Thinking about SPRING...

Spring tends to come early where we live... and it lingers. My favorite part about Spring is the flowers. Yesterday morning I spent a few minutes trying out the macro features of my camera. I was able to catch some of the colors of spring from the flowers around the house. I know to some this may be a bit of a boring post, but hey, to those of you still in the winters of what should be Spring - Enjoy!

Tulips are my favorite. When the weather begins to hint that Winter is waining and one is wanting Spring - these flowers poke their little leaf buds through the thawing ground. They endure winters last tries at snow and slowly, oh so slowly, bloom to welcome in Springs arrival.


Meet "Big Red". The girls have named him such. He towers at least 8 inches above the rest of the tulips in the pack. Each day they beckon to him as they leave for school, "Hey Big Red - you're looking tall and grand today!"


The red and yellow flowers are bright and warm. Some have combined the two colors to stand with extra flair.


Bidding the sunrise good morning these happy flowers catch the sun and soak it in. I too love to throw open the shades and let the morning sun flood the living room and slowly warm the house.


Pink is another color found in the garden. The pinks above smell similar to lilacs and its scent lingers in the air. Its my favorite in the garden because it is so hardy and blooms in full shade and full sun and it blooms all year long. Here it is in a bud-like state. Probably two more days and it'll be in bloom. This plant's name has eluded me over the years - does anyone know?


The other pink that is fun to watch unfold are the flowers of the Bleeding Hearts.


These are the leaves of my favorite shrub. They are a bright chartreuse yellow-green in the spring and then fade to a true chartreuse green in the summer. I love the contrast it provides to all the other foliage in the garden.


Lastly are the blues that rise up from this ground cover. Waves upon waves of blue greet anyone who comes to our front door. Soon as summer settles in, the flowers will fade and I'll be left with a leafy ground cover. But for now - I'll breath in the flowers and smile. Spring is in full bloom.

Umm....Info? Oh yeah - The Exciting Info!

First I must apologize for leaving you all hanging for so long. That was a pretty long wait. How rude of me. So I've been going back and forth on how to blog about the exciting news we have to share. Do I just blurt it out? Do I tone down the details and just give you the gist of the story? Or do I give you the play by play of how the details unfolded - its a little comical. Decisions. Decisions. Anyone that knows me knows that I can hardly make a trivial decision if my life depended on it. So to satisfy my need to get the info out there and yet to also get by without having to actually make a decision... Perhaps I'll share the news with you all three ways:

Here's the Blurt:

We're Pregnant! Baby number 3 will be joining us around October 11th. I'm about 16 weeks along and we should be finding out boy/girl mid-May.

Here's the Gist:

So this was a "surprise" for the our family. Usually some minor fertility treatment is involved with us getting pregnant. It was a bit of a shock for Angie. You see I'm a planner - Type A personality. Yeah - it took me a few days to wrap my head around it. You know when you think of your life over the next couple of years and you have your goals in mind... and then... POOF! Something changes and those goals and plans aren't a possibility until several years later. Well my "POOF" took a few days to settle in, but like I said, I'm a planner. So my plans and goals took on a new dimension. A baby changes things. But the excitement of a pregnancy and a new family member caught like fire and plans preparing for this new little one quickly filled my mind and brought joy to my heart.

Joel on the other hand was instantly excited about the news of a baby. He's a great father and he's a great father of infants! He has always felt that we could have another baby and things would be fine.

The girls? They are elated with the news. -B- (also a planner) started making comments: We need to get a room for the baby ready? Who's room is it going to be in? You know I'm a really good babysitter mom... Am I going to be able to feed it? We need to go to garage sales at Grandma's house - we don't have anything baby anymore! I love my planner of a child. She's going to be a great mom someday.

-S- on the other hand (she's my imagination child) woke up the morning after hearing the news and declared, "Mom, I had a dream last night and I know that the baby is going to be a boy and I know what he is going to look like when he's 11 years old. And when he's eleven mom, -B- is going to be 20 years old." I had to tell -S- that sounded like a great dream and we'll have to see if the baby is a boy or girl. Secretly inside - I was cringing. What! I was going to have an 11 yr. old and a 20 yr. old at the same time! This was too much reality for me. Now I know lots of people out there have 20 yr. olds and young kids at home. But lets remember - I thought my family was just going to be the two girls - 2 years apart - high school, college, missions /marriages, all happening within a few years of each other. Yep. A baby changes plans.

Here's the Details Unfolded:

So my sister says that maybe I shouldn't go into detail on this blog of how we learned that I was pregnant. So to honor my sister's advice (and to save any male readers of this blog embarrassment of "girl talk" topics) I won't give the details. But lets just say I seriously thought I had cancer or something because I was sooo not thinking "Baby" when my body was throwing out all these changes.