baby shower photos

Thanks to my personal event photographer (thanks, Amy!!), here's some photos from the shower.


Grandma Davis' booties!














the grandma's: Kathy (Joe's mom) and mom; Aunt Nancy, Grandma Davis, Sonoma, Ann, Holli and Telanei, Kara and her mom, Deb














my new handmade vera bradley-inspired diaper bag















aunts becky, jenni, and nancy
















me and trish

So we're down to about 6 weeks to go until baby time. Now might be a good time to think about a name for baby-boy-LaValley: so far, nothing. We spent the evening browsing name lists online, and pretty much nothing has jumped out at us. We have a list of names we like, but none we love.

My shower was last weekend, and it was great, got a lot of fabulous gifts, lots of people came, good food, good cake, good times. I'll put some pictures on here eventually.
I've been not able to update this as much as I'd like lately; apparantly, if you don't update your virus protection for a year and half (like I did...well, didn't do...on my work computer) you'll mess up your computer and not be able to use the internet, or any other program on it.
So I can only update when I get my hands on the laptop, which isn't that often. Apparently Joe taking graduate courses is more important than me blogging. Who knew?

9.11.07

Random thoughts for today:

~ I was watching the headlines scroll across the bottom of the weather channel earlier, and it said "Americans celebrate the 6th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks".
Is celebrate really the right word? I'm thinking NO.

On to less political thoughts:

~ Speaking of weather channel, it's supposed to be in the 70's all week. I think fall is finally just about here, and I'm pretty happy about that.

~ Ten hour work days are getting kind of silly on my feet these days.

~ 32 weeks and counting. Are we sure that Davis girls never have babies early?

~ I failed my sugar test and barely passed the second round of it. So no more cake, candy, cookies for me. (Except baby shower cake, right??)

~ Baby shower #1 is this Sunday. Yay!

~ Wiffle ball weekend was last weekend. The guys did, uh, great....well, at least they had a lot of fun! (Hopefully Kyle's team did a little better than Joe's?)

And some photos of our trip up north: We spent Friday in Paradise, Michigan at Tahquamenon Falls, wandered around/shopped Saturday morning in Mackinaw City, then went to a wedding Saturday evening. It was gorgeous up there!

Joe and I at the Lower Falls
















The Upper Falls
















The bridge, by night. Fun to look at, not so much fun to drive over.















Jer and Trish at the wedding
















Joe and Jer and an owl

Today's Etiquette Lesson

The following is a list of things NOT to say to a pregnant woman, especially one who is holding scissors, and has 10 more weeks to go:

1. "WOW. You are going to have a BIG baby!"

2. "You must be due any day now?!"

3. "Are you sure you aren't having twins? Really? Are you SURE? I mean, did the doctor check for twins? They did? And they're sure there's only one? There's not another one hiding in there???"

Creative Title Goes Here.

I'm back, the lazy blogger that I am. I took a break from life in general the past couple of weeks, due to the ridiculous heat. Any time I wasn't at work, I was here at home, sitting not on the bird couch, but standing in front of the one window air conditioner we have in the living room. Good times.
It's cooled down to a balmy 85-ish now though, so I can go out in the world again. (Keep in mind however, 85 doesn't sound that bad, but that's about 105 in pregnant-degrees!!)
This past weekend was great- Joe ran in a 5K race in Flint, MI with his running group from Switzerland. (Well,actually, they're mostly from Michigan and Ohio, but they met in Switzerland.) I was excited to get to go with him and meet these people who I have heard so many great stories about! And yes, they were as nice and fun as Joe said they were.
The race went well, Joe ran it in 29-ish minutes ( i forget the actual down-to-the-second time). The weather was awesome, in the 70's and cloudy, so it wasn't too hot. It rained on and off, but not enough to keep us from having a good time. I stayed on the sides and watched everyone else run. Obviously. I mean, really, when have I ever been known to run anywhere, with the exception of through the mall on a good sale day, such as the day after Thanksgiving?!
They do have a 5K walk, however, and I think I'd probably do that next year. I think I may have actually done it this year, because I'm pretty certain that we parked a good 4 miles away from the starting line....I'm definitely not the speed-walker I was this time last year. This baby really slows me down.

Speaking of the baby, I'm up to 30 weeks now (and I"m sure, at least as many pounds gained!) I learned last week that one of the doctors in the practice left the office, so now 3 doctors are handling the patients for 4. I'm sure that will make for a nice long wait at my appointment tomorrow. I have one more ultrasound, tomorrow morning. I'll try to remember to not be lazy and scan in those pictures!

The next few days are work, work, and then more work. Joe's back into football full-swing, and getting a great tan from it, I have to say! I'm a little jealous of that.
We're headed up to the UP (that's Upper Peninsula, for those of you not familiar with Michigan-speak.) for a wedding, so I'll blog when we get back. Have a great holiday weekend!
This is a photo of Joe and his running club (minus the two people from New York and Florida). I tried to load more pictures, but blogger is being difficult tonight, so we'll have to settle for just one.

this week in photos

It's fair week in Urbana, and we live just blocks from the fairgrounds, so the air smells like cow poo, my 'short-cut' to work is off limits this week (I usually take the road by the fairgrounds to bypass all the stoplights) and I can hear the announcements in the grandstand in my backyard. Sunday night I got to enjoy a Phil Dirt and the Dozers concert. I know no one knows who they are, but here, they are celebrities. They're basically an oldies (50's and 60's) cover band. Last night was some lame contest about 4H girl of the year or something like that.
Tonight, for my listening pleasure, I get to enjoy the Oak Ridge Boys.

But enough about that. Onto the BIG news in town.......

MCDONALDS IS OPEN TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Oh yes. They tore down the old McD's at the beginning of summer to give our town a new fancy-pants Mickey-D's, complete with not one, but TWO drive thru speakers! (Yet, only one pick up window...now, do we really think the intellectuals of U-town are going to be able to figure THAT one out? Doubtful.) I took this photo at a stoplight this morning, but it doesn't really do justice to just how busy it was there. (Yes, the light was red when I stuck my head and camera out the window, mom.)




















Onto other photos now.


Me, 27 weeks pregnant. Joe requested this one...he's been gone so long I think he's forgotten what I look like. I'm just going to say that me and the August heat are not getting along very well right now. It's not so bad at night but the other 18 hours of the day that I'm awake are not so good. I find myself wandering around Target, Kroger, the mall -really anywhere that is air conditioned- to pass the time and not have a heat stroke.
OK, really it's not that bad, I'm just spoiled and I don't like to sweat. And I'm really starting to miss my ankle bones.





















This is Junior Special-Agent Tarquin's (the kid's got a lot of nicknames!) room, so far. There's a few minor details missing, such as a crib and changing table, but hey, who really needs those?





















And some photos from Lake Erie last weekend. Grandma on the jet ski, Carsyn in the sand, and Peyton...I'm pretty sure she's in the process of throwing sand in Marcus' face. I hope I spelled all of those kids' names right.

25 weeks?

I've lost count at how many weeks pregnant I am. Isn't that bad? I am signed up on a website that e-mails me "what's happening at __ weeks" updates, so that usually reminds me how far along i am. But those come on Tuesday, and since it's Monday I can only guess. I think I'm 25 weeks. I'll know tomorrow. Thank goodness for technology! hahaha
Here's a picture of me and Trish (my sister-in-law) at a wedding this past weekend. Notice I'm not wearing a dress. It's not fun trying on big muu-muus, so I'm sticking w/ pants or skirts from here on out.
Trish is also pregnant, also having a boy (she just had her ultrasound today) and is due 6 weeks behind me. Hmm....which would make this her 20 week ultrasound, which would maybe make me at 26 weeks????
Another cool fact, Joe's friend Aaron's (they've been friends since kindergarten and Aaron and I went to college together) wife is also pregnant and due 4 days before me (Hey Sara, how pregnant are we??) and she's also having a boy. I think we've got a junior wiffle ball team on our hands.

Happy Birthday to Me

Here's a photo re-cap of my past week, celebrating turning 29.

Last night, at the Japanese Steakhouse, with the family.
















































Last weekend, a birthday party for myself and Katie. Her birthday is July 6, so we usually do a joint birthday thing with our friends. This year,we went to the Mexican restaurant to celebrate.

























And finally, our re-painted, redecorated bedroom. I love IKEA!!!

hi.

I'm here, if anyone is even still reading my blog. I am a lazy lazy blogger, and I have no excuse for it. Well, our laptop isn't completely internet-ready yet, but that's not a very good excuse, is it? And I have about 300 pictures to choose from to post on here, but along with being a lazy blogger, I'm a lazy photo-transferrer and they're all still on my camera, and not on a computer. I'm just lazy, that's all there is too it. But let's blame the baby, OK? :)

We've been busy the last couple weeks...Joe painted the baby's room- it's a light gray with white trim- and it looked so good, it made our own room look pretty crappy, so we emptied out our room and repainted that....and then we got a new bedframe and some nightstands and just re-did the whole bedroom. It looks so much better now. I would say I'd post a picture of it, but we know that won't happen this week, right?

Also, our bathroom is torn up this week, getting new flooring in and patching a hole in the window/wall, which got there from a leaky window. It's more of just a patch job, until next summer when we have more time and we (Joe) can re-do the whole bathroom.

Other than that I've just been trying to stay semi-cool. We don't have air conditioning, so basically I sit in front of a fan most of the time I'm at home. I spent this afternoon out at mom and dad's in the pool, which is a huge improvement over my hot house.

The highlight of my last week was when we were in Michigan, and we got to spend a day at my own personal Disney World.....IKEA!!!!! I love it there. Of course we had dinner in the Ikea Cafe' and we stayed until closing time. (That's where we bought the bedroom furniture, etc.)

This weekend Lisa's coming home (yay!) and the family's going to the Japanese Steakhouse for dinner on Saturday for my birthday. I can't wait. And Rylee loves it as much as we all do...she thinks she's at Emeril's and yells "BAM!" to the grill chef. It's hilarious. Maybe I'll take pictures. Maybe you'll see them.

it's ...

Picture time! Here's one of me, 20 weeks pregnant. (Halfway done!!)



















and one of the baby. It's a BOY!

pink or blue?

Tomorrow is ultrasound day...which Mom has dubbed "pink or blue day". AND, almost as exciting, our laptop was finally sent back to us yesterday, so hopefully that means I can blog from home again now! So I will update, either tomorrow or Wednesday, with the results of pink or blue day, and a photo of the 20 week belly, in which I will wear a shirt from Jill.

(Thanks Jill, for the clothes!!! It's so nice to not wear the same five shirts to work every week! I'm loving them. Thank you Thank you Thank you!!!)

It's hot here- again- today. I got in my friend's pool for all of 45 minutes today and my legs are burned. Ouch. They're almost as bad as Lisa's were when we went to Arizona. (If you witnessed that, you'll know the level of discomfort.) Do you think that pregnancy makes a girl get burned more easily? I'll definitely double up on the sunscreen from here out, just in case. Oh well. Better get this baby used to the sun and the pool, right?? :)

I'm off to get some lemonade mix from Kroger and find some dinner. (Lemonade is the newest must-have pregnancy staple of the week, along with the ever-present cocoa krispies!)
Any last minute pink or blue guesses?????

For Jill (and anyone else)

These are 3-year-old photos, but the only ones I could find to show off our first 'child', Identity Hair Salon. Some of you have been there, some have not, but here it is. This is where I spend most of my time away from home. The girls there are awesome; they're my extended family, for sure!! These aren't the best photos, but you get the general idea.


This is sometime in July or August of 2004 (we opened in September 04.) We started with an empty shell of a room, and had to add pretty much everything.


















This is our shopping center. Most of the empty storefronts are filled now, but when we started, I had my pick of which one to use. It always reminds me of the end of The Sound of Music, like I expect to see Nazi soldiers in each doorway.....anyone else?














The shampoo area. Pretty self-explanatory.
















This is the night before we opened. We were finishing the final touches on the salon, while getting all of our own hair done at the same time. :) Notice the tupperware sitting on the half-wall....its holding finger puppets for the kids to play with. (Weren't those from Jenni, I think? They're very useful!!!)














From the outside, looking in.














This is Andi, one of our stylists, on opening day.















The front desk/waiting area

Switzerland

Apparantly I thought I mentioned Joe's trip to Switzerland, but in fact, I didn't.
He's taking his masters classes in Educational Technology, through U of M, and as part of the program, he *has* to go spend 3 weeks in Geneva, Switzerland this summer and next summer. Yay for him, bummer for me.
He leaves in about 7 weeks, so there's a lot to do between now and then, considering when he gets back he'll only have a week or so until school starts! It really is going to make the summer go way too fast for him.
I don't really know an awful lot about what he'll be doing over there...something technological, I'm sure, but what? I don't know. Maybe I'll find out and let you know. :)

Time to Blog

Hey Bloggerville! Our computer is still out, being fixed, so it's hard to go online these days. I'm out here blogging from mom's computer again- We just went to a graduation open house, and now I'm waiting for this storm to roll in. I can hear thunder in the distance....it seems like a good day to go home and do some laundry and read a book.
School's not out around here until next week: Joe has 2 make-up days, so he's done on Thursday. He's not doing any moth catching or anything this year, since his Switzerland trip is going to take up a good chunk of his summer. I think he's looking forward to a summer with no extra work.
I get a new summer schedule too. Next Friday is my last one to work, since one of my stylists is coming back from her maternity leave, so I can be off Fridays now! That's going to be so fun this summer. :) I'll take all the extra pool time I can get!! It's nice to be the boss, so I can let the other people go to work while I sit at the pool. :) hahaha
That's about it around here. Baby is doing well, 17 weeks now. I have an ultrasound appointment on June 19 to find out the answer to the big question, boy or girl?
I know I promised Nancy some belly photos, but really, I'm just too lazy to do that right now. There IS a belly to see though! Maybe when we go up to Amy's she can take a picture of me and do it for me. hah. =)
Time to go to the grocery store. Food is getting scarce around our house, and I'm almost out of Cocoa Krispies!!! (That's me and the baby's favorite food! It's a daily staple, sometimes twice a day.)
Happy holiday weekend!

responses to below

To respond to the responses:
As far as boy or girl, I feel like this is a baby boy, but that doesn't really count for much, so we'll just wait and see I guess.
I AM loving the empire waist fashions this season!!! It's more of a pants issue at this point. And I miss my skirts.
As far as 14,000 iTunes: That's Joe's department. He's mildly (OK a little more than mildly) obsessed with downloading as MUCH music as humanly possible! Of those, probalby only 150 of them are actually songs I purchased on iTunes; a few thousand or so are from our own HUGE personal CD collection..and the rest? Any time Joe could get his hands on anyone's CD's, he loaded them into our computer. And now we've got everything you could possibly want to listen to (and a lot you probably would NOT want to hear as well!!!)
So that's that with that.
Today was my last day of work before vacation! Lisa and I leave Monday morning. I'll blog at y'all when we get back!!!

Blahg

Our computer is sick. Or very well could be. Our virus protection expired, so we need to buy new, but before we do that, it needs to be sent in to clear out whatever computer gunk is making it be crappy. (Could it have anything to do with the 14,000 songs we have in iTunes? Possibly....) And while we're at it, I think we are adding more memory (you know, to make room for a couple thousand MORE iTunes!)
Anyway, point being, it's being sent off to Dell, so I won't have it for a while (ughhh....) which means limited blogging (because i was SO good at daily blogging in the past!)
So to cover the next week or so:
~baby LaValley is currently 14 weeks, new due date is Nov. 6. That seems SO far away! I'm in a weird clothing dilemma where none of my clothes fit, but the next size up, as well as maternity clothes are too big...any suggestions?

~I got an ultrasound at my last appointment too. I thought about posting a picture of it on here, but I have this thought in the back of my head that if I scan it, the picture will fade (you know, like a concert ticket does when it's exposed to bright light?) anyone have experience with scanning ultrasound pics?

~I'm going on vacation next week with Lisa (thanks Lisa!!!) She's taking me as her "plus one" for her awesome company retreat to Arizona. Isn't she nice?? Or actually, aren't I lucky that Desiree' couldn't go?! haha

~End of school is near, which means (oh NO!) end of network television is near!!! What are we going to watch?! Even American Idol is almost over. (Go Blake!!)
It's almost RERUN time! The only thing that makes rerun season better is that it's also pool season. (uh..let's just not talk about pools right now though, because that brings up swimsuits, which isn't a pleasant topic this week.)

~Happy Birthday to all of our May birthdays! I'm pulling a Grandma Featherstone here (That's Joe's grandma: she sends everyone's b-day cards for the month at the beginning of the month. Smart move!!) So happy birthday to Jill, Jessica, Amy, Mom, and Joe. And happy mothers day to everyone. Hopefully my pregnant mind didn't forget anyone.

~Speaking of pregnant minds, I'm finding that it really is true that you lose half of your mind when pregnant. Fun stuff.

~Favorite food this week? Strawberry shakes. I had 3 last week. :) Hey, baby likes them!

PROM!!!

Last night was the Time Warp Prom. It was a lot of fun- We'll definitely be going back next year. And we all agreed it was so much more fun than our real proms! A lot of people arrived dressed in themes: we saw the Captain and Tenille, George Michael, Slash, and numerous Madonnas and John Travoltas. Here's a few highlights from the evening:


The salon girls: Tracie, Andi, Tonia, Me



















Our friends (who don't work at the salon): Laura, Christina, Tina.
Actually, Tina works at the salon sometimes, she's our on-call receptionist.



















Me, hanging out at Tracie's house, waiting to go.





















Doing the Chicken Dance (and the table-chicken-dance)















Dancing to some fabulous 80's music!
Did you notice Laura's leggings?! Fabulous.















I took this from our table; you can see what a huge event this was. Our table was about a third of the way back from the dance floor, to give an idea of how may people were there. I was really suprised at what a big deal this is!

more vacation photos: Savannah

This is the Sorrel-Weed house: supposedly the most haunted in Savannah. We toured it, but didn't see any ghosts.















Joe, sitting on someone's front steps.


















This is the Williams house, where the man from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil lived (and died). We also toured this.




















The waving girl statue on the water. See how great the weather was?!

One more tail on the bird couch!

So for those of you who haven't heard it through the phone chain, it's time to get your baby-name hats on again! We've got until October to pick the bestest most fantastic name for the LaValley baby.
Yes, I said BABY.
And yes, we're keeping the Solstice. :)

Vacation pictures

Here's my first installment of vacation photos, since I know you're all dying to see them. =)


This is the street outside our hotel in Charleston; the building at the end is the open market entrance. Fun shopping.
















Kathy, Bob, and Joe outside a yummy restaurant we ate at. There's almost always a line outside to get in to eat the traditional "low country" food; another cool fact, Rachel Ray ate there. :)

















Part of "Rainbow Row" where all the houses are different colors.















The next few are all in Tybee Island. It was nice; I would have liked to spend a little more time there. It was great to walk on the beach!!

Snow??

Vacation was lovely, 85 and sunny all week. I got a little sun, we drove our car with the top down all week, I even got a mini-sunburn on my forehead...and then driving home, we drove back into this crap all over the place.
I am not happy with the weather.

Know who else I'm not happy with, "Hills" watchers? Heidi!
She's an idiot and Spencer is a punk.
And now we have to wait for next season to find out what happens? (Not that we don't already know: they'll break up and she'll want to move back in with Lauren, which will cause a fight btween her and Audrina....blah blah blah)

Anyway, back to vacation: it was so fun. I loved Savannah- I have a ton of pictures to share~ Maybe tomorrow I'll put some on here.
But for now, I have to get my lazy self up and get dressed so I can go over to mom and dad's for lunch and watch Rylee hunt Easter eggs in the snow.

Stay warm everyone!

Here I am.

I've been a bad blogger lately. It's been a busy couple of weeks- we went up to Joe's parents' house last weekend for a quick overnight...then work all week...then left after work Saturday for a Hair Show in Indiana and got back from that tonight....
Oh, I DID find my pink camera. Yay! Just in time for vacation. We're taking the Solstice so that means pack super-lite, so I can take the little camera. :)
We leave after work Saturday for our East Coast tour.
And I have been trying to finish my book in between everything else- whch is another reason I haven't blogged- and I'm almost done with it. Must finish before Saturday!

Another new fun toy- I got a phone that I can go online with. Too fun! I read everyone's blogs this weekend on the road. I havent figured out how to post a blog from my phone, still working on that one.

Off to bed!

We're headed to the (south) east coast for vacation this year. One of our stops is Savannah, and I had a couple people say that if we're going there, I MUST see/read "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" before I go.
So I went to the library, checked out the book, and now am about a third of the way through it. So far, it's pretty good. I think I'm into it because a lot of the story is about the city itself, and I am looking forward to going there.... but since I've started reading it, everyone I've talked to who has read it says "I couldn't get through it."
So...has anyone out there seen/read it? Does it get worse? Should I keep reading? Or should i just rent the movie and get it over with? =)