Snow!

I have no pictures to show for it, but it actually snowed here today! Several schools closed, but the co-op did not... sad. I did have to reschedule a couple of parent conferences so that was happy. It just kept coming down, so I decided to work from home today (not that my neck allowed me to do so for long periods of time). Hopefully, the pain will subside a little tomorrow and I can get some work done in the office. The next couple of weeks are going to be insane! I think I counted 23 parent conferences in 4 days next week. Yikes! I'm taking Monday off to go see a neurologist in Little Rock, and I am really hoping he will be able to suggest something to relieve this pain. If nothing else, I'd take a temporary solution to get me through the pregnancy!

Other than the neck mess, baby and I are doing really well. I keep pausing to see if I can feel her move around, but there hasn't been a definite sign of movement yet. I might be worried if I hadn't seen her squirming so much on the ultrasound last week. :) Casey, of course, is still being wonderful and taking care of us all the time. Meals aren't as much of an issue because several girls from church brought a TON of food over this past Saturday. Our freezer is packed, so we should be good for the next month! They've been so sweet about trying to help while we get these neck issues sorted out. Casey works until 6:00 every night, so dinner has kind of been a headache for us. I am so thankful for the Christian friends we have made in this young marrieds class at church!

Speaking of dinner, I'm starving and Casey should be home soon. I hope this update was enough to sustain you (Christy ;)).

And the winner is.....

It's a GIRL! AAAHHHHH!!! We had our ultrasound today, and it was amazing! Casey has decided he gets to be in charge of putting up pictures/video of what we saw today, so you'll have to go to his blog to see that. Click here to see her in all of her glory. The video is almost 8 minutes long, so I won't hold it against you if you can't make it through the whole thing.

The first image we got of our little girl was her face looking straight at us.... and then she waved. That's right. She waved. With her left hand. It was hysterical. She was in a pretty weird position, so I gave the technician permission to poke her to make her move around a little. Weirdest. Thing. Ever. I still can't feel her moving around in there, and it was crazy to see her squirm around so much and realize that was happening INSIDE ME! We also got a good profile shot, looked at her tiny heart beating, and then the technician was finally able to see that she's a girl! They said we're right on target with our time line, so the due date is still August 13 (hello, miserable hot summer!). They also said she weighs 5 ounces, and she looks wonderful!

Final consensus: Ultrasound = coolest thing ever.

Brooke made me do it

I have no idea what relevance this has to anything, but I have been tagged and must follow through. Thanks to Brooke for this random idea:

Pick up the nearest book with at least 123 pages. Find page 123. Find the first five sentences. Post the next three sentences. Tag five people.

"In the Gospels, Jesus is always surrounded by the poor, by the marginalized. And, adversely, He is often opposed by the powerful. Not all the powerful, but those who oppose Him are almost always the people who are ahead in the lifeboat."
--Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller

There is obviously more to this interesting section, but I have fulfilled my duty. I'm not one to tag others, so feel free to do this on your blog if you so desire.

On a more personal note, work is not as completely horrible as it was last week, but I still wouldn't mind taking a long vacation sometime soon. Thanks to all for the prayers... and keep them coming! :)

Crazy life: Update

Casey went to the doctor: he has the "true" flu and an ear infection.

My boss found out that her grandbaby-to-be has spina bifida.

My coworker's mother-in-law passed away early this morning.

I still have not started working on the paperwork that I need for my conferences tomorrow because I was doing conferences for the new girl all day.

I like Kim's advice--chocolate milk it is... and maybe some double stuffed oreos. :)

One woman vs. Four Counties

I normally try to use this blog to update about life, but I need to take a moment to VENT. My job has been steadily getting harder over the past few weeks due to circumstances that no one can control, but today was the last straw! I am now the only person doing my job for FOUR COUNTIES. There used to be five of us--now it's just me. We started the year one person short because one girl quit right before the school year started--we never replaced her. Awesome. We hired a new girl at the beginning of the semester to replace one that moved in December, but there has been an issue with her teaching license so I have to go to all of her conferences with her. Plus, she still has no clue what she's doing so I do most of her paperwork for her. One of the other girls had intense leg surgery a few weeks ago and is still trying to recover. It was down to two of us until the end of last week. My final friend is now spending all of her time at the ICU with her mother-in-law who is not doing well at all.
Please take note: I cannot be angry with any of these people because none of this is their fault. However, it doesn't make me any more capable to do the job of five people all by myself!!! Oh, and my boss isn't around to help because her son and his girlfriend are expecting a baby, but they found out last week the baby has water on the brain. So she's going with them to their doctor appointments.... fantastic. That leaves me to do all of the legal paperwork and every conference for White, Woodruff, Lonoke, and Prarie counties. No problem.
Oh, yeah--and Casey's been running fever since Saturday night. Cheers.

First tummy pic!

I finally got Casey to take a picture of my tummy now that I'm 12 weeks along. Oh, and I asked the doctor--I'm not growing at an abnormally huge rate, and we only heard one heartbeat so I'm probably not having twins. :) Here's the first of many pictures to come (we hope!):

Everything checked out ok at the appointment today. It took a while to find the heartbeat (yes, I freaked out a little), but we finally got to hear it. When I asked Casey if he could hear it, his response was,"Is it the pulsing thing?" ..... Yes, dear. The pulsing thing. That would be our baby. :) I still haven't gained any more weight, but he said that's fine. I'm finally able to eat without feeling sick, so I'll probably be eating more very soon. We go back on Feb. 27 for the first ultrasound to see if it's a girl or a boy!! I can't believe how fast it's all going!

Poor little shingles...

I'm sitting in my house praying that the wind doesn't knock a tree through the window. I got to leave work early today because the wind is blowing so hard, several power lines are down--we can't work without power! Luckily, we still have power in our house (for now), but several shingles have gone missing, and one of the metal whirly birds (I'm sure that's not their real name) went flying off the roof. Apparently Mrs. Mary Brown found it in one of the neighbors' yards and brought it back to us. She's so sweet. :) Right now I'm just hoping we make it through the night without losing power!

My doctor's appointment is tomorrow morning, so I'm sure I'll give a better update after that. We're supposed to hear the heartbeat--yay!!! I did go shopping with Mom in Memphis a couple of weeks ago, and I am already wearing maternity pants. "But Rachel, you're just now hitting the 3 month mark!" Oh, I know. Believe me, I know. I still haven't gained much weight--I guess the doctor will tell me how much tomorrow. All this to say, tomorrow's update will be better. Stay tuned. :)