Not-so-easy dill pickles!

If only they tasted as good as they look!
About 6 weeks ago Rachael and I decided to give canning dill pickles a try. We had ample amount of cucumbers from the farm, so we gave it our best effort. We were quite proud of ourselves when it was all done. I did not have a blog at the time or I would have blogged about it, but Rachael blogged about it, even put our recipe on the blog. If only she knew then what she knows now, she wouldn't have done that! I hope nobody actually took our recipe and used it. It definitely needs some tweaking. I found the recipe online at work, and a coworker suggested we use apple cider vinegar instead of the white vinegar the recipe called for. She seemed like an experienced canner so I figured I should trust her. Turns out she was wrong, even though she still swears that's what she always uses.


After a couple weeks we opened a jar to try the pickles and sadly we were not impressed, they tasted a lot like apple cider vinegar and not much like dill and garlic. This was very disappointing seeing as we had canned 40 quarts! But we decided to give it more time, apparently you are supposed to let them sit for 6 weeks before eating. The other night at work I was talking about the pickles and telling the lady who suggested the vinegar change that I thought that was a mistake and she suggested I bring in a jar and let everyone try them and decide if they are any good, now that it's been 6 weeks. The verdict: Not that bad, can still taste the cider vinegar but not nearly as much and we didn't use enough dill and garlic so there isn't a strong flavor to them. But they are crispy! I don't think I'll have to throw them out, but they're certainly nothing to brag about. And next year we will probably try again, but will use white vinegar and add a lot more garlic and dill. Actually I think I will steal my brother-in-laws recipe, he made sun dill pickles and they turned out awesome.

The full moon is gone

Ahh, the full moon is gone and so is it's lingering effect on my job. I thought I'd escaped the chaos it brings since I didn't actually work on the night of the full moon (monday 8-27) but the chaos was not only present several days before the full moon, it also seemed to linger for a few days after. In addition to being unusually busy (in the normally not very busy ER that I work in), there was a noticeable increase in psychiatric and/or ignorant and/or drunk patients or a combination of all three. As annoying as these patients are, they always seem to make the night a bit more exciting, and I can usually find some humor in the situation. Not that it's right to laugh at these patients or make fun of them, but being able to find some humor in a bad situation is the only way to stay sane sometimes. The night started off with several of these crazy patients, but by 2am all was quiet in the ER and not a single patient for the rest of the night. Ahh, So Nice!

Nothing much to blog about

Okay, so I haven't got much to blog about the last few days. I've had 3 days off and I've done a whole lot of nothing. Well I take that back, I have been painting the bedroom in the basement, but that's really not that exciting, certainly not worth blogging about. I wrote a dumb blog last night about shopping just for the sake of blogging. But then decided to take it off my blog because no post is better than a dumb post right? Or is it? Since I've already written the blog post, I might as well let you read it:

I haven't been shopping all summer at the mall. Since I had to go into SB for other errands, I figured I'd stop by the mall and do a little shopping. I went into Macy's first, and they have all their new fall clothes out and everything was so cute, and I suddenly got the urge to buy some cute new clothes. Unfortunately none of those cute clothes were maternity. Macy's doesn't even have a maternity section. So I decided to wander down to Motherhood. My sudden urge to buy new clothes quickly vanished when there was nothing eye catching that I just had to have or even sort of wanted to have. Since that is the only store in the mall that sells maternity clothes and they only serve one type of customer, they really have no need to draw you in and try to impress you with cute clothes and fancy displays. If you need their clothes you will come in and buy whether you want to or not. Surprisingly though, I think I managed to find a good buy on a new pair of jeans (only $40, what a deal)! The best part is, they don't have that big stretchy belly panel. I have a pair with the big stretchy belly and the denim is stretch too, so every time I squat down they practically slide right off, there's nothing to hold them up. If you think low rise jeans are bad, you haven't tried maternity jeans that stretch everywhere.
Then I decided to go into VS and buy some new pajamas since that is the most comfortable thing to wear these days, and seeing as I sleep a lot, it seemed like a good idea. And it was, other than the sales lady who wouldn't leave me alone, telling me all about the Angels card I just had to have. I got a very cute PJ set. Drawstring is so great.
I also couldn't help but notice scrubs, pj's, and maternity clothes have a lot of similarities. They all have either elastic waistbands or drawstring, they are either plain or wild prints and colors (sort of like wallpaper) that you'd never think of wearing in public. And they're not very flattering. But it's not all bad, their best feature is that they're quite comfortable.

I ended my shopping adventure by going into Gap Kids and buying some cute new baby clothes. I guess if I'm not in the mood to shop for myself these days, I can start shopping for the baby.
Oh, and guess what I got in the mail today? My baby bedding! That was fast, they said 2-3 weeks, and I don't think it's even been one. I guess I better hurry up with the painting. I have the downstairs room almost painted. I have to do it in stages because there is only one small window in there and the fumes get pretty strong.

A year ago today

It's not very often that you remember what you were doing a year ago, but today is just one of those days for me. I have to give Todd credit for reminding me though or I probably wouldn't have remembered.

We moved into our house. After months and months of remodelling, this old farm house was finally ready to move into. And I must say it turned out awesome, I love it, everything is just the way I want it. I guess it should be since I picked everything out. Although, I am working on talking Todd into a garage, a deck and a pool. Maybe if I'm lucky I will get one of those this year. I'm pretty sure it wont be the pool, that is going to take a while to convince him we need.

As I'm sitting here blogging I am distracted by the noise of the sump pump in our basement that is running non stop, I can hear it turning on every few seconds. We have gotten so much rain lately. Look at these pictures of the very full river below our house.

This is a pepper field that flooded, the yellow areas are the plants that died from too much water.

With all this rain many people have had flooded basements, my sister Rachael being one of them. She has some impressive photos of her yard that became a little lake, check out her All Wet post to see them. Our neighbors recently got 2 feet of water in their basement.

I am happy to report that our basement is nice and dry. Of course that's because it flooded this past spring and we have since fixed the problem. Had to have the cement floor chiseled out and drainage pipes installed around the perimeter of the basement that then drain into the sump pump. An expensive job, but I'm sure glad we did it, otherwise I am quite certain we would again have a wet basement with all this rain. Now if the electricity goes out, like it did for so many people in our area, we could have a problem since the sump pump runs off electricity. Hopefully that doesn't happen. I think we have a few days of dry weather predicted, so hopefully things will dry out a bit.

Awake again

Another sleepless night for me! I'm going to blame this one on Todd. Tell me if you agree.
Phone conversations from earlier today:

5pm
Todd: I'm basically done working, where are you?
Me: Just dropping off Kristen and Kate from swimming.
Todd: Come home soon and we'll go eat.
Me: Okay.

7pm
Me: I've been home for a while, what are you doing? When are you coming home?
Todd: I'm done working, just talking with Ronnie in the shop. Are you in a hurry to go eat?
Me: No, but I might fall asleep if you take too long.
Todd: Okay, be there in a little bit.

9pm
Me: Are you coming home tonight or what?
Todd: Yeah, I'm still in the shop talking with Ronnie, Lisa and my dad. Do you have anything you can cook for dinner?
Me: leftovers. (lucky for him we were using the walkie talkie feature and I was on speaker phone or he might have gotten a different response from me)

Todd finally comes home at 9:30pm.
Me: thanks to you I will be up all night, I fell asleep for 2 hours waiting for you to come home.
Todd: I thought you said you wanted to take a nap.

10pm Dinner
Mrs. Grass chicken noodle soup. (No, I wasn't punishing him for coming home late, he requested it.)

11pm
To bed, surprisingly I fell asleep.

2am
Todd still sleeping. Me, wide awake! Ugh!



I can blame him for this one don't you think? If he had come home like he said he was, I wouldn't have fallen asleep and then would likely be sleeping now. I'm quite sure it's definitely his fault.

On a lighter note, did you happen to notice the counter on the top of my blog?

Only 100 days to go!

24 week pictures

I've decided to go ahead and post the 24 week pics I took a week and a half ago. If I look big, it's because my uterus is about the size of a soccer ball according to American Pregnancy. Which is why lately I have been hearing a lot of things along this line, "you looker bigger today than the last time I saw you!" sometimes the person saying this just saw me the day before! The secretary at my work calls me madam chubs, and the other day Todd called me 2 tons of fun. I think that one is a double whammy because he is commenting on my growing belly and on my mood. I probably deserved it though. Pregnancy tends to bring out a psycho chick side of me that Todd has never seen. I can easily get dramatically upset over very simple things. I read about this in Jenny McCarthy's very funny book Belly Laughs, but thought it was a bit of an exaggeration, it's really not. And since farming season tends to bring out the grumps in Todd, it can get sort of interesting around here sometimes.

Done!

Feels good to make a final decision. I ordered the something blue baby bedding tonight. The store has it in stock so hopefully I wont have to wait 4-6 weeks to get it like I originally thought I would. I guess I better get started on moving the guest room furniture out of the soon to be nursery, to the spare bedroom in the basement. Which means I need to get rid of the stuff I didn't know what to do with when we moved in a year ago, so I stuck it in an empty room in the basement. Anybody need some speakers? or movie posters?
I can't wait to start painting and decorating. I'll be sure and show some pictures when it's done.
By the way, the ebayer who was selling the PBK tractor bedding for a ridiculous amount of $$ actually got a buyer.

Rain Rain GO AWAY!!!!

I used to like the rain when I first met Todd, because that meant he didn't have to go to work, or so I thought. Plus I figured it was good for the plants, but he would always say It doesn't rain underneath the plastic! Now that I know a little bit more about farming I realize that rain is not necessarily good, especially in large quantities in a short amount of time, which is what we seem to be getting a lot of lately. So I hope the rain stops soon, and so does Brewster for that matter, he is afraid of thunder and lightening. He wont leave my side, wherever I go, he follows me.

This is what the sky looked like at 5pm tonight. You would never guess that just 30 minutes earlier I was laying out at my friend Sarah's pool with clear blue skies and the sun shinning. Rachael and her kids were there too, and she got a phone call from Derrick warning of the approaching storm. We both dismissed his warning because there wasn't even a hint of a storm by the looks of the sky, but we were getting hot, so luckily decided to leave the pool and head for home. I made a quick stop at the grocery store on my way home and by the time I left the store the wind was blowing hard and the sky looked like the picture here. People in the parking lot were running for cover, dirt and debris was flying everywhere. By the time I got to my street I was blocked by this fallen tree, followed by another one just past this one.

Last night it also stormed, I was at work and actually just walking towards the exit doors to check out the storm when the power went out and the ER went black. I was a bit freaked out by the complete blackness but the doctor remained calm and slowly started counting. He only got to 5 before the generator kicked in, but it felt like forever. Thankfully we only had 2 patients at the time, and they were not nearly as concerned by the power outage as I was. But every other time I have been in a hospital when the power goes out, the generator kicks in instantly so you only see the lights flicker. The 5 seconds of darkness made me think the generator might not kick in at all. Anyway, the power outage also messed up the A/C and the temperature started to rise and it got very hot and muggy in no time at all. And the fire alarm started malfunctioning, it kept going off. Thankfully it only took a couple hours to fix the problems and everything was back to normal.

Just when I thought I'd made up my mind

I have been looking at baby bedding for weeks now, trying to decide which one I should get. I finally made up my mind. Yes I even looked one more time last night at work and found nothing better than the something blue. So I was fully prepared to order it today. But then I got a call from my MIL, she and her cousin had found the pottery barn tractor bedding I had been eyeing since I first started looking at bedding options. Now what do I do? Well once I got a little more info the decision wasn't that hard to make? They found it on ebay, someone had purchased it at Pottery Barn Kids, and now that it is no longer for sale at the store, this ebayer is auctioning it (new in package) on ebay, with an asking price of $529, and a starting bid of $499. I think the store price was somewhere around $250-$300. Apparently this person has multiple similar items for sale. Must be a good way to make a living.

Even though my MIL and her cousin offered to buy it for me, which was very thoughtful, I just can't justify spending that much of anybody's money on baby bedding. Plus my sister Rachael has assured me that we can do something very cute with the something blue bedding I had picked out. And now that I think about it, if I were to splurge and spend $500 on baby bedding, I would probably get this sock monkey one from posh tots.

However, being the indecisive person that I am, I will probably wait until Aug 23, when the ebay auction ends, and see if the tractor bedding sells or not. If it doesn't maybe she will relist it for a more reasonable price.

Whoever would have thought picking out baby bedding could be so hard. Is this what it's going to be like when I pick out a car seat, a stroller, bottles, pacifiers? I mean really how do you ever decide which one is the best? Having a baby is getting very complicated.

I've finally decided! (I think)

I have decided on a baby bedding. I'm going with something blue. They were all voted for and something blue only won by 1 vote, but this weekend sort of sealed the deal for me. After 2 days of helping my sister Rachael paint and redecorate her kids playroom, she has inspired me to also do something creative and artsy in my baby's room. We (when I say we, I mean my sister Rachael and I, Todd has already made it clear he thinks were crazy) haven't come up with a for sure plan just yet, but we think the something blue bedding gives us the most options. Rachael's kids playroom should be done in a few days and I will show you pictures so you'll know more what I mean.

The bedding takes 6 weeks to ship, I think they must make it after you order it. So that gives me time to repaint the extra bedroom in the basement so I can move my guest room down there, and then I can start on the nursery. I had this great plan to tell Todd that I shouldn't paint since I'm pregnant, even though my doctors office already said it was okay. Todd wasn't there so he didn't know that, and it seems believable. But now that I have just helped my sister Rachael paint her playroom, I don't think I'm going to get out of painting my own rooms. Especially since my sister is just the sort of person qualified to state whether or not it's safe to paint when your pregnant. So much for that idea. I guess I better get started. Good thing I have lots of sisters, I'm going to need some help, especially on the artsy and creative parts.

Of course I do work tonight, so I should have some down time around 4am to surf the web. I may just do one more quick look to make sure there isn't something out there I missed. But I'm pretty sure I will be going with the something blue. I will post pictures of our progress once we get started. Thanks to everyone who voted on the bedding poll.

All good things must come to an end

And by that I mean summer. Even though it is my favorite time of year, I must admit the heat can start to get to you after a while. The last few days have been a little cooler and I must admit it makes me happy to know that fall is coming soon. It also means that farming season will soon be over. I'm starting to miss my husband just a bit. If the month of August continues the way it has, which I expect it will, Todd will have worked over 400 hours this month. Makes it sort of hard for me to complain about my 36 hour/3day a week job. Thankfully he's not much of a complainer, he seems to love his job despite the long hours.

Other things that remind me that summer is over is that my nieces and nephews are starting back to school on Monday. The fair is always the last week before school starts for them. Kristen and Jack both got invites to the fair with friends which left little Katya feeling left out. I decided since it was my day off that I would take her and my friend Michelle's daughter, Olivia to the fair. Since I can't exactly ride the rides myself, the girls are the same age and size so I figured they would enjoy riding the same rides together. However, Katya turned out to be just a little bit more of a daredevil than Olivia and only wanted to ride very fast rides. Most of the rides she wanted to ride she was too short for. But they compromised and sometimes Olivia was having a blast with the ride and Katya was bored, and other times Katya was screaming with delight and Olivia was holding on for dear life. Here's a few pictures.

Here both girls are enjoying the ride.....

until Katya decides it isn't exciting enough for her so she pretends to be asleep.

I got roped into going on this ride because after we waited in line for 15 minutes, the carnie worker informed us that the girls weren't tall enough to ride without an adult. I said I didn't have a wristband so I couldn't ride, he said it was okay he'd let me ride. I then told him I was pregnant, just in case he didn't notice, but he said it would be safe to ride even though I'm pregnant. So I went ahead and rode the ride. I don't think my baby liked it too much, it was the pirate ship ride that rocks way up one way, and then way back the other way.

I later got some flack from Olivia's dad for taking pregnancy advice from a carnie worker.

We then moved on to the animals, where again Katya was again fearless, I was surprised she didn't get bitten by one of the animals. She went right up and stuck her hands in to pet just about every animal. Olivia would wait to make sure Katya didn't get bit before she would stick her hand out there.

We met up with Jack at the fair so I could take him home, and he fell and hurt his knee. So we made a stop at the first aid tent on the way out.

All in all it was a fun day at the fair, I got my fill of it until next year. I was exhausted by the end of the day. I was so thankful I could drop them all of at their homes and go to my own quiet house and relax.

24 week update

Hey guess what? Time flies when your pregnant. Not really, but it does seem hard to believe that I'm already 6 months along. I don't have any pictures to post, I'll have to have my sister Francie take a few for me this weekend. She is such a good picture taker she might be able to work some magic for me. Here's a few milestones to remember for month 6.

• I can no longer wear any of my pre-pregnancy pants anymore. Except scrubs. I'm so glad I get to wear scrubs to work. As much as I love to shop, I haven't been that interested in buying clothes that are only wearable for a few months. It just seems like such a waste of money. So if you see me wearing the same things over and over, that's why.
• It's nearly impossible to sleep on my stomach, which is really annoying since that is my preferred position of sleep. I still try, but it's just not that comfortable anymore.
• My stomach has grown 7 inches in 6 months, and I've gained 15lbs. (4 pounds ahead of the schedule I set for myself when I first got pregnant) Oh well, I look at it the way I did the marathon I ran. I didn't care how long it took me, I just wanted to finish and say I ran the whole 26.2 miles. Then if I ever run another one I can try for a good finishing time.

Thanks to everyone who voted for the baby bedding options. Unfortunately there isn't much of a stand out winner. I'll leave it up for a bit longer, and maybe that will change. My MIL has a determined cousin who still thinks she can find the PBK tractor bedding that is no longer available. She's been calling around to all the PBK outlet stores and checking to see if they get any in. I'm doubtful she'll find it, but it would be my first choice if it were available, so keep looking Sandy, I'm holding out for a while to make a choice in case you find one.

I'm working on a list of names, maybe that will be my next poll. It's very hard to pick a boy name. We had both agreed on a girl name, well sort of, I liked Isabel and Todd liked Isabella. But for the most part we agreed. Now that we know it's a boy we can't seem to come up with something we both really like. Good thing we still have a few months to figure that one out.

So go ahead and vote

The other day, or rather middle of the night I listed all my baby bedding favorites in my Aug 12 post. I asked what your favorites are and only my sisters left me comments. Rachael suggested I put a poll on my blog so people can vote. I tried to figure out how to do this last night and I didn't think I managed to do it, but I noticed the poll on the sidebar this morning when I was adding a new post. Well, only 3 have voted so far, (probably my 3 sisters votes) so I moved the poll to the top of the blog so you can't miss it. Surely someone else is reading this blog. I put a counter on the website and today alone it got 27 hits. So if you don't want to leave me a comment, at least vote for your favorite bedding.

Did she really just say that?

Now that I am just about 24 weeks along I am definitely looking more and more pregnant these days. Enough that people who don't even know me are starting to make comments, particularly patients in the ER. Not that I mind, they are usually nice things, such as; Congratulations! Boy or Girl? How exciting! Is this your first? That sort of thing. Last night however I got a few comments that caught me off guard.
The first one was a lady who asked me when I was due, I said December. She said "Oh I know someone who is due in December. She's a lot smaller than you are though." She tells me this just as I am about to stick an IV in her arm. Not smart lady! I said gee thanks, that was really nice of you to say. Of course I said this with only a hint of sarcasm, since I was at work and all. She immediately realized what she said and tried to fix it by saying "Oh I didn't mean anything offensive by that, I just meant that she was very small before she got pregnant." Oh, that makes me feel so much better, thanks for clarifying! (Of course I didn't actually say that.)
So later on during the night, or actually early this morning a 16 year old girl comes in who was assaulted by her boyfriend. She asks me if I am expecting. I tell her yes. (Duh? at this point it's sort of a rhetorical question, esp after the other patient told me how big I was.) She then proceeds to tell me how hard it is going to be, way harder than I think, life will never be the same... etc..etc.... Wait is this 16 year old girl really giving me advice on having a baby? I soon find out that yes she is, and yes she is talking from experience, she had a baby when she was just 15 years old. Poor girl, no wonder it's hard, your still a kid yourself, and clearly not in a good living situation.
I always imagined when I was growing up that I'd be done having kids by the time I was 30. Of course back then 30 seemed really old! It doesn't so much anymore, thankfully. Anyway, here I am 30 and just now having my first baby. I guess I should count my blessings, it sure beats being 30 and having my first baby already in drivers ed.

3 a.m. Boredom

Oh another sleepless night. Here it is nearly 3am and I am wide awake. I'm sure I'll have no trouble making up for lost sleep during the day, but it would be so nice to be able to actually sleep during normal sleeping hours. This is just one of the perks to working night shift, must be why they pay me a whopping $2 extra per hour just because it's night shift. I didn't use to have this problem, it all started when I ran out of Benadryl, which coincidentally was right around the time I got pregnant, so I just never bought more. I wonder if my baby is adjusting to my schedule and will be up all night too once he's born. That will just be lovely because I wont be working then and will probably be able to sleep at night.
So what is there to do at 3am? Online shopping of course. Currently I've been looking at different options for the nursery. Originally I wanted to do a tractor theme since we live on a farm and all. It makes the most sense. I found a really cute bedding set from PBK but unfortunately it is no longer in stock. Bummer. A Jungle/Safari theme is another idea. PBK has a cute one too. Or just something blue. Gap has an animal set I like, and I just realized it's on sale, hmm maybe I should snatch it up. I guess if I change my mind I can always sell it on ebay for twice the price which is what people are doing with the PBK tractor bedding. Feel free to let me know which one you like the best, I can't decide.

I do think it's time to buy more Benadryl.

Minding my own business....

Working in the ER you hear some pretty good excuses for reasons why things happen. One of my favorites excuses is "nothing, I was just mindin' my own business." This comment is often said by someone who came in for some type of assault. Then when you ask who did it, you will likely get a response like "I don't know, just some dude that came out of nowhere". Well I could elaborate a bit on some more comments they would give me, but that would take me away from where I was headed with this post.

Yesterday while making a quick trip to the bank (minding my own business) I had a very near collision with a semi truck (some dude) that decided he didn't need to stop at the stop sign before turning onto the main road (that came out of nowhere). I had to quickly swerve into the oncoming traffic lane just to avoid hitting him. Luckily there was no one coming towards me in the other lane. I had brought my dog Brewster along for the ride and when I swerved the car sharply he flew from the passenger seat into my lap and in the process somehow knocked the car into neutral. I then couldn't drive and didn't know why but luckily the car was still moving so I steered off to the shoulder until I realized what had happened. The whole thing was very scary.

After telling Todd the story he was quick to ask me how fast I was driving and warn me that I need to be a more cautious driver now that I am carrying his baby. (but I wasn't doing anything wrong! I was just minding my own business when some dude out of nowhere got in my way!) I have to assume he was relieved that I was not hurt because he forgot to mention that part. But none the less he made a very good point, because usually I am talking on my cell phone, messing with my GPS or scrolling through my ipod not fully paying attention to my driving. I'm just very thankful that this time I was paying attention and managed to react quickly.

So the lesson learned from this whole experience is MIND EVERYBODY'S BUSINESS WHEN DRIVING! And put down the cell phone or whatever else your doing and pay attention, because others may not be. AND WATCH OUT FOR THAT DUDE!!

My adventures in babysitting

My sister Francie posted her own adventures in babysitting the other day on her blog, so here is my adventure!
Due to my sister Rachael's wet disaster in her basement yesterday I decided to help her out by taking the kids off her hands for the afternoon. So after only 4 short hours of sleep (I worked night shift the night before) I picked up the kids for what I thought would be a few hours. I considered taking them to the beach, but it was way too hot and humid to be at the beach without a cooler full of cold drinks and water. And honestly, I wasn't sure I could actually handle all 4 kids by myself at the beach. Luckily my friend Michelle offered up her pool for us to use. I was happy to accept and off we went. Michelle's daughter Olivia joined us at the pool where we all played for several hours. I wish I had brought my camera because the kids were doing cartwheels into the pool. It was very cute, and you'll never guess which one was the instigator. JACK, the boy who never does anything even remotely scary.

Eventually the kids tired of the pool and we were off to get ice cream, Ben had gotten picked up and taken home for a nap. We decided to bring Olivia along with us since they were all playing so nicely. I figured if you have 3 whats one more, Right? I normally don't let kids eat in my car if at all avoidable, but since none of them thought to wear shoes I had no choice. Thankfully they were all very careful and no ice cream got on the seats. (My threatening to never let them eat in my car again if they spilled must have worked.)

Then we were off to my house to play a little Nintendo Wii. Bowling and baseball was a big hit, tennis was not so fun for them. I did manage to snap a few pictures of them playing. Unfortunately, the pictures don't show the cute dance they would do when they bowled a strike!


Jack, Kirsten and Olivia had the most fun playing the Wii!


Katya (monkey girl) on the other hand had much more fun climbing on my elliptical machine. Sadly that is the most use that thing has had in a few months, it needed a good dusting off.

We then went upstairs and the kids did some coloring while I made them dinner. Luckily when I was at Walmart last week they had a special on crayons for 20 cents a box and markers 79 cents a box. I decided it couldn't hurt to have them on hand. Good thing too because it was the only kid thing I had in my house for them to do. I have some very lovely pictures from all of them. Just no place to put them since my refrigerator isn't magnetic.



Olivia and Kirsten were the only takers on the fresh sweet corn from the garden. The other 2 didn't know what they were missing.


Eventually after dinner I rounded them all up and took them home. I was beat! 7 hours of babysitting and non stop playing wore me out. When I dropped them off at home Rachael and Derrick were still working on their basement and Francie was over helping them. It was such a mess I decided playing with kids all day (as exhausting as it was) was much better than helping them clean their wet smelly basement.

I also realized that my house is not very kid friendly. I have some adjustments to make. First of all I have no hand railings on the stairs. When our house was remodelled last year they took them off to paint and I thought it looked better without them. So far this has not been a problem for Todd and I, but for some reason kids can't seem to walk up and down stairs without holding onto something. So I may have to rethink the hand rails or get some really good washable paint. Also I have a candy drawer in my kitchen that is just too easy for kids to access and they can't seem to keep their hands out of it. I can't say I blame them, I have a hard time myself sometimes, but none the less I may have to rethink that one.


I meant to post this yesterday, but it took me a very long time to figure out how to put pictures on my blog in a timely manner. I don't have high speed Internet just a Sprint wireless card, its slightly faster than dial up, but for some reason loaded pictures very very slow. Today I tried putting the pictures on photobucket from my computer and then pulling them from there. It works much faster. I think I'm starting to get the hang of this thing now. I had no idea how hard blogging can be.

20 weeks

Well here I am at 20 weeks. I guess I don't mind posting these pictures because I don't think I'm that big. At least not compared to now (I've really grown a lot in the past 3 weeks since these were taken). I'll take pictures again at 24 weeks, but it just may take 3-4 weeks of growing before I will want to post them.

unfair weight distribution

When I first found out I was pregnant I signed up with American Pregnancy for weekly updates on my progress. It tells me a little about what changes to expect with myself as well as what's going on with the development of the baby. Well today the news was that my baby has reached 1 pound in weight. While thats very exciting, it doesn't exactly make me feel good about the other 12 pounds I've put on over the past 23 weeks. I did take some 20 week pictures of my belly which I will post as soon as I figure out how to do it.

I've jumped on the Blogging-Wagon

Everyone seems to be doing it, so why not, right? I've actually been thinking about starting a blog for a while, as a way to share whats going on in my life with family and friends. Since 2 of my sisters (Rachaeland Francie) already have blogs I figured it can't be that hard. However, it took me a week or more just to come up with a title in order to get started. I'm still not convinced I like the title so it may change in the future. Suggestions welcome. I also need to play around with the web page and make it a bit more creative, so again, suggestions welcome.

I expect to have lots to blog about in about 4 months, because as you probably already know, Todd and I are expecting our first baby in December. In the mean time I can always talk about being pregnant, I'm sure if you've ever been pregnant you know what I mean by this. With a baby growing inside you its hard not to think about it all the time. But while I'm pregnant life still goes on, I'm still working full time in the ER, Todd's farm season is at its peak, and it's summer so there is always something to do (and now blog about).