The One With...Um, I don't know

So, much has happened in the past month, plus we've been internet-less, so pardon my absence. I'm feeling super tired, and a little blah, so I'm just runnin through the highlights...

--We closed on our house on October 30th. It is beautiful and amazing and wonderful and my family, especially my mom, has helped us unpack and get things organized. It's been wonderful.

--We still have a billion things to do before Sammy is born. We need to put up a wall so I can do his nursery, organize our basement, decorate the living room, and various other unpacking things. If I think of all this for too long, I cry. So we don't do that much. I just pretend he isn't due in 8 weeks.

--I have selected a new birthplace...we're going to Special Beginnings in Arnold and are planning on a delivery at the birth center (provided Sam makes his entrance between 37 and 42 weeks and doesn't try to be breech.) Both Geoff and I are VERY comfortable with the idea of the center and are thrilled to be (hopefully) avoiding a hospital birth. For us it's a great option and so far we are loving the experience.

--My assistant at work got stolen. My boss decided he needed to "borrow" him until Christmas, basically, so I'm a little bummed at this turn of events. Running a Starbucks Holiday while being hugely pregnant is not on my list of fun things to do. But, the 12 weeks I'll have off snuggling my baby boy should make up for it.

--I'm getting uncomfortable. Please don't tell me how much worse it gets. I am aware that Sam will most likely be doubling his weight between now and birth, and that I'm going to get a lot bigger and more uncomfortable, but that's also on my list of things not to think about. Most of the time I do ok, but certain positions that Sam likes to find himself in are NOT conducive to his mommy's extremely short torso. The boy does not know what the fetal position is. We've got superman down pretty good though. He also doesn't know what head down position is, so hopefully he'll find that this month. He's still got plenty of time to figure out where he belongs.

Nothing much else to report at the time being. Life is good. I love my house, my family, my husband, my baby, and occasionally even my job. I also love that I'm about to go to bed.

Almost Christmas!

Wellllll....it's December. We're already pretty tired--I'm the at the end of an 8 day working stretch; Geoff is putting in lots of overtime plus balancing school, and life is flying by. I can't believe that the day after Christmas will be 5 months of marriage! It's gone by so quickly--kinda scary!

Work has been rough for me lately. Huge labor cuts have made my job a lot more difficult, as well as added the burden of trying to make schedules that still allow us to offer good service. So far I've done an alright job, but I've still got a lot to learn before I'm really running things efficiently. All in good time. My staff has been amazingly helpful throughout all of this. I love working with some of my best friends..I've developed great relationships with a few of my employees and their spouses and it's truly been an answer to a prayer of mine and Geoff's since before we got married. While we have many wonderful relationships in our lives as individuals, and some as a couple, we had desperately wanted a group of people who got along well, and found activities to enjoy together. We love hanging out in groups, and we were thrilled to find a few other couples, all newly married in the last 2 years, who have similar senses of humor and love board games as much as we do. More importantly, they all share our faith and we've found this the most wonderful part of it. Even more wonderfully, I've developed some great friendships with the ladies of these couples and they've encouraged me more in the past few months than I was ever expecting! It's so important to me to have companionship on the journey of learning to become a great wife for Geoff. I feel like so often women are stereotyped as sitting around together complaining that their husbands didn't clean the kitchen or left the toilet seat up--but I love having being part of relationships that celebrate each accomplishment of the men we've been blessed with, no matter how big or small. We love sharing our joy together, and being there to remind each other of that joy even on the days when we might be tempted to forget!!

The other big event of life recently was the birth of Steven Patrick Coleman, born to Bethany and Daniel on December 13th. I was so excited to go to the hospital that evening and meet the little man...who truly is a little MAN. Full head of hair, strong and sturdy (born early at over 9 pounds!!) It was really beautiful to see my friend after becoming a mom. Looking back to meeting her when I was only 12...thinking through the transformation of our friendship. We've been through SO many things together--breakups, marriages, deaths..huge life changes. To see her handle the biggest change yet with such complete beauty was really wonderful. I'm so excited to watch her and Daniel become amazing parents and see how Steven grows them together.

Welp. I'm sleepy! G'night!

Puddling...

Yeah, so it's officially holiday in retail. Geoff worked a lovely 14 hour shift at the mall on Saturday, and I currently have piles of merchandise taller than I am in the back room of my store. (Luckily, I also have an assistant who is a lot taller than me at my store. Most of my days are spent saying, "Booker? Can you come get something for me?" "Um...Booker? Can you lift this box up there?" and my favorite, "Booker?? Can you open this apple juice?" He's big and tall. Kind of the opposite of me, which is why we're a great team. He puts things on shelves; I whine about them being too high. It's awesome.)

Both of us are already tired and slightly overwhelmed by everything to be done in the coming weeks but we're pushing through. Over dinner tonight, we both realized how stressed out we were getting and were able to encourage each other to push through! I'm so proud of my sweet husband--besides working crazy long shifts every day, he's also done an amazing job lately of managing his time so that he gets his homework done, goes to class, and STILL makes spending time with me and helping me with things a big priority. Friday night we got all dressed up and he took me out to our special restaurant (we went to Charthouse when we got engaged and for our one year dating anniversary) and it was so wonderful. Then this morning, he snuck in the bathroom during my shower, took my towel, put it in the dryer for me and brought it back all warm and toasty cuz he knew I was cold! He's been a wonderful husband, even when he's tired, and even when his wife is melting a bit...

November is typically a difficult month for me--or at least it has been for the past few years. November 10th marks the death of my cousin Brandon in 2005, and yesterday marked one year since my friend Dave died. Remembering Brandon was really great--it was the first anniversary that I've spent thinking of the time he was alive instead of replaying the days right after he died. Remembering Dave has been a little more difficult--if you think of it, please pray for his family. Dave died last year the day after Thanksgiving, and his birthday is also in a few days. His family will be having an extremely difficult holiday.

All in all life at the Wards is still wonderful--Geoff and I are falling more in love every day, and while that sounds cliche, it's totally true. We honestly find ourselves looking at each other sometimes and realize that we love each other more than the day before. We are continuing to find more ways to show that to each other, which for us is the happiest part of being married. Life is busy and a little stressful right now, but we're so blessed to have each other--and we try to never let each other forget!

Home again, home again!

Greetings! I'm pretty much as happy as I can be right now...as I sit with my cup of coffee and Hangin' With Mr. Cooper reruns play in the background while my husband sleeps in. Being gone this week was not one of the more enjoyable experiences of my life; I'm thrilled to be back.

So, this week was my Starbucks conference in New Orleans...while I understand some of why we went there, I do question the wisdom behind that decision. It was the biggest conference to have taken place in New Orleans since Katrina, and it did put millions of dollars back into their economy. We also provided over 50,000 hours of community service while we were there, and it was very well received by the community. My beef, however, is with the idea behind taking ten thousand people to a city that is FAMOUS for getting drunk and partying. I heard so many people say "I NEVER drink at home, but if you come to New Orleans, you GOTTA party!!" Yeah. Thanks for that, Starbucks. Also, for anyone who has ever wanted to go to New Orleans, I found it a representation of society at its absolute lowest. It's almost like a different world--there's beer on the streets, so it's nice because I mean, you don't even have to sit down to get trashed. You can just get trashed while you walk, which makes it easier to be insanely stupid. Also, its easier to catch the beads that are thrown down off balconies by girls who are dressed in skimpy lingere. There are literally shops on the street with signs that say "Girl on Girl! Live Sex Acts Inside!!" and have pictures, GIANT pictures, of said acts. I was like, wow. I guess maybe in Katrina they all lost their computers, so now they just put porn on the streets. Nice. All in all I was very uncomfortable, and I'm not particularly close to anyone on my team, so I spent many hours missing my sweet husband.

But let's talk about the highlights: Biggest and best....Starbucks is going (RED)! We are partnering with the Red campaign to raise money for AIDS and HIV protection in Africa. I'm very excited about this, and it's a HUGE deal for us. The first promotion is going to raise a TON of money for the campaign and it's such an awesome organization. The big surprise came though when BONO came out to introduce it!!!! We had no idea he was coming, but it was just awesome. He is hilarious and wonderful. Most definitely the highlight of my week.

Last night was Halloween and our stupid street was lame...we were the only house with our light on, and thus got about three trick or treaters. It's ok though because we also had friends come over for a huge pan of dirt cake with gummy worms and I made some pumpkin gnocchi. I'm so...domestic. HAHA. (sike.)

Geoff loved his first week of school--its designed perfectly to cater not only to our lifestyle, but also to his learning style. Tons of reading (books that he's actually interested in!!) and responding; not a lot of busy work and stuff. He enjoyed going and said the 4 hours went by quickly, which will help him continue to be motivated. I continue to be more proud of him every day! Both of us are going into difficult seasons at work--him being at the mall and me working through a huge Christmas promo at 'Bux...it will be a very busy month at our house!! With the addition of his school, my training classes, and a small group, we are now out of our house 5 nights a week which will add some new dynamics to our life. But we are still thrilled with the way things are falling into place and continue to enjoy every second we have together.