Shorn

When I was growing up my great grandma always wanted me to be a beautician...I think so I could do her hair for free... Since I'm not doing anything with my Anthropology degree I thought maybe I'd try out my "beauty" skills on my husband. What do you think?

Before:

First we cut off his ponytail. Isabelle thought that was great...

Intermediate:

I actually kind of like this length, but it would drive Patrick crazy 'cuz it would get into his eyes. After we put the kids to bed I cut off alot more....

After:

I took these pics the next day so his face is all dirty from work, but otherwise, what do you think? Oh and here is my belly at 32 weeks with one of my new maternity outfits. :)

Names

So apparently no one cares for my angry post about not going to my reunion...or no one is checking my blog anymore, one or the other. My sister called me today to tell me her water broke so she's off to the hospital to have her baby. My parents are leaving to watch her kids and would have arrived at her house right about the time we would have gotten to theirs. So I guess it's a good thing we're not going to my reunion since no one would be there but my brother. (Although that doesn't make me any less mad about the whole situation). Moving on.
So we're trying to decide between two baby names:
Henry Russell or William Russell (although I also like William Henry, but Patrick is insistent on the Russell part). Here are the definitions:

Henry: The boy's name Henry \he(n)-ry\ is pronounced HEN-ree. It is of Old German origin, and its meaning is "home ruler". Norman name that is a favored royal name (for eight kings) of England and France. The second son of the current Prince of Wales is named Henry.

William: The boy's name William \wi(l)-liam\ is pronounced WIL-yum. It is of Old German origin, and its meaning is "will helmet, protection". For a long time after the Norman conquest in AD 1066, three out of four English boys were given some form of the conqueror's name, William. Short forms and variants came into being with a common basic meaning of "will", "determined", or "resolute". William has remained a royal name in the UK for nearly one thousand years. The firstborn son of the current Prince of Wales is named William.

Before you say it, no I did not intend to name my son after Princess Di's kids, it was only later that I realized both of the names I liked were theirs... Anyway. William is cool because I still like it from the last time and because one of the meanings is "helmet" which is funny considering what Patrick does for a living. I have liked Henry since we saw the last Indiana Jones movie. I also like that it is a traditional name (ie not wierd) but still not as popular as say "michael". We also have ancestors on both sides (I think) with both of these names so we can claim we took them from our family history. Which do you like better?

Updates

We just got back from our 30 wk ultrasound and are happy to report that the placenta has completely moved out of the way and we are previa free. Yay! Now I just have to worry about going into labor and not making it to the hospital on time (not a big worry since both my kids took 13 hours of hospital labor, were at least a week late and James had to be induced).

I'm glad everything is fine and we don't have to worry about randomly bleeding to death anymore, but I'm kind of disgruntled too. I was kind of hoping that it would still be there and they'd put me on more restrictions which would then make it medically necessary that we miss our supposed trip to Utah next week for my highschool reunion. Instead they took me off all my restricitions and told me it was totally safe to travel. Now I'm bummed out because the reason we probably won't go is money related. I hate not having money to do stuff. I also hate sitting at home all day taking care of screaming kids and constantly picking up the messes they make. I was looking forward to a trip. Eating at restaurants, stopping at gas stations, staying at a motel. Then once we got to my parents house we were going to take advantage of their free babysitting and go to the greenshow and a play, and see Harry Potter and the parade on the 24th and festivities at the park and then the reunion Saturday. We never get to do any of those type of things here. Just the screaming kids and messes. Bah! I think it would totally be worth putting it on our credit card to go anyway, but Patrick disagrees and since he makes the money I guess he should have some say in how we spend it. But it still sucks.

Picture Post

So I've been meaning to update but have been too lazy to think of stuff to say. Instead here is a picture post of what we've been up to:
28 wk profile pic...with new haircut. My mom trimmed up the back and sides for me while she was here and I decided it was good enough so I won't be going to the salon to drastically cut it anytime soon.

Mom and Dad came to visit for a week from Utah. Mom played with the kids and exercised and Dad sat around with small spurts of metal detecting in the 100 degree heat.

Mom helped me (and by "helped" I really mean she did all the work and I supervised) plant two pots of flowers to put on our porch the morning before they left...you can't really see the flowers in this picture, but I guess that's okay.

Dad hauled our rocking chair from the back porch to the front...James thought he was chasing him with it.

Isabelle holds James' hand sometimes and "helps" him. It's cute when he goes along with it. Not so much when he's pulling away from her screaming....oh and Patrick put in a chain link fence around the back to keep James from running out into the street everytime he's outside (his favorite pasttime).

Isabelle and James finally got a new pool to play in. It looked much bigger in the picture, but they don't seem to mind.

Isabelle in her 4th of July clothes (there's a flag on her shirt if you can't see it) and Patrick grilling hamburgers....We went to see the fireworks in Gunter and were pleasantly surprised by all of the stuff they had to do in the park. Next year we'll definitely go earlier to see more of the booths as it was almost dark by the time we got there this time. That didn't stop Isabelle from playing on the swings and slide and running around crazy.Isabelle actually took this picture of us...in the dark I might add. Turned out pretty good for a three year old huh? This is us waiting for the fireworks to start.

James was not impressed with the fireworks. He liked maybe the first two and then decided they were loud and scary, so Patrick covered his ears the rest of the time. We thought they were surprisingly good and much better than we were expecting for such a small town. Though they played more traditional patriotic music over the speakers rather then Tom Petty's "American Girl" and Toby Keiths "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue" which are Denton standards...it was still good though.

When we got home we set off a few small fireworks and did sparklers but it was late and the kids needed to go to bed so we didn't get to set off even half of the huge bag of stuff Patrick bought. If we manage to make it to Utah for the 24th they said we can set these off at my highschool reunion, but it's looking less and less likely we'll get to go. :(

The next morning it rained and Patrick let Isabelle go out and play in her nightgown with my Mona Lisa Umbrella. He's a much nicer parent than I am.Sunday evening I was finally able to finish making my 4th of July cake (fireworks and such ran too late to do it the night before). This is one of my favorite desserts...it's yellow sheet cake with a layer of vanilla pudding, bannanas, whipped cream and strawberries for the stripes. Generally you also have blueberries for the stars, but we decided to forgo those this year. It was still very tasty.