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WOOHOO! 2009! We can't wait to see what the new year brings us. May God bless you and keep you in His arms this year!
Last Sunday, Melissa had her piano studio's recital at the local Methodist church. She only teaches a few people, so we were able to keep it small and special for everyone. Being a Christmas recital, I decided to try something totally crazy. I made my first foray into trying to buy clothes for my wife. I presented her with an early Christmas present of a dress and all the accessories for her to wear to the recital. She did a great job of playing her jazz version of Jingle Bells. She has always had a struggle with jazz, so I was so proud of her.
Nathan even got in the act a little, with people presenting him with Christmas gifts. He loves to play with the alphabet blocks he got from one student.
I found this website that will take pictures and do all kinds of crazy things to them, like turn them into pencil sketches. So here is Meli's belly at 27 weeks if we had gone to a county fair sketch artist.
ht: ysmarko
So, I wonder if Meli could go to Hogwarts seven months pregnant? It has been ten years of waiting for Melissa and her ... infatuation with the Harry Potter series. She introduced me and now we are both hooked. So today, like millions of other people, we waiting in line, reservation in hand, to be some of the first to get the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Of course, like the last time, we went all out and even went in full costumes. Her costume was much better, however, looking totally like a girl student. We were not alone, but she was the only pregnant Hogwarts student there. :)
So now, she is listening to Jim Dale reading the book (chapter three as I write this) and I am going to be reading it for as long as I can before I go to bed. She's even making me go teach classes tomorrow morning so that the kids who will stay up all night won't even come close to ruining the ending. She's threatened to have absolutely no contact with the outside world until she's finished, so I don't recommend calling until Sunday. :)
Meli and I together at the store.
Mel with our copy of the book!
Ok, so it has been a while since we updated the blog (sorry Mom) so here goes with the post
"What's been going on in our lives"
So I guess the first story is about the ATA World Championships. We went to Little Rock where I got the chance to take some training Ground Fighting that we're going to be using at the school. I had a really good time at that, however... well more about that later. Then I competed in the Top Ten Finals for 1st Degree Black Belt Weapons. I finished 8th which was one spot higher than I came in, so I consider that a kind of victory.
Then, Melissa went home, and I picked up a rental car and drove to Lake of the Ozarks Missouri, and met the youth group for camp. We had a wonderful time at this very big camp. I'll put up more about that later at my own blog.
While at camp, I couldn't help but notice that while the normal being sore in the muscles was going away, a pain in my ribcage wasn't. As the week went on, it got steadily worse. I was hurting the whole camp, but didn't want to go to a strange doctor, so I waited until we got home. It turned out that I had cracked a rib during the ground fighting seminar. So I'm just now getting back to where I can spar and do most of the taekwondo. Even with the cracked rib, I tested and am now a 2nd degree recommended black belt. One more test before I'm officially a 2nd.
Melissa is doing wonderfully being pregnant. Nathan is beginning to show his own black belt skills, kicking her almost every night. Some of them have been getting so hard that he is able to bounce objects off her belly. It seems to be that her big symptom is going to be in her legs. She has been waking up every morning with huge leg cramps and her ankles are swelling to the size of her shoulders. So now she has to wear these support socks (knee highs) to keep her circulation going... in Texas... in July... while doing taekwondo. She hates the the very idea, but it's been working. Of course, those are my pajama pants she's wearing in the picture. :)
In fact, we've been joking around that her pregnancy is going too well. We've only had the initial ultrasound and the 20-week one. We're probably only going to get one more before Nathan comes. We really want to see the little guy again, but since the pregnancy is going normal, we don't need to. :( Too bad.
The baby's room (or area of the room) is coming along nicely. My mom sent some wall hangings and the mobile all in the jungle animal theme we were looking for. It's going to finish up very nicely by the time all the baby showers are over. We can't wait for the little guy to come and be in that bed!
Last week, Melissa and I went out to Dallas to use the gift she gave me for our anniversary. We went to go see the musical Spamalot, based on the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. So our little guy has already been to two Broadway musicals before he is even born.
Anyway, I'm hoping I've covered most of what has been going on in the lives of the Bilyeu family. We're going to make sure that these updates come more and more often. Later.
In yet another attempt to make life easier for the family members checking in on this page from time to time to see updates, we've bought a .com name. So from now on, you can check this page out by just typing in www.tkdbilyeu.com The TKD, by the way, is for Tae Kwon Do.
So last Monday, we had our latest listen to the heartbeat appointment. This time, doc had no problem finding the beat, but we picked up something interesting, too. There's that extra sound that the doc says is the baby moving around. Well, already the musical side of the kid is starting to show because the noise was in perfect beat throughout the whole time we were listening. Meli thinks that speck is going to grow up to be a percussionist, but I hope not. :)
Tomorrow, we will finally be heading over to Dallas to spend a night living totally above our station in life as I call it. We're going to dress up and go the Fair Park Music Hall to see Wicked. After having done the songs in the theater, Mel just fell in love with the whole production and set her heart on going, so I found two tickets for this day. We're both very excited about getting to see this in person.
This weekend kicks off the beginning of a very busy month for us as a family. Meli has her band concert, then a belt test, followed by the end of the school year, all leading up to her re-test on June 1st for her 4th degree black belt. May 30th will be the day to (hopefully) find out if we have Anne or Nathan instead of Speck.
I know this has been pretty random, but that's what you get when we don't update for a while. I'll put up pictures from Wicked as soon as I can.
So I was in Wal-Mart today and like always, I found my way to the Electronics. There I found something that I couldn't pass up. Apparantly, this company makes lullaby versions of rock music like Metallica, Nirvana, and even Tool. I think I'm going to try to pick up the U2 one next. Get our speck singing Beautiful Day early.
