Laurel's Nursery

I have finally finished Laurel's nursery and can post pictures! All it needs is a baby :-)

This is the view of her room if you come down the stairs and turn right.

This is the view from the doorway leading to Will and I's room.
This is her changing table and dresser.
A closer shot of her bedding.
The view from her rocking chair.

Laurel has the biggest room per square inch of body mass of everyone in the family!! I really love her nursery and I had a great time getting it ready for her. I am enjoying having it be clean and perfect, because I know that it won't last long!

Here is Will sporting the Baby Bjiorn! Looks like a natural to me!

39 Weeks!

Wow! It is hard to believe that we are only 7 days away from August 1 and Laurel's due date. At this point she seems very happy to stay where she is, but I know that all that could change at any time. I had a doctor's appointment yesterday and I hadn't made any progress, but I haven't felt discouraged about it which is God's grace! I just know that he has the perfect plan for the day that she is born and that day is coming very soon whether it is in 2 days or 2 weeks. I am still feeling very comfortable physically, but I think the waiting is beginning to become more of a temptation emotionally. I feel like I am in a holding pattern knowing that my life is about to DRASTICALLY change, but not knowing when! As always, Will has been so encouraging and done an A+ job of caring for me through my different stages of feeling super excited and then bursting out crying for "no reason"! He is such a gift from God and I am so grateful for him. I just can't wait to see him in his new role as a Dad. I know that he will be wonderful.

Even though I'm not posting anything particularly interesting, check back often, because one of these days you will be graced with the image of baby Laurel!!

Waiting for Baby Laurel

To me this is the most exciting time in pregnancy! I love knowing that baby Laurel will be born for sure within the month and hopefully within the next 2 weeks. I had a doctor's appointment yesterday and Laurel is making absolutely no moves to be born any time soon. She is a very contented baby :-) I have so enjoyed working on getting her room ready, purchasing the last few things we needed, and packing up Will and my bags just in case we need to head to the hospital in a hurry. There isn't much left to do. I am fully confident that God has the PERFECT date for Laurel's birthday and in the meantime Will and I will soak up these last few weeks of this season of life.

Last weeks pre-Laurel!

I can't believe how fast time is flying!!! Only 25 days left until baby Laurel's due date. Will and I have been having a wonderful time getting ready for her arrival as well as spending time together just the two of us (although we miss the Kittrell's who are gone on vacation). Over the past 2 weeks we have painted her room, purchased and set-up her crib/dresser, and gotten most of her things in order awaiting her arrival home. Here are some pictures to document....

This is the color of Laurel's new room! Of course it looks a little different in real life, but this is basically it. Also, this chair was my first spray painting project ever. I have decided to love spray paint!! It really is amazing. I think I may have been a little over-enthusiastic about it, because my finger that pressed the "sprayer part" was numb for days afterwards!

Will wanted his efforts to put together the crib to be well documented! We had a hilarious time!

VICTORY!!!

I am planning on posting pictures of Laurel's completed room, but I wanted to wait until it actually is completed. I have some pictures and stuff to put up on the walls and I will post the results when that is done!

Going even farther back here are some pictures from the Connolly Family Vacation to Oak Island, NC in mid-June. It was so wonderful to get to spend a whole week with my family! The Lord really blessed our trip and we had a wonderful time.

One day Anne and Dave (my sis and brother in law) and Will and I took a little trip about 1 hour away to a town called Southport. It was sort of like an extremely miniature Charleston.

Yum! We ate ice cream at a delicious place called Spike's Dairy Bar. I can skip the "pickles" part, but pregnancy had greatly increased my love of ice cream! I would like to eat it pretty much every day, especially now that it is Summer. Thankfully the closest ice cream to our house is TCBY, so I don't feel as bad about it because it is frozen yogurt :)



One of my special vacation memories is going pier fishing with Dad and Will early one morning! I used to go fishing with Dad a lot when I was younger and it was a great memory to go with Dad AND Will! Here were are on the pier.

This was a great moment! I really wanted to catch one of these tiny sharks during the trip and I did!! You can see the pride in my face :)

I really like this picture of Will.

A self-portrait of my brother, Michael, who just had a very successful open heart surgery 2 weeks ago. Praise God for all those answers to prayer!

Relaxing at the Leaky Tiki Ice Cream Parlor after a great game of putt-putt golf!

Dad being gored by a wild elephant while Mom looks on in horror.

That is a little preview from our vacation! Of course, we did a lot more then that, but I just didn't get as many pictures as I should have!

I know that I am a horrible blogger, but I fully intent on posting pictures of baby Laurel when she is born! I will probably appoint someone to post them for me, which will probably insure that they will be put up a lot faster!

Getaway!!!

This past weekend, Will took me on a wonderful getaway to a cabin in the Smokies. It was so special and fun to get to spend so much time just the two of us. It was the last getaway we have planned until Laurel is here. The little cabin we stayed in was perfect and we had such a great time playing games, talking, bird-watching, going to the mountains, etc.

This is a bridge that goes over the stream where Will and I were engaged! I am so glad that we got engaged in a National Park because we know that the area probably won't change very much at all since it is protected as a tourist place.

The water felt so good, because it was a pretty hot day...although I was a little bit afraid of snakes and spiders in the stream...thankfully we didn't see any.

Will and I loved the little cabin that we stayed in! Pictures really don't do justice to how cute and nice it was. It was very new feeling, clean, and well decorated. I hope we can go back in the Winter sometime and be there when it is snowing!

I look like I am ready to pop, but I still have 7.5 weeks to go! Laurel is growing by leaps and bounds (and therefore I am too!!). I thought it was fun that we were staying off Laurel Road. I am trying to hold up eight fingers for eight months, but it turned out a little funny in the pictures :)

Cades Cove is SO beautiful. I just love it!

Me and my Will! I am constantly growing in my love, respect, and gratefulness for him.

This was a really cute, young deer that was trying to cross the road, but was too afraid of the cars. It was cool to see him so close!

You probably can't tell how cool this was from the picture, but in real life it was amazing! There was a birds nest with 4 baby birds plastered to the wall in the one of houses in Cades Cove (Will just looked over my shoulder and said that it sounds like the four baby birds were plastered too the wall...oops!...I meant the birds nest was plastered with the birds in the nest!!!). Will and I sat on a bench in the room and watched the Mom and Dad make trip after trip outside to get food and then up to the nest to feed the babies. It was amazing to see it so close! Especially for someone who is very interested in birds, like Will.

I guess this one really isn't very interesting...it is a turkey. We did see a turkey with all it's feathers out (picture the typical thanksgiving turkey). It was really cool, but we didn't get any pictures.

This is an old grist mill.

In addition to these things, we also saw a bear and a coyote (which I had positively identified as a wolf until Will enlightened me!).

I am so grateful to God for blessing me and Will with such a wonderful trip that we don't deserve! We have been given so many sweet blessings :)

In other exciting news, this is my last week of work at the Cornerstone office!! I am very excited about staying home and getting ready for baby Laurel's arrival as well as being able to take better care of Will with my extra time.

This weekend we head off for a week at the beach with my family!! Pictures will be forthcoming.

Big Update!

I am long past due for an update! May has been very busy (and great!) so there is a lot to report.

First, Laurel's Baby Shower!

The ladies in my Care Group threw me a wonderful baby shower on May 18. I was absolutely blown away by everyone's generosity and kindness, both by those who served to make the shower possible and to everyone who came and blessed us with many gifts. Here is a picture of all Laurel's things piled up in Will and my room!

I can't wait to decorate and set-up her room! I only have 12 more days of work, so I should have lots of time to devote to preparing for Laurel in only a couple weeks!!

Anne and Mary DeGennaro took a road trip to visit over the shower weekend! It was really special having them there and we had a wonderful time shopping, eating, talking, and spending time together. I don't have any of those pictures, because they are on Anne's camera. Hopefully she can e-mail them to me soon.

This past weekend Will and I had the opportunity to attend New Attitude. The conference was excellent and it was wonderful to get to spend so much time together. The messages were all about God's Word and it was encouraging to me to hear about prioritizing my bible reading and memorization because I know that it is going to become a lot more difficult in the months/years ahead! I highly recommend listening to the messages which are available at newattitude.com.

On the last night Will and I had a special meal together at The Old Spaghetti Factory. Notice our matching colors :-)

It was wonderful to see so many special friends! Bebbie and I got to eat breakfast together and catch up a little. We both agreed it wasn't nearly enough time!

I am still trying to recover from the business of the conference and catch up on my sleep, but it was completely worth the lack of sleep for so much fun and great teaching!

We have a lot more fun and exciting things coming to us in the next weeks and months. This weekend Mom and Dad are coming for visit, next weekend Will and I are going on a long awaited getaway together (!), and the week after that I finish work and we head off for the Connolly Family Beach Vacation. We sure are blessed!

This is becoming a long post, but there is one thing that was on my heart to clarify concerning this blog. I assume that it goes without saying, but just in case I think I aught to say it. I want to make sure that everyone who reads this blog understands that the things I choose to post about are not necessarily the most important things in my life and that the amount I might devote to a particular topic doesn't mean it is more important than another topic that I don't really discuss. For example, I have recently been posting more about pregnancy and baby Laurel that I post about Will and my relationship. I am very aware that Will is my primary human relationship and I really do cherish him far more then I could ever cherish anyone else. I love Laurel and I am very excited to welcome her into our family, but she will never have Will's place in my heart. I don't want anyone to think that I am more consumed with her just because I post about her more often. Another example is that I don't really discuss Will and my involvement in Cornerstone and my relationship with the Lord on this blog. I love to discuss what God is doing in my heart and what I am learning about him, but I don't consider this blog to be the place to do that. My primary purpose in writing is to update friends and family who don't live in Knoxville with pictures and short descriptions of my activities.

Sorry that I took so long writing about that! It was on my heart to make it clear and I hope I have succeeded!

First week of May happenings

Will is very hard at work studying for his finals for school. We really miss each other for the 2 weeks of hard studying, but it is almost over (or at least it is the beginning of the end). His last final is this Friday morning! He got to take a little break after the Sunday meeting to enjoy the CCK Church Picnic. The weather couldn't have been more perfect and we ate bbq and treats until we were stuffed.

Here is Will enjoying his meal!

We rented bleachers from a man who uses them for Rodeo's.
I can certainly picture them in that environment!

Everyone enjoying the beautiful day.

One of our favorite little friends, London Oldacre!

Another little friend, Braden Blanton. He is about to celebrate his 4 week birthday!

We can't wait for Laurel to meet these 2 friends and for her to come to her first picnic!