We made it!

This was a CRAZY week-- Jeff finished up his finals for the semester and I finished up my last week of teaching/school (for potentially a very long time...) And, we made it, and now we're just waiting for the baby to come. :)

Some pictures...

These are some girls from my class at our Spring Talent Show that was on Tuesday night. They got all prettied up for it! Our class sang the song "It's All Right to Cry," which is a really cute, folksy little number from Brett Dennen (sp?), but then I felt bad because the other kids were really "cool" and sang crap pop songs like stuff from Hannah Montana. But my students are great-- they didn't mind at all and they were adorable.

This is Nicholas (also known as Nick-o) at the talent show. He's so sweet and nice. 

So for the last day of school, which was yesterday, the kids did a "graffiti wall" where they wrote messages to each other and they got to take their graffiti home. The messages were pretty funny-- almost a third of the class wrote "Rock on!"

This is Kai and me and my big 39-week pregnant belly. It was pretty crazy-- people were amazed that I was 6 days away from my due date and still teaching and at work. Do pregnant ladies generally not work when they're that close? I have no idea. But, I have to admit, that being this big and having to help with Field Day and all of that madness made me very very tired...

So for the last day of school, for Field Day, our school rented a 20-foot inflatable water slide, seen above. It was a crazy, wet, fun day to celebrate having made it through the year and say goodbyes...

Hooray! It has finally happened...

No...

I'm still pregnant.

The other thing has happened... Jeff and I have found some good food in Escondido. And not just good food, good Thai and Japanese food at that!

Hooray!

We've been getting take-out from this "Oriental" (yes, apparently, people still use that word) market/to-go restaurant called Chai Market. It's around the corner from us, in the most ghetto of ghetto strip malls, and the pad thai and green and red curries are good. Not just Escondido-good too-- like good-Thai-food-that-actually-tastes-like-Thai-food good!

And today, for dinner, we tried a sushi place (Sushi Nori) next to our Trader Joe's and it was awesome! It's owned by Koreans (which automatically gives it points) and the fish was fresh and delicious. They had good portions (it wasn't all rice and specks of fish unlike the other Escondido sushi places we've gone to) and the ahjooma (Korean lady) who waited on us was really nice and gave us free fried mango ice cream at the end of our meal! Score!

So, it seems that with a good Thai place and a really good sushi place, we could stick around Escondido for a while... We just need to find some good Korean food...

After a long day of work...

...and growing ankles (soon-to-be cankles I think), this makes me feel better:

Yummy yummy watermelon.

Oh, and I don't have to go to SeaWorld tomorrow-- praise God! My principal is very kind and letting the 38-weeks pregnant teacher work from home. Only 4 more days of teaching to go! I hope we make it...

The Silly Adventures of... and Kathy

I've been absent from our blog for a little while, and I thought I'd change that this morning. I'm sure it won't last, but at least I'll try.

Kathy's given most of the updates on me, I think. I'm working as a server at a wine bar (which is sort of funny, because I'm in seminary and most wouldn't put those two together. Add to this the fact that I found out about the job through the seminary. Definitely not many Southern Baptists around). I am nearly done with my first year of seminary - just a couple weeks of finals and I'm home free. My former study room has been transformed by my lovely wife into just about the most spectacular baby room I've ever seen. But, then again, you probably already knew all that.

Here's something you didn't know: last night, we thought we were going to have the baby!

Driving home from dinner, Kathy's stomach started tightening up intermittently. It was making her uncomfortable, but it didn't seem strange or anything. When we got home it happened again, and then again a little while later. I ran into the other room to get the books we have about labor (if we were going to have a baby that night, it was time for a serious and quick cram session), and pulled out my watch to see if there was any consistency to what was going on in Kathy's belly. After about 15-20 minutes, nothing happened, so I put the watch away (though the books are still on the living room floor). It was a bummer, but somewhat of a relief. We still have to pre-register at the hospital (seriously, that's what I was thinking every time I looked down at my watch!). It would have been nice to become a father last night/this morning, but, Lord willing, I'll get to take all my finals before Baby Locke decides to grace us with his (or her!) presence. 

Nesting: Part 3 (hopefully, the last...)

With Jeff working a new job (he's working as a server at a wine bar in San Marcos) that keeps him busy at nights, I've busied myself with the (hopefully!) last stages of getting the baby's room ready. I think that at this point, with the weather getting stinkin' hot (99 degrees yesterday!) and the ankles starting to swell, the room will stay as it below and we'll have to figure the rest out after the baby arrives!

The picture above is one corner of the room. We bought the bookshelf at Ikea (the only thing in the room that we had to buy that was over $50!) and I think it was totally worth it. The baby already has more books than can fit in his/her shelf! (The apple does not fall far from the tree...)

This is the wall next to the closet. We got the dresser that we're using for a changing table for $10 from craigslist. It didn't fit in my car, so we tied it on (it was sticking out of my trunk) and drove it home from Mira Mesa, freeways and all. And, it survived! Totally worth it.

And the baby's crib-- Jeff's mom had gotten us a really adorable crib bedding set (Thanks Mom!!!) to go with the crib, but after we starting decorating and all, we realized that it really didn't go with the all-the-colors-of-the-rainbow scheme I had concocted for the room. We kept things simple-- organic cream and yellow bedding stuff for baby. I sewed fabric pieces that go with the quilt I made for baby for the frames yesterday, but am not sure if I like them over the crib. Oh, and the cute bird fabric with frames on the side wall was totally Jeff's idea-- so so cute!

These are the pictures over the changing table/dresser. I have some of these in white frames on the bookshelf as well. They're from Maira Kalman's book, The Principles of Uncertainty, that I read during the earlier months of pregnancy. She's an amazing artist, and her pictures are funny and quirky and I thought they would be perfect in the baby's room.

Rosy says that my decorating style is "kitschy" but I think I just made the baby's room the kind of room I'd want to grow up in (even if baby's probably going to inhabit it only for a year or so.) I love color, and it was really fun to not stick to a theme and make a fun and funny space for the baby. 

Come visit us soon!!!

Nesting: Part 2

Now that we're close to the end, I definitely feel that whole nesting instinct taking over and we've been working on getting the baby's room "ready." (Jeff and I both acknowledge the fact that we're never going to be completely ready, because we have NO idea of what to expect...)

So below, are pictures of the beginnings of Baby Locke's room (formerly Jeff's study room). It's not even close to be where I'd like it to be when the baby comes, but at least now we don't just have piles of stuff everywhere! :)

The picture above is the closet. All the blue does NOT mean that we found out that we're having a boy. It was just that the choices for the hanging organizers and bins were this blue or pink, and I like blue better than pink. (And colors are just colors and they're all wonderful.)

These are some of the things that I've begun to collect to put on the walls of Baby's room. Aren't the melamine plates so cute?! Jeff got them for me at Loom in Park Slope while he was in NY.

Here's a corner of the room. I made the flags yesterday from leftover fabric from Baby's quilt. Yes, we do still have some piling going on as you can see in this picture, but it is much more contained (it's all in one corner!) than it was  before.

(Oh, and for our last day of Teacher Appreciation Week, the mothers at school put on a beautiful luncheon for the teachers and we got books that the students made and signed. My favorite page in my book is from one of my third graders, whom I obviously did not work enough with, who wrote "thing you for all the things, lov, m---". I thought it was very amusing.)

Where I work... (for now)

I'm officially 4 weeks from my due date of June 4th. Woohoo. 

Jeff and I are praying that the baby comes right on time (or late!) so that I can make it to the last day of school on May 29th. This is less about me wanting to work and be with my students (though there's a little of that in there somewhere...), and more about not having maternity leave and needing to save my personal and sick days for after the baby is born. 

So, I will be teaching at the Innovation Centre until the end of May (God willing) and working with third through eighth graders on reading and language arts. Even though it hasn't always been fun or easy, I've tried to make the most of my last few months and weeks of teaching (maybe for a very long time!) and do things with my kids, especially my third grade homeroom, that would be fun for me as well as the kids.

During testing, we read "The World's Gruesome Guide to Monsters" and made our own guide. I also taught them how to sew by hand and we made our very own stuffed monsters!

The one above is the one that I made. :)

Here's one of my student's monsters-- she's obsessed with animals (especially dogs and cats) so she pretty much chucked the whole monster idea and just made hers a really scary dog with lightning bolts.

Alyssa made a one-armed three-eyed monster...

And Eli's was my favorite: his monster is called Fangburger, and it lives in fast food restaurants like McDonald's and Wendy's. He said that any hamburger can become a Fangburger if it is not cooked the right way, and it will eat people up. (Needless to say, Eli comes from a family of very earth-conscious, animal-loving vegan/vegetarians... He's the kid in my class who lectures the other kids at lunch about why eating a turkey sandwich is cruel and evil.)

This week is also Teacher Appreciation Week. Each day, the kids have brought in things for the teachers. On Monday, I got flowers, on Tuesday, I got fruit (my peanut-allergic twins brought me the huge pomelos in the picture below), and today, I got giftcards! Not bad... even though the other teachers and I were commenting that we would feel most appreciated if all the kids stayed home one day and the teachers got to kick up our feet and go to the movies.

I'm not sure what tomorrow will be... The anticipation is killing me...

And, I definitely have the most wonderful husband too!

This is what I came home to today after a verrrrrrrrrry loooooong, hard day at work:

It was such a pleasant surprise. There was also a very thoughtful and amazing letter taped to the crib. Jeff has definitely been super patient and kind and caring through all of this pregnancy stuff. He is always looking for ways to serve me and care for me and I'm constantly surprised as I learn more and more, just how wonderful he is.

I have the most wonderful friends!

On Saturday, my hot friends from college, Yoonjin, Janice and Rosie, came to visit me in Escondido. Even though I had just seen them the weekend before at the baby shower in L.A., they drove all the way down to me, just to spoil and pamper me and baby!

They took me to a spa in Downtown San Diego where I got a "pregnancy massage" (which I think was more or less a regular massage, but not as intense). Here they are putting money in the meter before we went into the pomegranate-scented spa. (Sorry-- I'm still not so good at pulling out my camera at the right times! It probably would have been better for me to take pictures at the massage place!)

Then, later, we ate at a really good sushi place in the Gaslamp District, and Jeff came and met us. This is just a funny picture.

And the spoiling continued! We went to Extraordinary Desserts after dinner where, yes, the desserts were quite extraordinary, and well worth the 45 minute wait. 

Amidst all the pampering and spoiling, I felt most blessed when I looked around in the car or around our tables at various restaurants and cafes and saw my dear sisters who, despite having known me as long as they have, through all of the craziness and weirdo times, love me and care for me so selflessly. God's grace is evident in each of our relationships and am amazed at how He has brought all to the places we are in individually and still  knit together through Christ and His love for us.

And now, they are all taken and not available for Jeff's seminary friends. :)

!!!

Liberty print, limited edition Nike Dunks... 

 

wow.