Pop quiz!

Sad to say it, but I am a fairly worthless blog post. Forgive me, faithful blog reader (s). I think my mom and my husband read this, so there are at least two of you. :P
Now that school is out, I hope to be a more diligent poster. Plus, soon there will be a cute baby girl to post pictures of! eek preposition at the end of a sentence.

Let's see, what have the Grooms' been up to lately? Here is a multiple choice quiz.

1. In the month of May, which of the following exciting things happened to the Grooms'?
a. Thomas got a long overdue haircut and observed his 28 1/6 birthday. He also continued to be the best husband and dog daddy ever.
b. Sullivan was nominated by Ashley and Thomas as "most likely to be a cat in a dog suit."
c. Ashley finished the school year with a bang (and a surprise baby shower!) and began a new season of life, currently known as "I feel lazy right now but know that not working will make sense when the baby arrives."
d. Started working on the nursery and loaded up the baby girl's closet with gifts from two lovely baby showers.
e. Enjoyed hosting several of Ashley's college friends (yay for Audrey, Jess, Alli, Katie and Gavin!) on three different weekends.


Have your answer ready?









Congratulations, if you picked "all of the above" (which was tricksily not an answer choice), then you are correct!
Here is question #2, the final question. It's going to be harder.


Which of the following things happened to Thomas and Ashley in June?
a. We joined a hair band and began touring the country. Rock on, man.
b. We traveled to Colorado and enjoyed 10 days of blissful, child free traveling while trying to calmly envision how our lives will change. "HA!" says everyone who already has children.
c. We gave Sullivan away and bought 10 cats instead.
d. Thomas celebrated six years at Blackbaud.


Okay, how did you fare?








Yep, b and d it is! We would no sooner give away Sullivan than we would our baby girl, so option c is clearly out. Not to mention the cats.
And since it is only halfway through June, more excitement is to come. And more blog posts, methinks.
Stay tuned for a pregnancy update, pictures from Colorado and in process pictures of the nursery!

By the way, the picture is of Sullivan stalking our day lilies in the backyard.

Miscellany Monday

Okay, so I am attempting something new today...a link-up with another blog. Hurray for Miscellany Monday! Particularly since all of my posts tend to be miscellaneous anyways...perhaps this makes them more legitimate?

I'm going with a numbers theme today, enjoy!

1. The number of baby GIRLS currently residing in my belly (belly being the technical term of course). Sparkle Moonbeam, we can't wait to meet you in a few more months! Finding out this week if babyG was Sparkle Moonbeam or Abraham Lincoln Log and seeing her (her!) on the ultrasound was pretty stinking cool. We are so thankful that she is healthy. Not surprisingly for a Francis baby, one of her nicknames could be "baby bighead" since her head was measuring 1.5 weeks ahead. yowzers.


2. The number of disco balls Thomas parted with as we worked on cleaning out the future nursery and some of the attic this weekend. Dear Goodwill customers, please enjoy them as I rejoice over their departure.

3. The number of times I cried while cleaning out boxes and boxes of life memorabilia over the weekend. While it could have been over some awkward outfit choices and strange hairstyles, I think that my sentimental side was showing big time. Or maybe just the pregnancy hormones.

4. The number of times I went to the regional spelling bee in elementary and middle school. Also, it's the number of times I have used spell check since starting this blog post. Sad, isn't it?

5. The number of days off I have this week. Three cheers for spring break! Amusingly enough, we only have five weeks left of school when we return. Holy time warp Batman, where did this year go?

6. The number of cups of food Sullivan has eaten in the past twelve hours. He has very strange eating habits. I'm going to bring two poop bags on our walk later this morning...

7. The number of pears currently in our fruit basket. Thomas and I both love fruit, ensuring that our daughter will not be able to stand it.

8. The number of brushfuls of fur that I removed from Sullivan yesterday. I'm pretty sure he's the hairiest dog on the planet. My house is also evidence of this. Oy.

9. The number of things on my to-do list at home this week. You know you're an adult when you're super excited to clean out closets and organize bookcases.

10. The number of times baby girl has kicked as I've written this post. Feeling her (yay, no more "it!") move is definitely by favorite part of pregnancy so far. I know that these gentle movements will later become painful and uncomfortable, but hey, let's live in the moment.

11. The number of beavers visible from my bed. I counted them yesterday out of sheer curiosity. No, this is not some sort of weird fetish. Thomas has been collecting beavers since 3rd grade and it is one collection he could not part with when we got married. Most of them are pretty cute.

Look for a more serious post later this week about Easter and its glorious meaning for the world.

TOMORROW and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in

Woohoo! Less than a month between posts (barely)!
Not one but two moms at school today asked me if I were pregnant. Actually, they asked me if I am expecting, which is still the funniest terminology to me. Expecting...to gain weight? To not sleep? To be blessed with the cutest baby ever?
yes to all three!
This means that I have a certifiable baby bump, which thrills me to no end, since I have been struggling with merely feeling a little thicker around the waist. Typing this out reemphasized the utter ridiculousness of this thought. I am getting over myself.
I have received several name suggestions from some precious kindergartners at school. My two favorites are:
Abraham Lincoln Log
Sparkle Moonbeam (I couldn't pick just one of these and I thought they flowed nicely together as a pair).
So, we will refer to BabyG as one of these following our appointment TOMORROW when we find out whether the lovemuffin is a boy or a girl.
I will post some pictures next time, hopefully from our fancy shmancy ultrasound TOMORROW.
Did I mention that we're having an ultrasound TOMORROW? I am just a wee bit excited. Last time we saw the baby was at 6 weeks and 4 days; TOMORROW it will be 19 weeks and 4 days. Meaning that it will look like a baby rather than a miniature jellyfish.

ps) 2 gold stars for whoever can figure out where the title of this post comes from.
pps) Baby A.L.L or S.M. must love blogging because he/she is thumping away like a wiggly little fish.

I'm back! A mishmash of a post.

So, a little while ago (ahem 2 months ago), my friend Natalie gave me a blog award! Oh, the irony, since I have been such a slack blogger this year. I have sat down many times with bits of posts rattling around in my brain but have been unable to complete anything--obviously you know this if you have checked my blog any time in the last two months!
Well, there is a good reason, or at least a partially good one!

drumroll please....











We're having a baby! Yes, 2011 is the year of babies. I am the 6th teacher at my small Christian school to get pregnant, along with what seems like scores of friends, both real and virtual. I don't have any cute ultrasound pictures yet since our first ultrasound was at 6.5 weeks, meaning the baby looked like a little blob (a cute, sweet blob, but a blob nonetheless).
I am 15 weeks and feeling pretty good, although every time I think that I'm over the *"morning" sickness, it rears its ugly head again.
We are excited and terrified, and we can't wait to see who this little person is that God has blessed us with in late August or early September.
This blog will not turn into a pregnancy blog, but I do want to take time to record fun moments, interesting dreams, weird stories, etc. Grow, Baby G, grow!

On an unrelated note, please pray for the people of Japan. Stay informed, stay connected, and give in whatever ways that you can. This page is a sobering look at the devastation.






*This term is false, as the so-called morning comes to mean any waking hour of the live long day.

Of ridiculous dogs

Sullivan continues to be an extremely goofy animal though this is an old picture.
He is 70 pounds now and we think he is done growing since he is almost a year old.
His favorite pasttimes: sleeping on the couch (yeah we caved), sleeping on our bed (okay we caved big time), wrestling with Thomas, rolling in cat poop (ask Thomas about that one), taking many walks and generally being super snuggly and happy about life.
He also loves dairy products, especially milk and cheese, peanut butter, and anything else we feed him from his Kong.
I have accused him on more than one occasion of being a cat in a dog suit given his love of grooming, his desire for maximum comfort and his general fear of loud noises/the vacuum/pretty much anything and everything.
We love our furry son no matter how many pairs of underwear he eats or holes he digs in the backyard or pounds of dog hair we sweep up EACH AND EVERY DAY. ahem. I should probably stop before I suddenly get depressed about how rotten our dog can be...

10 for '10

In no particular order, here is a smattering of the notable things that occurred in 2010.

1. We celebrated our second wedding anniversary on Nov. 1. Hurrah for two terrific years of marriage! We have grown a lot this year as a team (see #3 and #5) and I can't wait to see what 2011 brings.

2. We started (and mostly completed) two renovation projects in our house: the master bathroom and the kitchen. On a not-so-awesome note, due to one thing or another, I completely failed at getting good before pictures, thus making these milestones semi-lame in a blogging sense. We love our new kitchen though and will get pictures up soon.

3. We traveled a lot: Colorado, Europe, Northern Africa, Hawaii and various points around the Southeast. Favorite moments include hiking in the Alps; exploring Malaga, Spain; putting together distribution packets in Guillermo's bookstore; celebrating my cousin's wedding in the glorious Colorado sunshine with lots of family; seeing my sister's ohana (apartment) and new workplace; riding on the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad with Thomas' family in the beautiful North Carolina fall; eating at Spago's and many other amazing adventures.


4. We got to see our little nephew Colton go from a helpless newborn to a crawling, verbal little guy that keeps everyone on their toes.

5. We got a dog that we love to pieces!! Sullivan has been so much fun (and so much work) this year and we can't get enough of his goofy antics. He is right around 70 pounds, a destroyer of plush toys, a shredder of paper and a sniffer of epic proportions. He is the perfect family dog and we are thrilled to have him--except maybe at 5 am when he wants to jump on the bed and "snuggle," aka take up more than 1/3 of the bed with his long legs and force his parents into absurd positions.

6. My parents moved to Charleston! We have really enjoyed having them around and are excited to watch them build a life here with church involvement, tennis of course, and maybe even the successful completion of a short sale. They also love Sullivan, and their help with him has been invaluable.

7. I finished graduate school and got a full time job! Tens of thousands of pages, and probably an equal number of miles, and a master's thesis later, I now have a degree that is still sitting unframed on my desk.Ironically, neither the degree nor the job has anything to do with the other, but I am so happy to be done with commuting and to be a part of such a wonderful environment at PCA that the lack of literature in my teaching position doesn't matter.

8. We deepened friendships, church involvement and neighborhood presence (thanks to Sullivan). We attended and took part in six weddings, welcomed a few friends' babies into the world and generally had a blast hanging out with people.

9. We celebrated two snowfalls in Charleston, one in February and one just a few days ago. Yay! I survived another boiling hot summer. Yay!

10. And most importantly, we enjoyed another year of God's grace, mercy and forgiveness in our relationships and everyday lives. This verse was on our Christmas cards and was a sort of theme verse for the year:
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-not by works, so that no one can boast." Eph. 2:8-9

See you in 2011! Maybe I can crack 30 for my number of posts next year...

That sunset looks pretty good right about now...

We got to spend Thanksgiving in Maui this year and it was awesome! Thomas and I flew out for a week of fun in the sun with my parents, sister and grandmother. It was a neat chance for reflection since the last time we were there was on our honeymoon, two short years ago! We got to see Hillary in action at work, walk the beach path, shop, kayak, relax and explore. Thomas got a dive in as well and he is thinking about getting certified. The week flew by but it was definitely a Thanksgiving to remember!

Obviously I'm way behind on my posting and in spite of good blogging months in 2010, I am close to falling short of my goal, which was merely to write more posts than I did in 2009. Doh! 2011, however, will be a different story...

Stay tuned for tomorrow in which I chronicle other bits of Thanksgiving, December and Christmas. Not to mention Charleston's SECOND snowfall of 2010.