ugh

It is so hard when you don't feel well to feel thankful. I wish that I could have a better attitude today but I just feel yucky. I think I came down with a cold and I feel so pregnant and the two just don't go together. So for today, I am thankful that I get to go home tonight and rest. I can't wait to sit down on the couch and rest. I guess I am really thankful that I have a warm house to go home to with a couch that I can rest on and a coffee table that I can put my feet on. That is what I am thankful for today.

love always,

Fall

photo found here

Today I am thankful for Fall. Normally I dread this time of year. I know that it is getting colder and I just think about how I am not sure I am going to make it through another winter. I am a summer girl through and through. I am trying to like Fall and today I am going to be thankful that I live in an area that has all 4 seasons. I love football time and going to tailgates and UT football games. I love that I get to see my best friend from college on TV because basketball season has started. I love the smells and the beautiful trees. I am going to focus on the great things about this season and not wish that we could just get through it and on to Spring.

love always,

BHS Soccer Team

Ugh, day two and I have already missed a day. I have a good reason. I was down in Chattanooga with the BHS Girls Soccer Team. We made it to the State Tournament and our first game was yesterday. Unfortunately we did not win so our season is over but the girls had a great year and I am so proud of them.

Mostly, I am THANKFUL for those girls. I feel so lucky to get the opportunity to coach at Bearden. The girls teach me so much each year. I know I make them mad, heck, sometimes they make me mad :), but I would not trade it for the world. More often they make me laugh. They are all so silly and have great hearts. I am sad that this season is over, but I think that their season was amazing. We did not have the most skilled players in each position and yet we managed to play with enough heart to make it all the was to the State Tournament. I am so, so proud and thankful for them. Thanks girls and especially the seniors for a wonderful year. I am going to miss you guys!

love always,

A Month of Thanksgiving

I am going to dust off the old blog today and start a November tradition on here. I hope that I will be able to do this everyday, but since Baby Lily will be here sometime this month I may miss a few days. *grin* I am going to do my best to post each day about something that I am thankful for. So for today here we go...

Today I am thankful for these sweet girls. Andy and I are so lucky to have 2 of the sweetest dogs on the planet. I caught them lying down together the other day (without being bribed) and I snapped this picture to send to Andy (sorry for the quality, my camera phone is terrible). Laney and Addie are just wonderful and I can't imagine my life without them. I know that their world is about to be turned upside-down but I hope they know how much we do love them.

love always,

10 years ago.

Why hello there. I know it has been a long time. I have been super busy with work, soccer, being a wife and growing a HUMAN! Haha that is what I say to Andy when I want to get out of doing something these days.
As the days have ticked by I did not want the day to pass when I looked back at where I was 10 years ago. It is hard to turn on the TV without finding one channel or many channels dedicated to something about what happened on September 11, 2001. The day that our whole world changed. I can think of various generations and the dates that they have engraved in their minds on where were you when such-and-such happened. September 11, 2001 is that date for my generation.
Where was I. I remember it was a Tuesday and I just walked out of one of my Political Science classes and was on my way down the hall to my Western Civ. class. I remember hearing someone say something about a plane flying into the World Trade Center, but beyond that I didn't think much about it. Like maybe some small plane made a wrong turn or something totally accidental happened. That was about as much thought as I gave it until I left my class. I remember walking down the hall towards the entrance to the building and there was one TV in the lobby. Everyone was standing around it in shock as all eyes were on New York City. I immediately went home and turned on the TV there and sat for hours watching as the towers were on engulfed in flames and then as they fell. It was shocking, the whole day was shocking. I called a friend of mine that was going to school in Washington DC when I found out that a plane had flown into the Pentagon. She told me that the city was a mess but that she was fine. She had been on her way back from morning soccer practice and luckily was not near where everything happened. I was so relieved to hear her voice and know that she was safe.
I remember later that day, walking into soccer practice at the UT fields and just knowing that things were different. Knowing that life as we knew it would change. In the days following I remember the strangeness of silence outside as all planes across the country were grounded. I also remember hearing the a plane flying overhead for the first time after the attacks and being nervous. Was it going to come crashing down?
As the years have passes it is easy to move one. To accept the new security changes that have become part of our lives. The one thing that I hope to never move on from is how I felt that day. I don't want to forget all of the innocent people that were on their way to work for another ordinary day when the whole world changed at their expense. I don't want to forget all of the people who on that day not only risked their lives, but gave their life to help others. I don't want to forget how as a community and as a country we came together. I just don't want to forget...

love always,

The storm

So last week Andy and I headed to the beach for a little R & R. I was planning on coming home on Wednesday and Andy was going to stay the full week and come home on Saturday. We heard that Knoxville was hit with a pretty bad thunder storm on Tuesday and we were both pretty happy that I was going to be coming home the following day to check on our sweet little pups that we left behind.

I got home late Wednesday evening and the dogs were so happy to see me. They were wired and ready to play. I was pretty tired from the drive home but glad to see that they were doing well. I went to bed that night and I don't think that either dog slept for more than 30 min at a time. When I woke up on Thursday morning I think I was more tired than when I went to bed the night before. I went off to work and told myself that when I got home that I could relax and get a good night sleep.

When I got home I fixed dinner and prepared to sit on the couch and did just that when I got home. The dogs had calmed down and we were enjoying our evening. I headed to bed at about 11:30 and immediately fell asleep. I woke up to my phone ringing at about 1:15am. It was my mom so I was immediately worried. When I answered she said that there was a tornado headed for us and that I needed to get the dogs and get in my bathtub. Once I realized she was serious and I was awake I went to the living room, got some pillows, my blanket and the dog bed and headed to the bathroom. I decided to check the weather on my phone and sure enough there was severe weather in the area. Since I still had power I decided to turn on the TV to listen to the news. I found out that my area was pretty safe from the worst of it so I sat on the couch and watched the news and would call my mom (who had not had power since Tuesday's storm) and update her on what was going on. A few minutes later I heard it start to rain really hard and the wind picked up. I peeked outside the window and was just in time to hear a loud crack and watch a huge limb fall down directly on Andy's truck sitting in the driveway. I was in shock and that was when I started to get really scared. Finally around 3am the rain stopped enough to where I felt safe going outside to check the damage. This is what I found.

Andy did not get good reception on his phone at the beach so I frantically emailed him hoping to get through at such a early hour. He was finally able to call me back and I told him what happened to his truck. Then I promptly started crying. Andy told me not to worry, that it was just a truck and everything was going to be okay. When I hung up with Andy I realized that I needed to get everything out of his truck. Luckily for me he had removed most everything from his truck knowing he would be out of town and it would just be sitting in our driveway. It took me a little while to get everything out and a little longer to calm down and get ready for bed.

This is what the truck looked like the next morning.

This next picture will show you how close it came to hitting my car. I was so glad that one limb did not take out both of our cars. Unfortunately, however, the limb did trap my car in the driveway and a co-worker had to come and pick me up for work on Friday.As you can see the limb crumpled the cab of the truck and shattered out the back window. My car barely made it out alive.The limb was huge. This shows you how far from Andy's truck it came into the yard.

Friday afternoon our dear friend and Andy's business partner came over and hauled the whole thing down to the street. I did not know that he was coming and I had left the house to go to the grocery store. I was shocked that in the short amount of time that I was gone that he was able to cut it to pieces. It was so nice and I was so thankful that the tree was gone. The best part was that Andy did not have to worry about it when he got home from his trip.

The funny part of the story is that when Andy and I were driving to the beach just days before this happened, we were discussing if he should get a new truck. I think that I pretty much had him convinced that he did not need a new truck and that the few things that were wrong with this truck we could just fix. Well, I guess God had other plans and he made the decision for us. Thankfully we were still in the talking phase and had not put any more money into the truck. I will say that Andy has had some fun picking out a new truck. I will let you know what he gets!!!

love always,

Baby Broome

So I figured I would update you guys on how thing are going with the sweet little one that we are expecting in November, November 18th to be exact. I guess I will start off on how we found out we were pregnant.

Last year Andy and I decided that we were ready to start trying to have a baby. I went off of my medicine and we just waited to see what would happen. In February I went in for a routine physical and blood work. They noticed that I had a mild issue going on with my Thyroid so they started me on some medicine.

Fast forward 2 weeks. On a whim I decided to pick up a pregnancy test at lunch. We had taken a few over the last few months and I just assumed that this one would be negative like all of the other ones. I got home at lunch and took the test and left it in the bathroom. I went about my regular lunchtime routine of letting the dogs out and fixing myself something to eat. When I remembered about the test I went back to check it out. When I saw that it said PREGNANT, I think I went into shock. I just stood there and then started laughing. I really didn't quite believe what I was seeing.

I figured that this is not the kind of news that you tell someone over the phone and since Andy was still at work I decided to wait until we were both home that night to tell him. Do you know how hard that was. I had to go back to my office and pretend like everything was normal when the news I just found out at lunch was so exciting and going to change my life. I made it to the end of the day and quickly ran to Target to get some onesies and then to Hobby Lobby to get an iron on print that I had seen there a few weeks before. I rushed home and got them ironed on the onsies and then took another test to make sure that I had not dreamed the first one!

Andy was outside so I put both tests and the two onesies in the bag and went to find him. I handed him the bag and he pulled out the onesies and the tests and said, "What is this?" I said, "Surprise, we are pregnant!" He was so funny, since I put both tests in there and there were two onesies (Andy loves all things pirate, so one said, Pirate in Training, and the other said Ho Ho Ho and a bottle of milk) and two pregnancy test the first thing he said is, "Are there 2 babies!" I laughed and said no, well that I was not sure and then we panicked. I went the following Friday to the doctor who confirmed that we were indeed pregnant. We told our families that night by giving them a bag with a pacifier in it and they were all really excited.

By the time we got to the baby doctor we told her that we wanted to find out how far along we were and that there was only one baby! She was able to tell us that we were 7 weeks along and that yes, there was only one baby. We were both so excited and it was so neat to get the chance to see our little blob for the first time.

I was so sick from about 6 weeks to almost 14 weeks. It was terrible and I remember thinking at one point that I did not know how I was going to make it from 6 weeks all the way to 12 weeks when they told me I would start feeling better. I did eventually start to feel better and it has been such a blessing.

Andy and I are super excited and totally overwhelmed at the same time. It is crazy to think that we are going to be responsible for another person. I think that in the next few weeks we will get to find out of the little one is a boy or a girl. We are currently 16 weeks along and everything has been going well so far. I will be sure to keep you updated on what we are having in the next few weeks and let you know how we are preparing for our little one!!

At the top are some pictures from one of our ultrasounds. In the last one you can even see the baby's sweet little foot!!

love always,