A Birth Story, part 1

The two weeks leading up to my due date I was fed up with being pregnant and anxiously waiting for Scarlett to arrive. I was so uncomfortable and couldn't sleep (Ha! As if I would get more sleep when I had a baby!), and I was sick of waddling around just waiting and knowing that it could be any day or three more weeks. Every night I would go to bed and think, "Maybe tonight's the night..." and every morning I would wake up disappointed and think, "Maybe today's the day..." Nope. The cycle continued. I also had a lot of irrational thoughts. "How will I know I'm in labor?" (Trust me, you'll know!), "What if I sleep through labor and wake up to the baby's head coming out??" (While we may have heard some crazy stories, I'm pretty sure for the majority of us there is absolutely NO WAY you could sleep through pain like that).

At my 39 week appointment my doctor asked me if I had any wishes to be induced. "No, I'd rather it happen naturally...but ask me again next week if I'm still here," I said, positive that I wouldn't be. The next week came. Even though we all know that it's an estimated date of delivery, it seems like such a let down when your due date comes and goes with no baby. At that point I was willing to talk induction. It was Thursday, and we scheduled the induction for the following Monday morning if she hadn't come by then.



My mom decided to go ahead and come down Friday night and stay the weekend so she would be here for sure if I was induced or if I went into labor over the weekend. She and my brother Cameron came down, and my sister Collier would come down the next day. Saturday morning Mark, Mom, Cameron, and I went to the home inspection of the house Mark and I were buying (we figured one major life event just wasn't enough), and I started feeling some tightening sensations. They were like stronger Braxton Hicks contractions that would come about every 20 minutes or so. After the inspection we went out for some lunch (which happened to be Mexican food - maybe that helped!), starting to get a little hopeful. Later that afternoon we decided to kill some time and hopefully kick things into gear by walking the mall. At that point the mini contractions started coming every 6-10 minutes, but they didn't hurt. When we got home, Collier had made it there and we sat down in the living room. All of the sudden the contractions started to hurt and started to get closer together. For some reason I was in denial that I was in labor. My mom kept saying I should go to the hospital (she had super fast labors and was afraid I would to), but I kept insisting that we wait like they told us until the contractions were 5 minutes apart, lasting 1 minute, for 1 hour. Mine quickly went from being around 10 minutes apart to 3 or 4 minutes apart, but they were only lasting about 30 seconds, and it had been less than 30 minutes. "Kara! You're in labor!" my mom assured me. They were starting to hurt worse now, like really bad menstrual cramps, and then quickly became 1-3 minutes apart. "OK, maybe we should call." As soon as I said it, my water broke.



Stay tuned for part 2...

My Return to Blogging

It's 10 pm, and I know I should be taking advantage of Scarlett's sleep right now to get some shut eye of my own, but the urge to write has so overcome me that sleep seems elusive. I've been wanting to start blogging again for a long time (since before I was pregnant), but life just slipped by and I kept putting it off. Well, now I have so many important things going on that I feel I MUST record them before I forget all the little details. I am telling myself that I WILL keep up with it. I'll start with a life changing event...

Christmas Traditions

In case you haven't heard, our family is big on holiday traditions. As the years go by and the family grows, some have been added, and some have had to be adjusted to accommodate the many different lives and schedules. But there is always time for fun with family. Here are a few of my favorites:

Crowns
On Christmas Eve, the whole family gathers and my grandparents' house. Granny has the tables set with the fine china (no surprise there!), and on each place rests a Christmas popper. Right before dinner everyone pops their popper to find a prize and a paper crown, which must be worn throughout the meal. They make everyone a little more colorful...

Christmas Bread

For Christmas morning, Granny makes her famous Christmas Bread, a sweet, delicate bread topped with sugary glaze and red and green maraschino cherries. It's wonderful with a little bit of jelly or just some butter. Last year she didn't make it, and it was quite the controversy! But everyone can calm down - she's making it this year.

PJ's

My mom started a new tradition last year. On Christmas Eve everyone gets the gift of new pajamas. Now everyone can look cute on Christmas morning.

What are some of your Christmas traditions?

A Sweet Treat

On Thursday I made some yummy Halloween Candy Bark. You can find the recipe here.

Toppings ready to go... love my pumpkin prep bowls... :)

Ready to chill and set...

The final product!

I love this candy bark because it's so colorful and festive. But a couple of warnings: it's yummy, but veeery rich, and it makes a lot. So unless you're sharing or looking to send your system into sugar shock, I recommend halving the recipe. Luckily, we had some friends over for the weekend so we were able to unload some on them. Did I mention that next to Christmas, Halloween is my favorite holiday??

Goodwill Hunting

Like a box of chocolates...you never know what you're gonna find...

As I've said before, I love going to thrift stores and finding things I can give new life to. It's like a treasure hunt. I hadn't been in a while, so the other day I went to Goodwill in Buckhead. It was probably the nicest, most organized Goodwill I've ever been to. This is my loot:

A really beautiful set of vintage-looking lace placemats and matching napkins in excellent condition:

A cool iron/wicker plant stand to which I gave a makeover. Before:

After:

You could use it for wine, but it's great for holding magazines. It also goes perfectly with my red dress picture.

I got a big stack of books. Seriously, $1.50 sure beats Borders or Barnes and Noble. And you can keep your Kindles - there's nothing like a real live book and the feel of the pages between your fingers. I got some cooking/instructional...

And some for pleasure reading...

Which should I read first??

An Update

I apologize for once again having gone off the grid. It's not that I don't have time. It's not that I have nothing to write about. I really don't have an excuse, I just haven't done it. So I'm hoping to make blogging more of a habit...

The Latest:

We've moved to Atlanta, and have pretty much settled into our new apartment (which I LOVE). I promise to post pictures soon, but we are still waiting on a few pieces of furniture and I want to show the final product. The location is great - Mark loves being close to work, and I love having a Whole Foods and Trader Joe's about a mile away.

Mark is loving his job, and the firm is keeping him very busy. As for me, I'm a happy housewife, unemployed by choice. :) Now I'm focusing on getting my event design business with my mom up and running. We have our business license, an almost website, and a paying client - so we're easing into it, but it's really happening!

We've been attending ChristChurch and have been really enjoying it. Great music, great teaching, and a lot of people our age. I'm looking forward to getting more involved there.

I think I'm really going to like living in Atlanta. There is definitely no shortage of things to do and food to taste (I have a long list of places to try). The only thing is that I'm ready to make some friends. We've met people, but we haven't really gotten to know anyone yet. Mark keeps telling me it takes time. I know he's right, but it was so much easier to make friends in college and even when he was in law school. I keep thinking, "Who can we convince to move down here?" Any takers?

Lately

Wow, I realize I have not posted in a while. The past few months have been a WHIRLWIND. I am still breathless from the marathon of events that has had my schedule locked up every weekend. And I’m still running! Between graduations, weddings, and baby showers, I am swamped! So I’ll recap the summer so far:

My wonderful husband Mark graduated from USC School of Law on May 7th. I'm so proud of him. I’ve seen him work so hard these past three years, diligently studying, writing, and becoming actively involved in extracurricular activities such as the Law Review and Moot Court. His dedication to academics allowed him to graduate second in his class. I could go on, but I’ll spare you my bragging.

After graduation, we took a lovely weekend trip to Hilton Head Island. We rode bikes on the beach, relaxed in beach-side hammocks, ate room service breakfast on our balcony, and picked out which beach houses we wanted to live in someday. Oh, and I had one of the best dining experiences of my life at The Studio. It’s a small, chef driven half restaurant, half art gallery. Everyone was extremely pleasant, and the food was incredible and very artfully presented. Candles and mellow live music created a romantic atmosphere, and the hostess was also an artist that had an easel set up in front of our table and painted between helping the diners. Definitely my kind of place.

Baby Fever is in the air! So many of my friends and coworkers are sporting the bump, but the mommy-to-be I am most excited about is my dear friend Kathryn. She is going to have a precious baby girl, and I was so happy to host a baby shower for her. It was so was great to see all the girls and celebrate the upcoming arrival of McKenzie.

My brother Cameron graduated high school on the last Friday in May, which ended up getting rained out and (after 2 hours of the administration's disorganized attempt at decision making) moved to the gym. Because of limited space, I didn't get to see my brother graduate. But I did get to wander the halls a bit for the first time since I graduated, which was WEIRD. I thought about all the awkward moments and how the little things I worried about then don’t even matter anymore. I wondered what I would say to 16 year old Kara if I saw her walking down the hall. It doesn’t matter, she wouldn’t have listened anyway.

The next (EARLY) morning we jetted off to San Diego for my cousin Ingrid’s wedding. She had one of the most beautiful receptions I have ever been to. It was held at her great aunt’s fabulous house on top of a hill. It was an incredible site for a reception. Some of my favorite highlights were the sun setting in the background, a fire pit, and at the end of the evening a surprise hot dog and soft pretzel stand as the guests trickled off the dance floor. For pictures, see my facebook album.

We took a few extra days and had some fun in San Diego. We did some sight seeing, went to a Padre's game, and had some AMAZING food (think fresh fish tacos and some of the most beautiful sushi you've ever tasted)!

Wedding events continued with a bridesmaids luncheon for Tiffany the beginning of June, and Tiffany and Jamey's wedding on June 12. Another beautiful wedding reception!

Mark and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary the last weekend of June that started with a French cooking class here in Columbia and ended with a lovely stay in Asheville, NC (with more good food, of course - it's kind of our favorite hobby).

What's going on now: Mark is neck deep in bar study, putting in 14+ hours a day. So that's yucky. BUT - the very very exciting news is that he got a job! This year has been the toughest year for graduating law students - only about 20% of his class has a job. Firms just aren't hiring in this difficult economy. After neither of his summer clerkships resulted in a position, we were so disappointed. The next several months were even more discouraging as more opportunities seemed hopeful, but the thud of rejection letters on our doorstep knocked us back down. But, as I already knew, God had a plan for us all along, even if we couldn't see it yet. Mark got a call from Nelson Mullins (the firm he interned with over the summer in Columbia) saying that they had an open position at their Atlanta office. He interviewed, they offered, he accepted. It is an incredible opportunity, one that we were definitely not expecting a couple months ago. Needless to say, we are extremely thankful to God for providing, and are excited about starting a new chapter in the big city. Now we are in the process of packing and looking for an apartment. So there is more race to be run with no end of the busy craziness in sight, but I love it.

On a totally random note, I really don't understand these hamster KIA commercials...