"God has shown favor"

Evan
God has shown Favor
also a Welsh derivative of "John" like the name "Shawn"

Alice
Sweet

Andy and I pretty much picked out the name Evan within a few hours of finding out she was a girl. That might seem strange since it is traditionally a boy's name, but my only association with the name was a childhood girlfriend, so to me it is a girl's name. It was pretty much only one of two names we even discussed and the other name was summarily dismissed by Andy upon my suggestion of it, so Evan it is. I finalized the decision to name her Evan when I found out what it meant, "God has shown favor." To me that is just perfect for how I feel about her. I don't know why I have been so highly favored to have such a sweet baby, but I have to express my overwhelming gratitude.

The name Alice comes from Evan's great-grandmother Howell. Grandma Howell died this last summer. I won't go into my experience completely, but I will say that at her funeral I felt very strongly that the time had come that we would finally have a baby. I found out two days later that I was pregnant. At Grandma Howell's funeral I felt so proud to be a Howell. What an amazing family and lineage that Evan now has!

Thank you Lord for showing us such sweet favor.

Introducing...Evan Alice

She's here, and what a good girl, two weeks early! She weighed in at 5lbs. and 13 oz., measuring 18 inches long. I really can't even begin to describe how overjoyed I am with such a precious daughter. Andy is over the moon. She came last wednesday and I would have posted sooner, but we are too busy just looking at her...and taking pictures of her. Here a couple of the over 200 hundred we have taken so far. Thank goodness for digital cameras!

Pregnancy meltdown

Wow, I have officially hit the emotional stage of pregnancy. I am a pretty emotinal person anyway, so I thought I would have gotten here alot sooner. I was actually beginning to think that I might skate through this whole experience without a great deal of emotinoal instability. Well, the past two weeks have proven that to have been a false hope. My oh my.

I had a baby shower the other night (thanks again Alyson and Wendy) and it was what I will remember as the official beginning of my meltdown. A few friends gave me some diapers they had leftover that their babies have now outgrown. It really hadn't hit me before that night that my baby is going to grow, really fast! Yikes. I don't think have thought much about that. That is probably a good thing because ever since I started thinking about it I have been an emotional wreck.


Then on Saturday I went to the hospital to pre-register. I know this is TMI, but on Tuesday I was dialated to 1cm and 80% effaced. Anyway, I was there just checking in and they told me, "Suprise, your doctor doesn't deliver at this hospital." What! I almost melted down right there, but I quickly became so angry that no one had bothered to tell me this, that being mad carried the day. That was atleast until today. After I talked to the nurse at my doctor's office I had a nice long sob fest. It really isn't a big deal other than feeling like I thought I knew how things were going to go down and now all of the sudden I have no idea and feel like I have no control over anything. That really stinks. I don't know exactly which doctor will be at the delivery because it is just whoever is on call that day. I asked the nurse about who I should discuss my birth plan with and she responded with "what do you mean by birth plan?" It turns out she knew exactly what I was talking about but apparently just wanted to take the opportunity to make me feel stupid. Fun stuff. S

I am feeling a little better now, but gees, no wonder pregnant get a little emotional. Hormones are going crazy, you feel like a whale, people act like your questions are stupid, and you are going to have a major change in life responsibilities in no less than 3 weeks (if I go over-due). Someone please tell me I am not going crazy. I know this is just another of life's adventures, but wow!

Andy

My husband survey:

1. What is his name? Anthony Leonard Howell. He never goes by Tony, it is Andy. His Mom didn't like the Andrew, but liked the name Andy, so she just made up her own rules. I'm glad she did.

2. How long have we been together? We celebrate our 8 year anniversary in May!

3. How long did you date? Not very long. I met Andy Thanksgiving week on 1999. We went out on about two dates and did alot of hanging out before Christmas and I just knew that we would get married. Shortly thereafter we broke up and Andy would say we never got back together, we were just friends who got married 5 months later.

4. Who eats more? Right now it is tough to say. I like to eat. I definitely have much more of a sweet tooth and Andy has a bigger appetite for Whoppers. Unfortunately, I always appear to be the one who eats more--why can guys get away with it?

5.Who said I love you first? I think Andy. I think it was after I told him I thought we were going to get married that he said, "So, I guess it is safe now to tell you that I love you?"

6. Who has more speeding tickets? Shawn 0, Andy 10+?

7. Who is smarter? Andy. he is seriously the most intelligent person I know. I know I am partial, but he is really a genius. It makes me mad sometimes.

8.Who is more sensitive? Duh. I am definitely the crier in the family.

9. Who usually wins the fights? Answering this may cause a fight. I would say we don't have fights, we have negotiations. It really can get quite ridiculous sometimes. "Andy, I would ask you to qualify the statement you just made." "Please clarify your apology." "What exactly do you mean when you use that word?" It would probably make pretty good reality tv. Actually our last real fight was about two years ago that I can remember. It was a doozey that is why I remember it. As I recall, I would have to say that Andy "won" in that we went with the plan he was supporting, however, I think it should be set for a review 6 months from now for us to determine if his plan is still best.

10. Who does the laundry? I do.

11. Who does the dishes? Mostly I do.

12. Who sleeps on the right? Andy

13. Who pays the bills? We both do in that I bring home some bacon too. However, Andy actually sends in the checks. It would be too stressful for me. All I know is that I bring home a paycheck and the bills magically get paid.

14. Who mows the lawn? The boy across the street. Maybe I can farm out some of my domestic responsibilities, Andy!

15. Who cooks? MMM, McDonald's? I do. Except for french toast. That is Andy's favorite and I think it's gross, so he is on his own.

16. Who drives when we're together? Always Andy.

17. Who is more stubborn? Hmm, that is tough. We are both pretty stubborn, but luckily neither of us like fighting or not talking.

18. Who kissed who first? I think it was mutual, but Andy was the one who initiated it.

19. Who asked who out first? Andy asked me out first, but I gave him my number.

20. Who proposed? That is kind of a tricky question. Technically I am the crazy person who brought up marriage first. Then Andy actually asked me later, twice, when I wouldn't answer him the first time. I was actually pretty mad he was asking because as I mentioned before we were "broken up." We had a pretty stressful engagement.

21. Who has more siblings? Andy. He has 1 sister and 5 brothers. I have three brothers.

22. Who wears the pants? I wear the stretchy pants.

Much Ado About Something

Here are some tummy pics, finally. As I am looking at these I am realizing why it has taken me so long to want to go public with these. Yikes! It is alot easier just to look at yourself in the mirror than to look at pictures of yourself. I hope all you skinny people out there enjoy these! :) I think I was 31 weeks when these were taken.

That feeling just before guilt

This has nothing to do with me not being a very punctual blogger. :) I was having an interesting conversation with a friend the other night that I have thought alot about and wanted to write about, particularly because I think most of my blog readers are women, this is for you!

We were talking about the broadcast on Saturday and I mentioned how I just love Sister Beck (the General Relief Society President). I think she is just perfect for women today-professional, yet grounded in the gospel. For me personally, she is a woman that I think actually understands what it is like to be me. This conversation led my friend and I to discuss her conference talk "Mothers Who Know" and the ensuing controversy. (For those of you who don't live in Utah, maybe you don't know, but there was a big brouhaha here because there were alot of women offended by what she had to say. Sorry if you were one of them, I'm not trying to make you feel bad). Anywho, I wasn't offended and was actually shocked to find that some women were because I think that of all the people who could have been offended by a talk about motherly duties, I could be a frontrunner-I don't have kids, I plan to keep working once my little bundle of heartburn gets here, etc. However, I wasn't offended because I realized at the beginning of the talk that I had a choice to make-get offended or take what she was saying and apply it to the unique circumsatnces of my life and learn, not take offense. My friend had a similar experience as she is a working mother of two. She described the feeling the talk left her with as "that feeling just before guilt." I thought that was an interesting way of describing it. It made me want to ponder, "What is that feeling right before guilt?" I decided that it is a positive feeling of facing a challenge. It is a feeling where we acknowledge that we could be doing more or doing somethings better, but instead of giving into guilt, we refuse to feel guilty and turn that into positive motivation. I think it is truly within our power to make the choice not to slide into guilt.

As we talked I realized that guilt really is a product of pride. That may not be obvious at first (it wasn't to me) because it seems so completely the opposite. But really we are being prideful when we say "I can't do any better and if you tell me that I can, then I'm going to feel guilty and offended." Guilt is an emotion without motivation. It robs us of the thrill of standing up and meeting a challenge. I guess in writing about this, my challenge to myself and others is to not give into guilt, but keep challenges to improve in a positive light so that you feel up to the task. Don't be overwhelmed by a feeling that you must do it all. You can't. But you don't need to feel guilty about it. Be honest with yourself though and be positively motivated. Maybe at this time in your life you really can't do more or better. More isn't always better. Maybe what you can do is recognize a need to be more centered and calm so that as you go about your life duties you are really experiencing the moments of your life.

The combination of the "Mothers" talk and other things discussed at Saturday's broadcast made me also realize that when we give into guilt and offense, we are acutally judging others. The thought that was shared Saturday about not judging those with big families (or small families) made me realize that we do often judge others negatively when we see them doing presumably more than we are. We feel guilty that we either can not or choose not to do as much. But instead of helping, we remove ourselves from the pool of resources to that person. We won't all have big families, but we shouldn't not help those with more kids simply because we feel their family is a statement against our own worthiness. We're not in a contest. Whoever has the most kids doesn't win, but whoever has the least doesn't either. We only "win" if we all "win" together and that is accomplished not by asking "why" ("why did that person make that choice?") but "what" ("What can I do to help you?").

Well, this is all really a rambling lecture to myself, but I wanted to write about this and tell all of you wonderful women out there to stop at the feeling just before guilt.

Hell (Ahm, I mean)... House pics

Wonders never cease, I had some house pics at work and I was able to pry my disk drive open. Here are some house pics in no particular order. These are all really old, so don't worry, we are actually really close to being done.