Christmas with the family

Here are some pictures from Christmas in upstate, NY, first at SJC's parents' house, and then at MEG's mom's house.

The baby is already getting gifts

Some of us wish it was 1986

Mary and Matt with two (Lucy and Maggie)
of the four furry friends at 11 Bethwood Christmas

Gingerbread house built by SJC, MEG, and Mom,
later eaten by Gracie when we weren't looking

The full 60 photo album (warning, lots of bad pictures!) is available here:

Christmas 2007

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Christmas at 9818!

Here are some pictures of our house all decorated for Christmas:

An annual shot I require of SJC

Sarah gets creative with low lighting

9818 from the front

Last year with just two stockings!

Baby Bump Photos #10 and #11

Sorry for the lack of posts. Sarah is getting huge. Here's photo #11, just taken tonight:




And here's photo #10, taken last week:

Fun with pregnancy symptoms at work...

So apparently one symptom of pregnancy is dizziness. I've read this and every once in a while I've gotten up quickly and felt a little light-headed...until today.

So picture this: today I'm teaching my first period class (about 7:45 am) and all of a sudden I start to feel a little dizzy. I figure everything will be okay if I just take a seat on the stool I have in the front of the room and keep going over the warm up problem. Then I realize it's not getting better - it's getting worse. The room is becoming a little blurry and I'm no longer really following our discussion. Great, now I have to tell the kids. I mention that I don't feel very good and maybe one person could pass out the lab, everyone else could read it over, oh, and maybe someone could get the nurse. I move from the stool to my big desk chair & put my head down. Now keep in mind that the students just found out I was pregnant - at this point I can't really tell what is going on, but I think I hear the following quotes, "I think she's gone!" "I think she's having the baby!" "Does this mean science class is over?"

Fortunately, sitting with my head down made me feel a lot better and the nurse did come in right after that. I recovered, but didn't feel quite right for the next few periods. Consequently, I taught from my big rolling desk chair - which was interesting. Fortunately the lab we did today only involved potatoes and salt and nothing too dangerous.

Half-way to baby!

According to the April 21st due date, today is officially the half-way point of the pregnancy: 20 weeks!

Baby Bump Photos #8 and #9

Here's today, while we were getting out our Christmas decorations:


And here's last weekend:

Back from hiatus

Sorry for the lack of posts. I didn't post much in November because I was taking part in National Novel Writing Month, which ate up a lot of my writing time.

The good news is that I achieved NaNoWriMo success; I wrote 50,000 words of fiction during the month, making me a winner:



I didn't finish a novel, the point was to start one. I probably need to write another 50,000 words, and then of course I will have to heavily edit it. One of the principles of NaNoWriMo is that you never hit the delete key. It's a great strategy for pounding out words and writing creative fiction --- i was amazed at where the story went some times --- but it leaves you with a lot of jumbled garbage at the end.

The novel I started is a first-person narrative about playing college rugby. It's fiction, but a lot of it is based on true stories from my experiences with the Hamilton Exiles.

Anway, tomorrow we'll post a new picture of SJC (as well as last week's missed picture, which we took but didn't post). She looks a lot bigger!