Happy Birthday to miserable me!!

Tomorrow is my 30th birthday. Yes, I've officially reached that age at which you can never really be considered "young" again. I remember meeting people in their thirties while I was in high school and thinking how OLD they were. I realize, now, that 30 isn't so old, but it isn't so young either! It's just hard to believe that it's ME turning 30! I think back to all the things I thought I might have accomplished by now, and I don't think I've done most of them. I have accomplished some of the most important things on my list, though, such as get married to a wonderful man and have children(well, almost plural). I will say that the one thing that I really thought would have happened by now has definitely not. That thing is delivering this baby! I truly, truly thought that I would have this baby before my birthday. At the time of this post, it's a little after 9pm and it's looking pretty doubtful that this little guy is going to make an appearance in less than three hours. So, I'll never be able to say that I had two children before I turned 30! I feel like since it's almost my birthday, I've got the right to complain just a little. I have reached that terrible miserable point in the pregnancy. I thought I was miserable last week, but I was wrong--it's gotten worse. For the past three days, I've been nauseated and unable to eat or drink very much. My ribs and back are sore and I'm crampy all the time. I have zero energy and even less enthusiasm! I'm SOOO ready to meet this little guy--and I'm still two and a half weeks away from my due date. What am I going to do??? I really thought I might be going into labor on Friday night because I had contractions for about 1 1/2 hours, but then they went away. How disappointing!! Anyway, I guess that's enough pity party for now.

We opted to celebrate my birthday with my family tonight because we could eat earlier and enjoy our visit more. We went over to my parents house for a yummy dinner and lots of presents. Here's my cute girl with me on my birthday. When I told her we were going to Mommy's birthday party, she said, "We're going to Mommy and Maura's party." She was absolutely convinced that it was her party too!

Maura and Grammy. I wish we could at least coax a fake smile out of her, but it's just not going to happen right now. She's way more interested in seeing the finished picture than she is in the process of taking it!

Enjoying our dinner(or as much of it as I could actually eat). Notice my face is swelling. My hands, face and ankles always seem to swell at the end of my pregnancies. NOT pretty.

Maura helping me blow out the candles on my birthday pie. Candles are the thing she's most interested in when it comes to birthdays. She talks about them for days afterwards.

Me and my sweetie. OK, you can really see the swelling in this picture. It's amazing how different I look just about two weeks after I give birth.

Lorie and Micah got me these cool new crocs sandals. They're super comfy and I probably will live in them when we get down to Georgia. From what I hear, flip flops are the ONLY shoes in summer there!!

My mom made me some beautiful fabric luggage. I think I might just have to repack my hospital bag now(which has, by the way, been packed for three weeks. Anxious, anyone?)

Maura and her "yittle" bibles. These are probably her favorite thing to play with at my parent's house. She says that the red one is Grammy's and the green one is Maura's. They always "read" John 3:16 together.

Finally a DVD recorder. We've tried multiple times to buy one and have always been thwarted. We're hoping that we'll finally be successful in taping things off our DVR and transferring some of our videos. YAY, thanks Brent!!

OK, below are some super cute pictures of my girl that I couldn't resist adding in.

We were all out in the yard yesterday taking care of some yard errands. Brent was trimming, I was weeding and Maura was "helping," which basically meant that she was walking around and touching all the flowers. All of the sudden, she started talking about kissing the flowers. She would bend down and kiss each tulip. Needless to say, it was absolutely adorable. As she was dressed in her scrubby lawn clothes and my camera was ALL THE WAY upstairs, I opted for a reprise today so I could take some pictures. Here's Maura enjoying the garden.

We've tried explaining that flowers are supposed to stay in the garden so that they can make us happy and we can enjoy looking at them, but this little tulip was just a little too tempting.

Going in for a kiss. She loves balancing on the landscaping rocks and playing with the flowers. She's pretty good about being gentle and just gently touching them all.

My little flower child.

My lavender bush bloomed this year for the first time in the five years that we've lived here. We're really enjoying it, and Maura is loving to smell the flowers.

I wish we could always be so young and carefree that we stop to smell(and kiss) the flowers.