I am sooooooo excited about the fact that I'm now twenty weeks!!!! As of next week, I'll have less time to go than I've already come. Yippee! Unless, of course, the baby's late. Hmmm... I'll have to have a discussion with my belly on that. :D But it's all downhill from here. Think snowball effect. It's going to go by so fast! We have a lot planned the next several months, and more to do that we haven't allocated time for yet. Starting in less than two weeks, we're shooting four weddings in five weeks, so we won't have much on the brain except photoshopping. Then it's our anniversary and a couple weeks later we're planning to go up to Humboldt county to visit Harry and Christa for a bit, then three weeks later we're going to Utah for Thanksgiving, then we've got the baby shower, then a few days later we're shooting another wedding, then two weeks later it's Christmas, and two more weeks and the baby's due!!!! Crap! Somewhere in all of that, we need to get our dead oak trees cut down and chop all the wood for firewood, finish setting up our new firewood holder Steve's been working on, get the baby's room as ready as possible, maybe get a couple of new trees for the backyard, deal with the everyday maintenance on the house, and work. Whew! Needless to say, we're going to be busy. We might end up putting out an all points asking for some assistance, but we'll see how things go. I'm trying to do as much now as I can, so things will be a little easier later. I finished painting the baby's room today. Totally done, finito. That made me feel good. I will post pictures, but I want to wait a few days until we have a couple pieces of furniture in there. The colors are bold enough that the furniture is needed to tone things down a bit. We chose yellow (top half of the walls), green (bottom half), and dark brown (stripe in between). Steve says it's kind of like a Mexican restaurant, and I can't disagree. But I do think that the pale, neutral furniture we have chosen will mellow everything out a lot. I feel pretty strongly it'll turn out just fine. And everybody knows a mother's intuition never fails. Right? :D

   I went through all my clothes this morning to put away all the items that don't fit anymore so I could see exactly where I stand and if I need to buy more garments. Not surprisingly, none of my regular pants and shorts fit. I actually found two skirts with elastic waistbands that still fit and will for at least another month. I was utterly shocked at the number of shirts I have that still fit. And even more so that about half of them look better now than they did before. Maybe it's just that I don't care that they show off my belly, whereas before that made me feel chubby. I'll be able to wear some of these shirts to term, with the help of my wonderful belly band. I think I've mentioned it before. It's like a tube top that goes under the shirt and over the pants to cover the belly when a shirt rides up. Corinne sent me a link to it, and I'm profoundly grateful. I'm telling you, any of you women who are planning to get pregnant (ever), you need one of these. Mom4life.com. Great investment. So now I have half a closet of shirts and more bottoms than I thought, so I'm definitely a happy camper. Steve and I are going to San Diego on Thursday to pick up a couple of antique dressers from my grandma's house (one of which is going in the baby's room) and I'm planning on checking out the big Goodwill while we're there, see if they have any good baby stuff we'll need. Now I know I don't have to spend much, if any, time in the maternity section. Sweet! We have some things we'll need but haven't put on our registry because we figured we'd get them ourselves used for a lot less. By the way, if any one wants to get us anything from our registries (eventually), please feel free to look around for a better price somewhere. Especially with the more expensive items, if you can find them used on eBay or Craig's list, we'd be more than happy for you to save some money! After all, that's the way we do things for ourselves, so why should we ask you guys to be any different? :D

   Our hick status has officially gone down a notch. We no longer live on a dirt road. They paved Lakeview, as well as almost all of the other dirt streets we go walking on in the neighborhood. I was absolutely amazed how fast they managed this. They graded all the roads, tore up the old asphalt on Manzanita, then laid new asphalt on every street. Three days. That's it. And they did a really nice job too.  The steep turn from Manzanita onto Lakeview has been graded, so it's much easier now. And, if you believe it, Valley View was already a paved road. It's just covered in a lot of gravel and dirt from the  surrounding dirt roads. They didn't do anything to it, by the way.

   I'm having another ultrasound in two weeks, so there shouldn't be any question this time. The baby will be big enough (22 weeks) that he'll have a heck of a time trying to hide the goods! :P We're 95% sure it's a boy, but 100% would be pretty good. Doncha think?