Happy Birthday Meredith!!!

Today is my friend Meredith Houlihan's birthday - she recently started her own blog and it's fantastic!! I know Meredith from school - she works in the faculty offices of our department - and it's always great to get to see her when I have an on-campus errand. She and I share a love of preppy cute things, cardigans, and chocolate. She also proudly displays all my leftover craft projects from the outpatient speech therapy clinic. Here she is with her cutie husband Hunter on their wedding day last summer. How it has almost been a year since they got married is beyond me. Time Flies!

Way back in February Meredith tagged me in a post about Stylish Bloggers!! I don't know about stylish, but I try to share the fun we have around our house :) Anyway, here are the rules:

1. Make a post and link back to the person who awarded you this award

2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Award recently discovered bloggers the award so it will be their turn next.
4. Contact these bloggers and tell them they’ve won.

So here are 7 things about myself - I'll try to come up with something new since I feel like everyone who reads this knows me pretty well.

1. I am really enjoying March Madness. Last season was the first time I watched any basketball because UK had such a dream team, and this year I did a bracket at work, and am having so much fun watching the games. It's probably because all the underdogs are winning. Tonight's our big game against UNC - so GO CATS!!

2. I am obsessed with ice water. This is since pregnancy. I used to prefer my water room temperature, but now I get up every morning and fill my Tervis Tumbler with ice and then water and I repeat this throughout the day at work. We only have 16 0z glasses at our house, but I'm thinking I need to buy a big 32 oz one to take with us to the hospital.

3. Every morning with breakfast I eat 1/2 grapefruit and Pete drinks a glass of grapefruit juice. In my first trimester, I drank La Croix sparkling water every day in grapefruit flavor. Now they are no longer available in Lexington (boo.) So...one of our nicknames for Baby Girl is Pamplemousse, or mousse for short :)

4. I only had to work a half-day on Friday so I was able to do a little shopping! I bought a coming home outfit for Baby Girl at Bella Bliss and had it monogrammed with her name on the front, so.......someone other than me and Pete knows the name!!

5. We've had dinner two nights in a row at home and we're going to eat here tonight, too. Confession: This is probably the first time we will be eating dinner at home at least 5 nights out of the week in 2-3 months. After our kitchen was finished we had gotten in the habit of eating out - usually Oasis, Rincon, or something similar and with me working all day and then having to work on my comps in the evening, we've been bad. :/

6. I'm afraid if our baby ISN'T born with red hair people will be disappointed (me and my dominant dark hair getting in the way).

7. My favorite Pandora station is the Disney Children's Station. It always plays good stuff from Beauty and the Beast, Little Mermaid, and The Lion King, and then Friday when I was listening to it it also had some Glee soundtrack and Julie Andrews!! It's the perfect music for cleaning the kitchen.

okay! that's seven things!! I tag Rachael at Living the Dream, Jennifer at From Bluegrass to Palmtrees, and Stephanie at A Day in the Life...

All three of these ladies have blogs that with any post can have me in tears just as easily as laughing my head off. Can't wait to see what you all post next!!

We are SO lucky.....

...to have such loving and generous friends!!

Earlier in March all the girls from my program at school got together and threw a shower for me and Mindy. Mindy is due 10 weeks after I am with a little boy!

April was kind enough to host us at her new house, Tracy and Holly made the darling diaper cakes, Ginnie brought the delicious treats from Babycakes, and Corie got us coordinating frames! They're magnetic so you can put different initials and little figures on them - so cool. It was so fun to have someone to share in all the shower fun - Mindy and I sat side by side opening gifts and playing games - we had the best time!! I'm so excited that I know so many people who are having babies this spring or summer. I think we'll have a good time sharing ideas and inspiration, trials and triumphs as we wade through our first few months as moms. Thanks to everyone who took time out of their Sunday to come. :)

Then, two Wednesdays ago, our church choir threw us a shower during the second half of rehearsal time!! This was especially fun because Pete was there, too! We love being a part of such a great group. Here are some pics of us opening our gifts:

a whole box of goodies

including some awesome soft books!

Then it was time to open the big box.

THEY GOT US OUR PACK 'N PLAY!!!

Here we are getting ready to leave, giving one last thank-you to our fearless director Clif.

We're all done with showers and have bought all of our remaining gear. I finally found a coming home outfit this afternoon at Bella Bliss. Now we just have to install the car seat, write a labor plan, and pack a bag. Oh yeah. And find a pediatrician. We've met with one and have appointments with two more in April. Nothing quite like waiting until the last minute. Oh well, I have been pretty busy with certain school projects up until this week ;)

I'm pretty excited about this upcoming weekend - no major projects, just time to clean the house and try to relax a bit!

I'm BACK!!!

So you know what that means........

I PASSED MY ORAL COMPREHENSIVE EXAM!!!! Here I am shortly afterward - in all my 'professional' attire. For being 36 weeks pregnant, I l.o.v.e.d my dress! (you really can't go wrong with navy in my book)


My presentation went really well, and I was able to answer the questions regarding my client and his intervention with confidence. I missed a few of the 'general knowledge' questions - I had to say 'I don't know' twice - but apparently it wasn't enough not to pass me, so in May I'll graduate with my Master of Science in Communication Disorders and will be on my way to being a Speech-Language Pathologist!! Yay!! I can't believe it has gone by so quickly - so much has happened in the past three years, but, as always, it seems as though it happened in the blink of an eye.

Now that my evenings are back to being my own I'll hopefully get on the wagon with blog posts. I've got pictures from two more showers to share, a nursery to reveal, and a Baby Girl to deliver!!! So stay tuned :)

Babies, Babies, Everywhere!!

In the past 9 days I have been to 4 baby showers!! Two for me, 2 for other friends of mine who are also due in April. Here's a pic of all the preggo ladies at my shower two Saturdays ago.
Bari's due May 30th, I'm due mid-April, Megan's due April 30th, and Emily is due April 1st.
Emily, Megan and I are all having girls - yay for more girls to join the Nugget!! Josh and Bari aren't finding out the sex of their little one so it will be a Memorial Day surprise!

February 26th I had my first shower - a fabulous bird and nest-themed event thrown by Rachael and Audrey.
And as I mentioned earlier, Grandma Prann came!!!
It was so great to have her sitting beside me as I opened gifts - oohing and aahing over everything with me.
AND Matt and Jen drove in all the way from SOUTH CAROLINA just to come to my shower!! Talk about great friends. We all went to lunch before the shower - Grandma too - then Matt and Pete went off together while Jen stayed for the shower.
Like all of my friends at the shower, Matt and Jen were super-generous with their gifts. They want to be sure that Baby Girl Crawford is well-supplied for her first trip to S.C., so in addition to giving her the most darling sundress with flamingos on it, they gave us this little number:
You might not be able to tell from the picture, but it is an infant-sized crocheted/knitted(?) BIKINI!! Jen assures me it was meant as a joke, but I feel like we'll at least have to take a picture of Baby Girl in it just for posterity.

It was so great to see all my friends - old and new - and I feel so lucky that our little girl will have so many people to love and support her when she makes her arrival.

The day after my shower was Emily's - it was a GREAT little party for baby Scarlett - I forgot my camera, though, so I'll have to wait for others to share their pictures before I can post any.

This past Saturday was Megan's shower. Emily H., Emily L., and Christa did a FABU job decorating. I l.o.v.e. all the pom-poms. AND we made an alphabet book book for baby Clover. Emily had 26 pages with a giant letter sticker on each one. There were plenty of markers to go around and we each made a page or two for the book. I chose L and did an L is for Ladybug page :) That and Present Bingo are my two new favorite shower games. AND the minute-to-win-it game Rachael incorporated at my shower. Maybe I'll post that video later.

On Sunday, April, Ginnie and the girls from my program at school threw a shower for me and Mindy, who is due at the end of June. I'll save that one for another blog, but it was great!