Relaxation

As the year 2009 approaches, I cannot stop thinking about how relaxing this Christmas vacation has been for me. First, we went home to Huntsville to stay with Bill's folks (my parents were in MO). We spent Christmas Eve with my family and Christmas Day with his. It was so nice not having to split time down to the second, this definitely alleviated a lot of stress.

This past Monday we traveled to Jackson to spend the new year with the Koseks'. We are going to be here until Sunday and this trip has been amazing. I mean there is not going to be a whole lot going on when you get two pregnant Zarzour sisters together. However, if you throw in a precious 2 year old and an restless husband (Bill) and an ophthamologist resident who is on call every other day- things tend to get a little more exciting. Since we have been in Jackson, Bill has decided to put up new screen doors and redo my sister's guest bathroom vanity, he is so handy!! During this time Kim and I have been running all over town with Kate spending as much money as we can:)

Anyways, now to the true relaxation part of this vacation. Yesterday Kim, Kev, Bill, and I decided to treat ourselves to a one hour massage compliments of St. Dominic's day spa. My sister and I recieved prenatal massages while Bill and Kev were manhandled my Karen, their special massure. I have never gotten a massage before, but man was I needing one. The one complaint I have with my pregnancy is my extreme back pain. No matter what, I cannot get comfortable. Anyways, ever since yesterday my back has been A OKAY!!!!!!!!!!

One of the best parts of my massage was getting to lay on my stomach. The spa had a special pillow for pregnant women with a big old hole in the middle. As soon as I laid down there was a big old smile on my face. I was so grateful to be able to lay in that forgotten position. After our massages we ended the day with art time with Kate, where she drew a picture of baby Ryan (I will post a picture later) and watched the Jungle Book. I love coming to Jackson!!!!

Tonight Kim is having people over to celebrate the new year. Here is how crazy the party is going to be, five couples all pregnant!! The wine will be flowing tonight!!! Happy New Year to all!!!!!!!!!!

The Most Fun Laundry I've Ever Done

After getting home from my 5 hour lunch at the Adam's house. I decided it was time to clena our house for the holidays (there is nothing worse than coming home to a dirty house.) After I finished cleaning, I still needed to do something. So, I went into Ryan's room and cleaned out her closet. It was not THAT bad, but there were around 30 shirts, 5 outfits, and 20 pairs of socks in there that we have recieved as gifts for her. Well, the other day I bought my first jug of baby detergent to wash her sheets in and I wanted to continue to washing extravaganza. I washed all of her clothes, actually dividing them into colors and whites (which I never do with Bill's clothes). I also washed all of her towels, washcloths, and blankets she has gotten so far too. I waited until both loads were done to begin folding the laundry, which was the most fun I have ever had folding clothes. I kept holding up each piece of clothing, beginning with the newborn pieces. I kept thinking I cannot believe an actual person is going to fit in this. Then as I went through all of the months of clothes that she has I was overwhelmed with how fast she is going to grow. The 9 month onesies didn't even look like they would belong on the same child that would wear the 0-3 month onesies.
Everyone likes to say how motherhood is tiring, exhausting, and tough and I know there will be hard times. However, I just started crying folding her clothes thinking, I cannot believe she is going to grow this fast. As I laid her clothes in her drawers I was seriously smiling from ear to ear. I wish someone could have seen the embarassing look on my face. I cannot wait for that precious girl to get here!

Ryan Lily's Pad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

After a long day at work, this is what I came home to. I really cannot write anymore except- Bill is the most amazing husband ever! He did ALL of this himself! Enjoy the pics!















The other babies approve. Little do they know they are about to take a serious backseat to a very powerful girl in our house.

I mean amazing, he did an amazing job. Okay after posting pictures I do have a few words to say. Bill put up the custom shelfing, painted the room, cleaned the room, made her bed, organized the room, hung her curtains, folded her clothes in the drawers...umm yeah I think it is safe to say he is totally wrapped around her finger.

Bedding

Bill and I are on a mission to get this house ready for little Ryan. It is crazy how what once was a house with plenty of storage and space, now seems to be the smallest house ever- and she is not even here yet.

We bought a new desk today to put in our guest room, just a simple little thing. We got rid of our old recliner. We got rid of our desktop computer. We are taking our old desk home to give back to my parents. We donated our second round of "stuff" we had to Head Start, our last donation totaled to $940 worth of stuff. Bill is installing new door handles all over the houe, we have had some major issues with our previous ones. We went to Home Depot to look at some shelfing and molding to put in the nursery. Last but not least, we got our bedding. We have not picked it up yet, but I did find a picture of it online.



All of this preparation is messing with my head, I feel like Ryan should be here tomorrow. Next thing on our to do list, teach the dogs not to bark everytime they hear someone cough in our neighborhood, pray for us:)!

Mouse Hunt

*Note, this posting is not for the squeamish or extreme bird lovers.

Well I promised I would post about our recent infestation. Yes, apparently we have become the local hotel for Opelika's mouse population. I know my tone is extremely light right now, but this is how I avoid throwing up everything I think about a mouse snuggling up with my innocent baby in three months.

It all started about a week before Thanksgiving. I was doing some laundry and noticed a few pellet shaped things on top of the dryer. I am no fool and I knew what they were supposed to be, but there was no way I was accepting the fact that we were housing rodents. So the next evening I lifted Radly and Kramer's bag of dog food and found a whole collection of pellets. Even then, I just was in denial, I thought well maybe they are just dead bugs or balls of lent, or well freaking rat poop. So I opted to tell Bill about the disgusting discovery I had made and he said yeah I have been finding pellets around the house too. Immediately I was mad, " What, you have seen rat poop and did not tell me?! How could you?!" Then he simply replied, "Did you really want to know?" the truth was no!

So the next night Bill was having some grad school friends over for a Thanksgiving dinner. I was preparing the appetizers and had to get something out of the pantry. I went over to the pantry picked up the bread and crumbs started falling out the huge hole at the bottom of the bag. The rat/mouse/small deer had eaten through our bread bag and through like 5 pieces of bread. Well no wonder the dang things are living in our house, they are living pretty. Warm bed (probably snuggling up with our worthless dogs at night), plenty of food, and no distracting traps. After I found the bread situation, I started looking around the pantry and there were holes in a ton of our packaged food and poop everywhere. Bill and I probably threw away around $300 worth of groceries once all of his friends left and I told him I was not sleeping until he went to get traps.

Bill took an 11 o'clock trip to Winn Dixie and bought the only traps they had, poisoned pellets. We set them everywhere we found terds, which was in every room and every closet except our bedroom, thank goodness. I mean we found terds in the laundry room, o9ur pantry, the garage, our two linen closets, our COUCH, EVERYWHERE!!!!!!!

Since then we have yet to see a mouse terd or mouse. Bill tells me to prepare myself to find a dead mouse on our floor when I come home from work one day, but let's face it- how do you prepare for that? The pellets we got kill the mice from the inside out. So we probably have a family of dead, dried out mice in our walls. Man I can't wait until we decided to tear one down and it starts raining mice.

This is not where my story ends my friends, when we left to go to New York we decided to set some sticky traps too, just in case. So we bought about 10 sticky mouse traps and set them everywhere, including the garage. Well, just tonight Bill decided to tell me some horrifying news. I told him how I saw a dead baby deer on the side of the road on my way to work this morning and had to pull off the road to cry for the poor thing. Then he let out the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He told me a horrible thing happened in one of our mouse traps in the garage. He said he came home for lunch on Tuesday and found a baby bird trapped in our sticky mouse trap. He said it was horrible, the poor thing was trying to flap, but its wing was caught in the stickiness. He went over to the bird and had to break the bird's wing in order to get it out of the stickiness, then he set it free in our front yard. He said it was horrible, because the poor thing was starring at him every time he pulled and it start squeaking. I mean I was just tearing up hearing this story. I will have to say I am way glad Bill found this situation instead of me, I would have set up a small vigil around the bird and prayed for it speedy recovery.

Needless to say, our mouse traps have been useless, but we have managed to catch one defenseless baby bird and break its wing. If you come over for a Christmas dinner at our house, don't bring anything with a dairy product in it, you may just awaken a small visitor.

New York State of Mind

For those of you who don't know, Bill and I went to New York over Thanksgiving break for our last hoorah without little Ryan. I will admit, I was not so much looking forward to the trip until the day before we left. I think the stress of leaving a mess of a house behind, that is infested with mice (another blog posting) and not being with family around the holidays was stressing me out.

However, as soon as we sat down at Tavern on the Green in Central Park on Wednesday afternoon in New York, all of the stress went away and it was just about Bill and I having a great time in the city that never sleeps.


I could not believe what we fit into a three day trip. We went to Central Park, Times Square, Ground Zero, Staten Island, Ellis Island, Greenwhich Village, Soho, Bryant Park, Wall Street, FAO Schwarz, Columbus Circle, The New York City Library, Rockefeller Center, NBC Studios, Chinatown, The Museum of Natural History, Little Italy, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Caroline's Comedy Club (to see Craig Robinson, Darryl, from "The Office"), see "Hairspray" on Broadway, and I am sure there are other things but I just cannot remember. It was an amazing, fast paced, trip and we are already excited to go back with Kim and Kev one day. Here are a few cool pics.