Almost ready

On this 7th day of Christmas, I ordered a crib mattress and some bedding! We also have some doors that are almost all painted and ready to be hung in the bathroom. Green Bean, we're almost ready... stay warm in there a few more weeks, please!

On the 6th day of Christmas...

... I will publish a post!

Merry Christmas! We have had such a wonderful Christmas celebration! It was such a blessing to be home in Louisiana for 10 days... 10 days packed with family and friends and baby showers and can I mention the FOOD? Luckily, I received a Wii Fit Plus, so I can tone some of this weight I put on while eating all that Louisiana had to offer.

Yesterday (on the Fifth day of Christmas), I did not receive 5 golden rings... but even better!! Richard Carey and I celebrated our 2nd Wedding Anniversary. R.C. took a personal day from work and we just played and basked in our beautiful marriage. He was still on Louisiana time, so he woke up at 4:45 a.m. and went grocery shopping for the week before making breakfast. Yeah... amazing, huh? Two years... wow! I am so blessed.

Belly Shots!

It's what you've been waiting for! Our bellies... pre-thanksgiving.

Happy Thanksgiving!!

RCG Post #2 comin' at ya' ---> After taking off a couple of days of work this week, Valerie and I were able to make great progress on painting our bedroom and the attached baby "nook". The "nook" got stripes (shown on top). The bedroom wasn't lucky enough to earn its stripes yet.

While putting in so much work on the house, Valerie thought it was time to offer me a little Thanksgiving surprise. Valerie scheduled a day trip to a local golf course for the two, I mean three, of us. The hole above is a par 3 that drops over 100 ft (with a view of the SF Bay in the background). The last hole was a 670 yard par 6....yeah that one was crazy. I will have to say though, the best part of the day was the pretty little caddy!!

Happy Thanksgiving to all! Wish we were able to celebrate with you in person.

Costumes, Karaoke, and Cookies. Oh my!

For Halloween, we visited the Celios (the baseball family) for dinner, trick-or-treating and movie watching. We had no clue that on our trick-or-treating route, we would be invited into one special home for karaoke! Mark starts us out with a wonderful rendition of a perfect song... Thriller.We finish off a yummy Thai/American dinner with these cookies RC and I made.
Aren't we a sweet couple? :)


What fun it is to explore the good ol' costume chest!! Can one ever have enough costumes?

RCG's First Post

I'd like to welcome all you bloggers out there in the blogosphere to my first ever blog post. I have been super impressed with the effort that Valerie has put into starting and posting to the Bright Greens blog. I figure it's time for me to join in on the action. To the right is a glimpse of the fun that the Green family had at the 2009 Nike Womens' Half Marathon. Valerie and Green Bean endured till the end. I took pictures at mile 4 and the finish. And might I add, there were some good free donuts, coffee, and steak and egg burritos at mile 4. I'm not sure if Val will run it again next year, but I may go cheer the strangers on at mile 4. I'll let Val post her choice of the pics from the race itself. I figure that if she was the one running, she should get that privilege. Until next time, signing out.......Richard.

Amazing husbands have no limits

So this is what I came home to on Saturday after my long run... Pain perdu and turkey bacon. This must be love.

New Photo Shoot

We had our 19 week ultrasound and we couldn't be more excited! We were able to see Green Bean shaking those hands all around. Our favorite view was of the two legs crossed nice and tightly. The nurse said that the baby looked long, so perhaps it will be taller than me by age 12. :) I can finally feel the tiny movements of this precious life growing inside. G.B. is the size of a large heirloom tomato right now (you may have already understood the scales on the side of the photos). We are not going to find out the sex of the baby, so we'll just keep dreaming of the day we will be holding our bundle. Until then, we'll keep talking, reading, singing, and giving high fives when we score touchdowns. This baby is obviously a football fan.

Happy Birthday Richard Carey (yesterday)

Richard Carey is 25 years old now! He's been in Las Vegas this week for a training, so he was able to visit the Hoover Dam yesterday to celebrate his birthday. On Saturday, we're going to make a big pot of jambalaya to celebrate our birthdays together. If you're around, come by at 5!

I wish you could see the rest of this photo... he's looking down at this black skillet filled with hot-out-the-oven chocolate chip cookie brownie, ice cream, syrup, you-name-it... I hope yesterday stirred up this same face somehow!!

My dear husband, life is so precious and passes more quickly than we think. I try to be mindful and thankful for every moment we're able to spend together. Thank you for being you. You are loved.

The Fun in Fundraising

Tonight, my dear friend Sheree is having a fundraiser for Team in Training. We're training together for the half marathon. Sheree occasionally works at a yummy pizza place in Danville, CA. Tonight she is donating her tips (and the bartender is also) to the Leukemia/Lymphoma society. I will be out on the patio face-painting for donations for my own fundraising. Here's the fun... Sheree asked me to make her a t-shirt to wear tonight (it's all about the marketing, right?) and we each made a box to collect the money. I mean... how much fun is this? For my box, I didn't mean to make my title look like trees in a forest, but I had to "run" with it. So, I put a cartoon drawing with my school picture sticker on it, and now it looks like I'm running through the trees on a Saturday morning. Who knows how much money I'll make painting faces with this fancy of a box! Sheree's box is real cute and has a ribbon closure for easy money counting at the end of the night. Sheree's t-shirt has fuzzy lime green iron-on letters, and a pizza made entirely of felt. I sewed ribbons on the rolled up sleeves and tied them in the back. Really, I feel more alive since I've been working with crafts the last few days. I asked RC if I should change professions (not that I don't get to work with crafts in my current profession), and he said, "Yeah, you should be a mom!" Fair enough. I'll let you know how our fundraising goes.

Happy Birthday, Anne Marie!

Our dearest Anne Marie is 23 years old today. Happy, Happy Birthday! She's thriving in the California Central Valley, working her little tail off. She lives about 3 hours away from us, so visiting her is a cinch (which will be nice when she becomes Auntie Anne). The first photo is of Anne Marie with RC and his stylish sunglasses on their family trip to Italy 2 summers ago. They look like they're playing nice. The second is from this year when she came to stay with us and we had a Mardi Gras party!

Anne Marie, we just love you and your fun, easy-going outlook. Thanks for taking my side when RC gets silly and starts picking. :) Oh, and we let you win Scrabble last week because your birthday was coming up. Just kidding. You're my favorite sister-in-law.

This is the deck that Richard built

On our journey to fix up this house, one of the projects mandated by the insurance company was to fix the outdoor steps outside of our bedroom sliding doors. I wish I had a picture to show you how the steps looked. They definitely looked like a compilation of whatever could be found in the garage that afternoon. A large piece of concrete, some wood pieces, some smaller pieces of concrete blocks... We decided a small deck might add some interest to the back of the house, especially since the stamped concrete just ended when it got to that point. So, I'm just showing you what Richard Carey worked so hard on. The bottom picture shows the process along the way... all the measuring and levelling. Lots of patience! There are still some finishing elements left to do, but it's great for now!

Photos

Here's the Green Bean!!

Up and Running

Welcome to the Green Blog Show. I created this blog months ago, but never got around to actually updating it and posting. So here it is. A glimpse into our wonderful world that now includes a beautiful addition. Our baby Green Bean is 10 weeks and is the size of a kumquat (featured in the photo above). Green Bean is due to arrive late February 2010. Are we going to call this decade the "tens" or the "teens" or...? We have 2 photos of Green Bean, but they are currently in a PDF format, so I'm unable to post them to the blog right now.

Richard Carey has said he will also post to our blog, so you will get to hear his side of things from time to time as well. He's working hard right now while I'm enjoying the beauty of Summer. Now, I'm going to paint on a blank canvas. Perhaps I'll post a picture of it when it's done.

Keep us and our bundle in your prayers.