It's a boy!

So we found out last Friday that we are having a little boy. Since then the list of things to do before he arrives feels like it has tripled, and time is speeding up. There are 19 weeks till his estimated arrival date, which in a normal world would sound like a long time, but for some reason now sounds like it's just around the corner.

We have started painting the nursery (well Henry started, I'm staying away from paint fumes at the moment) but due to a lack of advanced planning we have run out of painters tape and progress is stalled until we make a trip to the hardware store. It's a small room, so you would thin it would be a quick project, but somehow we have managed to drag it. I'll be glad once it is done, at least we will have completed one project.

Today we finally sat down and wrote a list of all the little projects we want to get done in the next four and a half months. Now that it's on paper I feel slightly more sane. On the bright side, I now have the energy to work on projects. On the down side, I am traveling for work 2 out of the 4 weeks this month so at home project time is limited to weekends.

Me, now that my bump is actually showing.

Happy Groundhog Day

It's that time of year again. The time when an over fed furry animal is pulled out of a tree stump in an otherwise unknown town in Pennsylvania to whisper in the ears of men in top hats and predict our meteorological future while national media catches it all on film. While I've never been to Gobblers Knob, I have watched the proceedings on TV, and I'll admit I was curious as to where this tradition started. For any of you likewise curious people, here is some information http://pittsburgh.about.com/cs/punxsutawney/a/groundhog_day.htm

In my search of the history of Groundhog Day I found some little known facts abuot the event. Here are just a few I thought were interesting:

1. Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow 97 times, has not seen it 15 times, and nine years are unaccounted for.

2. The National Climate Data Center reportedly stated that Phil's prediction's have been correct 39 percent of the time. This number is in conflict with Phil's club, which states he's been right 100 percent of the time.

3. In the years following the release of Groundhog Day, a 1993 film starring Bill Murray, crowds numbering as high as 30,000 have visited Gobbler's Knob, a tiny hill in Punxsutawney where the ceremony takes place.

4. Though groundhogs typically live only six to eight years, Phil is reputed by townspeople to be more than 100 years old, surviving beyond a marmot's normal life span thanks to the strong constitution of his wife, Phyllis, and a steady diet of Groundhog Punch.

5. States without groundhogs are taking matters into their own hands by choosing their own weather predictor. Texas, for example, chose its state mammal, an armadillo, to predict the weather for their first "Armadillo Day."

6. The groundhog's full name is actually "Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators and Weather Prophet Extraordinary." It was so proclaimed by the "Punxsutawney Groundhog Club" in 1887, the same year they declared Punxsutawney to be the weather capital of the world.

So happy Groundhog Day everyone! Punxsutawney Phil comes out at 7:25 this morning, and although the odds are stacked against me, I'm hoping for an early spring.