Wednesday, September 23, 2009

At Ease

**Disclaimer -- I can't get the the formatting to change on this post and my patience just gave out, so I guess you get to read everything underlined for awhile... I often tell Matt that I think I was born in the wrong generation. I like things simple, and often get overwhelmed by technology and the ever-increasing information flow these days...

***Second disclaimer. Based on my first disclaimer, you may be wondering why the text is not underlined as noted. Turns out I somehow linked almost my entire post to a giant belly picture. I mean, not just a giant belly, but a super zoomed in picture... It was bad enough that I waited to for Matt to get home to fix the mistake. Thought I'd leave the disclaimers because they made me laugh. Moving on...

****3rd Disclaimer -- Matt here this time. I had to step in and fix whatever Johnni did because the text was a really weird size. And why did we start with 2 stars on the first disclaimer instead of 1? One more thing...Johnni refers to my phone as an "i-phone" in this blog...what she really means is iphone. No hyphen. That's all, thanks.

In case any of you were thinking to yourselves, "Oh, I haven't heard from Matt and Johnni in awhile -- I wonder if that's because they're having their baby?" I thought I'd put you at ease for a little while longer at least. I'm convinced that she won't make her debut for at least another few weeks or so...

What have we been doing lately? Last weekend we drove up to Auburn for the Auburn / West Virginia game. The plan was for it to be 50% business / 50% exploration. It is just a couple hour drive and we thought it would be a fun opportunity to see the campus, take in the football game day atmosphere, and maybe go to the game. The trip ended up being about 95% business, and even our conversation the ent
ire drive home was about tickets. It was fun to be around all the tailgating, but we were glad we decided not to go to the game. It poured -- you may have seen on the news that game play was even delayed due to all the rain. I think we both learned a lot on the trip, and I also can attest that Matt got some great use out of his i-phone that day (he's been waiting a couple years to get one). If I had one, I wouldn't know what to do with it, but I think he gets optimal use out of that thing... Sometimes I tease him that he's a bit nerdy, but really I'm just impressed by his skills with technology in general.

Recently some of my friends down here threw me a surprise shower that really caught me off guard. I was convinced that Matt and I were just headed down the street for a Saturday morning small group / Bible study. I was so convinced by
Amy's
cover up story that even though Matt was in on the whole thing, he was wondering if there really was going to be a Bible study at some point. Some clues that I should have picked up on:

  • Amy called to check how my doctor's appt. went that I hadn't remembered telling her about. I thought she was just a really good listener. Turns out she had originally scheduled the shower for the day of my appt. but had to change plans because of it.
  • Even though it was a couples' Bible study, Matt made me promise I'd go even if he had to work that day.
  • Matt randomly offered to do a load of laundry late Friday night (Matt rarely does laundry unless he really needs something). Later I found out it was so he could wear his golf shirt because that's where he was going instead of the shower...
  • Matt wore his golf shirt to the "Bible study." I thought that was kind of strange, but didn't mention anything about it.
  • When we walked in it was all girls (no couples) and friends that didn't know each other where there. They had to tell me -- "this is for you!"

I was clueless, but I love surprises, so it was great :) I was thoroughly confused though for the first half hour trying to walk through all the details in my mind. I instantly thought of Kelsey, and how she must have felt when Jay got her to plan "his birthday party," while she in fact was planning her own engagement party. Not only must she have been completely stunned by the proposal, I'm sure for the first hour of her party she was trying to figure out all of the details that got by her and how everyone else was in on it...

We do have almost everything ready for baby-time. I haven't packed a bag or anything yet, but take a look at my most recent project. Small projects tend to turn into time-consuming ones around here, so I'm glad to be done with it. Would you like it if you were a baby?


When she gets bored with the simple contrasting shapes, I'm not sure I'll have the patience for making more complex ones, but that's just a problem we'll have to tackle down the road... Oh, and I should mention that I hate the word "mobile." I never know the right way to pronounce it, and I cringe every time I know I have to say it in a sentence. It doesn't help that Mobile, AL is not too far away and I sure don't know how to pronounce that either. I just try to talk around words like these in conversations...

Matt here, group blogging effort this time I guess. I've looked it up in the dictionary and shown Johnni how to pronounce "mobile" when it is the toy an infant looks at (moh-bahyl). I've also explained that Mobile, AL is the another way of pronouncing it (moh-beel), with mobile as in "mobile homes" completing the variations in pronunciation (moh-buhl). She still doesn't keep them straight...I can only do so much.


More belly shots:
Apparently we both got huge over the past week but we're still having fun hanging out together... It's going to be weird not to have a little one kicking around all day long!
And finally, her room :) Hopefully the dogs are this calm and collected when they meet her for the first time. Ha! You probably all know better than that by now...

Friday, September 11, 2009

Labor Day in Destin

Johnni and I have spent the past couple of days settling back in at Ft. Rucker after spending the weekend down on the gulf coast. My parents came down last week to come see us, bring us a few baby things from Johnni's shower in July, and to get a vacation in at the end of their busy summer.

I took a pass for the weekend (Army lingo for permission to travel) and we headed south through the southern-most parts of Alabama and the grasslands of Florida which, according to my mom, remind her a lot of Florida (it was funny because we were actually IN Florida by the time she said it...).

The condo we stayed in was right on the beach which turned out to be the most convenient place. If Destin has a best quality it's definitely the white sandy beaches with clear warm water. We went down to the beach each day, swam with the ocean-dwelling fish, and enjoyed the relaxing environment. I took my swim-goggles along...so I was the nerdy guy(ok, kid) out in the water that swam around on the bottom looking at the fish...and taking a jelly-fish sting right on the nose. Here's a pic of Johnni and I on the balcony of our condo:

Would you believe that she's 36 weeks pregnant in the picture? She looks great!


We spent our evenings sampling restaurants from the tripadvisor.com's most popular list for the area and found McGuire's Irish Pub to be well-deserving of its #1 spot. We had already been there with Deb and Craig a couple months back, but a second trip along with some comparison shopping confirmed what we already knew.


My dad and I spent Saturday afternoon golfing together at Indian Bayou Golf Resort -- he came out the winner with a 77 on the day. Nice round!


We came back on Monday through a couple extra hours of traffic and finished the evening with a stop by our favorite local mexican restaurant for dinner. All in all it was a great weekend and nice relaxing getaway (without the dogs, too!) before the baby gets here.

Monday, September 7, 2009

Piggy Back

Eventually we'll come up with more of our own material that is blog-worthy, but for now, here's another piggy-back post.

Check out our nephew, Conor. Ashley did a wonderful job. We're not surprised, since it was the combination of some good looking parents, a good looking baby, and an awesome photographer!

Enjoy!
 

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