What's in a name?

People ask me what my favorite part about being pregnant is. And while I try to mentally decide between morning sickness and not sleeping on my stomach, it hits me like a lightning bolt: the name. Picking out a name for a new person on Earth is one of the most fun, conversation inducing, opinion raising tasks. Shorten or not? Traditional or funky? Family or no family? I love it! So many options. My friends, family, neighbors, man walking his dog down the street or pretty much any random person can tell you that I am not really one for options, but this is the one exception.

SO! When we named Zeke, we decided that we are not ones for out there names that no one would get like "Exxon", but we did not want to name our kids "John" and "Mary". Our names (Jill and Mason :) ) are names that have actually been heard of, but they are not used in our generation very much. When we found out Zeke was a boy, we started the search. One night we were driving through Southlake and I was looking through the baby name book and there it was "Ezekiel". It means "Whom God makes strong"... loved it. I wanted Zeke to have every tool behind him to become a strong man in the Lord including an awesome name. My father's name was the choice for the middle because we wanted to use a family name for all of our kids. I think that names from family members is a way of honoring them for the impact on your life. And my father certainly has had that on me, so Ezekiel William it was.

Then, four years later we find out that we are expecting again. Yay... more naming! So, we found it was a girl and began the process again. There were several names that we considered. Two top contenders were "Suzan" and "Ruby". In the spirit of keeping with our family trend, we decided that "Suzan" was our top pick after my infamous Aunt Sue. (Talk about an influence in my life! That is another blog for another time.) Her name means "purity"; pure in heart is something I have been praying over our kids for a long time so it works perfectly. To be a little different than even that, we went ahead with "Suzanne". And not to keep Mason's family completely out of the naming mix, we decided to use his middle name as our daughter's: Robbins. (Monica's grandmother's maiden name) Suzanne Robbins. Perfect!

So, this blog was supposed to be short (sorry...), but I am having a dilemma. Zeke goes by the shortened version of his name as Suzanne will. How to spell it? That is the dilemma! Suzie? Suzy? Thoughts? We do have a majority on this, but I would love to know what you, Internet world, thinks. Hmmmmm......

The Incredible Pantry

OK, I know that I am way too excited about my pantry, but I can't help it. I think it is because I feel like I am accomplishing something in preparation for our daughter to arrive. Or maybe because I think it rivals Martha Stewart's... I am not sure. Anyway, here it is!

The additional shelves were added by my amazing dad, Bill. I can remember him doing projects like this for our house when we were growing up. The projects always seemed to take longer because he never rushed and he always measured twice. Thanks, Daddy! You made my kitchen amazing!

The Social Network and The Fighter

Okay, let's get something out of the way. The obvious title motif is a little overboard this year. Look at some of the Best Picture potential nominees: Black Swan, The Social Network, The Fighter, The King's Speech. All the Yahoo users were up in arms because Inception won nothing last night. Well, the Harper Awards give it Most Creative Title. There you go, Yahooers, happy now?

Anyway, Mason and I went to the movies all day today and saw The Social Network and The Fighter. Both great movies with great acting and great scripts. Here's the thoughts on them:

The Social Network- Okay, Mark Zuckerberg, if you are reading this, just don't cancel my account. I am addicted to this thing you shamelessly created from someone else's idea. Moving on. This was a great movie. The screenplay was fabulously written by the wonderful Aaron Sorkin who also wrote some of my favorite shows, The West Wing and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (NBC please bring it back). It was witty, quick and purposeful. Jesse Eisenberg did a great job at making Mark Zuckerberg seem like a hero and a villain all at the same time. Honestly, I did not like Zuckerberg after leaving the theater. I felt sorry for him. Maybe that was the point. Look, I am not really sure what happened in all the stealing idea situations; we are not Friends (see what I did there?). I do know that if he is half of the dillhole that Jesse Einsenberg portrayed him to be, I would block him from my news feed if we WERE Friends. (enough of that) Seriously, he seemed so very determined to be in that inner circle that it made him emotionless to anything else. It left me feeling sad. And Mason too. No tears, just sadness for poor billionaire Mark Zuckerberg. But all in all, it definitely deserved the accolades it received at the Golden Globes.

The Fighter- Anyone who has known me for over an hour knows that I love Rocky. This movie was like Rocky except you switch Adrian for a girl with a left hook and a bad mouth, you trade Paulie for a crack addict and Mickey is actually a overtanned, overdyed, overbearing mother. Then, you have The Fighter. Oh, and throw a wonderful corps de ballet of seven sisters who would scare a child on Halloween. We'll make them the awesome doo wop group that sang on the street corner. Take it back, doo doo-da-doo... Anyway, The Fighter was an amazing film with a spitfire cast. The story was a story we have heard before, but they did it in a really interesting way. Christian Bale, who most of you know as our current Batman, was Captain Insane-o awesome in the role of Dicky Ecklund. He was delusional, he was insane, he was hilarious. He was Dicky Ecklund. It was phenomenal. He was my favorite part in the whole film. Mark Wahlberg was good too. Fully committed to the movie and he was the steady beat to the up and down craziness of Christian Bale. Melissa Leo and Amy Adams totally embraced the lifestyle and look (eeeek) of the time and the environment of the plot. All of them are shoo-ins for Oscars nominations if I were voting. This film was really worth watching.

So, there you go. Two more Ineviteables down... many more on their way. Nominations are up at the end of the month we will see what happens!

PS. This was originally written for Facebook, which is why I am asking MZ to not cancel my account.

Golden Globes 2011

Okay, so I have seen some of the movies that are nominated tonight. I don't really make it a priority to see all of these because the Oscar ceremony is really a bigger deal to me. However, I must point out two of the films nominated tonight because I have recently seen them. These two films, Black Swan and The King's Speech, are what I put in the Inevitables category. That means it is inevitably going to be nominated for Golden Globes AND Oscars so I will not be wasting my precious movie watching time. So, here you go:

Black Swan- Saw this with a friend who is into artsy stuff and we both wanted to see the movie, so off we went. The movie was... emotionally confusing. I liked it, but I didn't. I appreciated it, but I did not appreciate some of the unnecessary content (my friend and I agreed the girly love scene could have not been done at all and eluded to in the movie in a much more tasteful way). I was scared, but I wasn't. So, it was emotionally confusing. So, here is what I did like about it: Natalie Portman did an amazing job creating this character that wanted something so perfect that she drove herself to madness. The artistry of the actual dancing, costuming, camera perception and visual effects were wonderful. But honestly, the likability of the movie ended there for me. The film was directed by Darren Aronofsky who also directed The Wrestler and I had the same reaction to this film as I did with that one: I saw it. I am glad I did. Once. And I need to either go say about 30 Hail Marys or take a shower.

The King's Speech- Okay, I saw this one with five of my friends. We all have very different tastes in movies and we all loved it. Colin Firth is my hero and Geoffrey Rush is amazing. The subtly of the acting, set and script made this movie. They did not have effects to make things exciting, they made the movie exciting by.... ACTING. Soapbox alert! I had a realization after seeing this movie. There are two types of people in this world: those who are entertained by movies with effects and those who are entertained by movies without. NOTHING WRONG WITH EITHER. I just realized that I am a person that prefers movies without it and that rely on the abilities of the actors. Take Avatar for example. Not really known for its acting... which is fine because that whole film rested solely on the effects. And... I am going to say it... I found The King's Speech to be 10 times more entertaining than Avatar (sorry, Jared Viertel). Of course, as mentioned before, neither way is wrong. It is all about YOUR preference. Soapbox over. So, I highly recommend this movie. There are no special effects, but I think you should see it nonetheless!

Watch the Golden Globes tonight. You will be glad you did.

Inspired by Erin

Well, hello everyone...

I wanted to start blogging because my cousin Erin shared her blog with me and it seemed like a really cool thing to do. Blogs are funny to me because I hear my sister talk about them all the time. She reads blogs of people that like make their own paper for their Christmas cards, grow all their own food and whose kids speak Mandarin at 5. She immediately rolls her eyes in disgust and calls me saying, "I am going to start a blog that is called 'We are having chicken nuggets for dinner again.' or 'I haven't worked out in a month and I don't care.'" I don't know if I will be on one extreme or the other, but we'll see how it goes.

Sunday is my birthday. I really don't feel like the new year starts until January 16, so normally I spend the first two weeks in a state of flux. Weird. I know. It's like I don't want the year to start, so I loll around the house hoping that pending things like taxes and website redesigns will not creep into my brain.

31 is the magic number for Sunday. Never thought I would get to this point in life. Not to sound morbid, Mom, but when I was twelve, I could never picture myself as a 31 year old. Some people do, not me. Maybe it is because I did not know what it would look like: great husband, 3 year old that sounds French when he talks, a daughter on the way that will probably be sassier than me and a faithful dog that loves me no matter what. What more could a girl want? Or I guess since I am 31... what more could a woman want? Nothing I tell you. Nothing.

Thanks for reading my first blog! I will keep you posted on how this year of life changes me. It is sure to happen.