Since we've been gone

Soooo,  I'm just gonna come right out and state the obvious. I've been neglectful. We've been missing from these parts for quite a while, and I feel kinda bad about it. However, Mama had to take a bit of a break from blogging to focus on the craziness that has been life these past few months. Peeps, we've got so much going on, it's enough to make anyone's mind spin, Poltergeist style. Finding the motivation and/or the time to blog has been quite a challenge lately, but I'm dedicated to finding my blogging mojo again. So let's play a brief game of catch up, shall we?

* We're moving, ya'll! Yes, our New Year's resolution from two years ago has finally been fulfilled. We sold our house and are preparing to move into our first single-family home in June. It's been at least a year in the making (and, ohhhh, three or four years in the "dreaming"), between completing repairs on our current home, decluttering and getting all the rest of the details arranged in order to put our house on the market. But you guys, we accepted an offer from a buyer within FIVE DAYS of listing our house on the market. FIVE DAYS! I was so glad to ditch the daily cleaning that was required of making our house spic and span for showings. Because trying to keep a house tidy with a two-year-old tornado on the loose pretty much equals mission impossible in my book. So now we're in the packing phase and it's coming along slowly but surely. We're excited to finally have a yard, a garage and a nice quiet street, and the biggest bonus?? The new house has a community pool. That's a major score during the hot and humid Maryland summers! Now we just have to get Maribelle over her aversion to swimming pools.

* School's out for summer. I finished the last class of my master's program and I only have student teaching (and a 25-page Action Research Project, and two Praxis exams, and well, one more student teaching-related class) standing between me and my master's degree in secondary education. If all goes as planned, I will be graduating with my (long overdue) master's degree this time next year. And that's only because I had to push student teaching back to Spring 2012 because our fall is going to be pretty busy. And that's because ....

* Baby M II is due to make his/her appearance in late October! Yep, ya heard. I've got a proverbial bun baking in my oven, and we're so over the moon excited to be growing our little family. I'm about 16 weeks now, and all the sickness and zombie-inducing fatigue has pretty much passed, so I'm feeling good and enjoying it while it lasts. Maribelle is happy to tell you all about being a Big Sister, but seriously, she has no idea what's going on and NO idea what's about to come her way. (The jury is still out on how to refer to our growing bean, so for right now, I'm going with Baby M II, since Maribelle is the original Baby M. Any and all suggestions are welcome.)

This very faint test confirms that a line is a line is a line. It was the lightest of double lines, but I can assure you, it was in fact a positive. I received the fortune during our Valentine's Day lunch earlier that day and decided to go home and test. Sure enough, the fortune was spot on (because, you know, those things are always so prophetic and wise).

Our 8-week-old gummy bear. Proof that I wasn't just nauseous and vomiting for nothing. Clearer pictures will come in a few weeks at the 20-week ultrasound. After a lot of back and forth, and much to the dismay of so many people we know, we're leaning toward not finding out the sex again. We just love keeping everyone in suspense, ourselves included.  

Muaah-ha-ha-ha-haaaa (that's an evil-sounding pregnant lady laugh, fyi).