Bri, Jenn and Ava come to visit!

This past weekend Paul's brother Brian, his wife Jenn and their 14 month old daughter came to visit us in Oklahoma City for the first time.

Paul's five years older than Brian and was off to college by the time Brian was able to really hang out and do things. By the time Brian started college, Paul was off to grad school and then moved to OKC shortly after graduating. They have a lot in common, they're good friends but we've never just hung out for long periods of time together, until this weekend.

We had such a good time hanging around our house, driving them around to a couple of "must sees" and "must eats" and playing with our niece. We sat on the porch and blew bubbles, played puzzles and sang songs and danced. You basically can't get any more adorable than this:

I took this right after I downloaded "InstaGram" onto my phone and I feel like I need to print it out and write a caption on the back like my grandma used to do. "Ava, 14 months, Paul & Christa's porch, October 2010". I'm a little obsessed with that app now so if all my pictures look straight out of the 70's for awhile, you will know why.

It was weird having a baby around the house but we loved it. It was a good way for Paul and I to see what our house is going to look like, what we're going to have to move to higher shelves, what must go and what we are willing to let get slobbered on.

They left this morning and I'm a little sad to go home tonight and not see them and have dinner with them.

We only have a few months before we're in the mitten of Michigan again so it's not the last time we'll see them in years, but still.

earthquakes, mascara-less and frozen pudding

Today I felt an earthquake. A big earthquake. Well, not California 7.0 big, but OKC 4.3 big. That's big. I was sitting at my desk and the building shook and shifted and my desk moved and it was a little intense.

Does it make me stupid for just realizing in the last 3 months that people say "OKC" because it's the airport code? You know, like how people call Atlanta, ATL?

30 minutes later the power went out in our building. It came back on but talk about some weird stuff going down on the Broadway Extension.

I also determined 15 minutes ago that I forgot to put on mascara and eye liner today.

No, I am not tired. No, I am not sick. OK, well, I am tired and that's why I forgot to put on the black junk.

Have you ever had frozen pudding?

Don't.

It was an accident and the texture was a bit nauseating.

I'm having a hard time getting motivated to work. Well that's not true, there are lots of things I want to do and tasks I want to be making progress on. I am having a hard time getting motivated to work at my JOB. WHERE I AM PAID TO WORK. What is my problem?!

the new safari in our house

Rug shopping is serious business for me.

Living in a house with no carpet and 90+ year old wood floors provides plenty of charm but plenty of cold feet too.

Having rugs is necessary.

I, however, despise paying for rugs.

Currently the rug inventory in our house is in sad shape. They consist of Bed, Bath and Beyond, 5x7 solid colored CHEAP rugs, free tile samples from work that I have turned into rugs, two small 3 x 5 Pottery Barn rugs (both bought on clearance) and a 5 X 7 crewel rug from a previous job that is much too thin for my tastes but works in the space and was basically free.

The cost of nice rugs is out of control, and it makes me miss having carpet because there's no associated "extra" flooring cost with it.

When we decided to do the baby's room and do it up right, I knew I wanted a new rug. The one in the room currently, leaves a little something to be desired in the color and style department. It worked fine when it was a TV room and covered with a coffee table but knowing how much food I alone dropped on the thing makes me want to clean it, roll it up and store for another day, possibly. I mean, we only paid like $80 bucks for it almost 5 years ago, I can't say I'd be terribly heartbroken to see it go. Plus, the pink nail polish stain on it that was so conveniently hidden by the futon has been glaring at me for the past few days. 

I started searching for rugs and quickly decided I wanted a zebra rug for her room. 

Don't get me wrong, I know it's been done. I'm aware that this is not my most creative moment of all time. But I knew with everything else that I was planning to do, a gray and white zebra (hide shaped) rug would be perfect. 

And I guess to say it's been done before is almost an understatement:

But I obviously don't care.

The search was on but I only found one gray and white, zebra shaped rug. I couldn't afford Thomas Paul and since his sold so fast or were discontinued the one I had found would have to do. Except, it turns out it was an outdoor rug and was not quite the soft, plush, infant friendly rug I was hoping for.

I went home somewhat disapointed from work and walked into the living room to find my new Fall 2010 West Elm catalog sitting on the coffee table. Fresh from the mailbox. I've sort of lost interest in West Elm lately and almost didn't pick it up but I'm glad I did because inside I found something similar enough:

Ok, so it wasn't a hide-shaped rug, which was a make or break deal with me, but it was $100.00 cheaper and actual tufted wool, softer and a little more appropriate for the application. 

While we were in Dallas last weekend, we hit up the West Elm Store, which is a really well done store. They have the right font, the right flooring, the right materials, the right fixtures, all of it works for them really, really well. It sort of made me a fan again, everything about the store was fun, besides the rotting wood floor piece I almost stepped in when I wasn't paying attention. But other than that, seriously, a fan.  

We checked out the Safari Rug, liked it, and bought it. The 8 foot roll was added to the heap of furniture boxes, bags and luggage in the back of the Highlander ten minutes later and we were on our way!

18 weeks to go for...wait for it....

Things are supposed to be settling down right about...now.

We've had in-laws, gone on a weekend trip with friends, had office deadlines, visited my parents two weekends in a row and have been all over Dallas (on OU/Texas weekend mind you) shopping for furniture.

So, settling down now would be good because we only have 18 weeks before our baby girl arrives! We've picked her name and we're not much for keeping secrets especially with 14 other people out there having babies (not that we're staking a claim here, anyone can name their child whatever they want. We don't mind duplicates but we just don't want other people to be disappointed or angry, so we're going ahead and putting it out there).

Addison Cole. No special meaning, no family namesake, nothing totally crazy. We just liked it, and then loved it.

It's amazing what a name does for the whole experience. We still refer to her as "the baby" or "her" a lot and probably will continue to do so, but knowing she has a name makes it all very...well I don't know how to explain it really, it's just different.

On that note, 18 weeks to go for Addison Cole!

o·c·t·o·b·e·r

I should be working. I have a deadline. Today.

Which means that for the last two weeks my chest has been tight, my teeth have been clenched, my legs have been bouncing and I have struggled to focus on any one task for more than three seconds at a time. Yea, these things are fun. So, with today being the big day to issue a package of construction documents to the contractor, I should be working.

But it’s October 1st. And what's better is, I'm done at 8:38 am.

The month of October has a special little place in my heart. It is my birthday month and in a fully self righteous and narcissistic way that makes it special. I’m not the kind of person that celebrates my birthday for more than the day it’s on, and even on the day, I don’t make too big of a deal of it. The day doesn’t roll around for another 16 days but starting October 1st, things get good around my neck of the woods. There’s something about October 1st that means newness for me. Most people find spring to be the season that does that for them, but I wasn’t born in spring and therefore, spring means nothing more than green grass and come this time of year, I’ve seen plenty of green grass and I don’t mind the brown so much.

October is when everything started and every year I feel like it’s starting again. I know that that feeling is something I’ve put into my own head and that I don’t remember it being October and cold when I was an infant. But over the last 24 years I think I’ve convinced myself mentally that I do remember it and that’s why it’s so special.

But besides all of that mumbo jumbo, it's October which means celebrating tons of other people's birthday's too, going for walks outside because it's so freaking nice, driving with the windows down, apple crisp (which Paul made last night and I ate for breakfast today), and cardigans. CARDIGANS people.

I'll be heading out of work early today, just because I can and I may spend my free time outside, just sitting. Still too warm for a cardigan, but nicer than it was a month ago.

photo from Etsy seller integrity studio.

an intro to furniture, of sorts...

Paul and I are ... interesting ... when it comes to furniture. We know what we don't like (style wise) but have pretty eclectic tastes and like all sorts of things. So our furniture tends to fall in a "hodge podge but it totally works" kind of situation. We both like all types of wood finishes depending on what piece it's on so when we started deciding what to do for the nursery it was sort of a free for all.

After much debate (not between Paul and I but the debate in my head) we settled on white. Which was a shock to most people, but it's what worked best for our current house and will work fine in any house we put it in later for future kids. So then it was on to style. We both like modern, transitional and traditional. But we got our crib (as a wonderful present) before we knew what we were having, so that set the tone for the rest of the pieces in the room.

Our crib is from PB Kids and for the price, the quality was well worth it. Every other place I looked, you spent an outrageous amount on a "modern" crib and the quality wasn't always that good. And I've bought furniture from Pottery Barn before so I knew what I was getting into. Plus, this kept us from going too modern or too traditional, which was perfect for the rest of our house.

We then settled on a dresser and bookshelf from IKEA. I've seen a lot of people use this dresser in their nurseries and I've been told, drawers, drawers, drawers. We'll use it as our changing table too. I plan to switch out the knobs for a more decorative style so it's a little different than everyone else's.

The bookshelf will hold a few metal locker storage baskets that will hold books, toys and blankets and the rest of the shelves I am sure will get filled up quickly as we're already accumulating wonderful gifts!



Finding a rocking chair though proved to be, for a lack of a better and more eloquent phrase, total crap. Everything I was finding was either quadruple my budget, ugly or didn't rock. I guess the "ugly" statement isn't completely fair. Some of them weren't ugly, they just were not right for our house, our style or our nursery. I really wanted a vintage mid century danish style rocker but all the ones I could find were in worse shape than I cared to care for. Things were looking down. So far down in fact, I almost gave up and was going to either A) shell out $1000 for a fully upholstered piece or B) move the recliner back into the room (and I was dreading both options). I'd almost made my decision when I stumbled upon this baby:

I about lost it and bought it on the spot. Urban Outfitters? Really? I was going to buy furniture from UO? There was only 1 review and I decided I had plenty of time to purchase it if it was what I really wanted. And then it disappeared. Story of my life.

And I about lost it again, but for a totally different and unrealistic reason. It was just a chair. You would have thought someone would have needed to walk me back off the edge of a cliff. It wasn't really the story of my life, my life's been great, I'm never the "always screwed over type". So I was back to settling between option A and B when it reappeared with more fabrics then ever and tons of reviews!

It was settled, it was the chair.

This weekend, Paul and I are heading to Dallas to pick all this lovely stuff up. With another set of family coming to visit in possibly two weeks, work commitments on weekends, 4 baby showers on the other weekends and the holidays just around the corner we figured now was as good as time as any!

"So long sweet summer, I stumbled upon you and gratefully basked in your rays."

Today is officially the first day of fall which means I need a pair of these:

Hello gorgeous. It also means that I am dying my hair back to my natural color, so it will be fake "real" for a while but will be my natural dark, fall and winter hair color. Oh and I'm getting a new pair of glasses and I am debating between a brown frame and a tortoise shell frame and I'm extremely giddy about it. Oh fall, how I love you.

Although it is still in the 80's here in Oklahoma City and will feel like summer for probably another few weeks, the calendars/meteorologists say it's now fall and therefore I am celebrating.

But for as much as I love fall every time it comes around, I am terribly sorry to see this summer go. This is the summer that we made major progress on our house, that we celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary, found out we were having a baby and a baby girl at that.

Some old school Dashboard Confessional came up on my Pandora station this morning and Age Six Racer made my morning (and this blog post):

"So long sweet summer, I stumbled upon you and gratefully basked in your rays.
So long sweet slumber. I fell into you, now you're gracefully falling away.

Hey thanks, thanks for that summer. It is cold where your going, I hope that your hearts always warm. I gave you the best, gave you the best that I had. You passed on my letters & passed on the best that I had."

Weekending in Tahlequah and a minor fit

This past weekend Paul and I and 7 other couples from our church class packed up and headed to the Illinois river for the weekend.

It started off as a disaster for yours truly.

A few days before we were going to leave, there seemed to be some confusion in the plan on how we were all getting there. Paul and I had thought we we're settled with a few other couples on carpooling but it seemed it had changed or morphed or grown and everyone was confused. I asked the boy to look into it which resulted in a lack of handling (the way I would have handled it). I threw a hissy fit because I didn't want to drive after an 8 hour day of work when I needed to get up and move around every 30 minutes to keep comfortable. Driving more than 45 minutes has started to get miserable because I can't shift a lot. Yet it was 6:30 Friday evening and I found myself in the driver seat of the Highlander packed with girls from our class.

Instead of just going with it, the husband decided to be smooth (it was a little late for that) and after more shuffling and a few quiet curse words to myself and an almost full on scene of water works we were on our way, me not driving but very, very furious.

After we got there everything was great and everyone had a really great time. It was just getting there that was the problem.

I struggled over the weekend a lot with what my friend Lauren would call "super insecure junior high Christa" syndrome and I felt like I was back at summer camp when I was twelve and my best friend Vanessa had ditched me for much cooler friends with cooler clothes and jewelry. I also for the first time did not like being pregnant.

My doctor is easy going. No rules really. There was no packet, there was no list of do's and don'ts but the only thing she has flat out told me not to do was float in the Illinios river because of the bacteria. So 15 out of 16 people would be floating and Christa would not be one of them.

So while they went to float, I picked up breakfast for us for the next morning, got my eyebrows waxed and also grabbed our lunch for Saturday from Subway.

We spent the rest of the weekend hanging out, eating and playing games. The guys? A nice game of Mexican Train. The girls? Well, the girls played a ridiculously scandalous game of "Say Anything". I don’t think I’ve ever blushed so much in my life and if you know me, you know it takes quite a bit to shame me.

stupid people make me feel crazy

I'll leave it at that or i'll get myself in trouble.


Enjoy that post did ya?

the felt bird

Yesterday, Paul and I took off work and did a little tour of parts of Oklahoma we had never seen before with Paul's mom and dad.

We went up to a small town called Kingfisher, stopped in at a local (small-town) museum and then skipped (well not literally) across the street to a former governor's mansion. It was built in 1892, I didn't take photos, but you know me. I love those old houses so much I thought about hiding in one of the corners and just living there quietly during the day so no one would notice and then living it up at night. Huge front doors, trim and crown molding in perfect condition everywhere, parlor rooms and wood parquet flooring. I should move on or we could be on this house all day long.

After our museum and mansion tour we went up to Enid, Oklahoma to have some lunch and look around.

Lunch was at a place called PaneVino and was really delicious and fun. We we're shocked for a town like Enid to have such a cute, legitamite wine bar/restuarant. I had the Italiano panini off their lunch menu and would order it again, and again and again. If you're ever in Enid, whatever you might be hanging out around there for, it's a good place to eat!

We also hit up a store called B Hip Kids (super cute and we spent lots of time in there) and The Felt Bird.

The Felt Bird is a lot like Collected Thread here in OKC but had a little larger shop with a little more variety. It's run by Riley, Estela and their dog Dexter who was super sweet and just followed my mother in law around watching her look at stuff. They have clothing, jewelry, homewares, gifts, TOMS and a lot of other really cool things.

We bought our first gift for our little girl, it's their Owl Snuggly pillow seen above but ours has small red and pink apples on the front. They also had a big collection of sock monkeys and I'm wishing i'd grabbed her the classic gray and red one too but she's not even here yet, seriously, how many stuffed things does a kid need?