19 weeks and we're off to Hawaii!

By tomorrow afternoon my pregnant butt will be lounging on a chair on the warm sandy beaches of Maui, sipping a virgin Mai Tai and trying to decide whether I want to continue reading some pregnancy magazine or pull on my fins and go swim with the sea turtles.

Sigh.

For now I'm still wearing a turtleneck, thermals under yoga pants and two pairs of wool socks, but I've got a maxi dress and my trusty Rainbow sandals packed and ready to change into during our layover!

Anyone else know the wonder that is Rainbow sandals? 

The way the layers conform to your feet and feel almost like walking on a cloud? Best. Sandals. Ever.

I can't remember the last time it was warm enough to wear them...

We got more snow today and this morning it was in the low 20's outside and the high 50's in our bedroom...brrr!

I think the only one who's not ready for spring is Roy, who loves being out in the snow no matter the temperature or the length of time. After flinging his food like seed on a field and him digging around in it for an hour, he still did not want to come inside.

Anyways, here's the Week 19 photo. For some reason my belly seems to have almost doubled in size over the past 7 days...

This was also taken at night, after tacos and a bowl of ice cream.

We're not taking a laptop to Hawaii, so chances are we'll be unplugged for a week. So aloha, I'll see you next week!

It Was A Short Hike

First off, if you look at the top right hand corner of the sidebar, you'll see a new poll open where you can vote on whether you think we're having a boy or a girl. So far the consensus has overwhelmingly been boy, and I have to say I have a hunch its a boy. But we'll have to wait until March 8th to find out!

Last Friday night was Matt's birthday, and after tricking him into thinking all he was getting for his birthday was a coffee grinder (he was so sweet trying to act surprised and excited for it), I surprised him with a (used) Xbox 360.

When we got home that night he went to work setting it up, and I couldn't resist taking this shot to show you how cute my hubby is with a headlamp on.

Then, since this tired wife didn't have it in her to bake a birthday cake (much less a three-layer coconut cake a la 2009), we picked up a single size cheesecake from The Confectionary down at Pike Place Market, and stuck a candle in that.

Last Sunday we both had the day off, so after trying out a new church (which we'll be returning to!), we headed to Issaquah to do a bit of hiking. Neither of us had been on this hike before, but we soon realized that the combination of a sunny day + a weekend = lots of people on the trail. Half our time was spent pressing up against the side of the trail to let people pass up or down.

Then I realized that the baby was embracing its Irish roots and dancing a jig...on my bladder. Looking around, there was no cluster of trees or bushes dense enough to hide behind. Add that to the high traffic and it ended up being a very short hike.

So note to pregnant women who enjoy hiking: make sure there are plenty of places you can sneak off to if you want to hike for longer than half an hour.

That being said, it was really pretty out so we snapped a few pics along the way...

No I was not playing Ninja dress up wearing all black. Its just what I had that kept me warm...

This guy came trotting around the corner as we headed down, sans owner or leash (we were glad we hadn't brought Mr. Roy), and paid us absolutely no attention. He was just happy to be hiking.

Isn't my husband handsome? I think so.

By the time we got home we'd kicked most of the mud off our shoes, but I still gotta say it brings about a certain satisfaction to come home muddy.

How To Meal Plan While Pregnant

You CAN'T!

BAAA HAHAHAHAHAHAH!

Ok, I seriously thought about just ending the post there, but I have learned a few things in my whole 18 weeks of pregnancy.

One is that meal planning is close to pointless. You may plan to have curry chicken on Tuesday, but by the time Tuesday rolls around and your face is the same color green as that curry...its off the menu.

Then on Wednesday you've got tacos on the list, but that night you realize that you have to have an egg roll RIGHT NOW OR SOMEONE WILL GET HURT!

Then there's the nights I just have ice cream for dinner, but we won't get into that now.

To help gauge this ever-changing scenario of  I've learned a few things that have helped keep our dinners (when I could muster the energy to make them) flexible and easy.

The first thing I learned was that the smell of cooking chicken makes me sick to my stomach. That's why I have Matt cook the chicken. Sometimes I can manage to boil some pasta and saute some veggies to go with it to make a complete meal. I've been meaning to have Matt cook a bunch of chicken breasts on our George Foreman mini grill and then just freeze the already grilled chicken. 

That would be smart to do. I should do that.

One thing I did that was pretty easy was throwing some beans in the crock pot overnight, then added the spices from THIS recipe for Ranch Style beans the next morning. By the time I came home from work it was smelling pretty darn good. 

I've also made bigger batches of rice, then once its cooled frozen it in ziplock bags so that if stir fry or curry sounds good, I don't have to wait 40 minutes for rice to cook, I can just heat it up.

Soups are relatively easy. This week I browned some ground beef, added half a cup of Lawry's taco seasoning, tossed in a small jar salsa, a can of beans, a cup of corn and filled it up with chicken broth and let it simmer for half an hour. Voila! Dinner for that night and lunch for a couple days. 

Other than that, easy dinners are a lifesaver. Frozen potstickers, tortellini, pre-made sauces like Trader Joe's curry or a bottle of orange mandarin sauce I can just drizzle over the already cooked chicken and rice. I think Matt would have starved had it not been for those options. 

Sadly, that's all the advice I can offer. It may not be much, but its how we've made it these past few months!

Any other suggestions?

Nearly 18 weeks

So I may be one day short of 18 weeks, but for the sake of keeping things relatively simple let's say I'm there already. Heck, let's round it up to the halfway point, shall we?

So here we are...



Baby and me.

In a week and a half that bump will be hanging out of a tankini and baby will get his first taste of natural Vitamin D. Because we don't get it up here in the Pacific Northwest. We take it in pill form.

Note the creamy whiteness of my skin.

In 2 1/2 weeks Matt and I will meet up so they can smear my belly with that goo stuff and we'll get a peek at the gender of the baby. I have a hunch its a boy. Not that I don't want a girl, its just a hunch. Matt's had a dream. My grandma had a dream. My cousin brought us a baby boy book. And it feels like a boy...is that silly to say?

Speaking of appointments, yesterday I got up, got dressed and went to work like normal (ok, maybe not normal 'cuz the past two months the getting up and to work part has been subject to rounds of barfing and migraines the likes of which I won't go into here). Around 11 o'clock I realized I had completely forgotten my OBGYN appointment that morning. Not even the haziest recollection that I needed to go somewhere stirred in me as I rose and dressed.

Attack of the Preggo Brain.

Stay tuned for more developments.

Unless I forget to post them.

The Best Love Stories Are True Ones

I'm currently reading The Pioneer Woman's book, Black Heels to Tractor Wheels and have to say I'm loving it.

One, because she's hilarious.

Two, because it makes me thankful that if you swapped the boots and wranglers for fleece and flannel, and Marlboro Man for Mountain Man you would have something close to my Matt.

If you feel like another good love story, you can read about Matt's proposal, which I think (though I may be slightly biased) is the best of all time.

The Proposal

Minor Thing Left Out

After I sent the last Morning Cup I realized I had left out something BIG...

Amanda and I DID go see the Harry Potter Exhibition!

And it was great. 

Amanda wore the sorting hat and was put in the Gryffindor house, then we saw the painted fat lady trying to break a glass with her voice, read the fine print at the bottom of Dolores Umbridge's decrees (Blah blah blah), strolled around Hagrid's hut and sat in his chair, tossed a few quaffles in the rings and saw how big the great hall doors really are. What was really cool was seeing the costumes, and how small the three main characters were when it all started out!  

Sorry if your not a Harry Potter fan, but we are total nerds for it. If you have a problem with the whole magic thing then you might as well toss out Tolkein (who has wizards and witches) and C.S. Lewis (who describes Aslan's resurrection as 'deeper magic from before the dawn of time) as well. But enough on that...

ANYWAYS, we had a blast but sadly the only pictures we could take were at the exit...

I like how Amanda posted the one of her all cute and sweet...

...while I impersonated Gilderoy Lockhart and look like a dorkus maximus...

And to my disappointment, Amanda will not be attending U-Dub as the out-of-state tuition was way more than expected...but at least we got a visit out of it!

And last weekend Matt and I put together our new bed!!! Hooray!!! Since we've been married we've slept on our mattress on the floor. On a free box spring on the floor. Then we bought a frame off Craigslist for $70 that we kept together with zip ties but was still pretty squeaky and wobbly. We finally ditched that and lately have used a plain metal frame that was propped up on bed raisers to fit drawers under the bed. 

After all that, we finally bought ourselves a brand spankin' new bed! The Hemnes bed, by Ikea. Knock Ikea if you want, but so far the bed is very sturdy, and though we thought our mattress was getting a sink hole in the middle it turned out it was the old free box spring, so with the Ikea slats its like having a new mattress!

Roy tried to help put the bed together from inside the square until he drove me so crazy he was banished to outside the frame. So he lay wherever I was and stuck his nose underneath to make sure I was doing a good job.

We rearranged our bedroom, too. Maybe this is my nesting phase coming out. Then again, I've always liked rearranging furniture.

This is before:

And though its hard to get a sense of the space with my current camera lens, here is the after:

Oh, and here's a nighttime view Matt took...

and yes it feels as cozy as it looks.

Oh, and during a thrift store outing last weekend I found this $7 piece of work:

I don't know why but it just cracks me up! Matt and I are big Seinfeld fans, so why not add a little humor to the bedroom? It tones down all the mushy lovey pictures.

So that's our new bedroom and its nice having a change! Its also nice being able to have the bed low enough to sit on while pulling on socks. Before it was sort of on stilts, and you couldn't lean against it or the whole thing would wobble over. Rather precarious...

Hope you all are having a lovely weekend. Yesterday it howled and stormed but today dawned bright and beautiful and I'm off to take the Roy boy on a walk!

Hometown Tourists

A few weekends ago my cousin Amanda headed north to visit (and check out the University of Washington, but mostly to see us, I'm sure).

We love it when company comes because it gives us an excuse to be hometown tourists! Admittedly it was easier living in Queen Anne and so much closer to everything, but its nice now to have an excuse to get coffee at El Diablo or head to Pike Place Market.

I should have posted this long ago, but here's a visual re-cap of her whirlwind tour.

The first day she arrived, we visited my favorite fish n' chips place at Fisherman's Terminal called Little Chinook's, then after a coffee at El Diablo we were going to head to the Harry Potter Exhibition, but found out tickets wouldn't open up for another 7 hours (yikes!). So we made use of the Seattle Center and visited the Experience the Music Project/Science Fiction Museum (also known as the EMP).

Good times all around. And there were no nudists in the park this time, which was a plus. 

The next day Matt joined us on our tours, and we headed downtown to the Seattle Art Museum (which I've been wanting to go to since we moved here) and Pike Place Market.

This mask was supposed to be of a woman in labor...somehow I don't think I'm going to look that serene...

I really liked this painting, it looked like fur. Oh, and I got a haircut.

THIS was my favorite, though. A giant, samurai-like coat made entirely of dog tags.

It practically filled the room!

My cute cuz...

The hanging, lit Ford Tauruses

And this was a preview of a coming attraction. Apparently there are stereos inside these costumes (?) and people put them on and dance to the music. Personally I just thought it looked funny.

so did Amanda...

At the market we shopped in the Italian grocery store and stocked up on a smorgasbord of raviolis for dinner that night. OH, and two giant heads of garlic which we roasted and spread on our bread. YUM.

Well I know it wasn't fraught with the pithy descriptions as of norm, but I haven't quite been feeling the best (I'm 16 1/2 weeks now, can I be past the throwing up/exhaustion phase yet?), but I will do my bestest to keep things more up to date!