Friday, January 25, 2008

This is your brain.







This is your brain when you are moving, and pregnant.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

One more thing before dinner:
Last night, Chris and I were chatting and I mentioned how the last move was kind of stressful and how at the end I was crying and he was frustrated. This was at 1AM the night before we moved as we were trying to make the new place sanitary and move one very unsanitary fridge into a spider-ridden basement...ugh. Anyway, so I was saying how I wanted to keep things as stress-free as possible this time and hopefully this move would be marriage strengthening.

Twenty minutes later, I absently turn my ring with my thumb, like I always do...but it doesn't feel like it always does. I look down and see my engagement ring, but no wedding ring! I LOST MY WEDDING RING!!! Oh no. Pit in the stomach. Definitely NOT marriage building.

To make it short, because Anna is saying "Wan wan wan wan" and I assume it's dinner she wants, after going through everything I had touched in the past hour, including Anna's wet diaper out of the trash (thank you Chris), I found it at the bottom of a box I had packed. (I had a feeling it was in there because that was the only box with packing peanuts which make a big mess) But whew!


More snow! The roads are gross, I cancelled tutoring, we are hibernating this evening, and packing.




As many of you know, we are moving. On Monday a company in MD made Chris an offer we couldn't refuse. 'Think of the family' a husky voice said. So we accepted that and the whirlwind began. The first phase was brainstorming...we did that for a day and a half and decided that Chris will make the almost 2hr each way commute for next week and then Saturday we will move everything down to MD. Saturday is nine days from today, did you know? !!!! Well it is, and seconds are flying by at an alarming rate. Fortunately we moved 8 months ago and the house hasn't really had opportunity to disorganize. There are lots of things that have not even been touched since they came out of the box last time. Makes me wonder how much stuff I really could do without...hmm. I'll ponder that when I have the time.
So, we started packing boxes Tuesday night. We have a few more nonessential things to go still, but most of what is left will need to be packed the day before we move. We are packing machines I tell you. Frantic packing machines at that.
So where are we moving to? Well, the state of Maryland. The east part. Ummm, probably near Chris' work. Miss Trighe and Hughe Gnoes are our neighbors. Yes that's right, we don't know. Thankfully, Chris' parents are in the same area and we can stay with them as we find a place to live.
It is crazy how quickly things are happening. And speaking of chickens with their heads cut off, I need to get dinner on the table.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Okay okay, for those of you who hate political posts I owe you one. And this is a pretty good one I think...


It was snowing pretty heavily for about an hour today and Anna just had to get outside.

So dad took advantage of the photo op.
I tried to teach her to stick her tongue out, but it didn't happen. We did work on saying "snow" though. Since she mastered "no" about 3 months ago, I figured that putting an "s" in front wouldn't be too difficult. Well I think I got something like an "sn" once or twice. No vowels, but we'll get there. I mean Einstein didn't conquer relativity in one day.

She did have fun walking around the driveway for a while. She particularly enjoyed facing the snow so that it would blow into her face. After a while though she wanted to just be held. Here is the turning point...

So now daddy just had to hold her so she could enjoy the snow. And who got their way when daddy got cold and wanted to come inside? That's right the 16-month-old. So we stayed outside a while longer, but finally dad had enough.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Deep Thoughts on Decision 2008:

The Democrats are all communists. They want to redistribute wealth and expand the federal government's power to "give" us healthcare. Most people (Rs and Ds) seem to have a low level of trust when comes to government. Why in the world would anyone trust them to administer our healthcare?
They also want to tax the big bad oil companies. Last I checked it wasn't the oil companies who didn't want to drill for oil within these great 50 states. Instead it's the EPA who won't let them drill or build new refineries.

One question: Hillary says she has 35 years of experience. Can anybody out there think of ONE thing she actually accomplished in those "35 years"?

The Republicans aren't much better. They are all talk. At least Ron Paul has the right ideology. The only problem with him is that I haven't heard him once detail a single plan of how he would actually implement his ideology. The rest of them talk about how they are just like Ronald Reagan when really, none of them are. I don't get it, if the Rs know that Reagan was the best conservative President possibly in history why do they refuse to actually practice his policies.

Secure our borders. Win the war on terror. Lower taxes (reform the entire system). And STOP SPENDING OUR MONEY! That's all we want.

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Okay, back to what I was saying. Christmas in Georgia.
Christmas dinner- boy did Anna pack it in. She sat on Dad's lap with her own plate to her left and Dad's plate to her right. She's a double fisted eater. She gained a pound in GA on turkey, stuffing and gravy.
It was nice to have a couple more days after Christmas to just hang out and enjoy being around my fam. Chris enjoyed the pool table, football on the flatscreen, kickball, rocket launching and video games, but the old wood Brio trainset my mom had out for the kids occupied most of his time actually.
We had some girly bonding time over foot treatments and trying Katie's bare mineral make-up. It was a good time and it flew by.
We came back to Baltimore Thursday night, stayed up way too late watching Band of Bro's with a couple of friends, and got up way too early with Anna. We spent Friday afternoon with Great Grandmom.



Out for a spin in Grandmom's walker.



That evening we had dinner with college friends and decided we were too tired to drive back to Philly. So we drove home Saturday, unpacked, had a restful Sunday and de-holidayed the house Monday. Everytime we come home from a trip, Anna goes straight to her room and looks through books for an hour. Maybe checking to make sure she still has the story straight? I guess she misses her books.

So, sew. I turned on the norse giant last night. It has a needle threader that blows my mind. I threaded the needle four times and made Chris come watch too. I tried out some of the different stitches and sewed a couple seams. I want to do a little project, but I don't know what. Any ideas?? I'm going to go to the library and check out their sewing books.
And in scrapbooking- it turns out my sister-in-law is an expert! How could we have never talked about it before? I'll be calling you little lady.


Oh, other news too. Monday we had another ultrasound. Our tech was a little inexperienced so the baby is still probably a girl. Chris and I are pretty sure that it's a girl. Names names? We have zero. Also, the US showed me to still have placenta previa. We'll go for another next month to see if there is any movement, but the studies I've read show there is about a 25% chance for it to move at this point. I'm steeling myself for the c-section and maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised if the placenta actually does move. The great news is the baby is happy and healthy and that's what we care about. I'll just wear my midriffs now...or not.

Well, in the midst of writing this blog, we were visited by our good friends Sam and Deb from GCC. They happened to be in the area so stopped by for milk and cookies and Scrabble. It was nice to see them and get pulverized in scrabble.

I think that's all for now.

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Happy 2008!
We had a very tame New Year's Eve- Anna was in bed by 8, Chris and I watched three episodes of Band of Brothers, went to bed, heard firecrackers before completely asleep and one of us mumbled happy new year. Envious? Unlikely.

So, we have been traveling about for the holidays. Before we left town, we had a little Christmas here one morning.
Anna had just woken up. She stares blankly:






Realization:





Stroller joy:



The day before we left PA, Chris parents, Uncle Bill and Aunt Gloria came up on their way out to Germany. Bill and Gloria gave Anna and baby doll and it was a huge hit. As she pulled back the tissue paper, she started squeeling "Bee-be! Bee-be!"



Friday night we drove to Baltimore. Saturday morning we flew into Atlanta and Anna met her cousin Will for the first time. Here they are in their pjs.



Out on the trampoline with Grandpa.






Woohoo static.



Then it was Christmas morning. Aunt Hannah was the first one up by far. Then Anna and a very reluctant mama. When all fourteen of us (that's the immediate family nowadays! My parents, siblings, two spouses and two babies) were awake we started opening presents. Anna and William were soon overwhelmed and started down the path of meltdown. Anna went down for a nap with a pile of presents still unopened. Here she is with her teaset.



This year, I definitely felt out of the young crowd. I hadn't really heard of half the gifts my siblings received. DS, docking station, PALM? I just said 'oh wow', and I remember my grandpa doing the same thing when I showed him my Sony discman 15 years ago. Guess I'm out of the technological loop.

In other news, I about to embark into the world of sewing. I am completely intimidated by my new machine. I haven't turned it on yet, even. She's a Viking and I'm too novice to unleash her without reading the instruction manual a couple more times. It's a new world to me and I'm excited.
Another new world- scrapbooking. Chris' mom gave me a gift cert to a scrapbooking site more than a month ago and I've spent hours and hours reading forums and trying to understand what all those tools are for. Those scrapbookers have their own lingo I tell you. Cuttlebug, wishwand, cricut, cropodile? I need to make a book up for Anna before this baby is born, and I want to get some of these fancy tools, but I don't know which things go with which and what all you have to buy to get started.
I'm finished working at Lands'End though so I have much more time to wrap my head around these new hobbies.

More to come...I lost my train of thought and I think I need lunch.