Josh & Shana

So....it is really late and for some reason I can't really get to sleep. Both my favorite men are fast asleep tucked in their beds (or cradle). I have been in Atlanta for over a week now, and I am so excited I still have over a week left till we go back to Louisville. I had a great past week, until I got sick. I was throwing up all night one night, then it faded away pretty fast. It was pretty crazy. Everybody that I hung out with on Sunday pretty much went through it this week, crazy!! That was no fun. Christmas was great as well. It was so cute watching Truett on Christmas, obviously he doesn't have a clue what was going on, but he did get his hands on some wrapping paper (pictures to follow shortly). Today was another great day. The boys all went to see Avatar while Judy and I (Truett too) stayed home and lazied around. We did a puzzle, laundry, ate good food, and started a sewing project. I am trying to build my confidence with my sewing machine one project at a time. Right now I am working on place mats for my dining room table. We'll see how they turn out. Then I am moving on to a curtains, and then an apron.

Night one of my first overnight shift is over. I worked 8pm until 8am. I cut, well, at least 40 tenderloins, and I don't know how many rib roasts. I worked with my boss, Jeff, and we got finished with time to spare. My hands and back hurt but it wasn't too bad. I got home around 8:30am and was in bed by 9. Weird. I feel like I've tricked my body into some crazy punk'd episode. I slept for 8 hours solid - up at 5pm. Now I'm about to go back to work. Another 8 to 8. But after this shift I come home and my friend from down the street, Will, is taking me to the airport at 11:30. I'll be in Atlanta by 3:30pm. We may try to make it to the Christmas Eve service at CCMA. It all depends on flight times and traffic out of Atlanta.

I feel a little like Kevin from Home Alone. Except for the part where I wished that my family disappeared. And except for the part where the bad guys try to break into my fun house of pain. I also don't have creepy neighbors that carry snow shovels and scowl frequently. I guess the only reason I feel like "the little jerk" is that I'm home alone until Christmas Eve. Shana went home with Truett and Zoe on Thursday morning. I can't go because of work. This is, by far, the busiest time of year for us at work. Where our meat department will do $32,000 in a really good week during the summer, we'll do $40k plus on the 23rd and 24th. So needless to say, there's no time off given.

It's 9:33 pm. I just got back from the U of L hospital. Jimmy had just gotten out of his 3rd surgery a few hours before. John and I got to go back to the ICU and see him. John explained a lot to me. Jimmy was walking home on Sunday night and came up on a few guys. This part is a little sketchy as far as details go. There was only so much the the police told John. He was basically in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was shot 8 times in the abdominal area. One of the bullets severed his femoral artery (the huge artery that goes from the heart to the leg). He was still conscious when the cops got there and was able to give a description of the shooter before he went out. When the femoral artery is severed you can bleed out in a matter of minutes. When Jimmy got to the ER the doctors were amazed he was even alive. Throughout the next several hours he was given 48 units of blood. 48!! That doesn't include the plasma. The doctors told John and the family that it looked grim and to expect the worst. However, people were praying. He survived the first surgery. Then the next. Then the next. The doctors saved both of his legs and he is now in an induced coma. He's on a respirator but could breath on his own if it were ok for him to be awake. He's in stable condition, but not totally out of the woods. Its a very real miracle that he's alive.

It's 5:05 AM, on Tuesday morning. I'm getting ready for work. I noticed that I had a voicemail on my phone from late last night. It was John Tucker (Canadian John... read about him below). He is involved in a ministry to men who are saved out of really rough, and most of the time homeless backgrounds. The ministry provides these men with a structured environment and a place to live. John lives with these guys in a big house right next door to the church they attend in downtown Louisville. Its not the best part of town. One guy in particular is named Jimmy. I've met Jimmy several times. He came to stay with John for a few weeks when John lived across from us. He's a great guy with a rough past. Jesus changed his life. Last night Jimmy was shot. I don't know all the details. Only what John left on my phone. He said its "touch and go" at this point. Pray that Jimmy lives. I don't really know what else to write about it, but I'm just asking for your prayers for this brother.

I saw this on my friend Andy Darnell's blog (link on the right). Isn't this why Martin Luther started the Reformation? So people like Jean don't have to depend on statues of Jesus to protect her dogs' right to poopie? This video cracks me up!

Here are some more videos of the most adorable kid on this planet. Can you tell we can't get enough of his laughter.

Us playing at my work on campus.


Josh playing with Truett.


Me playing with Truett.

Well. Its winter. yay. Winter.

I took this on my phone this morning. Yay. Snow.

I haven't had much time to pay attention to Obama's plan for Afghanistan or the war in general, but I think I got the idea of what he's saying. To the Dems he's sounding more like Bush and to the GOP his pre-planned exit strategy is telling the bad guys our plans. Here's my quick theory on his plan and why its changed since his election campaign: When he was on the campaign trail he was planning out of ignorance. He made promises that he didn't know he couldn't keep. There were probably a lot of things going on behind the scenes that was so top secret that he had no idea about. That's probably the reason that Bush had to make some of his decisions about the war. There's so much stuff going on that we don't have any idea about. Once Obama was elected and got all the information he had to change his tune. Notice that when he got elected he didn't touch the war topic for a while. I know the economy was/is pressing, but he never mentioned it even in the face of pressure. Why? He was briefed on ALL of the information that he didn't have prior to becoming the commander and chief. He had to change his position. If that's the case, and I realize that this is totally my opinion, he should just tell us that he's gotten new information that he can't disclose that's caused him to change. It makes sense. It also makes Bush look a lot less stupid for his decisions. Anyway, that's just my opinion.

Dean and Judy came up for the week of Thanksgiving. We had a really great time. Truett was definitely the main event because all we did was hang out pretty much. We had a really good time. As always really good food too. Here are some videos from the week. Truett was always our center piece at the table and we all had a lot of fun with him. As you can see two of the videos are him in the bumbo on the dining room table.


Here is one with Dean playing with Truett. Dean seems to have the touch to always make Truett laugh.



Here is Judy with Truett talking his head off.


Truett at the dinner table again.

Most of you who know me that I am a fan of Toby Mac's music. Well, we took our students to the Winter Slam where he was playing along with some other great artists. We had a really great time. We even took Truett. No worries his head was full of cotton, but I am sure I got a few crazy looks from people wondering why I had a baby there. I only saw one other baby there besides mine.


Right now this is my favorite song of his. You can hear me jamming to this while driving down the street occasionally. Or hear me jamming with this in the ipod as I clean house.


You can see all of us jamming.

P.s. I said jamming a lot. :)

Last Friday the Joneses were out of town (they live below us) so we thought it was a good opportunity to pull out the Dance Dance Revolution game for our students. We had a really good time. Here is Scott playing with Truett.


This video is to get back at Josh for my drumming Rock Band video. If you haven't seen that you can check out our youtube videos for it.

To make some extra money this Christmas I'm offering my services to design you and your family a Christmas card this year. Now that school's out I have some extra time. Here's how it works: You send me what ever picture or pictures that you want on your card with some idea of what you want (colors, scripture, names, design ideas, etc.) and I'll make it happen. I'll send you back a high resolution JPEG of your card that you can take to be printed. Or you can do like we're doing this year and use shutterfly.com to print ours. I think they print 4x6 for .14 cents/print. I'm not sure what to charge. I was thinking about $10/design. Shana said $25 but you can get them done at Costco for way cheaper. Shutterfly does their cards for $1.49/print. But, if you take my $10 design and print them for .14 cents/print you'll save some money! Here's a price comparison for online printing with different sizes. Anyway, if you want one done I could probably have a one day turn around.

Here's our card for this year:

Truett is doing amazingly well with his sleep this week. I started reading the book "The No-Cry Sleep Solution." It is packed full of ideas on how to get your babies to sleep longer, go to bed easier, and nap better. I was worried a little bit because Truett doesn't nap by the book (6 hours a day), I am lucky if he sleeps 4, but he is a good night sleeper. Which after doing my logs realized that he sleeps more at night then the books says. So, that makes me feel better. Also, seeing that he isn't fussy and doesn't seem to be exhausted all the time. I guess my baby is ok. Well, I implemented a few of the ideas from this book and Truett is sleeping longer in between feeding now at night which is great for mommy. I am now getting between 3 and 5 hours of sleep at a time, as before I was getting 1 to 3 hours. Mommy is better rested which makes daddy happy too.

You are probably wondering why I say I am giving up the books for now. Well, my gracious husband has helped point out to me that Truett has slid into my number one spot of priorities of my life right now, giving God and my husband whatever is leftover at the end of the day. This was really easy to do. Also, I have been consumed in my parenting books trying a new idea almost everyday, and what Josh, many friends, and one of my books pointed out you have to give things time. Well, I have been driving Josh crazy with no stability in this. So, I am giving up the books for the rest of the year. We are going to stay on this course and see where it takes us.

I feel a huge burden to make sure we raise Truett right and so I consume myself with books. I think my friends have probably even gotten sick of hanging out with me and talking to me because all I ever talk about is Truett and ask parenting questions. Well, this is me asking forgiveness and asking for your help to stop this. There is more to me then being a mom, I am a child of God (number 1) and Josh's wife (number 2). I need to cultivate those a little bit more.

P.S. Dean and Judy are on there way to Louisville as we speak, SO EXCITED!

Truett is super happy and showing all kinds of emotions now. He'll actually interact with us now. Here he is playing with us last night. He looks so cute in his pjs and socks. He wores this half the day because it was a pj day. Aunt Heidi got him these pjs and Vena got him these socks. I love both of them.

This semester I'm taking "Biblical Theology of Worship" with Dr. Bruce Ware. I've learned a ton and its been great. One thing that he's had us do is a Worship Arts project. I could have written some music, a hymn, stuff like that. There were several options. What I decided to was to write a poem, use some Scripture, and illustrate the whole thing. Here's what I came up with.

I started with this picture. It's me in my parents' basement. I took it back in October. I had an idea back then of what I wanted to do. They had a white wall, I had a camera. Here I am.
Then I found a picture of a road, which for some reason I can't find on my computer right now but it looked similar to this one:
Anyway, I added a bubble/force field thing which represents the protection of the Word. I added the dark sky, some extra clouds and lightening using some sweet photoshop effects. I added myself, made the ground quake, and wrote a poem. I'm kind of putting myself out there with the poetry...which was the hard part for me. I'll turn it in on Friday. I'm going to take it and get it professionally printed. So anyway, here's the final project:

Ha! I bet you thought there would be more Truett videos. Soon. But in the mean time here are more videos from Truett's favorite band, Need To Breathe, off their myspace page - also where you can listen to all of their albums for free!

I'm in the library trying to focus on this paper I have to write. I think I need to unwind a little before the creative juices start flowing. So here's a little type-barf to get it going...

Here is a picture of Truett fresh out of the womb. Moments later the camera crashed to the floor. He is so precious i would do it all over again.

I just found these pictures on my computer. Thought I would share them with the world.

This is my labor and delivery room. That bed was like a transformer into all different kinds of positions. I absolutely loved my experience at this hospital.

I hated this position, but had to do it every couple of hours so they got a read on Truett.
In between contractions. This was in my room.

Made a new label called Truett Videos, mostly with grandparents in mind. So if you scroll down on the right you'll see a label called Truett Videos. When you click on that it will pull up all the videos on Truett on the blog. Enjoy.

I love watching my husband be a dad. Last night and this morning he was the sweetest ever. The past week Truett's sleeping patterns got all out of wack. After talking to Jennifer, he is most likely going through a growth spurt. I went to bed last night early when Truett went to sleep while Josh took care of Zoe and a few other things after he came home from work, which was after a full day of classes. He really is the best. Well, this morning when I woke up Josh was making a homemade breakfast. Homemade pancakes and sausage. It was really yummy. Then after breakfast he cleaned up the kitchen (even better) while I took a shower. When I got out of the shower this is what I saw. I thought it was adorable my man cleaning the kitchen with Truett strapped to him. Truett is really growing up these days and recognizing Josh recently. So, I think Josh is having a lot more fun with him. Truett googled at Josh in the ergo this morning, they had a good time laughing at each other.

This is one of Truett's new play spots while mommy is on the computer. He is growing up so fast that now he is starting to entertain himself. Obviously mommy is helping out a bit here.

This is Truett and I walking down Hillcrest the day before Halloween. You can see Zoe down there too. Josh had never gotten to see it all decked out in their Halloween garb. They are pretty crazy about their Halloween decorations. Well anyways, this is me in my Mobe type wrap. It isn't exactly a Mobe, but it is just like one. This one is from Target. It is one of my favorite things. Seriously!! After finally getting the hang of it watching tons of youtube video on how to use it, it seriously is one of my favorite baby gifts. I never leave home with out it, no joke. It is always in my diaper bag. Since it is just 5 yards of material it fits nicely in my bag. Truett takes at least one nap in it a day about. He likes it a ton, sometimes when he is really cranky/tired I can put him in it and he goes right to sleep. Not to mention he takes way better naps when I wear him in it. As you can see here he is fast asleep.

A couple of weeks ago I attempted to go get my haircut and had my first breakdown. I had Truett snug in his car seat walking into my appointment when they said sorry we can't see you unless someone is watching Truett. I was like what. I thought surely they won't not see me maybe a warning, nope. I went home with the same hair I walked in with. I was so mad and sad. I cried all the way back home. I was having a bad body image day that day too. The weather had just dropped and I threw on a jacket that has never been snug since I purchased it. Well on the way there I noticed it was really snug in my shoulders. Needless to say on the way home I was feeling really down about myself. I could careless most of the time if I wore makeup or not, but I care a lot about my hair. I felt so down, I came home and cried to Josh and saying I was fat and ugly and of course he was floored. Well that day finally passed and we figured something out. So my husband was an awesome husband last week. He met me at the hair salon so that I could get my hair cut and waited in the car with Truett. I was there for about an hour. What a trooper he was. Now I feel pretty again. Next week I will start to work my gym schedule back into my daily routine. Need to get my belly back to normal. We'll see about that.

This song is great.

If you want to follow any of the links he mentions in the article his blog is on our bloglist in the side bar. This is worth your time...

This is pumpkin one of three...he'll get to the others after some Greek.

This is one of my favorite sites. Josh likes to spend time with Truett in the morning in our bed. This is Josh teaching Truett how to lift his neck on his tummy. They are so cute together.
Trying to get as many more wears of his coke shirt as possible. He wore this on Sunday to church. Josh thought his diaper looked like shorts and that he looked funny, so he wanted me to take a picture. Look at those chubby legs he is so adorable. I absolutely love his little converse socks though. I had just changed his diaper, no worries we had some little jeans on him. SOO cute.