I am Apparently Incapable of Forming a Coherent Thought for More than a Single Paragraph

Brandon writes a Bible Blog, and sometimes his postings find their way onto my blog. I take his postings off my blog so that those of you checking in for pictures of my kids and sarcasm aren't utterly confused by all the Brilliant Insight. Check my sidebar if you want to check out his blog. He's so smart...

And he's also in Pasadena, California for the next couple of weeks working on some school stuff for his master's degree at Fuller Theological Seminary. (Did you know Brandon was working on his masters? It's called the Masters of Arts in Global Leadership, but I tend to refer to it as the Master of World Domination). So it's just me and the boys until he gets back. My mom is coming for a couple of days this weekend to hang out with Dane and Aidan so I can work, and she's going to make calzone while she is here. :)

I still have yet to take a photograph in the month of January. I don't know if it's because the boys haven't been cute this month, or if it's because I'm a bit intimidated by my new external hard drive and the fact that I don't have "Pictures 2008" folder on my desktop to drop pictures into anymore. I really have to be spoon-fed all this technical stuff, people.

I am buying a refrigerator tomorrow, and I'm pretty sure the decision will cause me to lose sleep tonight. I don't want to do it. I want someone else to just do it simply so I don't have to decide which one of 14 identical white side-by-side models to buy. Did I say 14? I meant 57. And that's if I only go to one store. Does anyone have a fridge they love? One that doesn't cost $2000? One that Home Depot carries?

Perhaps next time I will be able to write a posting that has, you know, a point.

Have a great week! Please pray that when I stop by my house tomorrow there is at least some paint on the new walls so I don't have a pregnant-hormonal-lady-irrational breakdown.

Ramblings

It's been a bit since I last posted, and since I have nothing insightful to say, I thought a basic list of ramblings would be appropriate.

--Aidan was sick over the weekend, and I had to keep him home from church Sunday.  That child cried and fussed for almost 2 hours Sunday because he wanted to go to church and "see all his friends".  He will be the one I am tempted to ground from youth group when he is a teenager.  (As the wife of a high school youth minister, DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED on this practice.)

--Dane has been really sweet lately to his baby sister.  He will hug me, then hug my tummy, and talk to the baby.  He felt the baby kick the other day and the child was beside himself with excitement.  He asked me if God had made her feet yet.  Yesterday he put his ear to my tummy and said, "I heard my baby sister say Dane!  Dane!"

--Speaking of the big brothers, Aidan is convinced that he, too, has a baby in his tummy.  When he wasn't feeling well this past weekend, he was convinced it was because the baby in his tummy was angry.  He also prays for his mythical baby when he prays at night.

--I got Mac back from the Mac screen people and he is as good as new!  Yay!  I am typing this from a chair in the living room, not connected to a giant monitor screen.

--My house has walls inside now.  Not painted walls, but walls nonetheless.  Have I mentioned Brandon's shower remodel?  Allow me to explain.  Our master bathroom was built with a ridiculously small shower, next to a nice big bathtub, all along the back wall of our bathroom.  When the giant tree from our backyard decided to become an indoor house plant last September, we decided to not replace the bathtub and to make the shower much bigger.  The plan is for the shower to run the entire 8 feet or so of the back wall, be about 4 feet wide, with a 6 foot high "wall" in front of it, with an open doorway type thing on the opposite end from the shower head.  Are you picturing it?  It should be really nice if it comes together.  And Brandon will tile it himself after we move in.  All of this has proved to be a bit tricky to communicate to the various people working on various parts of our bathroom over the last couple of weeks.  For example, last week, Brandon went up to the house and a closet had basically been built where our shower was supposed to be.  Completely walled off, with a doorway.  And no light.  Interesting concept, no?  But it's coming together now.  Watch for "before and after" pictures of our new shower coming Summer 2009.

  

--Have you heard?  Apparently there is an inauguration scheduled.  I have a feeling I will hear the phrase "History in the Making" once or twice from the news media today.

--I guess I haven't mentioned it lately, but I am feeling fine, and the pregnancy is trucking along relatively incident-free.  Brandon even has mentioned that I am slightly less whiney (whiny?  I whine less) than I have been with previous pregnancies.  I passed my glucose test with flying colors, my blood pressure is perfect, and yesterday at my doctor's appointment she mentioned to me that I have lost 3 pounds in the last 2 weeks.  How ON EARTH that happened is beyond my comprehension.  But the woman with no willpower really didn't need to hear it.  And she didn't need to stop at the grocery store on the way home and purchase pizza, Stouffer's macaroni, and not one, but two different types of chocolate chip cookies.  Apparently the woman with no willpower interpreted this as "I have some ground to make up."  She's going to regret this in a few months.

Happy Inauguration Day, and I hope you celebrated MLK Day with gusto, as everyone in the tile-store industry apparently did!

Stranded

The e-bay van is cursed.

For the last month or so, it has been having what I can only describe as electrical difficulties, and every now and then it will just die. The lights won't work, the buttons on the key won't work, the engine won't even turn over, nothin'. We have taken it to the dealership twice before to have the problem resolved, and they have so far basically told us (after we spent almost $700 dollars), that they do not know what the problem is.

Onward down the road we go.

The boys and I went to Pump It Up yesterday for a couple of hours, and then I had the brilliant idea to take them to the Kolache Factory for lunch to take advantage of a really good coupon I had. (That doesn't sound like me, does it? Trying to convince my young children that yes, kolaches are lunch, just to use a good coupon?)

I pulled the van right up next to an electrician's truck in the parking lot, and the van promptly died. And did not restart. I guess the electrician felt sorry for the poor pregnant lady popping the front hood and messing with the fuse box (it's the only "car thing" I know how to do: identify the fuse box), because he came over with his special electrician's tool and tested all of my fuses and my battery and verified that they were all in good working order. I had great fuses and a terrific battery, the van was simply cursed.

So the boys and I headed inside for some "lunch" and I decided to myself that I was a pregnant lady stranded at a Kolache Factory, and, frankly, things could be worse. I was sitting and digesting my wonderful egg/sausage/cheese creation while the boys ran around chasing each other (we were the only ones there. I guess no one else had the coupon). The employees, who all knew of my stranded-ness, had retreated to the kitchen and left me to browse my cell phone for someone who could possibly come and get us. Brandon was away at a staff retreat, naturally.

I was midway through the "K"s on my phone when I look up to see Aidan's shoe flying through the air, behind the counter, and directly into the racks of kolaches stacked behind the counter. I 'calmly' set my phone down and tried to reprimand Aidan for kicking his shoe into the ham and cheeses while stealthily trying to retrieve the shoe and dispose of the kolaches that had fallen to the floor at the same time. (What I wouldn't give for a peek at that security tape.) Thankfully, the employees remained in the kitchen and did not witness the vandalism. When I got back to the table and my phone, I realized that in my haste, I had accidently dialed my friend Kelsey and had been connected to her voice mail the entire time. Later that night, after she had gotten off of work, she called me very concerned that something was wrong, thinking I had been in some kind of accident.

How do you explain to your friend, "No, no accident. I was just stranded at the Kolache Factory with my cursed e-bay van and my son's shoe was flying for the air, headed for the racks of kolaches behind the counter because I had the brilliant idea to eat lunch there and use this great coupon I had."

An accident is much more believable.

The van eventually started back up, just after I had secured another friend who was on the way to rescue us from certain Kolache Banishment, and we headed straight to the dealership for the third time in less than a month for the Dodge experts to tell us the van is possessed and nothing short of an exorcism will cure it.

And my exorcism I mean new internal computer.

The Nameless Baby

UPDATE:
This has been so fun to read everyone's ideas for baby girl names! I had no idea it would be so tough to name baby girls. The boys were so easy, we have always had a short list of boy names, just none for girls. Here are some of my favorites so far (and Brandon has vetoed ALL of them for one reason or another):

Elaine or Lainey (Brandon is okay with "Layne", but his spelling falls under the "weird spellings" category, and it rhymes with Dane)
Ava or Eva (both vetoed for being too trendy)
Bella (also too trendy)
Claire (I love it, but Hot Brandon says it's an old person name. And it's one syllable)
Gracie (another old person name, according to H.B.)
Audrey
Maisy or Maisie
Sadie (vetoed by both of us, we decided it was a dog's name)
Eden (we both love this name, but it rhymes with Aidan)
Natalie

Basically, if Brandon has heard of another person with the name, it is too common. He tells me there are a "ton of people" named that, even if he can only name one. A few that he likes, that I have vetoed:

Jael
Piper
Skyler
Meadow (or something like that. It may have been Moonbeam or something.)
several others that I can't remember because I already vetoed them.

We have a name in mind that we will probably choose because it's the only one we can both agree on, but we'd love to keep hearing your ideas in case we see one we like better!

Original post:

You may not have heard, but I am pregnant. With a GIRL. And she will make her grand appearance in March. The only problem is, we will have to call her Baby Girl until she is old enough to pick her own name, because Brandon and I CANNOT agree on a name that we both love.

So I am pleading and begging for help here. I need some ideas. I have googled and searched for names and we just cannot find it. So please, please, please, give us some ideas and suggestions. Here is the criteria:

1. Something unique, but not too weird.

2. Nothing trendy, we do not want her to be one of three kids in her kindergarten class with the same name.

3. Without divulging too much info on the good ole' internet, her last name will be our last name (um, duh), and her middle name will be my maiden name. Her middle name is one syllable, which "goes better" with a name that is more than one syllable.

4. Nothing that rhymes with Dane or Aidan

5. Must be easy to pronounce and spell. No weird spellings.

6. Nothing that sounds like a stripper. (For example: Dane really likes the name Lola. Just. Not. Happening.)

Nameless baby appreciates your help.

Brief Break and an Update

I finally sent my broken Mac in to have the screen repaired, and I should have it back by this time next week, so my computer access is a bit limited until then. Perhaps I'll take up a hobby in the meantime. Like sewing or basketweaving. I'll let you know how that works out.

Also, I was just looking at the picture I have at the top of my blog and thinking how that family looks nothing like us now. Gone is the wicked tan I got for a wedding I went to in July. The 2 and 4 year olds in the picture are now 3 and 5, and I have an almost-7-month baby belly now. (Okay, some of the belly is cheeseburgers. But a lot of it is baby.) And the tree behind me in the picture doesn't stand there anymore, because it crashed through our house a few months ago. And the backyard? Our family hasn't seen it since September.

We expect to be back in our house "within a month", as our contractor has been telling us for the last 2 weeks. We'll see. Brandon has been picking out tile for our new remodeled master shower, and they tell us insulation and drywall will go in this week sometime. Over the next few weeks we will be deciding on things like what refrigerator to buy (any suggestions? We are not going with stainless steel.) and picking out a new mattress and furniture for our bedroom. This should be more fun than it is, but frankly, we weren't wanting to redecorate. The majority of our worldly possessions still live in a storage facility, and TiVo, we miss you most of all.

So that's a bit of what's going on. The kids are back in school and loving it, and Brandon went back to work this week after an almost 2 week break. I'm off to work on my basketweaving now, I'll catch you on my "new" Mac!