Well, it IS 2009! (This One is for Amanda I.)

Okay, so I have learned that my dear friend Amanda I. is unpleased with my recent blogging, because I have left something very important out of my recent posts. So here it is: most of my friends know about The Plan. We love to joke about The Plan, since it has not really worked so far. According to The Plan by Kristen, Lloyd and I were supposed to get married (that part worked ok), both find a job, and buy a very cute house that we both loved. Then, The Plan changed when LL decided to apply to vet school. We applied to several, since they are very hard to get into, and I amended The Plan to include me working and Lloyd going to vet school somewhere in the Northeast, specifically Cornell or U. Penn, since they are both near where we have lived. Well, The Plan went drastically awry when LL fell in love with a vet school in Starkville, MS, approximately 1000 miles south of the schools I had laid out in the The Plan. I, however, rolled with the punches and gamely (or not so gamely at the time) agreed to move to the other end of the country. However, I still was hanging on to the "cute house we both loved" part of The Plan, only to find out we were unable to afford the "cute houses," and we instead ended up in a trailer park. In Mississippi. Frightening, I thought. And surely not part of The Plan. But I have been reminded over and over again that I can have The Plan, but the One who is truly in charge of The Plan is not me, it's God. So I came to love my trailer in MS, and tried hard not to get too focused on The Plan. As more and more of our friends and family members became pregnant, LL and I were asked with increasing frequency "when are y'all going to have a baby?" and I would always reply "2009." This seemed like a safe answer, because it was fairly far in the future, and if pressed, I would respond that LL would graduate in 2009, and we thought a baby and vet school would be too much for us. "Baby in 2009" somehow became part of The Plan. My friends would laugh and joke about us having a baby in 2009, but since almost NO part of the The Plan has gone according to schedule, we all didn't take it too seriously. Lloyd and I got wrapped up in all the details of planning his externships, moving, trying to sell our house, renovating our new/old house (by the way, SO not the "cute house" of The Plan, but I do love it), finding jobs, etc., and the baby clause in the The Plan became a distant memory. Until March 14, 2009, when I finally broke down and took a pregnancy test. Positive. And another. Still Positive. SURPRISE! Looks like this part of The Plan worked after all. Lloyd and I are expecting our first child Nov. 5th, 2009! We so so excited and can't even begin to imagine what Thanksgiving and Christmas are going to be like this year! And now all our friends keep reminding us, "Well, it IS 2009!"