Mine

All mine.....and overfilled with love and gratefulness.

Now

New life....

given to us....

totally stole our hearts with just one breath....

forever changed with God's blessing.

Lawson Allen

September 20th at 11:55 PM

6 lbs. 12 oz. and 20 in. long

Work Shower

Casey, Jodi, Sara, and Lavonette threw us a wonderful baby shower at school a couple of weeks ago. I love these girls...they really know how to make someone feel special. Our school is such a special work place and everyone has been so supportive during my entire pregnancy. We were given such great things, and some of the cutest clothing. I'm so thankful to work with such caring, creative, loving group of teachers. Nora Davis rocks! Here are just a few pictures from the shower.

Sweetness

I know what sweetness is....I see it in this picture.

I made this frame for Lawson's room. I think it's cute. I also updated my Plum Cute blog...check it out. There are two new hospital hangers on there. You can find the site on my blog list on the left hand side.

Brag

Well, it's results time....all the information was taught, test were given, and they were sent to Neverland to rank our students' learning... state testing always makes teachers a little nerves...students too.

This is a picture of my sisters. Watts and Warren. The three of us make up the roster for the third grade teachers at Nora Davis Magnet School. We pour our hearts into making learning fun, relevant, and rigorous.

I've gotta brag a little... you may not can see it in our picture, but we are wearing a double crown. And how often do people get DOUBLE crowns!!!! We got double crowns for math and language arts. It's really hard to read in the picture below, so I'll explain. Our local newspaper prints the MCT2 test results each year and ranks the best and the worst schools/grade levels in the county. And if you look at the picture below...under BEST...you'll see Language Arts...and the BEST 3rd grade is ............NORA DAVIS MAGNET SCHOOL with 70.9 % of the students scoring advanced and proficient! YAY, US!!!

AND if you look a little farther down, under THE BEST....Mathematics...you'll see that the BEST 3rd grade is............... NORA DAVIS MAGNET SCHOOL with 77.4% of our students scoring advanced and proficient! DOUBLE YAY for US!!!

SO, let me sum it up for you. Our babies, that are now in 4th grade, my sister teachers, and I are the BEST in the county at Language Arts and Math!!!!!!!!! DOUBLE CROWN!

Grandparents Visit

So, my grandparents came down for a visit on Sunday. They wanted to see me pregnant one last time (since time is getting near) and look at Lawson's nursery before he gets here. I'm glad they came because they crack me up. They are so funny! Really.

***
They were telling us that my grandad had lost his glasses after taking my grandmother to the doctor...he said they looked for his glasses for at least one hour. He said that he had basically given up when he sat down at the kitchen table with my grandmother to look over the side affects sheet for her medicine...well, when she finished reading the list, she took off HER glasses...and you guess it, he finally found HIS...since she was wearing them! I laughed and laughed! Of course, she blamed him for not looking at her to noticed that she was wearing them! Funny.
***

We had a great visit with them. We grilled, laughed, talked, and played the Wii. It was seriously funny. And I wouldn't be surprised if my grandmother asked for a Wii for her birthday.

Pumpkin

Winner...winner...CHICKEN DINNER! Yep, that's right. Shad won the pumpkin contest. You may remember that Shad and his bro had a giant pumpkin contest this summer...the votes have been counted and Shad WON! Now, this was a GIANT pumpkin contest- and I think that the word giant is a stretch...but all that matters is that Shad won, and we get a free dinner!

New Favs

I gotta few new favorite things-

Lawson's Chandelier..... it's the element of surprise in his room, and Shad is excited to have deer horns in the house.

Sweet gifts from a baby shower....

A frame built by my dad and Shad. This photo was taken by a good friend, Jeremy Brooke, at St. Louis Zoo. He has great prints and takes family photos..look him up on facebook- Bullfrog Photography.

And of course...my weakness. Vanilla Moon Pies and whole milk. I have NEVER been a milk drinker until eight months ago.....now we go through GALLONS a week. Shad calls my Moon Pies....MOOOOO pies- he's mean. Especially, since I'm really looking like a MOOOOOOOma now.

Random Thoughts of Creativity

So, I wanted to make something... so I made a chocolate chip pound cake. Apparently my mind wanted to make something else...the cake didn't really hit my creative spot. I mean, all you do is put a couple ingredients together, mix it up, turn the oven on, and BAM one hour later you got a cake...hard stuff.

I really needed to be painting; especially since I begged Shad to cut out Lawson's hospital door hanger before he went to work! My daddy bought me a bunch of power tools last year when I got in the wood business, but I'm not allowed to use them when I'm home alone. So after begging and promising to work on it while he was gone...Shad cut the hanger out. I won. But it's still laying outside with saw dust on it....I guess I should hide it before he gets home. So, instead of doing something I NEED to do- like paint, sweep, or mop- I sew. Or tried...

So, this was my first attempted to use applique on clothing- that mess is hard! No wonder that clothing is expensive! I learned a lot, but I still have a few questions...for those who know what they are doing! I really just hope they don't come apart in the washing machine! I made the rocket because this mess is close to rocket science- for real. And of course the L is for Lawson. :)

Lawson at 31 weeks

We went to the doctor Friday morning for our 4D sonogram. We were really excited to get to see our little guy! When we got to the office, the sono lady gave us the spill- you know, Lawson may not cooperate with his photo shoot, cord could be in the way, placenta issues....and so on. Well, everything worked out great. We got 41 pictures. Some are printed out, but all of them are on a CD. We also got a recorded video of the entire session- that's the 4D part, meaning real time. I love that because he was pretty active. He would move his little arms, cross his feet, strech, pout, SMILE, and he even yawned! So amazing! Shad yawned right after Lawson did...the sono lady and I just laughed! So sweet- he and his daddy are just alike.