Update

Well, life here in Starkville hasn't changed much.
Mike has his finals this week and next, so he will be a happy camper when he is done. He'll get a 4.0, I'm sure of it. He's a good studier!! :)
Harli is still growing like a WEED! She has started to put on the chunk - SO cute! She's also started to coo, which I love.
I'm just hangin' out at home, and I love being a mommy. So awesome! :)
Mike's parents are coming next week to spend some time with us, which will be so nice to have company. We are also going to bless Harli next Sunday while they are here, which I am really looking forward to. My mom just surprised me yesterday and told me that her and my little brother, Michael, are going to come for a day for the blessing too! It will be so wonderful to connect with family, especially so close to the holidays.
It's been very different being here in Mississippi this time of year. It was 60 degrees yesterday. It barely reaches freezing at night. No snow. SO weird.
Hope all is well with everyone. Miss you!

Pictures with Harli

Mike's friend, Daniel, took some pictures of our Harli for us yesterday... They turned out so nice! Thank you Daniel!!! :)

Daddy's little girl.

Vroom, vroom

Yes, we're starting her young. :)

Miss Harli

My little peanut is getting so big. I love it but I hate it at the same time. I just want her to be bite-sized forever!

Harli Ranae Orencole

So much fun!
Right after her long trip from heaven ;)

One of her favorite spots... right in Daddy's arms.

Three generations :)

It was SO nice to have 'Mimi Schwartz' help the whole week. Baby Harli sure loves her

Our sweet Harli was born

Tuesday, October 5 at 4:37 PM

weighing 6 lbs 10.5 oz

and 19 inches long.

She is a DREAM baby! We're so in love. :)

I hate fire drills.

After a pretty-darn-good-20-minute contraction and 20 more minutes of shorter ones last night, we decided to head to the hospital. Much to our dismay, it was only a false alarm. DAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGG IT!! I was SO frustrated - not only for having it be a false alarm, but for the fact that I looked like a total rookie (as if I'm not!). Better safe than sorry I guess.
On a happier note...
My mom is coming to see us in less than one week!!!!!! Yessssssssss!!! It's going to be so nice to have her here to help me know what the heck I'm doing [This is a side note/hint for you, little Miss Harli... hurry up in there! We're ready for you! ;)], and to just have some company from home.

My belly.

Here "it" is... 37 1/2 weeks - 2 1/2 to go!

I went to the doctor yesterday and had an ultrasound and things are looking great! After a big confusion about my actual due date, it has been set to October 11... if I can make it that long. My regular doctor was out yesterday, so I saw one of the others and he doesn't think I'll even last to next week! Ah! Who knew! She has dropped a lot in the last couple of days too, so when they went to do the ultrasound, they couldn't get a picture of her head because it was so far down in my pelvis... They also did a "non-stress" test, and apparently I've been having contractions and I didn't even know it! ...I always thought that they were like cramps, so I hadn't been tracking them.
I guess we'll just see.

Sorry Charlie.

I've had a lot of people ask to see pictures of my belly.

Well, the truth is, I haven't taken any.

...And then our camera broke. (We know now not to buy Sony or Kodak...just go for the expensive one.) So, in the meantime, we are trying to fix it hopefully before October - seeing as there might be a couple of events we would like to capture.

So just look closely at the 'white out' picture. It's definately there.

Amen sista!

...5 more weeks, 5 more weeks, 5 more weeks...

Mississippi State vs Memphis

Last Saturday we were introduced to what "real" college football looks like. Wow. For those that have never been to a football game in the South, we'll just say that it is definately not a Utah State or even BYU game. It is CRAZY!! People started tailgating for this game Thursday night... Certainly not lacking in the school spirit department. It was a total blast. We had a great time.

The student section - this is only about 1/3 of the stadium.

Cowbells are also allowed this year, which is what most people in this picture are holding. Oh boy, what fun that is!!! It gets pretty darn loud in there.

Mike's football helmet face paint :)

If you couldn't tell, the game was a 'white out'... Second row baby!!

GO DAWGS!!

Goose (Geese? Gander? Gaggle? ...whatever) Hunting

Notice I changed the wallpaper to match? ha ha)

Yesterday Mike's good friend, Travis, took him goose (again, the tense throws me off... I'm just calling it goose. :) ) hunting for Mike's first time. They left pretty early, about 4:30 - but not after Mike had his special hunting breakfast of toast and hot chocolate (when he was little, whenever he would go hunting or fishing with Grampa Robb, they'd sit and eat toast and hot chocolate together before they left. I think it's pretty cute he keeps the tradition). Within a couple minutes of them getting there and all set up Travis had his limit and it only took Mike a couple more minutes to get his. NOTE here: He didn't take longer because he's a bad shot - he's actually a pretty darn good shot. He was shaking and fidgety because he was just so excited!! He was like a 5-year-old on Christmas day! He said that it was right up there with one of the best hunts he's ever been on.

Travis took his video camera and got some video of Mike shooting at a flock (which was pretty cool to watch). In the video clip, while Travis and his dog, Dan, went to go get the goose, the camera was still rolling... (Mike forgot about that part) and he was fidgeting with his gun, then the net, then the ground... I could tell he was just excited! :) By the end of the outing, Travis got 5 and Mike got 4. They had such a blast!

...Anybody got any good goose recipies??? Yeah. We've got lot's of meat.

This is Dan and "his" collection... You can see on both sides of him the holes the boys were hiding out in with the sheets over them for camo.

Mike's biggest goose of the day...

Travis and Dan

Mike and Dan (the goose on the left is his big one)

Dan was a really good dog the whole time - probably more even-mannered than Mike! :)

Harli's 'H'

This is the wall decoration I made for Harli's room a couple of weeks ago. I was super excited to finish it because it took forever to do! I'm pretty happy with it though - it's just happy. :)

I'm thirty weeks along now, and I'm starting to get ANTSY! I just want to meet this little girl... But then I also have to remind myself in the same breath not to get too excited, and just enjoy this "alone time" I have with Mike while I still have it - because Heaven knows, life as the Orencoles know it is about to change big time.

I'm slowly getting used to Starkville/the South. The heat is becoming bareable and the culture is starting to make a little sense... The thing I miss the most about home (besides family and friends) are the mountains (which is funny because I never realized how much I loved them until I didn't have them around anymore.). So enjoy them for me while you're there, would ya?!

Mike is ROCKING school. Seriously. He is doing really well and I'm so so proud. :)

That's about the extent of our excitement for now... Keep in touch 'yall.

Finally! A house tour.

Hi! Welcome to our home!

Yes, Mike did all of that yard work. He's awesome at man stuff like that. :)

The condensed version of the back yard...

The shed. (It really is manly on the inside, I promise...)

See, I told you!

Inside the shed - (this picture was taken before Mike rewired the whole thing and installed 3 shop lights and a motion sensored light on the outside all by himself. He did a really great job.)

One of my favorite places in the house. I'm surprised that couch doesn't have a little worn out patch where I like to curl up.

Living room

Kitchen

Note here: when we moved in, these cupboards were kind of really ugly. They were the fake brown manufactured stuff. So we decided to jazz them up a bit and paint and antique them... We banged them out in about 2 1/2 days (which was pretty amazing considering when we painted the cupboards in our old house it took almost a week). We still have a bit we'd like to do, like a backsplash, but that's on the back burner for now.

Dining room

I love this little corner or the dining room - a table full of family. :)

Side A of the office

Side B of the office

My little desk area of the office. :)

Guest bathroom

This is where our spoiled dogs spend 90% of their day, asleep.

Our (mis-matched, hodge-podge) bedroom

Harli's room

These organizer bins are SO SO cute. Loooove Target! :)

The master bath - it has two kind of rooms to it. This half...

And that half...

...And that's our house! Feel free to visit any time... :)

Coating Ceremony

Getting a little blog-happy here.... ha ha

Here at Mississippi State Vet School, they do a little ceremony the first day of classes called the Coating Ceremony. During the ceremony they have each member of the class go on stage and a vet places a lab coat on them, welcoming them into the field of veterinary medicine. It was really neat. This sounds like a little love-fest for my husband, but it makes me so proud! They all looked so official. It's weird to think in four years he'll be a "real" DOCTOR! (Yay for that!) ("real:" kind of an inside joke. MSU CVMs have this joke that "real" doctors treat more than one species. ha ha)

MSU CVM Class of 2014

This picture is kind of nerdy, but I had to post it... It reminds me of all those pictures my mom has of me when I was young, starting my new schools, with my little backpack, holding my lunch box. :)