Starkville Hunt Club

A couple months ago Amelia came home from work at lunch. When driving up the street toward our house, she noticed that our neighbors had what looked like a car that had been involved in an accident on display in their yard. At first glance, it looked like one of those drunk driving warnings on the side of the road where a smashed-up car is there to remind everyone of the dangers of drinking and driving. Upon further inspection and a closer look, it turned out that instead of a public service announcement, our neighbors must have hit a deer on their way home the night before. And needless to say, you can't just put the wrecked car on the trailer: you also have to include the 8-point buck you hit. As you can imagine, growing up in Birmingham, Amelia had never conceived of the desire to bring home road kill. On the hand, Dave wanted to go saw the antlers off and ask if we could have some of the meat from the deer.

Baby Watch '08

Yesterday, November 24, 2008, our niece Abigail Elizabeth joined us at 2:13 in the afternoon. She is quite a cutie and both baby and Gloria are doing well. Abigail weighed in at 6lb. 4oz. and is 19.5 inches tall. As Chad quickly pointed out, Abigail has her Aunt Beth's feet...a little on the large side for such a little baby.

Abigail was very alert right after she was born and is already very photogenic, as you can tell:

Here is Abigail with her mom and two of her aunts (whom she is named after):

Abigail's 1st picture with the Gladney side of the family minus Uncle Dave:

I'm sure there will be more Abigail pictures to come as we will be spending Thanksgiving in Birmingham with her. Now I guess we move away from the Baby Watch '08 campaign and enter the Baby Watch '09 campaign.

Today's Photo Session

Today we had an appointment with the doctor that included an ultrasound. Joshua is about 29 weeks old. His head and his stomach continue to measure a few weeks bigger then 29 weeks. According to the fancy ultrasound machine and Dr. Witty's expert measurements, right now,Joshua probably weighs about 3 pounds 7 ounces. Although my due date remains January 21, it seems that the numbers and measurements may indicate an early arrival (only by a week at this point).
Dr. Witty cracked us up as usual with his "witty" (pun intended) comments. We are grateful for his attention to detail and his running commentary on the undeniable fact that an unborn child is a living person. We had a good time and enjoyed getting to see Joshua today.

Trick or Treat

It is our first Halloween in the neighborhood and it is 7:00 and we have run out of candy. We were visited by a whole host of characters ranging from Hannah Montana, Raggedy Ann and Andy, a kid who was dressed like Spiderman but when asked who he had dressed up as he stated his name, and a friar pushing the devil in a stroller, among others. We had a good time and will be better prepared for the after-7 crowd next year.

Funny stories from our childhoods:
When Dave was little, he called jack-o-lanterns "jack-o-leens."
When Amelia was little, she was scared of jack-o-lanterns and her mom made up a song to sing whenever you were scared by a pumpkin. It went "Hey Mr. Jack-o-lantern / peaking out the window / We are coming / to spy on you." The funniest part is that Amelia did not know this was not a widely accepted way to deal with pumpkin fear until only a few years ago when she learned that no one else knew that song.

Here are pictures of our pumpkin turned jack-o-leen. You also get a couple glimpses of how big Joshua is getting too.


Before:


After:

Painting Party

There are many things about being pregnant and preparing for a baby that feel overwhelming. For me, one of those things was trying to figure out how to "decorate" the nursery. As you all know, Dave and I are not people who have strong opinions about such things which translates to indifference when it comes to decision making time.

After much looking around and searching, I decided we would do our own thing. The result...the room will stay that same color as the rest of the house, my sweet mom has made a beautiful bumper (all white blocks of different textured materials) and is working on the bed skirt, and to adorn the walls and bring in some color, original art work by various members of Joshua's family.

Dave's parents were here a few weekends ago and his mom painted wooden initials for his room. Then last weekend, my mom, sisters, aunt and grandmother had a painting party Friday night and painted canvases to hang on the wall. The rules for the party were: 1) paint whatever you want on the canvas; 2) it doesn't need to be perfect; 3) no stressing over what your finished product looks like.

Of course all the paintings turn out wonderfully. We have several more canvases to be painted by the boys in the family at a later date. Once they are all done, we will hang them up around Joshua's room. It really was a fun project and I am excited to decorate the room with things made especially for Joshua by people who love him.

Here are pictures of the process and the finished products.

Dave's mom working on the initials:


The finished product:


Aunt Glo and Aunt B painting:


The painters hard at work:


Finished products:

Another Work Funny

I promise to post some pictures from the recent baby shower and painting party. But this post must be devoted to a hilarious comment made by one of my patients this week.

Let me build the scene: Mr. "C" lives next door to his granddaughter who I am pretty convinced is addicted to meth and breeds pit bulls, rottweilers, and chihuahuas and in her spare time checks on him and brings him food throughout the day.

I visited Mr. "C" on Monday. He gave the usual answers to the usual questions. But then started telling me about his weekend. He reported that he thought his granddaughter was going to die this past weekend because her heart had stopped beating. Stunned, I asked what happened. He stated, "I don't know. Her heart stopped beating and some man, who happened to be at her house, performed that artificial.. (pause for thinking) artificial.. (pause for thinking again) artificial insemination and got her heart beating again." Stifling laughter, I asked him to tell me again what happened. "Oh" he starts again, "her heart stopped beating and the artificial insemination got it working again. Then the had to do p-c-r because she was inhydramationed. After that they took her to the hospital and she got an iv and is doing better now."

I tried to look as concerned as I could while at the same time trying not to laugh and trying to decipher what in the world he was talking about. We still don't know exactly what went on this weekend. But I did see his granddaughter pulling out of the driveway a few minutes later and she didn't look "inhydramationed" anymore...thank goodness!

Checking in with not much news...

Things have been quiet in Starkville. Well, that is not altogether true, classes started a couple weeks ago which causes the population to nearly double from it's summertime average. With the start of fall semester, Dave has been busy at work but always calls it a "good busy."

I have been working part time since the beginning of August. As you can imagine, I love that! I have been able to get a lot done and I certainly don't feel as tired at the end of the week as I once was.

Things seem to be on schedule with the baby (Joshua), who is turning out to be quite an active little guy. The doctor had to chase him all over my stomach today in order to get a steady heartbeat reading.

We have had a lot of rain over the past few weeks. Anyway day now we expect the entire Smurf village to move into the mushrooms growing in the backyard. .
Dave has been mowing over the mushrooms but then it just rains again for several days and they grow back.


We enjoyed the Labor Day weekend in Jackson with my parents. Not only were we fed well but we registered for baby stuff and watched college football on the big screen. It was a fun weekend. I did however see something quite disturbing at Babies-R-Us while registering. You will have to click on this link that will take you to a picture of the Cozy Crib Tent II. The near nightmare inducing part of this product is the picture of the cat in the second circle seemingly trying to claw it's way into the crib. Dave's grandmother apparently once said that cats will suck your breath during the night and based on this picture, I'm starting to believe that.

Have a great week.

The results are in...

We're having a baby boy!

After waiting on the doctor yesterday for over an hour to have an ultrasound, we have conclusive evidence that we are having a boy. My doctor was gracious enough to spend an hour and a half with us looking at the baby and watching him move around (wave, yawn, cross his legs, etc). We really had a good time and are very excited to know. We no longer have to refer to the baby as "the d.l.f." (dear little friend)...read Prince Caspian to find out where we got that name.
It's funny how people, even those we don't know, tried to guess if we were having a girl or a boy. The lady that sold us a rocking chair last week seemed pretty convinced after giving her furniture sales pitch that we were having a girl. One of my patients claimed that because of "how low" I was carrying the baby, it had to be a girl. To which I would like to raise a point of order and reply, I don't think I am big enough yet for someone to comment on whether I am carrying this baby high or low, but he is a grumpy old man and I didn't argue with him. But now that I know he is wrong, I'll be sure to clear things up with him next week.
Thanks for your continued interest and thoughts. We'll try to do something fun in the next couple of weeks that will leave us with some pictures to post next time.

Vacation with the Gladneys

We have been back in the "real world" for a week now after spending a week in Destin with the Gladney family. Vacation for the Gladneys includes a lot of sleeping, eating, sitting by the pool and playing games. There is the occasional time spent actually on the beach and of course an afternoon or 3 at the outlet mall. We had a great time and hated to have to come back to the oppressive heat of Mississippi.

Here Dad, Chad, and Beth are waiting their turn to play our new favorite game, ladder ball.

Here is Dave holding what looks like a marine biology class on the beach one evening.

Gloria and Beth practically ran down the beach to witness bridal pictures being taken. Chad later went down to check out the action.

The red and purple flags flew over the beaches all week. Thanks to a public service commercial involving children ages 8-12 yelling what each colored flag meant, we knew the "RED MEANS SURFERS ONLY!" and "PURPLE IS FOR DANGEROUS MARINE PESTS...BE SURE TO SHUFFLE YOUR FEET!" I don't think shuffling my feet would have kept a single jellyfish from stinging my legs, but the commercial was quoted often.

Finally some news for the blog!

Thankfully the posting frequency on our blog is not an indication of the activity level in our lives right now. Since the last post it has become permissible for us to announce that Gloria and Chad are having a baby around the 1st of December! And we more recently learned they are having a girl! We are very excited about the coming arrival of our niece, Abby.

We are additionally excited because approximately 7 weeks after Gloria and Chad's baby girl arrives, Dave and I will be having a baby as well. January 21st is the estimated date of arrival and we couldn't be more excited. For those who don't have a 40 week math mind that means that I am 13 weeks into it. Things have been going great and we are in the midst of having fun telling people our news. We kept it a secret for a while, although we are learning that multiple people were "suspicious." We would appreciate your prayers for us, our baby and our growing family.

Maybe now we will have more stuff to post more often. I can make no promises but I will try to do better about updating our blog...although I don't know if anyone reads it. :)

Con-graduation!

A couple weekends ago we had the pleasure of attending Gloria's graduation from UAB. After much hard work and determination she now has her masters in public administration. We enjoyed being with all of the Gladneys and most of the Hunsbergers. Way to go Glo!

No matter the occasion when Dave and Chad are together there is always time for a posed picture.

People Say Funny Things

Being a hospice social worker my primary job is to provide emotional support to our patients and their families. There tends to come a point in my time working with families that we reach a point of comfort, where patients and families feel free to talk about and/or tell me all kinds of things. It is amazing the dirty laundry that has been aired to me. But today one of my patients and then another patient's wife made me laugh. (The names have been changed to protect the innocent.)

When I arrived at John's house today, I knocked loudly, knowing that he is severely hard of hearing. Whne I didn't get an answer I opened the door and yelled inside, "John, I'm here to visit with you." He apparently didn't hear me. I walked into his two room house and looked over at his bed where he can usually be found, but he wasn't there. Just then, in the corner to my right, John turned around and yelled, "Wait, I just pooped and I don't have pants on!" I had to laugh as I backed into the kitchen to wait for him to get dressed.

This morning I visited with the wife of a patient who passed away about 5 months ago. She and I were talking about her recent onset of multiple health problems when she took off her shoe and asked, "Amelia, when I take my shoe off, does it look like my foot is flipping a bird." I couldn't help but laugh out loud because her foot sort of did looking like it was flipping me off. She went on to explain that she had recently had surgery on her second toe in order to correct damage done to it by arthritis. Her second toe lies flat but her big toe curls under it and causes it to sit up and appear to be making an obscene gesture. She got tickled at me laughing and before I knew it we were both crying we were laugh so hard.

So, needless to say, it has been a funny day.
~amelia

A little of this and that

Please forgive the slow posting lately. Honestly, not much is news is being produced on the Nolen front these days. So here are just a few little thoughts I have:

~LOST continues to be the don't miss tv show for us. And last night's episode left us wishing today was next Thursday so we could see what happens. If you don't already watch LOST, I really think you would enjoy it. I am not usually interested in shows that require you to keep up with characters and different story lines, but this show is great. So trust me and start from the beginning. The first 3 seasons are available at your local video store. Watch them and then you can catch up with this season's episodes online or wait until summer when the dvds are released. It is worth it, I promise.

~The inside of our house is being painted. Actually, the painter "Cubby" started fixing some dry wall issues today and will start painting on Monday. We have been anticipating this for several weeks and due to circumstances beyond our control (the weather) the painting is just now under way. The strangest part for me is that all of our furniture is currently in the middle of each room. Not only does this look strange but it makes doing anything in any room a little more difficult. So I am practically lying on the bed while typing because the desk is pushed up against the bed. Anyway, we are excited to have this done. Our house will look so good and we can finally hang stuff on the walls. Thanks mom and dad for helping us with this project!
~This being the last day of February means that March Madness is coming soon. I am preparing for a 3-peat (or is that a 4-peat? I guess you loss track after so many victories) in the Dave vs. Amelia bracket contest. We always have fun with it, but best of all, basketball will be on tv all the time for a couple of weeks.

Well, I guess that is all, for now, from me. Maybe Dave will post a few of this thoughts his weekend.
hugs~amelia

Day of Rest and Gladness

O day of rest and gladness, O day of joy and light,
O balm of care and sadness, most beautiful, most bright:
On Thee, the high and lowly, through ages joined in tune,
Sing holy, holy, holy, to the great God Triune.

On Thee, at the creation, the light first had its birth;
On Thee, for our salvation, Christ rose from depths of earth;
On Thee, our Lord, victorious, the Spirit sent from heaven,
And thus on Thee, most glorious, a triple light was given.

Today on weary nations the heavenly manna falls;
To holy convocations the silver trumpet calls,
Where Gospel light is glowing with pure and radiant beams,
And living water flowing, with soul refreshing streams.

New graces ever gaining from this our day of rest,
We reach the rest remaining to spirits of the blessed.
To Holy Ghost be praises, to Father, and to Son;
The church her voice upraises to Thee, blessed Three in One.

– Christ­o­pher Words­worth, 1862.

We are settling in nicely and getting a lot of stuff done and arranged to be done on our house, and both of our jobs are going good, but we are always grateful for a day of rest and an especially beautiful one at that.
~a and d

As you can see from this picture, I recently killed my first deer. I have been interested in hunting since I was a small boy, and I have recently taken several necessary steps to become involved in deer hunting. However, as this incident proves, I am still almost a complete novice.
I shot this deer near Forest, MS, with the help of Amelia's Uncle Mike, who is a guru of outdoorsmanship. He basically talked me through the whole thing, using urgent and descriptive commands. For example, when we heard a group of deer (including the one I eventually shot) approaching the green field that we were observing, he whispered, "Go ahead and get your gun." As I began slowly and noisily fumbling around to pick up my rifle that was stowed safely out of the way, he reached over and tapped me on the leg and in a more excited tone instructed me to "Gitcha gun in ya hand." Yes, it took a statement that explicit for me to finally realize what I needed to do.
Once the deer were positioned in a good spot in the field, he talked me through the actual firing of the gun. In spite of his sound instruction, I managed to hit a tree roughly 100 yards behind the deer in question on my first shot. I followed up my miss with decisive action: I sat there and watched the deer and its friends run around in a circle in the field. As the deer ran up to the edge of the woods and paused, Uncle Mike filled me in on another secret of hunting: you can shoot more than once. "Bolt another one in there, man!" he rasped, jogging me from my momentary lull. The deer, being particularly cunning, had run toward the shooting house where we were located and stood still, presenting her side to me and waiting for me to take another shot. Based on my previous shot, this was probably the safest thing she could have done.
Alas, her limited experience proved wrong. However, in one last act of spite toward me and my hunting prowess, she hopped over a small ditch filled with about 6 inches of mud and into a bramble patch. This proved to be possibly the most hilarious part of my hunt, since once we found her, we had to carry her back over the ditch and into the field. As we crossed back over the ditch carrying the deer, I managed to get my left foot stuck in the mud and lose my balance. As I tumbled into the mud (nearly face first), I yelled out the only logical statement that came to my mind: "My hat!" Why that was my first concern, I do not know. As I lay there in the cold, wet mud, Uncle Mike looked down at me and summed up the situation very well. "Ohh, Dave," he said with an air of pity in his voice. If you look closely at the picture, you can see that my left leg is completely black. That is the mud that covered my camo pants completely and soaked through all the fabric on my left side.
To sum up, I had an awesome time. I couldn't have done it without Uncle Mike's expertise, or the deer's willing cooperation. Now, I can't wait for next season.
dave

Live from Starkville, it's Saturday evening

Well, we made it, and with all of our belongings. Many thanks to friends in Tuscaloosa for packing our truck in record time last Sunday and to people who don't even know us (along with Kenny and Grant) in Starkville for unloading our truck in world record time. Without their help and Amelia's parents, we may still be on the road somewhere between Tuscaloosa and Starkville.

This week has been filled with settling-in type activity, like unpacking boxes and figuring out which light switch controls which light. Today we hosted our first party. It is my mom's birthday so family from Jackson and Birmingham met here for the celebration.

An intersting side note...we took a walk around the neighborhood this afternoon and realized that possibly 8 out of 10 homes have some sort of bulldog statue displayed in their yard. We do not yet have the official numbers, but it is estimated that we spied between 20 and 30 of the works of art in a 20 minute walk. So naturally in an effort to fit in, we will start looking for the perfect bulldog to guard our front door next week.

~a and d