Challenge Time: Blogging from A to Z

  I came across a blogging challege for April and decided to take part, it starts this Sunday with the letter A.  Head on over and sign up before Sunday to take part in the Blogging A to Z challenge!

Family visit

As I mentioned earlier my brother, his wife, their four boys and my Mom came for a visit this weekend during their spring break.  The got in late Saturday night and left first thing Tuesday morning.  On Sunday we took them to a place called the Clam Shell which is just east of where we live.  It’s a public natural area where you can hike around and there are some Indian pictographs on the rocks.  The boys had a blast climbing and exploring even though it was very windy.

The boys all had fun playing Candy Land and Austin played pretty well with the.  Uncle George taught him to do a victory dance when he finished the game.

Austin had a great time with Grandma.  She brought him a Little Angels video that was produced by Roma Downey and he constantly asks to watch it.  It is really cute and goes through the alphabet and associates religious words and terms with each letter.

It was pretty cold on Monday so we just hung out around the house in the morning and played in the back yard a bit.  In the afternoon Dustin took everyone but my Mom and I to town to go to the western store and park while Austin napped. 

Random thoughts for Wednesday

Life has been so busy and crazy lately.  I thought I would get down some thoughts while I munch on my lunch.

• We had a nice short visit with some of my fam this past weekend.  I have pictures for a seperate post later.  It's a lot of work to accomodate 7 other people and being pregnant I was pooped.  It's always rejuvinating for my soul though and overall it was a good visit.
• Tomorrow night I have my first book club meeting where we will be discussing The Book Thief.  Originally we were supposed to finish the whole book which is 574 pages, but last week they decided to reduce that down through the fifth section which is page 300.  I am at about 285, so will be able to get to that point tonight.   It's a good book, but it's hard to wrap my mind around what life was really like in Nazi Germany. 
• Friday night I am supposed to help out with a fundraiser for Austin's Learning Center.  They do these fundraisers to help pay for supplies and for scholarships for families who can't afford tuition.  It's a spagetti dinner and I said I would come and help chop the salad and any other food prep they need. 
• Saturday I have two things going.  I have to work for a few hours, then we are helping out with our park rebuilding.  The town we live in got a bunch of grants to update the park, which was in horrible shape.  They have enough funding to install two new play features and they are having a community volunteer work day on Saturday. 

New Bed

We finally purchased Austin a new twin sized bed.  We went with a twin XL so he will be able to use if for a long time even if he ends up being tall.  He was so excited that when Dustin brought the matress in the living room he pushed it down on the floor and went and got his blankie to snuggle up on it and try it out.

He has done okay with it at night, he has been in it almost a week now and we have a had a couple of nights where he woke up multiple times, but most nights he has slept all the way through and had no issues.  He has remained in the bed at all times and waits for Dustin or I to come in for him, so that has been nice.

5QF

TGIF!!!  So I looked at the 5QF sneak peak last night and wasn't really interested in too many of the questions then, but when I read some of the other participants answers today I caved, it's just such a fun meme, and so addictive!

1. If you were free to just hop in the car and drive, where would you go? Or, if you could hop a plane and go anywhere, where?

I pretty much always want to go to Colorado- it's my home, I love it there, I can't think of too many things I dislike about it.  It's anywhere from a 6-10 hour drive depending on what part I am going to, so there you go!

For flying, that is more challenging.  This is about the time of year I went to Hawaii, and it was wonderful there, so maybe I would fly to Hawaii and lay on the beach for a week. 

2. What's your most recently read favorite book?

I haven't read a book in a while, I am a blog and mag reader, but I am currently reading The Book Thief for a book club that I am a part of.  I am about half way through it and it is a good, easy reader.  It's just incredibly sad because it is set in Nazi Germany, and hard to wrap my head around what it would have been like to have lived under those conditions.  It's a captivating story though, and I am enjoying it.

3. What's your favorite Spring Break memory?

Well, I mentioned that I went to Hawaii about this time of year, which happened to be the spring break of my senior year of high school.  My oldest brother took me for my graduation gift and it was a great trip.  I even got to meet country star Tracy Lawrence as he was on his honeymoon and at the same luau that we went to.

In collge I had two notable spring breaks.  One of them I went with an old friend from high school and her boyfriend and his two buddies to South Padre Island, Texas.  It was cool because my brother used to go there for his spring breaks and it was kind of a right of passage for me.  Instead of staying at a resort we borrowed my brothers pop-up camper and stayed at a campground, so it was pretty fun and inexpensive.  The other I went to Las Vegas with one of my BFFs.  It was a crazy trip, but a lot of fun too!

It's too hard to pick my absolute favorite out of those 3.

4. What do you put in your child's Easter basket? Or, for those w/o kids, what was put in your childhood basket?

Here is my Easter post from last year, and here is my post from 2010.  I put in a few toys and a little candy, since Austin was pretty young still.  We will probably do a bit more candy this year and we are talking about a basketball hoop for our backyard (not actually in the basket, LOL)since he is really into basketball right now and playing at the park involves us lifting him up to the height of the basket.  I will probably also do a new Veggie Tales video, some bubbles and a kite.

As a kid my basket was mostly candy and maybe one toy.  My sister is 15 years older than me and she would help fill my basket.  She liked to torment me and put Whoppers in my basket, and the good chocolate in hers so I would have to trade her since I hate malt balls.  I remember one year getting a Trivial Persuit game, but that is the only toy that stands out in my memory.

5. Do you get a summer haircut?

No, I don't really cycle my hair with the season.  My hair grows fast, so I usually let it grow out pretty long and then when I get tired of it I have it cut short, but it doesn't correspond to a season.  Twice I have donated my hair to Locks of Love and once to Beautiful Lengths.  It was short when I had Austin, but I think I will leave it long for when I have this baby.  Right now it is pretty long and about to the bottom of my shoulder blades. 

Introducing...

Our little baby GIRL!

Little arm and fingers

Tiny foot

Top of head and part of face

Spine and ribs

She had a great profile one, but I guess she forgot to hit the print button on it.  Everything looked good and she was actually only measuring at 18 weeks, so 8 days later than we thought before.  They did not change my due date though, so it is still August 12, but I won't be in a big hurry to schedule a repeat c-section if she doesn't come by then.

The technician said she was 112% sure that it is a girl.  She got multiple good looks down there and was very confident.  

Good guessing so far by Briana, Ryan, Misty, Marika, Brandi, Lisa, and Madeline!

The Big Day!

Tomorrow is finally our first ultrasound for this little one and I am so excited!  I hope little one cooperates so we find out who he/she is.

I have been SOOOOO busy the last week and a half, it has been insane.  Two weekends ago I went to a baby shower on Saturday, and we celebrated Dustin's birthday with a hike on Sunday, so I never really had a down day on the weekend. 

Then I worked that Monday through Wednesday on a special project at  work.  I usually have Mondays off to spend quality time with Austin and catch up on housework.  I would love to share about the project, but components of it are confidential so I can't.  It involved a bunch of hiking, which actually went pretty well considering I was 18 weeks at the time. 

Thursday I had to go to the big city to shop for a community event we hosted on Saturday.  It took all day to finish all the errands, so even though I planned to take Friday off I had to go in for a few hours to finish prepping for the Saturday event.  The event we call the Spring Celebration and it's designed to promote gardening and healthy living among the tribal members.  It's the seventh one we have hosted and we had a huge turn out relative to our community.  We had two other guest speakers, one from Pipe Spring National Monument who talked about their demonstration garden, and one from the local Master Gardener Program who talked about propagating seeds and gardening practices.  I gave a talk about World Water Day, which is this Thursday, March 22, and about how important water is for food production.  One of our tribal members gave out starts of her native plants and talked about how to plant them.  We were going to plant some flower beds in the afternoon, but the weather got cold and windy, so we decided to postpone it.  All in all it was a huge success.

I finally got a break after 6 days of work on Sunday and Monday.  I was so wiped out though, and it was all I could do to get the minimum household chores done. 

Today I was back at work and off to the big city again for a Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument interpretive planning meeting. 

This weekend will be busy once again as my brother is bringing his family of 6 and my Mom to visit during their spring break.  They are only planning to be here a couple of days before heading to my other brother's house in Phoenix, but we will have to get the house in shape on Saturday before they arrive that night. 

A new shade of blue

A year and a half ago we decided to paint our house from faded yellow to a blue.  We didn't spend a lot of time picking the color and found that Dustin had a darker blue in mind while I had a lighter blue.  We ended up with this color, Bluer Than Blue:

This was taken before we touched up the white trim part, but you get the idea about the blue color.

It ended up being much brighter than we anticipated and we finally decided that it's too much, especially in light of the fact that we are trying to sell our house and haven't had anyone look at it yet.  Not that any real estate has moved in our town in months, but we want to have the best shot at any perspective buyers.  So we decided to repaint the house and this time around are carefully choosing the shade.  We still like the idea of blue, but want to go with a much more neutral shade.  We picked up this Palisade Blue the last time we were in the big city.  We painted the front of the shed and are still wrapping our minds around how much we like the color.  We have our ultrasound in the big city on Wednesday, and will likely go buy the rest of the paint for the house. 

So what do you think, is this a good shade of blue?  Would you buy it if you were house shopping, or would you go with a different color?

You know your the parent of a toddler when...

In church this morning the first reading was the story of Jesse presenting his son David to Samuel.  All I could think at the time was picturing them as a grape, gourd and asparagus from Austin's Veggie Tales story David and Goliath from the "God Made You Special" video.  In the video Dave is played by Junior Asparagus and Jesse is Pa Grape.  Goliath is a giant pickle.  I guess it not only makes the bible stories tangible for kids, but their Mommy's too!

Birthday hike

Last Sunday we went on a hike to commemorate Dustin’s birthday.  We went to a place that I went to for work a few years ago that I have been wanting to take Dustin to ever since.  It’s called Nampaweap and it’s in the Grand Canyon Parashant National Monument.  After a short hike you come to a boulder covered hill and on the rocks are ancient Indian peckings.  Here are some photos.

Baby shower fun!

This past Saturday I went to a baby shower for the lady who is my husbands Technician.  In attandance was a bunch of their coworkers and the wives of other coworkers, mostly my group of friends here, so it was a lot of fun.  I saw a couple months ago that she put these on her registry:

So I of course thought "I can make those," so I went through my pattern books and whipped these out in the car on my Colorado trip last month.  Not the same pattern, but they will do.

Since the pattern was a complete set for a Christening, I went ahead and made the matching bonnet as well.

I was asked to bring a plate of cookies so I went with brownies, cream cheese mints and sugar cookies with sayings.  I do okay with cake decorating, but it is hard to write such tiny letters on cookies, so they looked a little sloppier than I was happy about.

They really didn't need cookies anyway as they had cake, cupcakes and a philo dough dessert, it was yummy!

Here is the proud Mama-to-be!

5QF

1. Are you looking forward to the time change this weekend?

Heck no, and I don't even change time.  I live in Arizona so we do things right and keep our time the same year round.  But then it's the challenge of figuring out how everyone else changes, and we live on the border with Utah and near to Nevada, and both of them honor DST, so we are always having to consider which time zone we are traveling too.

2. Are you getting the new iPad/would you want a iPad?

No, I am not planning to get a new iPad.  Those things are so skinny and flimsy looking.  My three year old would get ahold of it and it would be demolished in less than 5 minutes.  If I was going to invest $500 I would get a new desktop computer that has the firewire port I need so I could upload video from my video camera.  I didn't know what it took when we bought this laptop, and it does not have the right port, so all of my video of Austin is still captured on the DV tapes.

3. If money was not a problem, what is the one thing you would splurge on?

I would buy a ranch.  It would be nice to know where we will end up when my husband does get a new job, but if I knew that I would buy us a big 200+ acre spread with a big ranch house and barn. 

4. How did you and the Mr. (or Mrs.) meet?

We met in college, although we went to different rival universities.  I was in an ag sorority and he was in an ag fraternity.  One of the girls in my sorority's real life brother was in Dustin's fraternity and he would bring down a group of his friends every so often to go out and eat and then party with his sister's friends since the city we lived in was considerably bigger with more available to do.  We hung out a few times in a mutual group of friends and then one night at a party had a personal conversation and hit it off from there.

5. Summer is right around the corner. Bikini or one-piece?

That is an interesting question considering I am currently almost 18 weeks pregnant.  When I was pregnant before the seasons were opposite, so I barely had a bump during summer, but this summer I will be confused as a whale at the pool.  I currently have a two-piece tankini, and I think it will probably fit over my growing belly, but I might have to get a special maternity suit and if I do I will probably get a one piece.

A unique offer

So last night I log into Facebook and am checking all my updates and I had a notification that I had several comments on where I put the link for my baby pool.  A lot of the comments were "oh, I didn't know you were pregnant" comments, because I never came out and made a "We're pregnant" update, I just subtly changed my profile picture to Austin wearing the "#1 big brother" shirt that I posted here when I announced my pregnancy.  I thought it would be fun to see who really looks at my FB stuff without putting one of those copy and paste "who reads my profile" updates.

One of the comments came from a cousin of mine on my Mom's side of the family.  I am not really close to my Mom's side of the family.  It's a long story, but if you are up for the read here it goes.  (You can skip down to "The Offer" section if you don't want all the family drama)

Family History

My Mom's Dad was married to a woman and they had three boys.  It was a happy and wonderful marriage from what I heard, and she was perfect.  Then she died from tuberculosis when the boys were fairly young.  My Grandfather vowed he wasn't going to marry again for 10 years out of respect for her. 

Then he married my Grandmother.  She was the oldest of a bunch of siblings, I think 11, so she mostly stayed home and helped raise the younger ones.  She was in her 30's when they did marry, and to some degree it was sort of an arranged marriage as she was Catholic and her family wanted her to marry a Catholic.  They had my Mom and a few years later got pregnant again.  They did not know though that they had mismatched Rh factor and my Mom's brother was still born, or at least only lived a few hours.  On top of having lost a baby and trying to make the step-parenting thing work, their relationship was rocky as my Grandmother wasn't the cook or housekeeper that the first wife was.

Her half brothers were almost adults when she came along and were off to their own lives.  The eldest brother was killed during World War II, and the other two also fought in the war, but returned home to marry and have their own lives.  When my Mom was about 16 her Mother became ill with breast cancer and was given a year to live.  She ended up living three years after that, but in the mean time my Grandfather passed suddenly from a heart attack.  My Mom lost both of her parents by age 19.  She also was married at this point, and of course her brothers didn't really approve of my Dad, so they always had a rocky relationship, but did remain in contact.   I can remember visiting my Uncle Paul pretty much everytime we would visit Iowa.  I remember going to Uncle Ralph's a few times, but it was more of a challenge since he lived in Illinois. 

Uncle Paul and his wife had two sons.  One married a woman who had a child previously and they just raised her and never had their own biological children.  The other son married and they had a baby girl, but she had some genetic disease that caused her to lose all control of her muscles and she passed before age two.  They were told they had a 75% chance of any more children having the same disorder, so they split up and it really messed up my cousins mental health.  So no grandchildren in that branch.  Both Uncle Paul and Aunt Doris have passed away now.

Uncle Ralph and his wife Cecelia (Aunt Ceese) had five kids.  By the time I was old enough to remember things, they were all grown and out of the house, so even though we visited Aunt Ceese and Uncle Ralph I did not really get to know their kids very well.  One of their daughters lives in Illinois and I remember seeing her a few times growing up.  She has two kids who are a few years older than me.  As an older teenager my one brother moved to Phoenix and two of their other kids lived there at the time so we connected with them on a few visits and I got to know them a little bit.  I met the final two siblings who live in Florida when we went to my Aunt and Uncles 50th anniversary celebration.  I like them all and we got along well, I just don't really know them well. 

The Offer

So the two kids of Uncle Ralph's that lived in Phoenix never had children.  The two in Florida have kids who are teenager-ish.  The the cousin who made the offer has one daughter who has a couple of kids, but is apparently done, and a son who is married, but appears to be in no rush, or not planning on having children.  So since Margaret saw that I was expecting and there aren't any immediate babies expected in their branch, and they are in the process of moving Aunt Ceese to an assisted living home and consolidating her stuff, she offered that they have an old wooden rocking horse that was my Grandfathers, and that I could use it for the time being.  She also said that she would assume that my Mom probably played on it as a child and all the rest of the family. 

I am not entirely sure why, but the offer was just shocking to me.  I don't have anything from that side of the family.  When my Grandparents passed my Mom was a teenager so she got very little of their belongings, the brothers kept most of the sentimental family heirlooms.  I guess I just feel so disconnected from them that it just seems odd to be reconnected to that aspect of my ancestry.  On one hand it might be interesting, but on the other I don't know to what level I want to take on that responsibility.  You know, if I took it and it got broken or something.  

I definitely want to talk it over with my Mom and see what she thinks, at this point I'm leaning towards turning down the offer, but I just don't know, a little piece of me feels like I should try to connect and let my kids have that little piece of their ancestry.  Also to consider is that we already have a really cool wooden rocking horse that was a baby shower gift, plus this thing is in Illinois, so we would have to ship it, so who knows how much that would cost. 

Tuesday ramble

Oh I had the best intentions of blogging over the weekend, but it just didn't happen.  Here it is Tuesday and I'm back at work.  Here are some thoughts over my lunch break.

• Thank you to everyone who has made a guess on my baby pool so far.  It is fun to think about and I can't wait to find out who this little person is.  With Austin I had an ultrasound at 8 weeks, and although we didn't find out the sex then it just connected me to him.  Since I still haven't had and ultrasound and been able to "see" this baby I am having the hardest time wrapping my mind around him/her. 
• We had a great weekend, pretty laid back.  Saturday was pretty chilly out so other than grocery shopping we stayed inside and played a lot of Guitar Hero.  Sunday we went to church and in the afternoon went out in the yard for a bit after Austin's nap.  Yesterday Austin and I vegged out in the morning watching movies, I did not sleep well that night since my hips were hurting, so I snoozed while snuggling on the couch with him.  We spent a lot of the afternoon out in the backyard as the temperature got over 70. 
• We decided that the color of our house is too bold, so we are in the process of repainting in hopes that it will sell better.  While we played outside on Sunday, Dustin primed our shed then painted the front of it the new shade of blue, we purchased a small can for now, so we can try it out for a couple of weeks before making the final decision to do the whole house that color.  So far we have decided that it is not the color we would want for forever, but it is a much more palatable color overall.
• I got a bit of spring fever on Sunday since the weather was so nice, and I pruned our fruit trees while Austin played in the sandbox.  I have been bad about it since Austin came along, and the biggest one was in desperate need of the trim.  Hopefully I didn't cut too much all at once!
• I was invited to be a part of a book club.  One of Dustin's coworkers wanted to start it up and she picked out and bought several copies of the first book.  I am not much of a book reader, but said if she had an extra copy I would take it and give it a try.  The book is called The Book Thief.  I have until the end of March to read it, so hopefully I am into it and am able to complete it. 
• I placed an online order with Babies R Us for a baby shower that I am attending this weekend.  They were running a promotion that if you ordered $100 worth of stuff you would get free shipping, so to fill that out I ordered three HALO sleepsacks for our new sunshine.  It was fun to get that first thing for the baby.  I went with two cream colored sacks, one in fleece and one in cotton, and another fleece one that is green with teddy bears.  The cream colored sacks both come with the swaddling panel.  They are so tiny and adorable. 

Blasts from the past

Aren't digital photos great? If you have read my blog for any amount of time you probably know that I am a hobby photographer, and love to take pictures. I am of course now in the digital age and have been since about 2004, with a few years of digital and 35mm overlap until about 2006. But before that, like most people, I took 35mm photos. Remember, I LIKE TO TAKE PICTURES, so this amounted to a huge box in my office closet of photos and 35mm negatives. Sometimes I was good at storing photos in an album, but mostly not, so the photos got thrown into the box.


Now that Burger Baby #2 is on the way we need the office to be Austin's room, so we can make his current room that is next to our bedroom, the nursery again. I have been slowly going through and clearing stuff out, including the photo box. Last year for work I bought a slide/negative scanner for a project and started digitally scanning my old negatives during my lunch break. I got through a bunch, but still had a bunch to go. Since I am working on that room the photo box had to go so I have been putting all the photos in a plastic tote to go in the shed and sorted off the negatives to scan on my lunch hour. Once I scan them the are getting shredded forever, I really see no need to hang on to them and have to move them around, especially when film developing places are becoming harder and harder to find.



This was the week of our wedding.  We live in AZ, but got married in my home state of CO so we went there the week of the wedding to do all the last minute stuff.  We took one day to get away from all the wedding nonsense and went to Rocky Mountain National Park to clear our heads.  It's Dustin, my Mom, and my Sister.



Me at Lake Mead during one of my college spring breaks.





Dustin and I on the road between Santa Fe and Taos, probably summer of 2003 or 2004.  Oh how I miss my pre-baby and college figure self!



In Santa Fe at one of the museums.



At my first Alpha Gamma Rho Pink Rose Formal.



Some of the ladies at the Pink Rose Formal, you may recognize the two ladies on the left, it's me and then Brandi from Life of a New Mommy.





At the tribal employee Christmas Party.










At a family reunion in 2004, man do I miss my Dad!

 

My branch of the family that attended the reunion in 2004.





At our wedding rehersal dinner.





In my college dorm room, yes it was the 90's, forgive the hair.



See, bangs on the poofy side were in then, at least for some still!