Mother's Day

So, as I said in my pseudo-update, we spent Mother's day weekend with my parents in Kirtland.

I took my new camera. (After like 4 years of spanish, I ALWAYS want to spell camera with an extra "a" (i.e. camara), anyone else?)

We left early Friday morning, the 8th and drove straight through, and except for that wrong turn toward Akron, we totally would have been there early. :)

So - in typical familial fashion, we had a weekend full of food. Yum! To make up for my hideous lack of photos lately, I'm posting a handful here. Enjoy!













mmmmm....I love pancakes. We used the flat top again and dad bought a bacon press. Because seriously, how can you have a flat top grill and no bacon press? You can't. I'll just tell you.





These are from dinner that first night (so technically before the breakfast shots but whatever). We had grilled steaks, corn on the cob and some other random stuff that I can't remember we ate. Sorry - my memory is really going what with this whole baby thing.
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I Couldn't Do It...

I couldn't. I tried to make the hippie skirt/dress thing work.

I put on the skirt Sunday morning and I almost cried. The hippie shoes I bought weren't quite right and didn't hide the foot chubbiness, the skirt was this faded-screen printed mess and it didn't look right with the shirts that I had available.

I couldn't really sleep anyway, so I was up early. I take off my hippie clothes and I pull out my sewing machine. I had some fabric and a pattern and I proceeded to make myself as non-hippie of a maxi dress as I could.

I knew it would be a challenge and I had to be at church by 12:30 so I couldn't afford to make any mistakes.

3.5 hours later - I had a jersey knit, pseudo-maternity maxi dress. It was made of this yummy chocolate brown.

The only problem...? DH said I looked like a franciscan monk, and a pregnant one at that! (Try explaining that to the holy father)

Oh well, at least I wasn't a hippie!
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Some Realizations

I've recently come to some realizations.

1.) At 34.5 weeks gestation, my ankles are now "swollen". I put this in parenthesis because from a theoretical/physiological standpoint, I understand the concept of edema and how that would tie into pregnancy and what all that might mean.

I had NO idea it was going to look so grotesque. You see, friends, I dislike feet. They are, in general, ugly. Add ankles that are of varying, mismatched sizes throughout the day and you have a recipe for disaster.

2.) Maxi dresses make me look like a hippie. I have never in my life wanted to be associated with the whole "hippie" mentality. Give me a pencil skirt and stockings any day of the week.

To combat realization #1, I have purchased two maxi dresses. They are not actually meant as maternity wear, but considering my maternity options, I had no choice. The situation was dire. These newly purchased dresses will shortly become skirts as I remove the sorry excuse of a bandeau top and those laughably incapable spaghetti straps meant to keep everything covered. They will then be long enough to just graze the floor and keep eyes away from my ankles.

3.) I don't own any "hippie" shoes. I don't. My family in/from California would probably laugh at my horrendously buttoned-up wardrobe with blacks, whites and other random, bold, primary colors and my shoes match my wardrobe.

4.) I don't like diaper bags. Seriously, do they all have to come dipped in Teflon? I understand the practicality, but the style just SCREAMS mediocrity in most cases. I have decided that I will just buy those larger styled bags that normal people still use and then stuff it full of bottle holders and diapers and changing pads.

5.) I don't get to have small purses anymore. I've since purchased a seriously capable wallet, that can manage my entire life while riding along in my "non-diaper bag" diaper bag.
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Memories of my Sweet Sixteen

So, I was looking for a picture from the party where the three birthday girls are smiling over our cakes, and I was about to call my mom so that she could get it for me, and then I remembered that all her photos are in Ohio, and she's still here in Chicago for another two weeks.

So, you're going to have to imagine me at 16 with my two best friends from High School, TM (now TB) and LS (now LF).

Ok, just to give you some background, TB, LF and I all have birthdays within a month of each other so a joint sweet 16 seemed like an absolute no brainer. LF's dad was or is the Harbor Master for the City of Chicago and although I'm not completely sure what he does/did, but it was powerful and it was awesome.

So he knew a guy who knew a guy who got us this really great deal on a charter boat, you know, the kind that you see all the tourists ride? Generally they're filled with cheap plastic lawn chairs and a questionable looking "bar", but they actually provide a lot of space when you get rid of all of that.

Collectively, we invited about 200 of our closest friends and we met at LF's house, loaded into what seemed like a million cars and we headed off to Navy Pier, where we were going to pick up the boat.

We get to Navy Pier and the DJ has already arrived and set up on the upper deck. There was food and cake on the lower deck and we were ready to party. We board the boat and head out to Lake Michigan. We were planning on being out till about 10:30 or 11:00 (i think, LF and TB - correct me if I'm wrong on any of this) and so we motored out to the light house and up and down the shore a few times, blasting "high school" music and generally having a good time.

After pizza and cake and all the obligatory birthday stuff, we went back to the upper deck to dance during our last pass of the light house before heading back to the pier.

At this point, my parents are looking off the side of the boat and they notice this odd shape in the water. They think to themselves, "What could be floating this far out from the shore?" My dad then says, "It's a body!!!" He runs up to the captain and tells him we have a man overboard.

They circle around and pull out their spotlight. All 3 sets of parents start rounding up the kids and turning off the music (totally lame) and make us go down to the lower deck for a head count. They're convinced someone took a nosedive off the end of the boat.

They realize that all the kids are here and being that we aren't that incredibly unaware, we start trying to figure out why they were being such downers and why we had a search light scanning the water. Eventually some chaperons lets it slip and then, like a tidal wave, the news spreads to everyone at the party.

Pandemonium ensues.

We have people hogging the bathrooms, throwing up and crying hysterically because they'd never seen a dead body (btw, it was 200 ft. away - you couldn't really see it), then there were the kids who didn't know what to do who just sort of sat around and made small talk. My brother was with most of the guys and a few boyfriends making dead body jokes, (i.e. "wow, this is a killer party!", "I bet his name is BOB"), there was also a group of super religious evangelists that were praying over his soul. I somehow managed to get stuck in their prayer circle. It was somewhat uncomfortable and seemed horrendously insincere.

They finally locate the body with the spotlight and call the harbor police. We're about 20 minutes from the harbor so we can see them coming for a REALLY long time. Eventually, the parents decide to let us turn the music back on and we go upstairs to dance. It's a bit awkward, but, being that we are mostly resilient high schoolers, we make it work.

The next day, we all go to school and the news of this crazy party is all over the school. My Choir teacher mentioned it in class and asked if anyone had heard about it. (LF and I were in the same choir and we're like, "uh...yeah, we heard about it".)

The funny thing is, there was a band concert the night of the party and according to the band director, to miss a concert should have been punishable by expulsion and the complete loss of a high school diploma. So all our friends that were conveniently "sick" from the band concert that night couldn't admit to being at the "killer party"...
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Layoff...I'm starving!

Don't judge me, I had cookies for breakfast.

I wanted to eat them. Leave me alone.

Ok, I thought about naming this post "hiatus" since it's been a while since I posted. I'm kind of busy right now and blogging just isn't anything that I want to do.

I try to blog at home (so as NOT to be a horrible employee) but I've had baby classes, piano lessons, and other things that makes blogging nothing more than a blip on my radar.

With that said, here is a brief list of things that I hope to blog about in the future, that have happened to me since my last post (Seriously - since my last post).

1. My birthday. Yep - I turned 26. It's been 10 years since my sweet 16 boat party with the dead body (legendary, I'm telling you. I'll have to explain it later).

2. The Camera - I got an awesome camera for my birthday. We thought it might be a good idea what with the whole "situation" happening the end of next month.

3. To the Country. We went and visited my parents at their house in Kirtland this last week. We saw my mom on Mother's day, and talked to my brother who is on a mission for my church. He's been out almost a year.

4. We signed a lease on the new apartment.

5. I cleaned said apartment - horrendously deep, back/knee/foot-ache inducing cleaned.

6. The lease on said apartment fell though. :(

7. Starting over on my apartment search.

8. Mild panic with the baby not moving - going to the doctor and realizing yet again how dissatisfying my ob clinic is.

9. Having an AWESOME baby shower at work.

10. Taking 4 shopping bags full of stuff home. PLUS a giant high chair. Yep. Someone bought me a highchair...and brought it to work...for me to take home.

11. This is the last week of seminary!! I taught my last "real" lesson and finished the book of Revelation today. We're cleaning up and playing games the rest of this week.

12. Saw the new Star Trek movie. Surprisingly interesting. I don't even like Star Trek and I mostly understood it.

Yep. That's what has happened in my life in the last 2ish weeks. I'm still pretty tired from all of that but someday, someday, I will post about these things.

Until my next update - Rae out.
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