What happened to December?!

Oh my goodness...I cannot believe this month is over! I have to say this has been the busiest, most crazy filled Christmas I can remember. I would say around about December 20th I began wishing I had stuck to my original thought I had back in the summer that was something like, "It would be a really good idea to have my Christmas shopping and decorating finished before the baby was born in November....". Oh well, hindsight is always perfect! Somehow all the presents got bought (although they were not wrapped until very late Christmas Eve!) and we made it. Would it be terrible to say I'm glad the holidays are over?! I just want to DO NOTHING!!
ha ha ha :-)

Seriously, we had a very good Christmas and tried to fill it with all of our little traditions we have created since Madelyn has been around. We started by visiting Santa at Fantasy of Trees (picture is on a previous post)...Madelyn told him specifically that she wanted a jewelry box (lucky for Santa it was just a little $10.00 very small jewelry box she saw in the Disney store). She then later was very upset because she forgot to tell Santa to bring Drew a rattle....she'll just tell Santa when she sees him at the mall she decided. We went to the Knoxville Christmas Parade with Papa Chas and had lots of fun...although Madelyn was very disappointed though because "Shoney Bear" was not in the parade this year. Not sure why she likes that bear so much!!

New to our traditions was a little Christmas show featuring all the little dancers at GymBugs (where Madelyn is taking dance this year). Madelyn's class danced to "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree". I was so proud of her up there doing her dance!! Justin always laughs at me because I always get a little teary-eyed at these things...I think being 4 weeks post-partum had something to do with it! It was a sweet little show and I got a huge blessing from some of the performers. There was a cheerleading group consisting of mentally handicapped adults. They did so good on their routine and it was so heart warming to see them having such a good time and being so excited about performing in front of an audience. It was really touching to watch.

So then there was all of the family get-togethers. I won't go in to details about all of those but let's just say we have eaten way to many sausage balls :-). Christmas Eve night Madelyn and I made some special Santa cookies we thought he might enjoy when he came to our house (sorry Mandy! Maybe Evan will give up his cookies next year more readily!! ha ha). She was so excited Christmas morning about seeing all that Santa had left her. She was even more thrilled to notice that Santa did not close the fireplace door all the way when he went back up the chimney (good idea, huh?!). And yes, Santa did leave Drew a rattle in his stocking.

Drew at his first dance recital....:-)

Gabriella Grace Deel arrived on December 23!! Merry Christmas Sara and Stephen!

Madelyn and Drew with Justin's Granny on Christmas Eve. Madelyn loves to play with the magnifying glass at Granny's house.... this picture is so funny of Madelyn!

Our special cookies for Santa!

The shiny little box is the jewelry box...notice the fireplace door :-)

Mimi with her babies!

Opening presents with Avery, Mallory, Riley and Kaylee

Drew is not too excited about his UT puppy dog!

Sophie and Emma are here this week from New Jersey! We have so much fun when Jenny, Pete and the girls come to visit. We opened presents with them last night.

Madelyn disguised as "Fancy Nancy"

My handsome little fella at 6 weeks old

Graduation Day!!!

Bath Time!!

Drew is 5 weeks old today! Here he is taking a bath tonight....

Oh my heavens!

I'm back! Okay, everyone says that having 2 kids keeps you busy and now I know why. It seems Madelyn is adjusting just fine to her new baby brother and daddy is adjusting well too....however, Mommy is having a hard time!!! :-) Maybe it's because I have a newborn baby right in the middle of the busiest time of the year? Or maybe because I am finishing up school and had to take an online quiz the weekend we came home from the hospital or because I had to work on a presentation for school when he was 2 weeks old? Or maybe it's because I am 4 years older than when I had Madelyn and the sleep deprivation is taking a much bigger toll on me now??? Or maybe because I had to go shop for a dress to wear to graduation 3 weeks postpartum (I was asking one sales lady if a particular dress looked okay and she kindly said "honey, that dress isn't going to work....it's too tight. Not exactly what I needed to hear!) ha ha ha....

I'll be okay, really. I'll make the adjustment eventually :-). We did finally get our Christmas tree up and decorated after several days of just the tree being up with no ornaments. Madelyn was very insistent on asking "Is it time to do the ornaments now?" until finally the ornaments came out.

Last night we took about 50 pictures or more (no joke) just to try to get a good one for our Christmas cards. It became kind of funny after a while...Justin and Madelyn were good sports and we finally got a decent picture of our children!!

Drew is growing so fast already. Last week at his 3 week check-up he weighed 8lbs 10oz; he has already gained 2 pounds! We love him so much and Madelyn is especially enjoying him. It has been so sweet to see how her motherly instincts have kicked in. She loves to try to "calm" him down when he is crying by saying "It's okay, it's okay...Madelyn is here". It is really sweet. It will be fun to see how their relationship will evolve as he gets bigger and more mobile. We'll see how motherly she is towards him then!

So yes, graduation is FRIDAY!!! I cannot believe that after 2 1/2 years of non-stop school it is finally over!! It seems surreal right now with everything else going on but I'm sure it will sink in on Friday. God has been so good to work out all of the timing and issues I was so concerned about regarding me going back to school. Madelyn was 2 years old when I decided to quit my job and return to school full-time to be a nurse practitioner. It seemed like such a grueling task at the beginning of it all. How would we afford me not working and the enormous thought of all the student loans?!! And then there was the issue of having another baby. I wanted so badly to have another child before Madelyn got much older. So now it is all behind me- I'm graduating, we may have a ton of student loans but overall we survived, we have another baby now which ended up being perfect timing, and I have a job waiting on me whenever I'm ready to start in January. I could not have made it through school without incredible support from 2 people: Justin and my mom. Justin has been so encouraging and definitely picked up where I slacked around the house! I love you, buddy and thank you so much for ALWAYS being there for me and for allowing me to do this! Mom (& Gene) has helped us in so many ways that I can not possibly name them all! Mostly, she has helped us tremendously with Madelyn. Thank you, thank you mom!

So now I will update everyone with recent pictures of the latest happenings~~~~

Madelyn with Santa at Fantasy of Trees

Here we are freezing our tails off at the Knoxville Christmas parade! Mom and Gene watched Drew at our house...too cold for him!!

Introducing....Andrew Parker Snow

1 week to go!!

With one week to go, we are getting a little anxious around here!! We pretty much have everything ready, including the car seat in the car. It was quite entertaining watching us put our swing back together (or trying I should say)....we didn't keep any instructions from when Madelyn used it and so we could not figure out how to make all the parts match up again. Finally, we thought to google "Graco swing instructions" and there they were! What did we do before the internet??? So then we easily put the swing together and had a good laugh about how dumb we were and how that swing was whipping us. It was sort of the same story with the pack-n-play bassinett set-up but we eventually figured that out on our own. hahaha

Drew's nursery "spot" is finished for now. I have ordered letters that spell his name but the "W" is on backorder so I don't have those hung yet. It is the same story with the curtains. Other than that, everything is done. Here are some pictures.....

And, here is one last picture of my belly at 38 weeks:

Halloween Fun!!!

"I'm not a CHICKEN....I'm a BIG SISTER!!!"

Madelyn's last soccer game was this past Saturday and it was quite entertaining to say the least. There was one particular little boy on the other team (who's name happened to be Drew) who was causing some commotion! At one point during the game he and Madelyn were having some words. They were behind the goal and he yelled to her "Hey, your a chicken!!". I would normally think this would cause her to start crying and say "mommy, he's mean!" but that wasn't the case. She immediately put her hand on her hip and pointed at him at yelled "I'M NOT A CHICKEN, I'M A BIG SISTER!!". I have no idea where the big sister part came in but anyways it was so funny. Everybody could hear her. She immediately ran over to me and told me he called her a chicken, then she went straight to the coach and told him. When it was time to substitute players, she went straight over to Justin (who sits on the bench with the players) and told him what had happened. It was so funny. We were all laughing so hard at her! I finally had to tell her to forget about it and play soccer! Here are some pictures of the last game...

Other news...

Baby boy Drew is scheduled to be born via C-Section on Wednesday, November 12. I am 37 weeks this week so obviously he could come any day. Yesterday's ultrasound predicted his current weight to be 5lbs 11oz. I'm feeling good although I do feel very, very large. I'm trying to take it all in and savor these last few days. It is so precious to have a little baby growing inside of you and the feeling of it all is so quickly forgotten after delivery. I'm also starting to feel very emotional about having baby #2 and hoping Madelyn doesn't feel neglected!! She has been the center of our attention obviously and it just breaks my heart to think of her being jealous of the new baby and all the attention he will require at first. I know many of you reading this have already gone through this!! Pass the tissues!!!!!

I had told Justin that he can make the final decision regarding Drew's middle name because I really did want him to make the ultimate decision (between Justin and Parker). His deadline to decide though was November 1st. He sent me a text message during the day today and told me he had made his final decision.....ANDREW PARKER. I had already thought in my mind the baby's name would be Andrew Justin so this surprised me. So...looks like this will be his name!!! Thanks to all who voted on our blog!! hahahaa :-)

Also, I am pleased to announce that I passed my comp exam!!! Yippee!! This is such a huge relief and a big burden lifted from my shoulders! Now the road to graduation is very much downhill. I will finish with my clinical hours on Monday. I cannot say enough how thankful I am to the Lord for seeing me through all of this!

Softball Champs!!

Justin's softball team (not the famous "Big Daddy's" team, but in the fall league they were the "World Futon" team which is pretty much the same group of guys ) won their tournament this past Tuesday night. Justin came home acting like a little kid because he was so excited about the game. Apparently, they were down 10-0 and came back and eventually tied the other team 19-19. Justin got on base and Shawn Bennett made a hit and Justin made it around the bases and made the winning run. He then started doing the "gorilla" because he was so excited (some of you may have seen this before...), anyways, they won! Boys will be boys...... :-)

Justin and the big fish

Justin has been anxiously waiting for me to share some pictures of him and the big fish he caught last week....so here they are! He was on vacation last week and one day went fishing with his buddy, JB. They were floating down the Holston River in a little bitty canoe. Apparently, this must be fun when you are a fisherman!! He took these pictures with his BlackBerry so the quality is not great but you can get the idea....

And if you are needing something to make you laugh, here is a sneak peek at what our new baby boy may look like:

Yes, this is Justin at around 1 1/2 - 2 years old!! Everytime we see this picture it just makes us laugh. Justin's mom says that everyone would always ask her "When are you going to cut his hair?"...it was hard for her to get those cute little curls cut off!! Anyways, we saw this picture the other day and just had a good laugh because little Drew may look just as cute as his daddy!! ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.....:-)

Madelyn's 1st time on Rocky Top!!

Justin and Madelyn went to the UT game last night and Madelyn had so much fun!! I'm not so sure Justin had as much fun as she did considering how pitiful our Vols are playing this year....but that's a whole different story....:-). They just stayed for the first half of the game but Madelyn was so excited because she saw not 1 but 3 Smokey's (the real dog and 2 mascots..apparently one with a black face and one with a white one). I think that was the real highlight of the game for her. It was a good father/daughter outing. Here are some pictures....

This is just before leaving for the game. Madelyn was going all around singing "Rocky Tock" as she says. We put out our fall decorations yesterday so she was very excited about "Annie" the scarecrow which sits at the end of our driveway.

Here they are at the stadium!

And in other news....I am 34 weeks pregnant today! Very exciting. It looks like the baby is going to be delivered sometime during the week of November 10. I will be a scheduled C-section so usually a delivery is scheduled during the 39th week. Looks like I will be through with my clinical hours for school around November 5th or so which will be perfect timing. I still have a few classes to attend after the baby is born but the major part of the work, most importantly the clinical time, will hopefully be complete. God is working everything out for us!!

I do have a prayer request for this week. We have our comprehensive exams for school on Tuesday. These exams determine whether or not you will graduate from the program. They will take place from 8:00 to 5:30 this coming Tuesday, Oct. 7th. Although we are supposedly "very prepared" to take the exams...it is really anxiety provoking to say the least. So if you think of it between now and Tuesday...please say a little prayer for me and my friends to remember what we have learned and be able to prove this with our answers!! Thank you in advance for praying... prayers really do help!!! My friends thank you too!!!!!