Lillianna (LeeLou) Smith...It's a girl!!!

I say LeeLou in parenthesis because we are still not 100% settled on the middle name... Well, I am. But I guess Smitty is still up for change if he finds something he absolutely loves and will be willing to fight me about it! :) And where did we come up with this strange name, you ask... Lillianna LeeLou Smith... Well we both loved Lillianna as soon as we heard it but we weren't sure about a middle name. Someone on facebook suggested we use one of our moms' middle names and see if we liked that. Somehow we ended up saying them both back to back, his mom's middle name being Lee and my mom's middle name being Lou and really liked the way it sounded! So it just kind of stuck. And now the more I hear it and say it, the more I love it!!! Besides, with a plain last name we can get away with a rare name like Lillianna LeeLou Smith, don't you think???

Here are the pictures from our last ultrasound! Enjoy!



This is the picture that says she's a girl...

This is a sideways shot of her. Her head is to the right and the white line along the top is her spine!

These are some 3D shots of her back... She was facing my spine the entire time and we could not get her to flip over so we could see her beautiful face at all...

In this one, you can see her left arm bending back up toward her face, like she's sucking her thumb I like to think. :)

This is another sideways shot of her spine.

This is her little foot!!! Toes and all!!! How cute is that!?!?!?!

This is her leg and her foot right where the arrow is.

This is a 3D of her spine. They like to see that the spine tapers together at the bottom. If it was still opened at the bottom it would have been indicative of a disability.

Her spine and ribcage!

Another sideways shot... If you can see the dark circle within her body to the left of the ultrasound, that is her bladder. This shows that the bladder is filling up normally meaning that her kidneys are functioning well!

And a non 3D of the spine tapering together to the left.

Our beautiful and amazing Lillianna! Can't wait for you all to be able to actually meet her!!! Well, and us too... I REALLY WANT TO MEET HER!

Guess July 2nd can't come fast enough for me!

Baby Smith

I know it's been quite a while since I've blogged but I just wanted to post this picture for anyone who may still be checking.

This is the baby, upside down. The head is on the bottom, the body on top of that. And on the left is a little arm and up at the tippy top are the two little legs.

Who Popped The Question???

So you might as well all know, Bubba asked me to marry him and I said yes!!!

As of right now, the wedding is being planned for September 26, 2009 so I've got lots and lots of planning to do, starting this weekend. Saturday morning is a trip to David's Bridal and Sunday after church I'm going to register at a couple of places. Busy, busy, busy!!!

I'll try my best to keep you all posted as to the happenings and such!

Chicago-Memorial Day Weekend 2009

Here is the detailed chronicle of my trip to Chicago! Please be advised, the following pictures are in no particular fashion or order!!! When you have this many pictures it's a bit of a hassle to try and re-order everything into timeline detail, so... I'm kind of starting at the end...

This is the bean in Millenium Park. It was our last day there and the only ladies left in Chicago were Amanda, Tiffany and I so we did more sight-seeing! And shopping!

Trick photography??? :)

Amanda, myself and Tiffany in front of the bean. I love the way you can see the Chicago Skyline in the bean behind us!!!

This is from inside the bean!!! You can walk up underneath it and arches up really high into this optical illusion type reflection. Who can spot me???

This is a fountain that changes the digital images of faces and then it spits water out at passers by!!!

Chicago style hotdog for lunch at Portillo's! If you order a hotdog with ketchup on it in Chicago, they will laugh at you!!! lol

This is the Adler Planetarium. Lianna and I saw a show here. We kind of did a whirlwind tour with a CityPass. It got you into most places and we wanted to see as much as we could but only had one day and it was only good until 5:30pm. So we rushed around and saw as much as we could! :)

Outside of the Shedd Aquarium... Stop number three or four on our whirlwind tour...

Beluga Whales at the aquarium.

This is Amanda, Lianna and I in front of the city line. It was really windy!!!

We had stopped to get off of the trolly tour to take some pictures and don't you know, just as we stepped off, we rand into the rest of the ladies who were doing a Segway tour of Chicago!!!

This is a picture of the city taken from the observation deck of the Sears Tower... Another stop on our whirlwind tour!

Flags inside the first floor of the Sears Tower. Pretty awesome looking!

We went to an off-broadway show called "Tony and Tina's Wedding." It was pretty funny. Basically it's as if you were invited to be a guest at the craziest most ridiculous wedding you can imagine and then you attend the reception for dinner and traditional wedding dances like the Electric Slide and such. But they also continue the show. It's entirely interactive and you mingle with the wedding party while they stay in character. Very funny! One of the groomsmen asked me to dance with him for the slow dance... The most incredibly awkward thing ever!!! I didn't know him from a hole in the wall and had to slow dance with him for the whole song and talk the whole time.... Wierd!!!

This is Tony, the groom.

This is Tina, the bride. On the right is her brother who was a groomsman but got more comfortable for the reception and took off his jacket and suit shirt. And the girl to the left is one of her bridesmaids who was "pregnant" and just so happened to be the girlfriend/fiance of the groomsman who asked me to dance with him.

Lianna, Tiffany and I went on an Architectural riverboat cruise along the Chicago River. It was pretty amazing. That's where all the pictures of buildings and such are from below.

This is the Navy Pier taken from the boat.

This is a random building, can't remember which one it was, but if you look closely underneath the building, you can see the subway train. Appearantly part of the City of Chicago was built overtop of the railroad system. All of the property is owned by the rail company so any buildings built on top had to purchase "AIR SPACE" to build onto. As a result any one who buys a condo in one of the buildings is also buying "AIR SPACE" to live in... Wierd, right?

This building followed the natural curve that the river made here so the facade is slightly rounded. I loved the reflection of all the buildings across the river that you could see in the face of the building. Very reflective!

Skyline including Sears Tower, which was recently bought by an overseas Brittish company and they will be renaming it because they sold the Sears Tower with the naming rights!!! What were they thinking?!?!?!

More cool architecture...

These two buildings were amazingly cool! The condo's here are called Marina Towers, I think, and they're located right on the Chicago River, but most locals refer to them as the Corn Cobs... The lower portions of the buildings are parking spaces, you can see the cars if you look closely, and all of the condo's are "petal" shaped following the design of the building. They were also supposedly the inspiration for the living quarters of a well known futuristic cartoon family... ANY GUESSES?????

I think this was our first night there. Lianna, Valerie, Tiffany and I went to a dueling piano bar called "Howl At The Moon" where they had two pianos and singers that would take requests and go back and forth playing the requested songs, trying to get everyone to sing along and participate with them.

This is a huge sculpture of the "American Gothic" painting that was along the "Magnificent Mile," which is the equivalent of 5th Avenue in NYC. You want any kind of high end shopping store, look for the Magnificent Mile!

The archetecture here was absolutely amazing! The tall building in the back is the Trump Tower...go figure!

This picture was taken in front of the Water Tower Building. From left to right is Valerie, Lianna and Emilee. These were only three of the thirteen ladies who came for the weekend!!!

And this tall beauty is the second tallest building in Chicago, the Hancock Tower... Appearantly Jerry Springer lives here... booooooo!


Well folks, this is it for now! I managed to take 371 pictures while I was in Chicago! This is just a taste of the pictures that I have but it definitely shows everything that we did for the most part! Hope you enjoy!!!

Been A While...

So last night consisted of a whirlwind event starting with a haircut... That's right! I chopped four and a half inches off last night! Nice to have full healthy hair again instead of frizzy puffed out split ends...

This was followed up by a quick but much needed shopping trip at Lane Bryant... Love that store!

Finish the evening off with a french manicure... I've been growing my nails out for a while and gave myself a quick but not complete manicure last week. The guy actually said to me... "That's a lot of cuticle..." Yep, no tact whatsoever!

And finally today, I got the flip flops... You guessed it, summer shoe shopping!

MAN, I FEEL LIKE A WOMAN!

Nice to be primped and pampered a bit before I leave for Chicago next weekend. Hopefully I'll have lots of awesome pictures to do a new and exciting post when I get back!!!

Is This Real Life???

I was a little blue when only two people showed up for youth group tonight! But at least they were up for some fun!!!

Spelunking Otherwise Known As Caving

SPELUNKING: The hobby of practice of exploring caves

(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spelunking)

Yes, Yes...I know it has been quite a while since I have posted... And I'm very sorry!!! But as I recently had quite a bit of fun exploring the Clarksville Caves in Clarksville, NY I thought it would be fun to post the pictures from the experience! Hope you all enjoy!!!

This is the before picture. We're all still nice and clean and dry!

And here's the after picture. We're soaked and filthy and gross!

This is the hole we had to go into in order to get down into the caves. Only slightly larger than me I think.


Once down in that hole we were in the actual cave. The entire ceiling of the first cavern was all fools gold. Doesn't it look so beautiful!!! It was stunning and this picture doesn't even begin to do it justice...

This was a bit further into the cave. There was a little underground stream running down the middle of the cave for almost the entire way. At first we were able to hop on different rocks and avoid getting wet but eventually the rocks thinned out and we ended up having to just walk right through the stream. And boy was it cold!

Just another picture in the cave. The ceiling was higher here but at some points it was very close to your head...other points you had to squat and shimmy or crawl.

Joy and her friends Hollan (green jacket) and Vartan (blue jacket) in the cave.

This is actually a shot of the group walking ahead of me although it's hard to tell because of the fogginess. The fog/mist effect was caused by our breath. I was very damp and cool in the cave and there wasn't much air flow so whenever we breathed out it created a mist that did not quickly dissipate. It was kind of a cool effect though because your breath just kind of hung in the air and then slowly moved away still almost in formation.

So the story behind my hand is this. Bubba attempted to climb up a piece of the cave wall behind us and a massive clump (bigger than my head) broke off of the wall where he was holding on. After it broke off though, we realized that it was actually a massive lump of clay and that there was a ton of clay in the actual wall of the cave! It was super moist and got on my hand because I felt the need to play with the clay...What can I say, it's the child in me!

This picture was taken after we as a group decided to go further up the tunnel/underground stream. We knew that the water got pretty deep (about waist high) but we wanted to go for it anyway. We started heading into the water and by the time we got as deep as we did it hurt so bad. We were all yelling "Ahhhh, it hurts...Pins and needles...Go back...Go back!" So we turned around and headed back...Appearantly there was a new tunnel a bit further up but we would have had to be in up to our waists...We decided to save that for a warmer day and plan on going back in couple more months.