Count Down to Baby P- Week 37 The Soundtrack of My Life

Week 37-

Baby Watch '14 continues! She is not in any hurry and at this rate it looks like I will at least get to my original due date of August 19th when I can officially induce! Other than going nuts and cleaning my house like a crazy person this weekend and really not enjoying most people at this time that is about all that is happening on the baby front! So I decided to do something different this week with the blog...

More often than not if you think about it, your life has a soundtrack. Not one you put together on purpose, but songs that you didn't realize at the time, would someday take you back to a moment in life. This week it seems I have been thinking often about my soundtrack. There are several songs that are very defining in this pregnancy and then that got me thinking about songs throughout my whole life. So for this week, here is my "Leigha's Life Mix Tape" via YouTube. 

Ah, the day I was born...

Just Kidding! I can't remember that far back!

Baby Blue- George Strait

The first few notes of this song take me back to Walters, OK. My Grandpa Frank had me and Kaytie with him and we had gone to pick up or see my Aunt Becky at the local Dairy Queen. It was closing time and we were the only ones in there and Becky was cleaning up while we ate our ice cream or basket meal of some sort. Since the shop was closing and they were cleaning Becky turned up the Jukebox and this song played. I have such a clear memory of this moment when I hear this song. I can see the Dairy Queen and I know exactly the booth we were sitting in. I can even remember how cold it was in there. I can see little versions of me and Kaytie playing and dancing around and Papa just sitting there waiting on all of us. I love this.

Rodeo-Garth Brooks

Really, you could put any Garth Brooks song here! Growing up Kaytie and I shared a room and at night Mom would let us listen to our Garth Brooks tapes. There was no Kids Bop back in the day with clean versions of songs. This resulted in Garth Brooks being to blame for my use of the word "damn" and getting my mouth washed out with soap!!

Really you could insert any Disney movie song into this section! My family loved Disney!! We saw every movie in the theaters.When we were young my uncles would buy us great Christmas gifts, and one Christmas they bought us our first CD player and the Beauty and the Beast soundtrack as our first CD! We were so cool! :)

You are...My Fire...My one....Desire!! OMG! Kaytie and I LOVED Backstreet Boys! I was in love with AJ the bad boy, she was cliche and liked Nick. Sigh. I wore this Millennium soundtrack out! We loved them so much we saw them in concert a couple of years ago and it was AMAZING! We plastered our room walls with photos from Tiger Beat of these boys!

Oh come on! My soundtrack wouldn't be complete without this song! Leo. My love. Kate and I saw this 8 times in the theater then saw it again when in came out in 2012! Seriously! I LOVE THIS MOVIE! I mean who wouldn't? It was even on TRL for several weeks at NUMBER 1! Therefore it must be good. And there was even a radio edit with voices from the movie. We owned the movie soundtrack and the Back to Titanic soundtrack. Oh yeah! Our room was plastered with movie posters and Leo, of course!

This song takes me back to high school and my silly crushes on boys! If I was lookin for a cowboy at BHS I was sorely out of luck! LOL!

Graduation! I was in the AV club in high school, just kidding, I was a Senior Class officer and we were responsible for the senior video. So we spent the year collecting video footage and then put it all together at the end and put music to it. This was a ton of fun and led to lots of late night up at the high school with the occasional game of hide and seek in the dark! And by hide and seek I mean trying to scare the crap out of each other! I can't believe they trusted us to be up there and work on this video for hours and hours and my parents didn't care either? Hmm. Still some of the best memories from high school took place working on that video and just my senior year in general! This song closed out our senior video.

College got a little Ghetto! LOL! Dance party in Stephanie's room!! What?!?! Cue the music and we come running!

Again...I thought I was Ghetto... What are ya gonna do but go with it and put these songs on a mix tape and let them take ya back! LOL!

Okay fast forward to later in life. I am reminiscing too much! Anna is gonna think her mom is crazy! She might think that anyways...

Back in the day of MySpace TJ put this song up on his page about the same time I did. This led to me sending him a message about how funny I thought that was then to him asking me to lunch one day! So precious! :)

Kaytie and I had the fun of living together later on in life. We shared a house in Edmond and in the evenings she would come home and turn up her music in the living room. This led to what I called "Club Kaytie" and we would dance around the house like we were at a club! LOL! We were obviously getting on in age since we found it more fun to go to "Club Kaytie" and make our own drinks then the actual club. This was also more fiscally responsible! What is funny, TJ was usually there and just ignored us! He still married me after seeing my killa dance moves. Kim...if you're reading this I know what moment in time you are thinking about in reference to my dance moves! Just keep your comments to yourself!!

This was our first dance song. TJ picked it out and I love to think about us dancing in the kitchen of my old house practicing. We weren't any good, but who cares.

Our last dance song at our wedding. We LOVE Norah and would listen to her often while we were dating. This song and dancing to it resulted in some of my favorite moments of the wedding. Just us, being in love and everyone else having pretty much left. It was sweet and makes me tear up!

These two songs inspired me while I was running. Being so incredibly over weight and moving my body and making little improvements over three years these songs encouraged me and I would often play them as I would get to the end of a run or race. This is a piece me that is lost at the moment. Not just because I am pregnant, but because running was something Kaytie and I did and the reality of trying to get back at it in a few months is hard, but I want to and I will.

Okay Anna, this is our song right now...
I love this song and listen to it often. It reminds me of me, TJ, and you, Anna. It is sweet and it tells our story. I love that in this song he talks about taking her home to meet his mom. When I took TJ to Walters the first time, my Grandma Norma made him sleep on the couch! Hehe! I love that in the video/song he says "Hey pretty girl, let's build some dreams, and a house on a piece of land. We'll plant some roots and some apple trees, Hey pretty girl, lets build some dreams." In the video it shows her pregnant and we have our house on a piece of land with some apple trees. :) At the end he says "Hey pretty girl, you did so good, our baby has your eyes, and a fighter's heart like I knew she would. Hey pretty girl you did so good." That's you Anna. You are the last piece to this song. You are our sweet baby girl and we can't wait to meet you. You are the product of two people who love each other very much. You are coming into a family that loves you very much. You have a puppy and kitty and a mommy and daddy, grandparents, and aunts and uncles that love you and can't wait to meet you!

So Anna you can come whenever you are ready! Sooner than later hopefully, mommy wants to meet you face to face.

Week 37- Kaytie Moment

I had a little bit of a breakdown this week in relation to Kaytie. It was just for a minute, but I was thinking about Anna's birth announcements, which one I will order, what they will look like, who all I would mail them to. Then I thought, Kaytie won't get one. She won't get Anna's sweet picture mailed to her. Should I take it to the cemetery? Should I take Anna there? I don't know. I don't know what I am supposed to do. I don't know what the answer is and it's not fair. I know Kaytie already knows Anna. I know she knows what she looks like, but she is not here for me even to start sharing Anna with her. It breaks my heart.

In continuing with the soundtrack theme, I can only imagine that you are wondering why one important singer has been left off...the one...the only...BRITNEY SPEARS! So let me tell you about Britney. When I was 16 and Kaytie was 14, Kaytie wanted to go to the Britney concert for her birthday. So my parents, being the amazing parents that they were and not wanting to go, let me take Kaytie and her friend. To a Britney concert. Downtown. At 16. Really?! LOL! I made fun of Kaytie for years for loving Britney, when I secretly loved her too! Then in 2009, after a series of awesome events in my opinion, Kaytie was given two tickets to the Britney concert in Tulsa and she took me! OMG!!!!! We had the best. time. EVER. Margarita's and confetti were flowing! So here are a few songs to round out the soundtrack:

It's Britney Beotch! If you knew Britney you would understand! LOL! :)

See you next week! Hopefully Week 38 leads to more progress with Anna! Maybe if I pack my hospital bag it encourage her to show up! :)

Until Next Time,

Leigha

We Bought A House!!

Oh my goodness! Where do I even begin! The month of September was a crazy month full of tons of excitement and life changes! I guess I will start from the beginning.

On September 10th Cheryl and  I attempted to run our first 5K race! It was called Heels for Hope and it benefits ovarian cancer research. I must say it was pretty intimidating setting off to actually run the race. I was quite nervous when we started and by the end of it I just wanted to finish! It felt great though. I really enjoyed the race and we are going to do another one this weekend, the Race for the Cure. I wish I could find one 5K a month to run in, in order to keep my running momentum up! My goal is to continue to run/jog 3 times a week. I have kept up maybe twice, but have gotten really busy! The day of the race my mom and TJ came to cheer us on! I will say it makes a huge difference knowing that the people who love you are there to support you!

The day after we ran our race TJ and I made an offer on this cute little blue and white house that sat on 7.5 acres. This house had everything we hoped for. It was on land, it had a large garage that could be converted into a man cave, three bedroom, two baths, you can't hear the train AT ALL, and most importantly a porch!!! After we made the offer we found out that another couple and put in an offer on the house as well, so it was up to the seller. I had to leave for our work retreat that same day and left it all to go float down the river and get some work done! While I was gone we found out they accepted our offer and we had to finalize our loan paperwork, get a home inspection, well and septic inspection, appraisal, and get it all done before the 1st so we could tell our landlord we were moving out! But I am getting ahead of myself.

The weekend after the retreat Kaytie and I went to see Katy Perry in Tulsa! It was soooo fun! I love going to concerts with my sister! We always have a blast! Katy Perry puts on an amazing show and we sang practically the whole concert! I adore my sister even though I know I annoy her and vice versa.  I think the saddest part about moving to the country is that I had to move farther away from her. I found a journal I had written my senior year of high school and I talk about how she was my best friend and a no one could take her place. I am glad somethings never change!

Before the Concert!

So it has become a tradition to eat at this Mexican Restaurant two blocks from the BOK Center when we see concerts!

That tradition also include the yummy tiki man margaritas! 

and this table is where we have set both times!

lol! We bought cotton candy in honor of Katy Perry's obsession with  candy!

It was raining when we left so we made a mad dash for the car!

Silly heels!

The week after Katy Perry, I had to hop on a plane and head to Colorado Springs for four days for work! In case anyone has forgotten we are still attempting to buy a house in all of this! Colorado was great! We had several meetings and went to a really cool dinner where we heard Bob Costas speak. While he was really awesome to listen to, an Olympian from the 1936 Games in Berlin stole the show. He was living history. His name is Adolf Kiefer and he was a simmer for the USA. He talked about how they had to take a boat 5 days to get from the US to Europe. He also met Adolf Hitler! It must have been a scary place to be in Nazi Germany all those years ago. It was crazy to think about the world coming together for the Olympics, an event to unify the world in peace for two weeks, in a place where so many horrible things were happening that the rest of the world had yet to find out about. I could have listened to him all night.

You can't really tell, but this is Olympic Gold Medalist Evan Lysacek!

 So we get back from Colorado and get all the things moving with the house. We finally get a closing date for October 7th. I call our landlord and let them know that October is our last month and start to pack. Mom and I had decided to have a garage sale the weekend before we close and move. I got rid of three truck loads of stuff! Who knew I had so much stuff! I will admit I did sell almost all my house decor. I want our new home to be ours not "Leigha's". Luckily, we made $479 during our two day sale and were able to put that money towards a new couch!

In the middle of all of this I have my first Leadership UCO class. This is a group of UCO employees that are selected from applicants across campus. This group meets once a month and allows employees from a wide variety of areas to learn and develop leadership skills and get to know each other better in order to work better together. Well our first class was the Challenge Course on the Thursday before we close on our house. Pretty much I am stressed to the max and now I am going to climb up a pole and hope a rope holds me in case I fall. Awesome! Well I made it up the pole and to the ropes that you had to walk across while holding another rope above your head. Me + zero upper body strength= a daring rescue by one of the facilitators! I would say I fell off the ropes, more like set down on them when my legs gave out from under me! So here I am swinging from a rope and harness waiting for my rescue! Once I was pulled to the next section of the Challenge Course I proceeded to finish with out incident! I must say this for all those who might be nervous doing this....it is very safe! So if you can just remember that your harness will hold you, it really isn't that scary. Even if you need to be rescued! LOL!

LOL! Hanging out waiting to be rescued!

Woo Hoo! I finished!

After surviving the Challenge Course I head home to finish packing! Turn out I was too tired and ended up finishing packing on Friday! LOL! TJ and I went to closing on Friday and signed our life away. It was such a relief to sign those papers and know the house was really ours. We met the previous owner and closing and he was so nice. He wanted to make sure we would be nice to Morgan, the neighbors dog who likes to sleep on the back porch and be loved on! He even left us some treats for him! After the paperwork was signed we came out to our new home and we were just totally and completely happy. The previous owners left us a list with all the number to call and set up everything so I called the electric (which is a coop...we are really in the country!), the internet, the trash, ADT, and Direct TV. Then we headed to Mathis Brothers where we picked out our new couch and KING SIZE mattress! Needless to say we were worn out by the time we got back to Edmond and still needed to pack a few more things.

Saturday morning came and we loaded up the UHaul with the help of my family and unloaded with the help of both our families! It was a crazy day and my family was impressed I didn't have a nervous break down or yell at anyone! LOL! My wonderful mom helped get my kitchen together before she had to head back to her house which was a miracle! Sunday our bed and coffee table was delivered, but no couch. Currently, we are sitting in camping chairs in the living room. I took Monday off to get everything put away and be here for the cable and internet people since TJ couldn't. While he was gone I managed to get the rest of the house squared away for the most part and start making my list of things to update! :) The bathroom needs paint and we would like to put down new flooring in the bathrooms and kitchen.

To sum up this really long post, living out here is going to be an adventure. It is amazing how happy we are right now. Moving out of that rent house into a home that is ours is the most wonderful feeling. TJ can hunt in his backyard and I can sit on the back porch and read my book. We have our own little piece of the American Dream and I am so thankful and grateful for it. Hey, it even came with a dog! It's perfect for us and this next chapter in our lives.

Home Sweet Home

Our new best friend!

Oh in case anyone was wondering! I have lost 38.2 lbs! I can't wait to get to -40 lbs!!

Talk to you sooner than later!
Leigha