Finding Nebo

In my 28 years of life, I've never lived outside the great state of Alabama, which means I am no longer caught off guard by three things: unbearable humidity, tornado season and Dan Satterfield. I knew storms were coming last night, mainly because my grandmother doubles as a weather radio! Since there's really nothing I can personally do to combat a tornado, I went to bed and told my 3rd shift husband to call me if I needed to scoop up the baby and crawl in a closet. No phone call = no danger.

All was fine and good until about 11:30. Okay, so I'm going to assume that you have all taken your car through a gas station car wash. You know the sound of the air and water pounding against your car? That was the sound against my bedroom window. I picked up my phone to text the hubs. "What's going on with the weather?" I asked. "Raining," was the response I got. Well, thank you Captain Obvious. So I got out of bed and turned on Doppler Dan to get the scoop.

If you aren't from North Alabama, there's no way you can possibly appreciate the utter passion local meteorologist Dan Satterfield has for severe weather. He eats, sleeps and breathes watches and warnings. It didn't take long for me to realize that the carwash sound was really the worst of it for Hartselle and that we weren't in any real danger. But I stayed glued to the tube for a few more minutes because as the storm moved out of Morgan County and into Madison and Marshall, the names of the communities in the line of fire got more and more interesting. I began texting JB just to ask him if he'd ever heard of these places...Nebo, Fishtrap Ford, Blackankle, Cushion, Hebron. But it may have actually been funnier just watching Doppler Dan struggle with some of these no-stop-light communities, or skip pronouncing them altogether for fear of saying them incorrectly.

So while I'm glad last night didn't spawn too much tornadic activity for NA, I'm sure happy I didn't miss an ever important geography lesson for my home state.

And He Shall Be...

As of today, I'm 33 weeks pregnant. That's 8 months and 1 week in case you're terrible at math. And in my nearly 28 years of life, I don't think I've ever taken as much time making a decision as I have in naming this baby. In my defense, naming a boy is tough. Let's face it, boys are stuck with their name forever. Girls at least have a "drop the middle or maiden name" option should they get married. But not boys. Without legal name changes, the name on their birth certificate will be the name on their head stone.

Jason and I started out with good intentions, each making lists of names we liked to see if any matched. Nope. It ended up in a battle of wills to see who could hold out the longest without giving in. I can only imagine now how my mother must have felt when she wanted to name my brother Zeke and my dad wouldn't have it. But after all, it was 1990 and Zeke was the lead man in a TV show "Tour of Duty."

So after literally months of deliberation and striking names off one another's lists one-by-one (no seriously, we marked names off with a pen), we have a name for our soon-to-be-here baby boy.

We can't wait for Grayson Rhys Brightwell to make his appearance so that you all can love him as much as we already do!