Say Cheese!

Today I am thankful for pictures.



I don't have the best camera, and I'm not the best photographer, but I love pictures. I love taking them. I love getting them taken. I love hanging them around my house. I love posting them on facebook.

Today, we are taking Simon family pictures, so it seemed appropriate that I blog about pictures. We are going to Portrait Innovations to get a picture of everyone in Rob's family (parents, sister and her family, and our family). We are also going to take our family picture that I hope to use in our Christmas card this year.

Pictures capture some of life's most precious moments. They are the only thing (other than the marriage itself, of course) that is really left over after the big wedding day event. They show how much a baby grows and changes over the first year of life. They allow others to participate in your life when they are far away.

If there is one thing that I could save if my house went down in flames (other than people and dogs, of course), it would be a box of CDs with all my digital pictures on them.

Unfortunately, my husband doesn't feel the same way, and is often reluctant to have his picture taken. I have to fight sometimes to get some good pictures of us and the things we do together. He's always saying that the camera steals your soul. But when he does manage to cooperate, we get some great shots! I'm hoping today's session will have some great results.

Here are some of my favorite memories:


Steak n Shake (my favorite restaurant) after dancing during ATLX 2007


We're engaged! 2007


Wedding on Sand Key Beach in Clearwater, FL, June 2008


Hiking in Alaska during our Simon family cruise 2008


Graceland with my best friend, Lisa, during Liberty Bowl weekend 2009


One of our many Braves vs Mets games


Oregon vacation 2009


My dad and me after the Richmond marathon, where I finally ran a sub-4 hr marathon!


Maternity picture while pregnant with Alan


Rob and Alan during Alan's first college game day


First picture capturing a reactive smile from Alan


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Happy Trails to You

Today I am thankful for trails.

Running is made much easier when there are good trails to run.

My favorite is the Cochran Shoals river trail along the Chattahoochee River. The trail is a 5k loop, but it also has some roads at either end that can extend the run to a 10 miler. Columns Drive is a straight, flat road at one end of the river trail that goes 2.5 miles out to a light. On the other end, if you turn left out of the river trail parking lot, the road goes up a big hill a mile to a light. This is my favorite place to do my 20 mile runs. If I put a water bottle somewhere along the course, it gives you plenty of opportunities to hydrate as you pass it. It is partially on packed gravel, so your joints don't wear out too badly. It has nice houses and scenery to look at as you go, and it is marked off by the quarter mile, so you know how long you've run.


Cochran Shoals river trail

During the week, I've started running on the Big Creek Greenway after work. It is a half mile to the greenway from the office, and the greenway spans eight miles from Roswell up to Alpharetta. I run to the greenway, run half the distance I want to get, and turn around and come back. It is very well maintained and is a beautiful, peacefull trail.


Big Creek Greenway

Aside from running, I love to hike. I try to get at least three hikes in each summer. The three that I typically do are: Stone Mountain, Anna Ruby Falls, and one up in Clayton, GA. I've also gone hiking in Big Canoe with my in-laws the past two years.


Hiking in Blairsville, GA 2005


Clayton hike 2006


Clayton hike 2007


Anna Ruby Falls hike 2008


Big Canoe 2009


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Holidays

Today I am thankful for holidays.



Today is my Name Day. A Name Day is similar to a birthday (with cake and presents), but everyone with the same name celebrates on the same day. It is a Czech tradition. I'm 3/8 Czech, so I claim it as one of my traditions. My name in Czech is Alžběta, and everyone with that name celebrates today.

Generally your parents will name you something that has a name day about six months after your birthday so you can have a celebration twice a year. I just found out that if we had done that with Alan, his name would probably be Peter Simon because Petr's name day is February 22nd, which is six months after my due date. I find that funny because most people were calling our little unborn baby "Simon Peter" before he was born.

They also say that if your parents named you something that made your name day be close to your birthday, they didn't like you. It just so happens that Alan's name day is August 14th, just a mere three days before his birthday. Rob's name day is April 29th, which is six days after his birthday. Of course the saying doesn't hold true in our family, because both Alan and Rob are well loved by their parents.

Most people think of Thanksgiving and Christmas when they think of "the holidays." That time of year is the most wonderful time of the year when it comes to seeing family and giving thanks for what you have. I love my family, and we are not able to get together as often as before, so the holiday season is very special to me now. I will have 19 people at my house this year for Thanksgiving, and I can't wait!

Christmas has become a little too commercialized for me. It has really taken away from the true meaning of the holiday - the birth of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. But as long as the family keeps the primary reason front and center (we always read the Christmas story from Luke at breakfast on Christmas day), I do love buying and giving gifts, decorating, and eating all the delicious Christmas cookies.

I also love Halloween. This holiday is the opposite of Christmas; the commercialization is a good thing. As a Christian, I don't like the origin of the holiday, but I love seeing the kids dressed up in their costumes, carving pumpkins, and handing out candy.

With the spring comes birthday season. Between mine and my husband's family, we have at least one person with a birthday in every month from January to August. Getting together to celebrate is the highlight of each month.

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Home is Where the Heart Is

Today I am thankful for work-from-home days.


This is obviously not me, but I thought it was a good picture of a home office

In the past I blogged about how I was thankful for my job and thankful for my boss and thankful for technology. Well, all those things come together to allow for today's topic. I have a job where I sit in front of a computer all day long. Because my boss is so awesome and technology is available, one day a week I work from home.

I get a lot done, both personally and professionally, when I work from home. I love that I can throw a load of laundry in and then go back to working. I love that I have very few distractions when I'm trying to get something done for work. But most of all, I love that I can be with my son all day long when I work from home.

I also get way more milk when I'm at home and around him than I do when I'm at the office. On weekends and on my work-from-home days, I can easily get 5+ ounces in a pumping session. When I'm at work, I'm lucky if I get 4 ounces.

I still have conference calls to get to and work to get done, but when I'm at home, I can cuddle with Alan in front of the computer while I'm doing those things. The only time I really can't do any work is when I'm feeding him. The rest of the time, he is content to hang out in his vibrating chair or under the activity gym or on my lap while I work.


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What Do You Expect?

Today I am thankful for my new found friends on the August mommy What to Expect message board.



Today my son turns 3 months old. The journey to becoming a new mom has been an interesting one. With hormones out of whack and routines changing, it's important to have an outlet. I found that outlet in several places, but one of them was a group of ladies who were in the same boat that I was.

I have to admit that I stole the idea for today's blog from one of those ladies. But her blog was so accurate, that on this 3-month milestone of my son's life, I felt it appropriate to be thankful for those who helped me through my journey.

I had always heard of the book What to Expect When You're Expecting. It is probably the most popular book for pregnant women. Now they have a What to Expect (WTE) iPhone application that tells you almost everything you need to know about pregnancy. I'll be honest, I never bought the book, and if the author read this, she would probably start charging for the app. But through this application and the website that goes along with it, I found a message board with ladies from all over the world who were expecting a baby in August just like me.

During my pregnancy, I was almost always on my iPhone. Rob would come home and ask if I was on facebook or WTE. It was always one or the other.

It's so exciting to share your experiences with people who are going through the same thing that you are. It was especially important before I told my family that I was pregnant (we waited until after the first trimester to tell), because it gave me a way to get the excitement out without giving away the secret.

Over the past year, I have established great friendships with these ladies. We have gone through a lot together. One of the posters lost her house and all she owned in a fire a mere week before her due date. To make things more complicated, she had been planning a home birth. During that trial, the WTE ladies banded together to provide care packages and money to help her get back on her feet before the baby arrived. Luckily the baby was a few weeks late, so she had more time to get things ready.

That's just one example of the things we have gone through as a group. We shared our stresses (PPD, significant others, work, etc), our joys (ultrasounds, birth stories, pictures of our little ones when they were born), and our losses (one lady lost her baby at 33 weeks gestation and another lost her 11-week-old to SIDS). We have a sounding board for questions about milestones. We have something to keep us occupied during those middle of the night feeding/pumping sessions.

I am so thankful for these ladies and how they have helped me stay sane throughout this life-changing experience.


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Electricity

Today I am thankful for electricity and central heat.



Yesterday, I blogged about technology. While electricity and plumbing are probably also considered technology, I wanted to discuss them separately.

I honestly cannot imagine living in a time where we can't turn on the lights at night, especially now that it gets dark at 5pm. I can't imagine working by candlelight. I can't imagine how dark the world is without streetlights and storefront signs at night. A world like that is so depressing to me.

I can't imagine living in a world where there is no heat, or you have to burn wood in order to heat your house. I lived without heat for one winter in Asheville, NC, and if I have anything to say in the matter, I will never do that again! They story goes like this:

My sophomore year in college, I was married and living in a double-wide trailer on a tobacco farm in Weaverville, NC. (That sentence just reeks of redneck, doesn't it?) There were about 20 farm cats that lived near us. The trailer had no underpinning, so when it started getting cold outside, the cats went under the house and dug into the heating ducts for warmth. One of them got sick, crawled up into the heating duct, and died. So, when we turned on the heat, it smelled of dead cat. Because of where the cat was and how the ducts turned, it was very difficult to get it out of the duct. You would need a flexible stick of some sort. If we were able to get a stick or something long and flexible enough to get to the cat and drag it out, it would fall down right onto whoever was trying to get it out. So, we went without heat that winter.

We had a kerosene heater that we used during the day, but it's not safe to use one of those things at night. We turned it off during the night and slept under a pile of blankets a foot thick. It was miserable.

If you thought that story was bad, it gets worse. Apparently maggots were eating away at the dead cat carcass inside the heating duct. Spring comes, and the maggots turn into flies. The flies don't want to be in the heating duct anymore, so they fly through the vent into the bathroom. Our bathroom was FULL of flies. I took the vacuum cleaner attachment and sucked flies out of the air into the vacuum cleaner.

True story.

So, today, I am thankful that: 1) I no longer live in a double-wide trailer on a tobacco farm in North Carolina, 2) I do not own any cats, and 3) I have electricity and central heat.

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Technology

Today I am thankful for technology.


The picture I took the first day Alan was in daycare, showing how much I missed him

This past weekend I went up to Epworth, GA to visit Rob's grandparents. It made me think of all the benefits of modern technology. Epworth is in the north Georgia mountains, very close to the Georgia-Tennessee boarder. And it is in the middle of nowhere; a place where your closest neighbor may not be within walking distance. Needless to say, I had no cell service while at his grandfather's house.

But even in Epworth, GA I could see modern technology everywhere. They have TVs and computers, microwaves, refrigerators, ovens, dishwashers. I could not imagine life without these conveniences.

This world is becoming so global. The company I work for has plants and/or offices in over 150 countries. In order to communicate with people across the seas, we have teleconferences, video conferences, instant messaging, email, an intranet site that we can use for collaboration on projects, webinars, etc. Without modern technology, none of this could happen. Can you imagine how long it would take to get a message to China using only the post office? And even then, the post office today uses so much technology to get there faster. What if they didn't have airplanes to fly letters across the oceans? How long would it take to get a message from the United States to China using absolutely no technology. How would you even do it? Horses and sailboats? My mind can't even grasp that.

We live in an instant gratification world. If we call or text someone and they don't answer right away, we get frustrated. If we need to know something, we pull out our smart phones and Google it and know the answer in an instant. Everything is at our fingertips. Sometimes that can be to our detriment, like constantly being connected to work and feeling like you are "on call" 24/7. But for the most part, I wouldn't change it for anything.


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