What We're Anticipating this New Year

So . . .  I've been a very half-hearted blogger for the last couple of months, and I am about to tell you why.

Mostly, it's because there are a lot of BIG THINGS going on, but they weren't things I was ready to reveal to the interwebs at large just yet. But have you ever noticed that when there are GIANT THINGS going on, you don't feel like talking about other things? Especially when you aren't talking about the big things? Maybe that's just me, and that's the kind of non-committal blogger I've become.

In any case, here are the big things going on in the Family Long at the moment (important points bolded in case you don't want to read my entire long post):

First and foremost, we found out a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving that we are expecting a baby (which puts me at 12 weeks now, just for the record.) We're very excited about this (no, it wasn't a particular surprise) and we're very much looking forward to meeting Baby Long sometime around July 17th. So far, everything seems to be going well - we saw a heartbeat at my first appointment at around week 7, and I was supposed to go again today but got bumped to next week because my doctor got stuck at the hospital. (I was going to wait and post this after my second appointment when they went ahead and told me everything was good and now I'm home free because it's week 12, but then they foiled my plans and I couldn't wait any longer.) I've been nauseated since the night before Thanksgiving and am pretty much living on breakfast foods and crackers, so that's been fun, but luckily my husband is a wonderful person who tells me to go and lie down while he does the smelly dishes and subsists on frozen corn dogs. Hopefully the nausea will go away soon and I can start liking/cooking food again. By all other accounts though, we are enjoying looking forward to this addition to our family. (And yes, basically everyone I know is pregnant right now. Am I the only one who feels that way?)

These pictures were on the card we made to tell my parents when we went home for Thanksgiving:

Our ad hoc Halloween costumes, for the record.

Yes, I washed that before we took a picture.

Second, and almost as crazy, we're moving back to Utah. Soon. As in, probably before the end of January. We'd been planning to head back that way after the school year ended so that we could house-sit for my parents while they serve a mission for our church. However, we'd also been in talks with my brother about taking over most of the day-to-day operations of his business, Mustache Power Productions when we moved up there in June. We talked to him again a couple of weeks ago, and he had started a new job and was drowning in work. It looked like he was going to either have to start turning down jobs for Mustache Power, or he'd have to turn it over to someone else in order to stay afloat, so we started asking some questions and found out that Eric's school wasn't as upset as we thought they'd be about him leaving before the end of his contract. We had to do some research to figure out what that would mean for insurance (see above concerning Baby) and figured out a reasonable solution.
So now it looks like we're going to move as soon as they can get a replacement into place for Eric, which they seemed to think wouldn't take long (we hope we hope!) I'm definitely not sad about abandoning the plan of moving during my 8th month of pregnancy or about not having to get up to teach seminary with morning sickness, or about being able to go baby shopping with my mommy, getting to work with my husband and my brother, and just generally not being out here in the middle of nowhere. I will, however, miss the dear friends I've made here (although I'm really hoping one of them is going to be joining me in Utah soon), the beach, and my short-lived but very enjoyable library job.

In side news, Eric and I made it very happily to our first wedding anniversary, which we spent at South Padre Island. We also had a lovely Christmas with his family in Houston where my sister-in-law and I generally sat around eating crackers. (She's due two weeks before I am.)

So there you have it! When there is a baby bump to show, I will post a picture of it (mostly because I genuinely stalk people's facebook profiles to see how they look pregnant, and I wouldn't deprive you all of that, just in case you feel the same way). For now, I'm just grateful that my pants continue to fit, and hope they will do so until we move, because I don't want to have to move MORE clothes than I already have. (We're already going to have to ship most of our books. We have a book-buying problem of epic proportions. But clothes I might be able to throw away to make space, as long as I don't also have to buy a bunch of new ones before we go.)

Happy New Year!