Another Dr. Appointment Today

Danielle had her monthly Dr. Appointment today. Everything is just great, the Doctor today pulled out the Doppler to hear the heartbeat and it was right in normal range and the doc said it sounded really strong. Now according to Bill's Mother there is an old wives tale about the Baby's heart rate and the gender of the Baby. If you didn't know there are family members on both sides that aren't very happy about us not finding out the Baby's gender until its born. The old wives tale goes like this, if the Baby's heart rate is above 140 you are having a girl if your Baby's heart rate is below 140 you are having a boy...well guess where our Baby's heart rate was...you guessed it 140 on the nose. So even if you believe that stuff (which by the way is totally unproven) our Baby isn't giving anything away.

Not much else to report over here, we are just trucking along.

And because no post should be without picture, here is one from a wedding in Seattle that we went out to recently. That is our Brother-in-law Tim and his son Lincoln, instead of a wedding cake they had cupcakes, Lincoln was in heaven!

Our Little Bean

Today we went for our first ultrasound. It was so neat to see!!! Our baby was really putting on a show it was very active during our ultrasound, wiggling around and kicking. Here are some of the best pictures...

sucking his/her thumb
here's legs and arms
this is the bottom of baby's feet

Ben Folds Five (updated 10.23.08)

Last night we had an amazing opportunity to go see Ben Folds Five perform for the first time in around 8 years. The show was at Memorial Hall at UNC Chapel Hill. The concert was partially a benefit for Operation Smile but it was also an event for a new series of concerts put on by myspace called front to back. The band was given the choice to play any of their albums front to back, they decided on "The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner" an interesting choice seeing how it was the least successful album they put out and ultimatley led to their breaking up.

There were a couple of highlights for me (Bill).

• One was the people watching, now remember this show was on the UNC campus and 600 of the 1600 tickets were allotted for the students. As I sat there before the show I leaned over to Danielle and told her "This album came out in 1999, so if there are any freshmen here they were like 9 when this album came out and there is no way they know all these songs" and I tell you the truth, once "Narcolepsy" started I saw two girls lean over to each shrug their shoulders and say to each other "I don't know this song" that continued all the way until "Army" everyone went nuts during that song. Then soon after that they all went back to a confused look and soon broke out their cell phones and started texting. I found it all to funny and sad that their were some people who bought airline tickets and traveled thousands of miles for this concert while others could care less and were wondering when he was going to play his solo stuff.
• Another great moment was "Your Most Valuable Possession" I was wondering how they would do this song. The vocals of this song are a voicemail recording of Ben's Dad saying some random thoughts early in the morning before he really wakes up. Well it was very cool that Ben's Dad actually came out and read what he had said that morning. It was really fun.
• After the band had finished "Lullabye" and the crowd went nuts, I was thinking is that really it? Are they just going to play the album and walk away? Well obviously the answer was no, they came back out and played 7 more songs from their other alubms, and that left those girls even in front of us even more confused. That was until they played thier last song of night "Song for the Dumped" oh how the crowd went crazy.
• All in all the biggest highlight from last night was Danielle leaning over to me and telling me the baby was doing backflips in her belly. I don't know if it had to do with the music or not but I like to think our kids gonna be a fan of Ben Folds Five.

It was a very special night and we had a blast. In October the show will be on myspace check the front to back site and I 'm sure they will have more details.
Here is a pic from the show, they wouldn't let us bring in real cameras so I only had my cell so its not that great but its the best I could do.


In other news Danielle goes in for her first ultrasound on Tuesday so hopefully we will have some pics to post then.
Peace out,
Bill


Now you can watch the video! Enjoy.
Ben Folds Five - MySpace Front To Back concert

Family Swap Meet

So Becky has done a wonderful thing for Danielle. Its called Family Swap Meet. Its a place where you can trade your kids for other kids...well not really its more of a story sharing place as well as giving advice and things you may not need anymore, as well as setting up playdates. If you want to contribute please let us know and we will add you.

Danielle is at 8 weeks tomorrow, we go in for our first Doctors appointment next week and hopefully we will have some pictures for you then.

The cats out of the bag

So everyone who we haven't talked to we apologize. Because there is something major going on in our lives and we need to share it with everyone.
We are going to have a baby!! We found out just about two weeks ago and we couldn't be any happier. Its still very surreal for me (Bill), but unfortunately for Danielle the mornings are all too real :( She is a big time trooper though.

We are already getting used to the standard questions.

1. The Baby is Due April 9th
2. No we are not going to find out the gender of the baby (we like surprises)
3. We are kind of hoping for a Boy, just because of the whole generational thing (Bill is the 8th generation William 'insert mothers middle name' Shannon.
4. We are more than happy to share our baby names with you if shes a girl her name will be Zoe Vera Shannon, if hes a boy he will be William Campbell Shannon.
5. Yes we are way excited!

The one thing we are running into is our nursery colors, we are using our guest bedroom and we really don't want to paint so we need to look for bedding that will match and we are having a little trouble. So if you see anything that you think will look good let us know!

Now I know that you are thinking hey where is the pic of the pregnancy stick or ultrasound? Well no offense to those who did show their pee stick, we just aren't going to roll that way, and we haven't had our first ultrasound yet. But feel free to join our baby pool and guess the Gender, Weight, Length, Date and Time.

And because no post should be without a picture I give you this.

Where it all began.

Do we know you?

Hey everybody...so our friends the Bennetts reminded us how horrible we are at blogging and yes we would agree, we haven't been very good at updating this blog. Things have been quite busy and we have been blogging just not here. We have been blogging almost every week on the Element blog.

Things are going very well for us, we love working with the youth group, Danielle is working part time at a CVS and Bill is still plugging away at Duke. In other news Bill is looking to buy a scooter, because A) they rock and 2) they are fuel efficient, he has tortured his co-worker with questions because he owns a Vespa and Bill can't make up his mind. Right now Bill is thinking of buying a rebuilt Vintage Vespa, if you have any connections or ideas or opinions he would love to hear them.

And because Bill doesn't believe in posting without a picture here is a vintage picture via 1996
It's me and my future bro-in-law and the hair on the head is not real but the chin and the chest is all me baby

Weekend with the Presidents

Christy, Marylin, Reagan, and Lincoln came to visit this weekend. Today we went to Duke Gardens and had a really great time. Here are some pictures from it...

Reagan walking the wall

Looking for fishies and turtles


Uncle Billy and Reagan


At the Fountains that aren't on


All of us together


Oooo, a caterpillar!