Valentine's Party

Erika invited us for dinner Saturday night for dinner and company. She was making Smitten Kitchen's (Or as her husband, Dave, calls her, "That Lady") Spaghetti and Meatballs. Erika said "Before you say yes to coming, I just want to warn you that there will be 10 kids here Saturday night." Ahhh what a romantic Valentine's evening. It wasn't bad though...We barely even saw the kids since they ate on the front porch and played in the back room. And our friends all have good kids.

Let me just say that I hate meatballs with a serious passion!! I have never liked them. I love spaghetti though and just thought that I would eat the spaghetti and bypass the meatballs. But I am game to try anything so I put one meatballs on my spaghetti. Wow...those were awesome and I went back to get more. SO GOOD! What else did we have? Heather made an awesome salad and Lucy brought the garlic bread and Kristy and Elizabeth helped to make the chocolate mousse for dessert. I brought the chocolate covered strawberries. No...they weren't homemade...I bought them at the grocery store and ...NO...they weren't good. I could have definately made them better than they did so thanks goodness the girls made chocolate mousse. Here are a few pics from the event.

Brian and Kristy feeding Finley.

The chocolate covered strawberries (that weren't good but looked good).

Some of the spread.

The boys playing Wii and swords and guns...and I think that one kids is trying to play Wii with a bow and arrow??? I am so glad I am having a girl. I think the girls were sharing an ipod and singing in their room.

Erika, posing with her table decorations after the meal was finally finished and dessert had been served.

Since I forgot to get a before picture of the chocolate mousse before I ate mine, I am giving you an after picture. And yes...in case you were wondering...it was good!
Matt and Natalia stuck platic hearts all over their faces but Matt was the only one who wasn't too shy for the camera.

Happy Valentine's Day

Last year, E asked me what I wanted for Valentine's Day. I was just exstatic when he offered to make a special dinner that night for me. Of course, dinner took forever to make and we didn't actually sit down to eat until almost 9pm and I also found myself helping with it because I would see things that were about to burn. But I guess it's the thought that counts. He's not the "send you flowers" kind of guy. More of the "get you something you actually need" kind of guy. I remember for V Day while we were still dating, he got me a USB flash drive. Another time, I got a choice of some really cool looking bands for my digital watch which was starting to smell.

We really don't do anything major for holidays for each other. We are typically content just to be together, healthy and happy. It's typically just a day of reflection on everything that the Lord has blessed us with. He is so funny though...every year we make a plan of what we are going to do and then when it gets closer, he just wants to make sure that he is meeting my expectations so he asks "Are you getting me anything for V Day?" This is meant to test the waters. With all this being said, I need to say that I have never recieved flowers. He knows that I would rather have something I actually need. Last year, he asked if I wanted some flowers and I think my comment back was "Why? What's wrong? Are you cheating on me? "

This year, I think we are just going to have dinner somewhere together since it may be our last quiet meal together without paying for a babysitter for the next 20 years. Ironically, we did this last night too??? I just enjoy not cooking and not cleaning up the kitchen and not feeling guilty about feeding my husband cereal for dinner for the third night this week.

So to all of you and the ones that you love, Happy Valentine's Day!

New Years Resolutions

Hmmm...so much change is about to happen I don't even know where to start the resolutions but regardless, I am jumping right in.

1.) Since I gained 36 pounds pounds of baby last year, I would like to loose 40 pounds over all since I will probably gain a few more before all is said and done.

2.) I want to apply the Baby Wise principals to the baby and get her to sleep through the night at an early age.

3.) I want to be able to establish an schedule once the baby comes so that I can be a good mom and a good wife.

4.) I want to be more spiritually healthy.

5.) To continue to budget our money and continue to pay off our debt.

Christmas Vacation - Part 2

We got to E's family's house Christmas afternoon just in time to have lunch with all of the extended family. His cousin, Travis, had a good month hunting and made tenderloin with horseradish sauce and a roast out of the spoils. It was delicious!! Afterwards, we all went back to the house to check our body mass index on the Wii Fit. We all tested it out and turns out, at 8 months pregnant, I still did better than E, his brother and his cousin at the balance test and my BMI wasn't nearly as high as his cousin's. So...Boooya!!

His family made a Baby Rachel Tree this year instead of a Christmas tree.

Later, my neices came over and we all opened presents. Kayla and Beth got clothes and gift cards. I got a kitchenaid food precessor and E got a bunch of tools.

Here is Maggie opening her present, a rope with a ball on it and a new bandana. She had an ear tucked back and didn't even notice due to all of the excitement.

...and yes, she ate the wrapping paper here again too.

Over the next few days, we did lots of shopping, lots of eating and catching up with old friends and distant family. We had a big New Year's Eve Dinner at E's cousin's house complete with massive steaks, shrimp and scallops. Then my family had a big New Year's Day BBQ/Game Night. Here is me, my mom and sisters eating Christmas cookies and playing Mad Gab.

A few days later, we drove to Nashville to spend the day with my friend from 3rd grade. Her daughter was having her 3rd birthday party so we were going and then hanging out with them for the rest of the day. Little did we know all of the baby stuff they had set aside for us. 3 boxes of clothes and shoes, a freezer bag full of hair bows, a huge bag of toys and books and then more toys that wouldn't fit into the bag along with sheets and a changing table. We were really thankful for everything. Free stuff is always good.

Me and E got up early and left the next morning to head home. Ahhhh....home sweet home. No more traveling for a while and back to work. We said good bye to the holiday by taking down the Christmas tree and decorations and started the New Year off by rearranging the living room. We hope you all had a great Christmas and New Years.

Christmas Vacation - Part 1

Oh the long post I have been avoiding. The day before Christmas Eve, all of the family in town was going to go to Bellingrath Gardens to see their Christmas lights. It's a walk through park so I was a little weary of that since I can't walk as far as I used to but after spending 30 minutes in traffic trying to park, and then walking a half mile to the gate, we were greeted with a MASSIVE LINE to get into the gate. We soon found out that it was an hour and half wait just to buy your tickets!!! No way. The walk through was going to be difficult enough and there was no way I could stand in line for that long. So we opted to head back to the house and play dominoes and eat Christmas treats. Here's me and dad on our half mile walk back to the car.
The next morning, Papa woke up early and made his famous Christmas Eve Pancakes...Delicious!!!
We all went out to run errands before our annual Christmas Eve seafood dinner which consisted of fried crab claws, seafood gumbo, oyster bisque, shrimp scampi along with several other side dishes. It was excellant!! Hats off to Dad and my Nanny for a fabulous dinner.


After all of the dinner crowd trickled out, our immediate family exchanged gifts. I recieved some jewelry, scarves, dishes, books, soaps, and so much more. E got 2 magazine subscriptions, some Wii points, a knife, some movies and much more I can't think of. The baby got some books and toys and Maggie thought it was Christmas since we allowed her to eat all of the wrapping paper left on the floor. Here I am showing off my new scarf with my aunt.
Dad recieved a singing and dancing Santa for his office. Maggie wasn't sure about him. She stayed far away and never took her eyes off of him.

Since my sister is pregnant, I gave her a book that I fell in love with long ago called "What Not to Name Your Kids." So after all was cleaned up, my sisters and mom sat around in the living room laughing to tears about how accurate our names were defined in that book.

Christmas morning, Papa made his famous breakfast burritos for breakfast and then me and E left to head north to be with his family for the rest of the holiday (which will be detailed in part 2 tomorrow). But before we left, the family was insistant that we needed to compare bellies again.

Off for Christmas

Sorry I forgot to tell you guys I was leaving for the holidays. I got an extra day off at work and really ran with it and forgot all of the things I was planning on telling you about. More to come after the holiday...

Merry Christmas to you all and I can't wait to see what the new year brings!!

Bailey Christmas Traditions

E and I talked the other night and he explained to me that he was really feeling blue this Christmas. He felt like we were both too busy with work and our lives to appreciate the season and all of the reasons behind it.


Well, I come home from work early on Sunday night (yes, I know, I did have to work this weekend) and made a big pot of wassail and hung ribbon on the tree. E came in, we checked out schedules and decided we had enough time to fit in our annual Christmas tradition of drinking wassail (or Egg nog), decorating the tree and watching The Elf. I love that movie!! If you haven't seen it, you are a fool for missing out on this awesome movie for so many years!!!



E put out the family nativity scene (which is a little cluttered for my taste but every year he insists that all of the camels and sheep have to be there...but hey, they will only be up for 3 more weeks anyway)



I was finally able to come up with a solution to our stocking problem. You see, last year, the stocking were so low that Maggie kept pulling them down. I thought about NOT putting them up this year and then regretted my decision and needed a solution. So I found one...they are hanging on the wall now behind the Christmas tree.



And I was super excited about finding our new Christmas ornament that I thought I lost. Our friend Justin went back to Key West a few weeks back and got me and E a Christmas ornament which has been something I have wanted to do in the future...have a special themed ornament from everywhere we lived and I had forgotten to get one from Key West.

So now, I present the famous (Ha) Bailey Christmas tree.

Renovation Updates

Slowly but surely...that's the team Bailey motto these days. Since I'm not much help to E with this giant watermelon in my shirt, he has been working hard by himself. Last weekend, he worked tireslessly for hours (longer than I would have had the patience for) to move the power for our dryer over a few feet. Last night, he ran the electrical sockets for my desk and for the washer while I unpacked our suitcase and started folding the laundry. The hope is....that the flooring will go into the laundry closet tonight, then the electrical work will be finished, we can put up the walls and install the washer and dryer by the weekend. Here is a picture of the work behind behind the washer and dryer.

In the meantime, I have put up our Christmas tree, wrapped all of the gifts, cleaned out the baby's room and continued with the painting projects I have in the garage.

Bailey Holiday Projects

We just got back from Thanksgiving vacation and after getting stuck in traffic for 4 hours, BOY were we glad to get home. The only problem is that time buffer that I always like between the time you get home and the time you have to go back to work. I missed that buffer and feel like my life is a little nuts with all of the home projects going on, no groceries, a filthy house and mounds of dirty laundry.

Maggie had a good time playing with E's parents puppy, Bob. Bob repeatedly tried to sexually assault Mag but he was lacking in size so she just thought he was playing. He pretty much just rode her tail around the house the whole time since that was all he could wrap he little paws around...if you get the picture. E thought it would be funny to get some VERY graphic pictures of all of the assaulting so I had to search hard for a pic that wasn't too dirty. They played for almost 3 days straight with E's brother (he really loves her and I think I may will her to him) and Mag had such a good time...so good that we had a hard time waking her up in the morning.

What else did we do? Well, my mom found a local thrift store that sells Target returns and rejects so we raided their store and spent a fortune but got so much.

Here is a picture of my biggest purchase. The seams have ripped on our comforter (I think Maggie's claws helped more than anything) so we were looking for a new silk quilt. And I found one at this store for 25 bucks!! All of the other ones I had been looking at were over 200 dollars!! I was thrilled.

We also picked up the bedding for the crib. I really like it and think it will turn out cute once I get the nursery finished. We also picked up several things my mom had started collecting for us...diapers, hangers, clothes, playpen, baby positioner, etc. We are sitting pretty so far.

Getting Ready for Thanksgiving

Happy Turkey Day!!

No, not that Turkey...this Turkey!!

Tomorrow we are on our way home. WooHoo!!! We haven't been home since Christmas of last year so we are anxious to get back and spend time with family. While it won't be exactly what we are used to, it will definately be a blend of what the days to come are going to look like.

With our first child on the way, we are going to have to rethink how we do holidays. I just don't think I will survive caring for an infant in the car for that long next year, Thanksgiving and then 3 weeks later, Christmas.

It takes about 12 or 13 hours to get home and so my husband is going to have alot of fun riding with an 80 pound dog and his wife who is 6 and a half months pregnant, ...this should be interesting!! I think Maggie will do better than me. Swollen feet, achy back and a full bladder....Ugh! This is going to be a long trip!!

Thanksgiving Social

This weekend was our annual Thanksgiving social which includes a meal, dessert, wonderful fellowship and of course, what would a Thanksgiving social be without a game of Thanksgiving themed pictionary. Very strange the games these people play but I am always up for a good time. Here are a few pictures from the event...sorry, there were so many.

I thought I would start off with this picture and the story that goes with it. I went home early from work on Friday to get the food cooked that I was supposed to bring. I made a sweet potato souflee' and 2 casserole dishes of apple dumplings (E's favorite). With an hour left before the party started and all three dishes needing to be cooked for about an hour, I opted to cook the souflee' and the biggest dish of apple dumplings. I figured that I would bring the extra dish of apple dumplings to the party and see if there was room in the oven to cook them during dinner. Once we got there, there wasn't room in the oven so I resigned to the fact that one large dish would have to suffice. I was eating dinner inside when Elizabeth came and whispered in my ear:

Elizabeth: Are those dumplings cooked all of the way?
Me: Yeah, why?
Elizabeth: Well, everyone on the porch is eating them and they don't taste like the last ones you made.

I looked into the kitchen and saw the dish they had been eating from was the dish of raw apple dumplings. But that's not the funny part. The funny part was that they were eating them and going back for seconds and ended up eating almost the WHOLE DISH of the RAW dumplings. I look on the porch where half of our group was eating and Renee' (who is also pregnant and due 3 weeks before me) is just sawing through the raw apples with her plastic knife. Here's what was left in the raw dish. I laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes. Seriously, they were going back for seconds on the raw dumplings!!!

Good food!!!

Dave and Russell carving the turkey and the ham.

Erika decorated the porch SO BEAUTIFULLY!! I am super jealous of her front porch.

Everyone finally digging in to the food.

Everyone eating on the front porch.

The infamous game of pictionary...I started us out by drawing "giblet gravy." Just a small note, pictionary between the men and women gets VERY competitive as you will see in the next few pictures.

Dave looking up "turkey wattle" on his iphone to make sure he is submitting the right word. Lucky me, I picked that one.

Lindy was upset that he had picked Sam's entry "Uncle Benny's Hangover."
Erika relaxing on the front porch after cleaning house and cooking all day.
Me, Kristy and Matt focused intently on the board.
With all of the pregnant women in our class, let me rephrase that...With half of the women in our class being pregnant, this drawing in particular got us all a little scared before she drew the eyes. I was seriously starting to reconsider everything post childbirth.

But once she drew the eyes, we all immediately knew what she was drawing...Russell's snake vest.
And Matt couldn't resist...he had to try on the snake vest and bust a move!!