bake every once and awhile, but it's pretty rare! (I know ladies... don't be jealous! He's all mine. I've always know he's a keeper!) Anyway, you can call him Martha Stewart now cause he planted an herb garden and attempted some tomatoes again this year. Last 2 years we grew them but they didn't get enough sun in our backyard. So this year Carson creatively planted some tomatoes and peppers in these cute little pots!
Last but not least... drumroll please.... since everyone has been asking, here is a picture of my belly growth (almost 15 weeks)! We are beyond excited about this little one and find out May 28th if it's a boy or a girl!! Stay tuned!!
WHEW! There's the update on our little growing family... Back to school work! Thanks for your prayers for Carson and the little one (well, me too!). We treasure them.

Wedding in south Texas

Sorry I've been a little behind on posting pictures! Here are a few of me with the Anderson boys at their cousin Shannon's wedding down in the valley. First one is at the rehearsal dinner.
You can't see the little belly that I'm growing in this dress... sorry! I'll post a picture soon. I think the only thing missing in this picture is three cute girls for the other boys! Any takers? From left to right: Justus (24, almost 25), Andrew (18 - at Baylor this fall) and Landon (21).
Do you like our matching outfits? Very fun and beautiful wedding. More pictures to come soon!