Special Delivery!

Yesterday, our friend Wez dropped by to visit for a few minutes.  She came by to see the nursery/new addition in progress.  She brought with her a special delivery for Little Jack.  An awesome quilt for Jack's bedding from Pottery Barn Kids and a stack of Baby Einstein DVDs - all thanks to our friends, The Spray's in North Carolina.  Beth sent us the quilt to see if it would work with the color we selected for the nursery...and a wonderful match it is.  Check it out!!!  The quilt is up next to the wall in the nursery to show how it matches the color.

CPR Certified

Ray and I decided to take advantage of some of the classes offered through the hospital.  After a long day of painting the outside of the new addition to the house, Monday night we attend a CPR class.  Quite an interesting adventure...you always run into interesting people at anything in the community.  We found the class to be very worthwhile and would recommend such a class to anyone.  So, if your work or community is offering the class, give up a couple of hours of your time and learn something that could possibly one day play a part in saving a life.

Couch Time on Saturday

We have spent the day on the couch...when I say we I am speaking of Jack, myself, and the Queen.  You can see in the picture that Queenie is an ole couch pro.  My mother claims that that when Jack arrives he will be as lazy as Queenie and I as well as be a pro at a couch potato!  You know that we would not have it any other way!  So, here we are at a three day weekend, which is nice.  We have Infant CPR class on Monday evening.  I got the "Jack Mobile" back last night with everything in working order.  Not sure what tomorrow holds...probably another day like today, which you will not find me complaing about it one bit.  I have also included some pictures from movie night last night.  One of Jack and I holding Queenie and the other of  Mary being invaded by Queenie while attempting to watch a movie.  Jack has been pretty active in the past hour, I think he is telling me to get myself up off the couch :D.

And Today is Thursday...

Well, after the long night I had on Tuesday night, I determined it was a good idea to go to bed early last night.  And by early I mean 7:00 - came in from eating dinner at church and headed straight to bed.  That was pretty early for me.  So, we didn't have to relocate to the recliner after I decided to sleep with 7 or 8 pillows.  I thought Ray was going to have make a late night run to Wal-Mart to buy a pillow for himself.  Luckily we had some extras upstairs.

The "Jack Mobile" is still in the shop for repair.  Nothing major - just more wind noise than there should be so a specialist will look at it tomorrow.  Hope to return the loaner and be back in the "Jack Mobile" before the weekend.

I have included two pictures of the clothes our friends Beth and Bennett sent to us for Jack.  I unpacked them from a box and put them in the dresser drawer.  Lots of cute things!!  Thank you again Beth and Bennett!!

Being a Night Queen!

Ok, ok now....I am referring to the Queen herself.  So, last night was our first night sleeping in the recliner since the start of our pregnancy.  Queenie gets to experience just about everything that goes on in the house, no matter what time of day or night .  So, around 2 am, I get out of bed from being there as long as I could possibly stand.  I head into the living room only to discovering that it is freezing.  I made that determination based on the fact that I was cold as well as the fact the heater was on emergency heat when I walked past the thermostat.  So, I need to chase a rabbit here for a minute - the heat stayed on from 2 until 6 this morning...and my thought was, "Oh my-what is the power bill going to look like for the month?"  Well, much to my surprise I come to work and receive my power bill email.  I was hesitant about signing in to my account and looking at my bill.  And when I finally signed in I realized that I probably should not have looked...it went from $160 last month to $300!!!  That is the highest power bill that I have ever paid...I compared it to this time last year and the bill was $180.  Now, can we say that it has been cold....just in case some of you haven't noticed!  So, back to my story.  After determining that it was way too cold in the living room, I go and get more blankets and decide that I also need to recruit the Queen to join me for the rest of the night in the recliner.  I awake her from where she was sleeping under the cover in the bed and I know full good and well she was confused...her initial response was to go straight to the backdoor thinking it was 5:15 am when she normally goes outside.  When she comes back inside she heads straight for the bedroom but I managed to get her to come back and join me in the chair.  Well, after 30 minutes of shifting around and getting more pillows, I finally found a comfortable position in which to sleep.  With all of those events, I was no long sleepy.  DirectTv doesn't offer too much at 2 am...so I settled for watching Wacky Races on the Boomerang channel...gotta love those old cartoons!

To draw this post to a close, I will end by saying that Jack and I along with Queenie spent several hours in the wee hours of the morning in the recliner sleeping off and on and freezing to death as the heater ran and ran resulting in an increased power bill and a decrease in sleep.  Something seems wrong with this situation.

The "Jack Mobile"

Well, we purchased a new car last February in order to have more room for traveling.  We bought a 2005 Infiniti FX35 - somewhat of a crossover vehicle.  Great idea for us...or at least we thought so, until now.  Little did we realize that three months after our purchase we would start discussing the idea of a baby in our lives.  And little did we realize that almost a year later we would be talking about trading.  That is what we did today...we bought what I like to call our "Jack Mobile".  No mini-van for us...we went the SUV route.  Much more leg room and a great deal more cargo room...now we don't have to pull a trailer when we get ready to go somewhere!  I have included two pictures of the outside and one of the inside.  The inside pictures is a picture of the backseat which are already assigned to Jack and Queenie when we take road trips.  Their names aren't physically on the seats yet but they probably will be soon.  All we need now is a carseat.

Jack's Snow Day and iTunes!

Jack's snow day will have to be another day of the year.  What a joke!  Here is all our snow!  Moody Alabama Style of course!

Jack has his own folder in iTunes!  It has 12 songs from Disney's Lullaby Album!  I hope he love Mickey and all his gang as much as I do!

Jack's Dr. Visit & Snow Day

Not a very exciting post today but worth remembering in the future.  Well, another doctor visit for Jack and me yesterday.  Just routine of course.  The doctor came in and she usually asks how everything is going and if I have any questions.  That is our normal routine.  Well, this visit began with her entering the room and saying, "Well, how about that nice fever blister you have there?"  I replied to her, "Aren't I the lucky one?"  So, she proceeds with the routine and asks, "Do you have any questions?"  And my response was a little out of the ordinary.  I replied, "Yes, can you do something about this?" as I pointed to the fever blister.  We had some laughs and moved on to another topic.  I got to hear Jack's heartbeat again, which to me is the coolest part of all the doctor visits.  The next doctor visit will be to test my sugar which is routine. 

Today will be a Jack's first snow day.  I am sitting at work waiting to go home early today and watching a few flurries fall from the sky.  I am hoping there will be enough to make just a nice blanket of snow but I am afraid it is going to get rather messy for those travelling through the area.  I will post some pictures of the coming snow a little later.

Still no nursery theme, no decisions made about furniture, and of course no final decisions about names.  Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available.  :)

Jack's Nursery and Christmas Gifts!

Over the weekend, we spent quite a bit of time working around the house and the nursery is well underway.  I think some people would say that we have gone to the extreme with adding a room onto the house but I was not up for the idea of walking up and down the stairs in our house during the wee hours of the morning.  The nursery was added the week prior to Christmas.  Once Jack is older, we will move him to one of the upstairs rooms and turn the added room into a sunroom or sitting room.

Everyone keeps asking, what colors are you going to use?, where are you going to buy furniture?, what is your theme going to be?, and the list goes on and on.  We are taking everything one day at a time.

So, in this posting I have included several pictures of the nursery in progress as well as gifts that have been given to us over the past month or so, especially here at Christmas.  In the pictures I didn't include the HUGE box of clothes that I received today from my friend, Beth in North Carolina that have been worn by her son Bennett...so many cute things!!!  Thank you so much Beth!!

Starting the New Year and Answering the Question, "Who is Jack?"

I guess from the dates that you see prior to today that it has been quite a while since I have blogged.  In fact, I had even hid my blog for quite sometime.  I have determined that with the anticipated arrival of our first little one, blogging will be one of the best ways to share with family and friends that don't get to be a part of our lives on a daily basis.

So, to the right is our little one, the one we refer to as Jack.  Why the name Jack?  Well, it started out as a joke from a friend of mine at work back at the end of summer.  She came to me and said that she had had a dream that she had a baby boy and was so upset because she was too old to raise another child.  So, she gave the baby to me to raise and named him Jack.  That is how the name came about.  We have laughed about it since that time.  It became even funnier when we discovered we were having a boy.  So, the name has become a part of our daily lives for the little one growing inside of me.

On a different note, the name Jack also has sentimental meaning to my family.  Jack Bennett was a cousin of my granny and a part of my life for almost 17 years...until he went to be with the Lord near Christmas of 1995.  I still remember my cousin saying to his mom, "Jack gets to go to Jesus' birthday party."  There was not a family event that Jack and Emmie Ruth (his wife) weren't a part of.  They were like having another set of grandparents to all of us Grigsby grandchildren.  They were avid Alabama fans and travel to see the Tide play on many, many, many occasions.  My mother can share more memories than I of Jack and Emmie Ruth as she and her brothers and sisters were growing up.

My memory of Jack is that he was a sweet man that adored us kids and was especially attentive to my brother, Tyler who has spina bifida.  You see, I believe that Jack had a special place for disabled children because of his service as a Shriner.  That was just the kind of man he was - always full of love for my family and my grandparents.

On one occasion, I remember Jack and Emmie Ruth taking me to eat at Hamburger Heaven over in Irondale which included hamburger, fries, and a milkshake (probably chocolate :) ).  Another memory I have was when my cousin Rob was young he would go around the house saying, "Let me look at your teeths."  Well, he said it to Jack one day and Jack actually took his teeth out of his mouth...I don't know if Rob ever asked to see his teeth again.  There are many, many more memories of him that I could share and many other could share but the one thing I know is if we do choose to name our son Jack, I want him to know how special his namesake was to our family.

So, for those of you wondering about names, we have tossed around several but as time grows near things could change but at the moment these are some of the ideas we have so far and all I have connection to family in some way:  Jackson Ray, Jackson David, Jackson Bennett...and that is where the list stops for now.  Those are the three that I can't get out of my mind.