Birthday Bliss

So far this has been the best birthday ever. Yesterday C and I went to a friend's lake house, got to go on a fast boat ride, played in the water on rafts, played in the sand on the beach, ate awesome food and had a wonderful visit with friends. Pictures to come later because I forgot my camera, but others did get a few shots of us enjoying our time there. At the end of the day, the whole group of 42 or so people sang "Happy Birthday" to me and presented me with a yummy cake. What a treat.

Last night, once we returned from our lake outing, we joined up with M for dinner. Our friends sent us home with plenty of food to have for dinner and M surprised me with a delicious strawberry shortcake birthday cake. Sooo good.

That night both M and I were able to feel the baby kick for the first time. I have been able to feel lots of movement the last few weeks, but never from the surface like last night. That was the best--especially since M was there to feel it too.

Then this morning, on my actual birthday, my baby girl came in to my room and said, "Happy Birthday Mommy." Music to my ears. Later this morning I was able to capture the birthday wish... here it is for your enjoyment too. I must confess, I've watched it a dozen times already.


Tonight M is taking me into Chicago to have dinner at a French Bistro. I can't wait. Happy birthday to me!

Familiar Places

I've been so crazy busy lately with house stuff, travel arrangements, finding doctors and speaking with insurance companies that my poor blog has suffered greatly. For that I am sorry. Even though I am completely exhausted this evening, I thought it would be good to post a few photos of our ever-growing, beautiful little girl.

She has absolutely no idea what is about to happen. She sees the photo on the fridge and says, "new house," but has no clue that very soon we will no longer call this place "home." She is getting old enough to recognize places as we pass by them in the car. The streets near our house are all familiar to her and she gets very excited because she knows she is getting close to home. All we have to do is turn into our development and she can hardly contain herself. Just today we were out driving and she saw a familiar building, points to it and said, "church." And amazingly enough, it was our church.

She surprises me every day with her memory. She had a doctor's appointment last week to check her ears...again...that's another story... but it is at the same office complex that my OB/GYN is located. We pulled into the parking lot and she said: "See the baby on the TV." The last time we were at those offices she and her daddy both got to see our new baby on the ultrasound machine monitor. I was blown away that she put all that together.

These photos are of my super smart, 21 month-old playing at a playground in Wheaton, IL just before we met a friend for lunch.

SOLD

Oh my goodness. Look what appeared on our realtor sign sometime yesterday. I didn't even know it happened until my friend came over for Bible study last night and said, "I love seeing the 'SOLD' sign out front."

It's finally happening. We still aren't sure when the closing date will be on this end, but hopefully it will be sometime next week and not much later.

This isn't the best photo because it is a picture of a picture, but you can get the idea of what our new house looks like in Atlanta.