Stephan LOVES Christmas. He sees the displays go up in stores and gets excited. We were walking through Kohl's a couple weeks ago and he saw their Christmas area and exclaims, "mommie, it's Christmastime here!"
Friday night I was out with a friend and we stopped in Target (the one near me is attached to the mall), I found a small tree that was $9. Didn't quite want to get it right then, but I knew that Stephan would probably love to have "Christmastime" in his room. I talked to Andy about it and we both agreed the tree was worth it. So after nap I said I wanted to go to the store and get a surprise for Stephan. He of course wanted to know what it was. When I told him I wanted to get him a tree for his room he didn't seem super enthused about the idea.
However, as he realized what I was saying he got a little more excited about things. When I showed him the little tree he got very happy and decided he wanted colored lights. We usually have white ones on the big tree, and I figured the colored ones wouldn't be as bright to leave on at night when he's going to sleep. We found the tree, the lights, a mini tree skirt and a few ornaments.
When we got home, the first thing we had to do was set up the tree, and put on some Christmas music. Stephan's a riot.
Everything always seems so much livelier through the eyes of a toddler.
I haven't done this in FOREVER, so here's a few at least.
- Thankful that our ultrasound went well yesterday. From what the tech said, baby is healthy. We enjoyed seeing the baby and trying to pick out all the organs she was showing us. The heart is by far the coolest.
- Thankful Andy made it safely to work. He had to go out in this awful snowy mess and not only made it all the way to work but it only took him an extra 15-20 minutes, which isn't bad when it's almost a 60 mile trip!
- Thankful Stephan seems to be napping. Most of the sledders out there aren't being too loud and I turned his music up pretty loud and have the wash going, just hoping he's able to get a good two hours before something wakes him up!
- Thankful for my new phone. While I've yet to find a shopping list program I'm in love with, and am still using my old Palm with HandyShopper, I like everything else about it, well everything except that the battery life isn't the greatest, but I'm working on figuring out how to make it last longer.
- Thankful I've not had to worry about work. We are on fall break, so now bonus snow days, but at least I don't have to worry about whether or not they are going to close my school for the day.
That's pretty much it. I've got to get some lesson planning done. Sunday I'm teaching our class. Going through the book of Esther. I worked on it some yesterday, but need to get my thoughts better organized still.
We started the day with lots of snow and of course, a SNOW DAY! Stephan's preschool was canceled. I already didn't have work as we are on fall break. Andy stayed home instead of trekking to Boulder.
While bummed that I was not able to spend time with my friend Natalie this morning or April this evening, and Stephan missed his show'n'tell that we'd prepped for last night, we did end up having a pretty good day.
This afternoon we all bundled up and braved the nasty drive to McDonald's for lunch. The main roads were not great, but not horrid either. We were pretty happy since our big 20wk ultrasound was this afternoon and we knew we'd not only get there, but also not have to leave super early.
Here are our pics of baby Stone #2. The first is my favorite, followed by the others she printed for us.
After we were done, we went upstairs to get flu shots. I'm still debating on the H1N1 shot, but it's not out yet anyway so we just got the seasonal shot. Stephan gets the mist up his nose and did AWESOME! He didn't even flinch. I was so impressed with him, such a big boy!
I got a call from my friend cancelling our girls night dinner plans, so we all headed over to Noodles and snagged some dinner. We'd gotten a "brave the weather and get a free bowl" coupon and decided to take them up on that. I got a couple pics of Stephan eating and then one of the outdoor patio furniture covered in snow.
My new phone ROCKS! I'm super glad I waited and that T-Mobile shipped it to me earlier than the "release" date. Andy ordered it on Monday and it came today. I've never had technology this new before, which is kinda fun. I'm a bit overwhelmed setting it all up, but that's life with something new. The one thing that sucks is I've no idea how long till I can find a case and haven't a clue if you can even have a case with the slide out keypad. Maybe, like all my other gadgets, I'll just have to make something with my scraps of flannel.
Much of the time I feel like we are in our routine and doing our best to keep plugging away. We have our big ultrasound next week and are all looking forward to that. We might all get the flu shot while we are there as well, though I'm still debating. So far things with the pregnancy seem to be going well. I'm feeling baby move pretty regularly, and Andy's even felt the baby kick too, something he was never patient enough to feel with Stephan. The other day in the car Stephan asked me if he could hold the baby when she came out of my tummy. He's such a sweetie. He thought he could hold the baby in the car, and I assured him we have a special seat for baby.
Last weekend on my birthday Andy took me up to Estes (we dropped Stephan off at nana & papa's) and we enjoyed a nice evening watching All About Steve, which ended up being a great movie. Saturday morning we had a yummy breakfast at The Egg & I and after checking out of the hotel we wandered around downtown Estes for a couple hours before we ate an awesome pizza lunch at Bob & Tony's and drove back to Loveland to do some more shopping and pick up Stephan.
The first "big" thing I figured out how to do in Photoshop is stitching photos together into a panorama. With no clue where to start, I ended up searching the web and finding a step-by-step process. When I started that I noticed that when you create a new file in Photoshop, there are these "Photomerge" options, one being panorama. Um. Yeah. Can you say easy? Here's my Estes pano:
Stitching photos together is a great thing when it comes to scenery, so I'm glad to have found a simple way to make that happen. I think as I figure it all out, I'm going to love Photoshop as much as my sister.
I very much enjoyed playing with my GPS on the trip, and that my mom was able to order it with her Amazon prime so it came in time. Also great that Amazon sold the GPS for $100 cheaper than just about anywhere.
More birthday deals came in the form of a few dinners out and I was able to use the gift card from my in-laws to get a chain for my necklace pendant. I don't know if I ever blogged about it, but one day a few weeks ago when I was picking Stephan up from school I noticed I had a chain, but no pendant. Freaked me out since it's the necklace Andy & Stephan had gotten me for Mother's Day. I freaked, figuring it could be anywhere, but then, as I was leaving the school with Stephan looked down and saw my pendant on the floor. I decided not to wear it again until I got a new chain! Thankfully, I was able to find a chain with the right length at Kohl's and it was on sale on top of our coupon and my gift card paid for just about the whole necklace.
My parents both sent me some money and pooling that, I was able to order Photoshop. I've been wanting a new photo program and HP sent a deal for $20 off after we got our new printer. After ordering, Adobe gave me a rebate for another $20 since I downloaded it, another added bonus! While I have no clue where to start with the program, in time I'll figure things out. Next week is fall break, so I should at least have some time then.
Today we are stuck waiting around the house for UPS. While I sincerely loathe having to wait around for them ALL DAY, I'm very excited to be getting my new phone, so aside from being a little impatient, I'm dealing with it. Yet another new thing for me to have to figure out, but as long as I can find a solid replacement for my beloved HandyShopper program on my Palm, I think I'll be one happy camper. I've got one I'm going to try and start with that I've read some positive reviews on, we'll see if I like it or need to go on a hunt for another one. I'm pretty much over carrying around my PDA for just the shopping list program.
The last thing I just want to whine about a little is work related. We have to create two objectives every year and this year my department is mandating one, the other we do with our school. I feel overwhelmed most of the time with what I have on my plate right now and don't want to be adding any more to that, I think I should be able to create these objectives around what I am already doing. On top of that I'm out in March when the baby is born. I'm feeling pretty stressed because they are saying we need to do these with 30 students and I just can't add that kind of additional work to my already loaded plate. No idea how to finagle my way out of this, but I'm sure going to try. The one thing that helps is knowing that it's not tied to my pay, like it is with some people. That would probably make me really freak out. At least the one at school I can work around the student amount. At least I think I can, we'll see.
Of course, the authors of the book dislike the sugar and other aspects of Nutella and suggested Dark Chocolate Dreams as a better substitute. Since I enjoy a sandwich with PB and Nutella every now and then, sometimes with slices of banana, I decided to give the pricey alternative a chance.
I spread some on a few graham crackers today to try it out, and am sold. I'll buy this stuff again for sure.
Just thought I'd spread the word :) Every [pregnant] woman needs to know about this stuff!
I've spent the whole afternoon uploading pictures to Flickr. I looked through all of our pictures from August and September, cropped and edited the ones I liked and then uploaded them and just now finished captioning most of them. Phew. I should never wait two months to do that! If you'd like to see what we've been up to the last couple months, check the pictures out here.
I'm going to go play with Stephan. He's been a little neglected since he woke from nap.
Oh, here's one picture I'm proud of. I took several and stitched them together to make this awesome panorama of my favorite view of Denver and the mountains.
Every once in a while I think about how I've not posted anything in a while, but I never get around to doing anything about it. Probably because there's nothing too exciting going on. However, it's been a couple weeks, so I figure it's about time to update this :)
After our camping trip, we focused on getting back into our routine. Then next Saturday Andy took Stephan to the "Day Out with Thomas" and they both had a blast. I enjoyed sleeping in and a very relaxing and productive morning!
We've also had some fun with car repairs in the last month and a half or so. Why is it that with cars everything needs to be repaired at once? Transmission fluid, brakes, the battery. Yikes. Hopefully, nothing else with my car for a while!
On Thursday after work I'm trying to get to the store and do our grocery shopping for the week. I've had a few trips with Stephan on Friday mornings that were not enjoyable in any way and am trying to avoid taking him with me if at all possible, especially when the trip is longer and there's more opportunity for toddler boredom!
Christmas came early and we have been enjoying Rock Band Beatles for a little over a week now. The game is all Stephan can talk about some days and we have had some interesting moments dealing with his excitement for the game and his lack of naps and general crankiness as a result. I've started telling him that if he doesn't talk about anything else, we'll just put the game away for a month! We do have a blast playing and singing together though.
For the most part, life goes on as usual. Work has been busy this year for me and I'm still getting used to my new school and the new responsibilities at my other school. Hopefully I'll be well into the swing of things before March!
Right now, I'm looking forward to heading to Breck at the beginning of October and having fun in Estes on my birthday. Trying to figure out what to put on my birthday wish list since the one thing I had wanted, I'm not so sure I want anymore.
So far, the baby front is going fine. I'm perpetually stuffed up and thus my ear is always popping, sleeping is getting to be uncomfortable, but March will be here before I know it with a whole new adventure. We have another appointment in two weeks, will be interesting to see if Stephan gets us another ultrasound. I doubt it, since the 20wk one is coming up at the end of October, but who knows. He's pretty cute and persuasive!
Taking a nod from something I do on my other blog ... here are the things I loved about our camping trip, and the few things that I very much did not.
Loving
- Time spent with friends. We go to know each other better and really enjoyed hanging out without a bunch of other distractions.
- Good food. Like Natalie says, everything tastes better when you are camping!
- Beautiful scenery. God created a wonderful world for us to enjoy, and we were up in the mountains with gorgeous views, even at night due to the mostly full moon and stars.
- While we had some tense moments, Stephan really did a great job
listening to us and staying close by. He's getting to be such a big boy.
- I remembered my Tylenol PM and took my iPod, so I got some sleep (though it had to be in the car).
- A willing hubby. This is probably the biggest thing for me. I know he didn't really want to go, but was willing to give it a try because I was excited about it.
Loathing
- This is sort of both I guess. We were very thankful to have some borrowed gear, a tent and an air mattress and sleeping bag ... however, somehow, wires got crossed and we'd thought it was an 8-person tent and a queen sized air mattress. When we got the tent up we realized it was significantly smaller but workable. The mattress though was a twin. No way Andy and I were going to fit on that sucker. The sleeping bag wasn't as big as we'd thought either, and we didn't bring any extra blankets or our other camprest mat.
- Our friends were awesome and let us use their kids' queen mattress, and they used our twin, but we didn't have extra blankets or another sleeping bag, and it was super cold (and that mattress kept leaking air). We were freezing. Stephan was ok, because he had his own bag and camprest. Our friends did come by and give us a few extra blankets they had in their car and suggested we sleep with hoodies. That's when I remembered I had my hooded down jacket in the car!
- Stephan woke up a few times screaming and I ended up sleeping in the car while he snuggled daddie. At least we all got a few hours of sleep.
- You pee A LOT while preggo and it's not so fun to have to go squat in the woods or walk to a smelly outdoor potty. Really unfun when it's nighttime and cold and you want to be sleeping.
- Stephan woke up just before 6am, not getting much sleep.
- My car died while we were up there. Not entirely unexpected, but we didn't have time to replace the battery before we left. At least we have cables in the back of the car!
While my loathe list seems quite long, we really did have a lot of
fun and enjoyed the outdoors. We also learned some about what we want
in our own equipment next time we go camping, and what we'd like in a
campsite/ground. Really, the only thing we thought sucked was the whole
going-to-sleep-nighttime part, the rest was great. Andy has even said
that he'd be willing to go again, which is HUGE! Next time, we'll do
the sleeping thing a bit differently (and remember lots of extra
blankets just in case), but at least this time we learned how to do
things better next time! You live, you learn right?
I'm a bit bummed we weren't able to stay up there tonight too, but I did not want a repeat of the night before and knew I needed my rest, we all do. I also feel bad about leaving our friends up there though they are seasoned campers and will enjoy the rest of their time up there.
One last thing. Last night, we were chilly and tired and crabby, but
I prayed for us and then Stephan prayed after me ... "Dear God, thank
you for camping ... Amen." That was so sweet. He really had fun, and
did not want to come home. He's still asking where our friends are
knowing we left them up there.
We'll just have to go again, though probably not for a year or two with the baby coming.
We had another appointment today. Stephan got the Dr. to pull in the "machine" and do another ultrasound. She followed me through the pregnancy with him, but had yet to meet him since she was never in when we came if for checkups and such. I posted the official announcement over on my other blog. Maybe when we get back from camping I'll get the pictures we got today scanned and up, but I can't really see more than just a little baby blob in the ones we got today.
Enjoy your weekend!! I certainly hope I do.
