Reese Elizabeth

After almost seven months of praying, talking, thinking and researching about what to name our sweet little girl we have decided on a name....

RESSE ELIZABETH MASON

It makes me smile just to type it out. I absolutely love it and feel like it already fits her perfectly.

Reese means "a name with strong character, ardent, energetic, fiery" {and i can already tell she's quite a busy body!}

Elizabeth means "consecrated to God."

So our prayer over her life is that she will truly live up to her name. That she will be ardent {passionate, having strong enthusiasm or devotion, fervent} in her love for the Lord and that she would use her passion to bring Him glory.

I just can't wait to meet her. I'm now 29 weeks along - made it to the third trimester! Reese should be about 2.5 lbs and even her lungs are fully developed - they just need to grow now. This week her brain is developing wrinkles and she's learning how to blink as well as growing her first hairs on her head {i can't wait to find out if they're red!} I'm going to the doctor every two weeks already and these checkups sure have been boring. ha. I know that's a good thing and I am so thankful that up to now everything has gone so smoothly. What a blessing. I pray it continues along like this all the way until I hear her perfect cry in April!

I've been weird about posting belly pictures... but here are a couple that Mark took of me the other day.

We love you more than you know, sweet baby Reese!

snowy

we had some fun in the snow this afternoon.... and we're super excited about another day off tomorrow!

then we enjoyed some yummy hot cocoa to warm up from the snow. what a great day!! can't wait for our little one to be here to enjoy it with us :)

snow day

What a lovely snow day we are having! We woke up to the most beautiful snow falling outside and to great news - no school for either of us today!! It's been snowing since about 4:30am and hasn't stopped since. Here's a picture I took about 10am...

I need to take another photo because the snow fall has probably doubled since then {we have at least a foot by now}. They're saying we'll get an additional 8 - 12 inches by tomorrow morning! Oh my!! How fun is this?

They've been saying this storm was coming all week so me, being the prepared wife that I am (ha yeah right), went to the grocery store on Tuesday and stocked up like we'd be snowed in for weeks haha. As I was buying the ingredients for a taco soup recipe I've been wanting to try I was thinking, 'this sure seems like a LOT of ingredients!' but who knows.... usually soups take a lot of random things?! So, I just looked at the recipe again and it says "serves 12-16 people" bahaha!!!!! Who wants to come over for dinner?? I don't think we even know 16 people here!! needless to say, we'll be eating taco soup for weeks after tonight!

nursery progress

Two weekends ago we started working on the nursery and it’s been a huge, on-going project ever since…. But I know it will be so worth it in the end :) It makes me so excited about our little one and I just can't wait for her to be here enjoying her new room!! Here are some pictures of the progress so far:

Here’s a before picture when it was a guest room:

We cleared it all out and painted the walls brown and also painted the entire closet white (it was the nastiest yellowy 70s looking closet before!)

Then we had crown molding put up and Mark primed, caulked and painted it. I never realized how much better it would look with the molding! (oh yeah and the guy who did it spilled a huge can of white paint on the floors and it splattered on the walls so we had to repaint)

Mark also took off and re-did the door knobs, which no one will probably ever notice but we do and it looks soooooo much better!

We moved the bed to our upstairs loft room and had no idea it would be so cozy :)

Then comes the big, huge, crazy project. We’re painting the wood floors in the nursery to be white/grey diamond checks. (It was already painted this way when we moved in but it is extremely scratched and dirty and the previous owners tried to clean it with bleach and it stained it all with big green blobs everywhere) So, we’re re-doing it and doing it right! So far we painted the white squares (except I accidentally marked the white paint can as grey and the grey paint can as white – oops!! Chalk it up to pregnant brain!! Haha) It doesn’t really matter except that now we’re painting white over the grey squares so it will probably take like 4 coats.

Here’s the progress and where we are now…

STEP ONE: paint the white squares (which are now the grey squares)

STEP TWO: tape off half of the grey squares to paint them white

STEP THREE: paint LOTS of coats of white

took the tape off tonight and it worked!! yay! it kind of looks plaid now bc we have to paint the other section of white squares... but you get the picture

STEP FOUR: tape the second half of grey squares to paint white {did this tonight}

{start here tomorrow}STEP FIVE: paint the second half with LOTS of coats of white

STEP SEVEN: paint at least 4 coats of sealer

STEP EIGHT: don’t ever walk in the nursery so the floors won’t ever get dirty again. Haha.

it's coming along, slowly but surely. we're shooting to have the floors finished by this coming weekend so we can move the furniture in. i'll keep you posted.

in other news.... we're supposed to get 7-11" of snow tomorrow night or thursday!! we're crossing our fingers and hoping it really comes. oh how I would LOVE to have a snow day!

garth & kat

this snl skit just really cracked me up! i was laughing so so hard when we watched it the other day and i caught myself laughing as i thought about it again today. its hilarious! watch "kat" as she tries to guess what the words are to the song as their singing it! ha. don't you worry that mark and i tried it and started laughing even harder! bahaha its really hard to do! (yes, we're super weird and i can't believe we're about to be parents!!) i couldn't find the real thing on their web site but this is the video from the dress rehearsal and i think it's even funnier the way they start laughing at themselves! haha. i love it.

surprise!!

Bean got the greatest package in the mail today from her best friend Avery Drake :) It was like a little baby shower! She sent the cutest little baby clothes, shoes, blanket, toys and other fun things! Thanks Linds and baby Avery! I know Bean will love every part of it. I can't wait for Avery and Bean to meet in June (and hopefully she'll have a real name by June haha)!

ping pong

While in Baton Rouge, Mark organized a huge, family-wide ping pong tournament! It was so much fun and I have honestly never laughed that hard!!!!!! from the us national anthem to the botswana national anthem, to taylor's sponsorship plane, to 5 million games of ping pong.... it was hilarious!

aimee and anna, my dear, lovely cousins and besties

the boys (Mark, Lingani - Uncle Brian's "son" in Botswana, Africa, Eric, Taylor)

Lingani the ping-pong champion!! he was seriously amazing at ping-pong! I guess they play a lot in Africa!

1st annual tourney.... can't wait for next year!

holiday vaca two

After spending a wonderful week in Branson, we all (mom, dad, eric, me and mark) traveled to Baton Rouge to visit Granny & Papa, Uncle Trent and Aunt Holly, Aimee & Kyle, Anna, Taylor, Uncle Dave & Aunt Michelle and Ben. The special treat was that Uncle Brian (my uncle who is a missionary in Africa) was here this year!! And he brought his african "son", Lingani, with him. We had the best time being with everyone, shopping, eating, playing games and watching football.

the fam eating dinner - uncle brian can't ever act normal in a photo :)

my cute cute cute diaper cake made my aimee and anna! i love it and don't ever want to take it apart :)

eating satsumas from papa's tree. yum!

little brother (who is going to be the best uncle ever!):

soon-to-be four generations:

holiday vaca three:

From Baton Rouge we drove to Ft. Worth and stayed with my Grandmama (my dad's mom) for new years eve/day. It was much quieter than our time in Baton Rouge but we still had some great family time and were glad to be together to welcome in the new year.

dinner at uncle julio's - a staples family favorite!

new years eve fireworks!

One of the best Christmases ever!!! I'm still a little depressed that it's over. I've never loved January....

holiday vaca one

I'm so sad that our holiday vaca is over! Mark and I both had two weeks off, which was a much needed break. We spent the first week in Branson with my family. It was a wonderful Christmas!! It was actually only the second time that my family had spent Christmas in our house in Branson. We've always either been in Ft. Worth with my dad's fam or Baton Rouge with my mom's fam. I have the best memories of christmas from growing up, but I must say, it was really fun to be in Branson for christmas this year. We all loved it. Especially since we had a WHITE CHRISTMAS!! so beautiful. Here are a few pictures from the first part of the break:

We had a cookie party one night with our best family friends, the Coopers. It was just like old times :)

Rebecca, Mark, Lucas, Eric, Me, Kristen and Conner (We sure love and miss yall!!)

Headed out to the candlelight service on Christmas Eve...

Our WHITE CHRISTMAS!!

mom & me ready for christmas dinner...