YAY FOR PREGNANT PIC! This was taken on Sunday Jan 28th. I am 23 weeks pregnant, so just under 6 months. You can see why I need to go shopping for Maternity clothes. Wow!
This close-up is just to remind myself that just because my belly, butt and thighs are growing doesn't mean I look like that ALL OVER. It's a good picture, and I can look at it when I am feeling really fat and ugly. (Don't you hate those days?)







Finally! I have pictures to post!

These are pictures of Josh's parent's log home. We were married here, but the inside was not quite finished. This is the inside, where everyone hangs out. You can see the kitchen, living room and the upstairs where 3 more bedrooms are located.

They hope to make this a bed & breakfast someday, I love going there and hangin out with family!

Isn't their house awsome? That buffalo participates in all our get-togethers. At Christmas he was wearing a Santa hat!




Thanks for looking! It's so nice to finally get pictures on my blog.

Laters!

ANNIE'S TURN TO BLOG!! HOORAY!

I'm feeling better now. It doesn't hurt quite so much when I walk or when I turn over in bed. I need to go shopping for maternity clothes.... the rubber-band trick isn't quite working anymore.

I'm in a journalism class that is sheer torture! I despise going and don't want to be forced to partake in any of the assignments. This is not an exagerration, which is truely sad. But the good news: I have decided to stay in school for 2 more years and get a B.S. in Elementary Education! what?? yup - 3 bachelor's degrees in 7 years. Some people can get a doctorate in this amount of time, but I had no clue what I wanted to until this semester, which is teach children. Josh and I are in prayer every night about this. I wish I could be a stay at home mom, I really do! But kids cost money....know what I mean? And I know that God doesn't love stay at home moms more than working moms (thank goodness!)

So, if I am going to find a job, I want it to be one that I love more than I hate. And one that doesn't stay the same, I feel like I make a difference, and has the opprotunity for advancement in pay. Teaching! Plus, the classes for this degree sound really fun (as opposed to those horrendous journalism classes I completed)

Now the real prayer will be for excellent child care. I am petrified about putting my darling(s) in anyone else's charge. God will provide, thats what prayer is for!

Josh is going to be travelling to New Jersey this Sunday, and I'll be all alone until Wed afternoon....oh sadness. I haven't been away from him for this long and I know I'll cry (stupid pregnancy hormones, might as well let it out!)

Till later friends!

I should be working right now instead of blogging. =)

Well, I called Pott. County zoning and they pretty much told me I'm an idiot. I said, "Oh yeah? Tell me something I don't already know!"

Ok. They really said that you can't move a single wide trailer older than 5 years onto a lot less than 40 acres (you know, a 1/4 mile x 1/4 mile). Sooooo, instead of buying a double wide and moving it onto the land or a newer single wide, Annie thought we might build a shed that we could finish out and live in while we build our house. I thought that was a pretty good idea, and so we sat down and figured it out a little bit, and she said she would finish up the floor plan for us later tonight, get an estimate on material costs, do the paper work for getting the building permit, call public works to see what kind of septic we need to put in, get propane, find water and drill a well, figure out where the driveway is going to be at, figure out how to build a bridge over the run off area and a few other misc. items like that. But she wants to build it with the idea being that after we build our house, we convert our house/shed into a shed and park her Harley in it.

On the baby front: Annie talks about being able to feel the baby kick, so thats kind of weird for her so far. But I think it's pretty neat. I can’t wait till I get to feel it with her.

Baby stuff along the lines of the new House/shed we are trying to make sure we don't leave anything important out of the design that we will regret later because of the new baby. I know that when she is born things will change drastically, so we are trying really hard not to miss any important design points along those lines. Maybe later I can post a floor plan of what we are thinking and that way if something is missing or should be changed we can be warned ahead of time.

CATWORLD

The cat that came to work with me is doing really well. She took a big stinky, runny, petulant, nasty poo on my nice 10 key calculator for me. I threw that away. But my brother got a pretty good laugh out of the whole deal.

Cristy (The Cat) is starting to fill out a little already, her back legs don’t look nearly as emaciated as they did when we found her and she is meowing pretty much constantly. Her tongue sticks out some times, so I wonder if she isn’t a little… slow…. I have an uneasy feeling that her meowing is due to pregnancy. *yay* Kittens for everyone!

Oh! And the best part about Cristy is how good she smells. I can honestly say, and I can’t stress this point enough, I have never EVER smelled a cats fart that is even 1/10 the amount of stink that this cat can produce. It just about makes my eyes water. I had to open the window to the office the other night. My goodness it was powerful.

Business is still going good. It’s kind of weird though. I have never had prayers answered so literally and directly as this. Tasha (the office manager) and I prayed that we could get some long owed money paid back to us and that business would pick up. This prayer was two weeks ago. So two weeks ago we booked most of February. Last week we booked the rest of February. Between the last two weeks we have only two outstanding debts still owed, all of the others were either paid in full or at least had payments made on. So that prayer was answered in excess to what I expected. We also prayed that we would be able to get more work done than we have been able to in the past, and since then it hasn’t been a problem. We crammed too much work into last week and even had a person gone on vacation and we were actually a little ahead of schedule by Friday. Like I said, I have never experienced prayer working in that sort of direct in your face way.

Ramble, ramble, ramble. Talk/type Later!

-josh

There is no need for alarm.

We decided tonight, Thursday 1/18/07, to move. We will no longer be living in Walnut Grove Trailer Park by the end of March. Where we are moving to, we don't know yet, but hopefully when we get there, there will be internet access so I can update everyone on how pregnant Annie is.

She is moderately pregnant at this point and is closing in on being mostly pregnant. *yay*

As far as the moving thing goes, we have a very short time to get a whole lot of important things figured out, but we aren’t moving far, just to our land. The bit about not knowing where we are going yet is in regards to the actual placement of the trailer.

We have had some meowing from under our home as of late. This has happened before. Several years ago I had some cats fighting under my trailer and it freaked me out because things were bumping the bottom of the house and it was weird... Anyway, the meowing has been pretty frequent and so today at lunch I decided to find out where the cat was at and how it was getting under the house. It turns out that 'Cristy' the Calico Cat has been residing under our trailer for a few days and managed to sneak in and out of under the trailer via a 2 inch wide slot in the skirting. Basically the cat was squeezing through the plastic skirting on the bottom of our trailer and it must have been pretty uncomfortable, but when I felt along her back tonight as I gave her some water, I could see that there wasn't much there to hold her back from going through a miniscule opening like that save for her hip bones, and the skin and fur that enveloped them. She’s in pretty rough shape.

I feel really sorry for 'Cristy' (I made the mistake of allowing Annie to name 'it') and am not really sure what to do with her. She is a very friendly cat, but I would be to if I was in her situation and she has some pretty neat spots on her body and a pink nose. (Annie noticed that fact. I wonder if it has to do with the color pink?)
Anyone need a cat? or a dog? or a dog and a cat? and some fish?

Just kidding, don't want to get rid of any one of them except the fish... they aren’t fun to move and so it would be nice to just get rid of them to someone who isn't going to move soon and can enjoy them and take better care of them than I.


Anyway, Annie and I have to figure out where we are going to move our trailer to on our paint ball course (the land on Vineyard Rd.) and then get the ball rolling on electricity, gas, drilling a well for water (exceptional water out there, I am stoked) and of course, figuring out what to do with the waste problem... It's really sandy soil, so I don't think I can put in a lagoon w/o putting in a clay bottom, but since the soil is so sandy and I have a pretty decent grade to the land I think that a septic tank and lateral fields might be in our future but I don't know yet because I don't know much when it comes to those kind of things.

This will be nice because now I can get up, walk across the lawn and start working on the house I'm supposed to start building on this spring. Rather than drive to the building site, forget some important document or tool and have to drive back to the trailer, get it and then drive back and then realize that I forgot something else, and you get the picture. Having our trailer out there will be very nice.

OK. I have to hit the sack and get up early for talking to people about putting a mobile home on zoned waste agriculture land. Oh yeah, add that to the list of things that have to happen, get a hold of someone that knows how to move a trailer. *sigh*


-josh

p.s. I didn't proof read this, so I apologize for the horrible way I tell stories and such, I'm really awful, so if you have any questions about my ramblings please feel free to ask Annie.

Well, it turns out that the first picture where I thought I had everything labeled correctly was actually completely wrong. It isn't a sonogram at all, it's actually a picture that one of the Mars rovers took while it was stuck in the sand dune. I guess it got really bored in that long stint of being trapped in the same location and just came up with creative things to do with it's free time. Like make sonogram like pictures of the microscopic life that lives on the grains of sand on Mars. Odd huh? Those crazy rovers and their creativity... sheesh.

Anyway, the winner of the guess what the picture really is contest is: *drum roll*

Brad


I think also, that if you want to take a super close look at these pictures, you can click on them and they will go to a new screen and bring up the life size photo. In real time even, which is super handy.

I think I am done blogging for, oh, ever. I'm not very good at it and I can't seem to write a whole sentence that doesn't have some sort of misleading conent. Shame on me. So it is now officially up to Annie to go back to her duties of updating this page, and at the same time, be honest about what is going on and stuff.

-josh

p.s. It was fun while it lasted.

Sonogram Pictures of:

Cute Baby Lizzie

I was assured by the specialist that this sonogram is correct. I have looked and looked at it and just can't make heads or tails of what I am looking at, but thought that I could go ahead and put it out there and let everyone else try and decipher this... She sure is cute though, where ever she is at...

-josh

_________________________________________________

I couldn't get around to posting the rest of the pictures till now.

please enjoy the rest of the sonograms.

























Thats my baby girl =)
This picture here is the first sonogram that we had done months ago. Back when she was in her "bean" state. I think she still looks pretty cute then to.





EEEK!! Hey, alien looking or not, she's still my little girl.




This is just a picture to show her bones (I think, but I'm not a doctor).






This picture here is the one that showed us that Lizzie is not a boy. If you look in the exact middle of the picture there, that's her butt. I can see already that she is going to be the person making copies of her derriere at the office and posting it on the board. tsk tsk (she gets it from her mom.)

-josh

We are having a baby girl!
Elizabeth Leona Shultz


God bless you all,
Annie & Josh

*tap* *tap* *tap*
"Uhhum."

"Uhh, is this thing on?"

Honestly, the only thing that I can think to write about is church. More specifically church game night. More specifically yet, a game called Scattagories. The most more specific piece of being specific would be the Scategories church game night moment where we had to think of "things you would shout" that started with the letter 'p' and the instant where Annie used her incredible timing of actually SHOUTING the phrase "Piss off!" where there was utter silence. I mean, I don't understand how she did it. There was honestly a void of sound for an instant and then a high pitched gleeful outpouring of her beautifully and diplomatically worded answer, (imagine a slow motion image of Rocky being punched and the spittle, blood and sweat flying off of the grimacing face and then a super deep pitched phrased very slowly saying, UUUuuuuuhhhmmPFFFfffff) "PISSSssssss OFFFFfffffff". That was like what that moment was like. Easily the best part of the whole moment was how Judy Weyrauch went, "Oh My" and put her hand up kind of below her neck in that shocked look. Then of course there was my flailing of limbs and exasperated shocked look that I like to give when there is an awkward moment and I want to exasperate it some more. Then time sped back up to normal and the night went on swimmingly. It was a very fun night, although, I'm not sure if we will be invited back. Well, at least maybe Annie might not be invited back.

Teasing dear, I love you. (I'm going to pay dearly for this later, but its VERY much worth it.)

Ok. Baby Time. Please stay seated.

Well, when Annie told me her password to get into this and change the blog, she said that I had to do an update on the baby.

1) Its a... We go in on Monday, January 9th to find out whether I'm going to be a dad or a mom. Yay!

2) Annie (and the baby) are in something like the 20th week I think. I'm about as reliable a source on this particular subject as I would be on the proper way to figure the consumption rate for rocket fuel per ft lb of thrust to the weight of a Saturn V rocket.

3) Annie has been going thru some changes. Mostly her pregnancy brain. I'm lucky if she remembers to take out the trash, walk the dog, pay the bills, do the grocery shopping, clean the floors, clean the cobwebs, clean the dishes, wash the clothes and empty the cat box. Just kidding. She has just told me that she is having a slightly tougher time at work multi tasking. She's still really good at her job though.

4)Annie has gone shopping for some new outfits, and I like her new clothes (the way they go together really well) better than her old outfits. I'm not saying that the old outfits were bad, these are just some really snappy outfits.

5)She has been sleeping more lately, and complaining. Sleep, complain, sleep some more, complain. Uhg. I guess I deserve this though, I was mean to a kid in highschool once, so this is my pennance. She has been doing the pillow between the legs and sleeping on her side thing. I think she needs a different pillow because she just complains about the one she is using now. Also, sleeping on her side has helped to aleviate her snoring. She used to keep me up at night, oh man, if I wasn't asleep before her, it was a real life nightmare trying to get a wink of sleep. If I sound like a mean person, I am, I am mostly jaded by the fact that I only get about an hour of sleep at night, the rest of the time I am trying to put things over my head to drown out the saw mill next to me. (this is probably the most sarcastic thing I have ever written. Please believe me, I love my wife, and she doesn't snore, usually.)

6)Annie is starting show a bit, its pretty cool. She looks cute. Soon she will be walking into door jambs and asking me to put her shoes on for her. =)

As for things in my life besides my wife and her ailments, work has been pretty slow but its looking like it will pick back up.

My new bank is giving me some AWESOME new loans. I was using a different bank and they really messed me up financially with some loans I took out to buy a second rental property. But since that dark time with them Annie and I have switched to Intrust and they are truly amazing. They refinanced all of loans that I had and gave me better rates, figured out some ways to save even more money and did it all in a very timely manner. Very happy with Intrust.

Thats about it. Except I received a chainsaw for Christmas. Talk about cool. So tomorrow morning I am going to go try and cut some trees down and hopefully not any parts off of my self. Like my foot, or hand, or head...

THIS IS ANNIE: I PROMISE to post as soon as I can what the baby is. Love you all!!
oh, and Josh is hilarious isn't he?