Tomatoes, Squash, Zucchini... Oh My!

There's nothing like fresh garden vegetables.... until those fresh garden vegetables show up at your door every week or two as gifts from a sweet neighbor. I really don't know where this sweet man lives. He's a painter for the man down the road, and he's been painting for over 50 years. My husband was visiting with the sweet older man down the road from us one day, and his painter asked if we would be interested in some veggies from his garden. Tim didn't turn him down, so a few days later we had tomatoes, squash, and zucchini on our doorstep.

Since then he has brought us another load of them plus fresh muscadine jelly. And today he showed up with zucchini, tomatoes, fresh bread and butter pickles, fresh pickled squash, and fresh pickled tomatoes. He told Tim he'd rather do that for someone like him than anybody else. It makes us feel bad, but it makes us feel good at the same time. What a treat to have someone so sweet who truly wants to share the fruits of their labor with you.

While I'm on the subject of heart-warming experiences with mankind, I must mention a sight we saw while driving home from my parents' the other day. A woman was stuck in the inside lane at a traffic light because her vehicle had stalled. There were two cars in the left turn lane next to her. A man ran across the road from a nearby gas station to help her. As soon as the two cars in the left turn lane saw that, they both immediately pulled their cars partly into her lane -- one in front of her car, and one behind -- to block her vehicle from passersby for safety as it was pushed out of the way. Then the drivers of each vehicle hopped out and helped push her vehicle to the shoulder. It was awesome to see. There was no hesitation from either driver. When they realized what was going on they both immediately sprung into action to help. Oh how I love the south!

Cooking with Bacon

Everything is happening so quickly, but it's all good! We were unable to get the house we wanted, so we started looking hard for houses hard and fast. After looking at several and not really finding anything that was going to work for us, we decided we would give a neighborhood a chance that we had previously said we did not want to live in. We looked at several houses online in that neighborhood, but none tickled our fancy. We finally found one that looked like it might be worth seeing. After walking in we pretty much decided that was the one. We weren't in love with it, but it was the best we had found to that point. The yard is much smaller than we had wanted, but it is only about 4 houses down from my brother and sister-in-law (who is one of my best friends). The neighborhood will be great for my stepson and the new baby, and it was a good deal. We went for it and eventually got our offer accepted. Now everything is moving along quickly. We plan to close on both houses July 27th.

The baby is doing good. We go back on August 2nd for our big ultrasound. We are planning a gender reveal party on August 4th. Right now our plan is to have the nurse write down the gender and place it in an envelope, then we'll have a baker fix a cake that is pink on the inside if it's a girl and blue if it's a boy. We'll cut into it at the gender reveal party, so we'll find out the same time as everyone else. Now let's just see if we can hold out for that.

Tim is doing good! He still has his bad days, but overall he seems to be much better. I think a big part of that is because of the baby. His overall attitude is completely different now that we're pregnant. It was something we both wanted so bad for so long, and he was so afraid that his injuries would keep it from happening. I saw an instant change in him from the time we found out we were pregnant, and it's stayed that way ever since. He even seems to love me more (or at least show it more), be more confident in himself, feel good about our surroundings, take things in stride better, and be less stressed. All that makes such a difference in pain level. I'm a big believer that stress can make a world of difference in physical pain and abilities. It's definitely not that the stressors have gone away. I think he just sees them in a more positive light now. It's so awesome!