The Swarrell Life

So the weekend is here and I am ready for it! I have my dad coming into town and Autumn gets home from Chicago! My boss is shutting down the office early today, so I have more time to get the house organized! I love it! Autumn is getting bigger by the day, at least that is what she is telling me. I can not wait to see her and the baby! The baby is the size of a butternut squash, about 2.5lbs! holy cow! also, here is a picture of my favorite doggy in the whole world! Hi Digby!

Well, I have two evenings of work at home and the baby's room is mostly painted. I need to get the chair rail painted and installed and I need to cut paint where the wall meets the ceiling. No problem! I have now planted six trees and six shrubs. You would think that I have had enough. But no, I went and bought six more shrubs. I luv diggin' in the durt. I have pics of progress in an album in the right hand column of the page. Take a look! if you can not find the slide show, go here .

There'll be some more updates soon, but for now I'll post some pics of our new house. Autumn had a great idea to print some of her pictures in black and white and frame them for the dining room. It is the top picture. That picture will also give you an idea how BIG the baby is getting. the pictures below Autumn are the three pictures on the wall. Each is a picture from a different trip that we have taken. The bicycle picture was taken in Uganda, the bridge is from Nepal, and the street sign with the house was taken when we went to New Orleans to help with clean up. What a great idea. It is so fun being in the new house. There are still a few wrinkles to be ironed out, but overall it is a great feeling to be there. I am painting the baby's room while Autumn is in Chicago with her mom, and planting some trees to spruce the place up. I'll post pics later for that stuff. In the mean time, enjoy some pics of our new place. We went to Boise and picked up a couple of area rugs...

My daughter is now the size of a chinese cabbage! My wife would attest to that, given that she is doing all the carrying. The ultrasound was good, the baby was well within tolerances; she measured small but not very much. It may be, much to Autumn's delight, that the baby just happens to be on the small side. She was moving around and chewing on her hand. Atta girl! She was also too big to be completely captured by the ultrasound. She weighs 2 pounds or so! I think that when she is born I will be toting around pictures of her and showing them to anyone who will look. So it goes.

Funny, I decided to help time go by a little quicker by writing on the blog today and I see Aaron had the same thoughts! I've packed up about as much as I dare to pack here at my parents house just in case we do end up staying here the rest of the weekend. I sure hope we are able to move into the house today though. My parents have been great to let us stay here the past 4 months but as much as I love them and enjoy spending time with them Aaron and I are definitely ready to have a house again. In the entire scheme of things a few more days would not really matter but it almost feels like Christmas when I was a kid. If I waited and waited for Christmas day to arrive and then when it finally did I was told I would have to wait a few more days before I could open any presents it would be a little disappointing. Getting a new house is like grown-up Christmas I guess. The other thing I'm waiting for is our ultrasound this afternoon. As Aaron mentioned, the doctor thought I ...

My newsletter this week says that our baby is as big as a Cauliflower. Mmmm, I like cauliflower. I went with Autumn to the doctor yesterday and he says that her uterus is measuring a little small. Of course, he also said that doctors are not as good at measuring anymore; they rely heavily upon ultrasound for the age of the fetus. So he ordered an ultrasound because his measure showed a small uterus. Now Autumn is a little worried. I am a little worried too, for Autumn. She has a lot on her mind and, with a low quality/quantity of sleep lately, is a little low on energy these days. She has been great about eating a healthy diet, etc. I cannot express how much I appreciate how she is handling this pregnancy. So by tomorrow, we'll have more pictures of our little girl. They should be up on the blog tomorrow!

I sit here waiting to see if we get our house keys today...waiting! It seem like an eternity. We have ran around for the last two days, getting this or that. Now we wait. I hate waiting. I think I am patient, but I am invested in this one. I am very anxious to get in the house. Ack. As a distraction, I am posting here. By the way, my cousin sent out this picture of their family. Good looking family! Jordan is four now...crazy because I remember when they brought him home for the first time. Good stuff.

I ran into some old friends on Facebook today...crazy stuff if you ask me. I thought about things that hadn't crossed my mind in years. I saw two girls that are daughters of some friends; I knew both of them before they could walk! They are 12 and 16 years old now. Crazy. They are pictured above. I used to babysit them. The younger one, Alana, would fall asleep on my lap while I was sitting in the glider. Then I would fall asleep too. good stuff. Brittany, the older of the two, is about to drive. I can imagine that gray hair is what's next for mom and dad. Either way, it brings back some fond memories. I also heard from a couple of people that I knew in junior and senior high school. We all went to Mexico on a mission trip when I was a senior. I think I was a senior. See, I am getting old. So it goes. I digress. We went to Mexico and helped build an orphanage. Pretty great stuff. I am so glad that I was exposed to that when I was young. Seeing real poverty is the sort of thing ...

I just read The Shack , by William P. Young. This book has been recommended by several friends and is a quick read. Read it if you get a chance.What struck me the most were the references to judgment. More specifically, the idea that we use rules to judge others around us. I think that I like it because I already thought along those same lines. Does that mean that the only reason I liked it was because I already agreed with it? Possibly, but I like to think I am more open minded than that. Maybe I am not. hmmm...

I hear that our baby is now the size of an english cucumber. Last week it was a rutabaga. Great word. I have felt her kick on several occasions, what a truly amazing thing procreation is. Autumn has a baby INSIDE her belly. Truly astounding, on a scientific, spiritual and physical level. Deep? No. I am just feeling pretty small today. Not in a bad way, it is just that I did not create that baby. Autumn and I were just allowed to be part of her coming into this world. Amazing.

We took a nice trip to Seattle last weekend and saw a TON of family. It was great since I had not seen most of them since my Opa's funeral two years. Here are some pics for you to enjoy! My cousin was up from California and we stayed with my sister and her husband. enjoy the pics! Album is posted on the right -> It is here too: http://picasaweb.google.com/Harrell1941/SeattleTrip2008