What They Don't Tell You

Now having been pregnant for almost 40 weeks I have discovered a few things about pregnancy--the things they don't tell you about pregnancy before it happens to you. Here are some of the things I have learned:

• Nose bleeds are common in pregnancy and come without notice
• Your feet swelling isn't just unattractive-it hurts
• Your belly button can pop long before the turkey is done
• There are a million and one wives tales people will use to predict what you are having
• Seeing spots for an hour is fine as long as your blood pressure is low (despite the fact is causes massive headaches)
• Being pregnant does not make weight gain any easier
• False labor doesn't feel so false
• Everyone has an opinion about how you are carrying-big, small, high, low, etc
• Your hair and skin might just be better than ever
• The itchy belly does not cease and there is no satisfying that itch
• Bending over isn't just hard-it actually hurts
• Most prenatal doctors appointments are pointless-they are meant really just to waste an hour plus of your time
• You can crave things you aren't allowed to eat while pregnant (sushi, I miss you!)
• Aversions are worse than cravings (keep chicken far far away from me)

This is not a complete list by any means, and I realize there are many ailments I have not had to suffer in pregnancy. With a week and a half till I am due I do not have much longer to learn more, so feel free to let me know what things I have missed out on this time, so that I am a little more prepared for next time!

(I think this picture looks like I stuck a ball under my shirt and am sneaking out of the store with it...since my belly dropped I look like I am stealing a ball all the time!)

Easily Amused...

Making me really happy I have realized is not that hard. Last night Kevin suggested we go for a walk to the park near our house. As we were walking we heard tons of emergency vehicles racing toward the back of the valley we will live. It seemed like a lot of cars, but we didn't think about it too much. As we were making our way home I heard one of them coming back out of the valley with sirens and lights going. I assumed it was an ambulence and made Kevin stop for a minute to watch it go by. Well, instead it was a fire truck and it pulled into the parking lot right of the park right by us. We watched the firemen get out of the truck not really in a hurry and go over to talk to a soccer team. (The weird part was that these firemen looked more prepared to go mountain climbing than to fight a fire...they had all the climbing gear attached to their belt). After a minute the soccer team started clearing all their stuff off the field.

As we were walking by Kevin tried to listen in to their scanner to find out what was going on. He knows I am always curious what is going on and convinced me to stay and watch. They cleared the field and directed a helicopter in to land on the field. It came right over our heads and landed, the firemen hopped in and then it took off. I was so excited because I have never been this close to a helicopter before and have never seen one take off. It was so cool! We watched the helicopter fly all over the mountain line surrounding the valley with their spotlight. Another watcher came and told us that a couple were hiking and had gotten lost and couldn't make their way down. The wife happened to be 6 months pregnant so they didn't want to leave her up on the mountain all night. I read this morning that they were found and it took firemen, with the family, four and a half hours to hike down from where they were. (The helicopter ended up not being able to get them because of cloud cover). While this may seem simple to most, I was super excited to be that close to a helicopter and watch it all happen. I guess it is the simple things in life!

Anniversaweek

This past week was our anniversary and Kevin took to calling it our anniversaweek since the festivities were spread out. Since Kevin had class till 8 on Wednesday (our actual anniversary) we went out for dinner on Tuesday to my favorite, Macaroni Grill. Kevin is very longsuffering to go there considering he is not such a huge fan of Italian food!

On Wednesday night we went to Baskin Robins for ice cream since neither one of us have gotten a cone there in ages. About a half hour after downing the ice cream the baby starting kicking like crazy. I guess he likes the sugar too!

Thursday night we were supposed to go to the symphony but it fell through. All in all though it was a great anniversaweek!

Moments You Will Remember

Today I had one of those moments you know you are going to remember for a long time and tell at dinner parties and laugh about. I was starting to feel a little better and needed to run some errands, so I thought I would head west and say hello to Jeff, Juli and co. who are just starting all this fun with the flu. As I am getting over to merge onto another freeway my car kind of jerks, but I think it is because I was changing lanes or hit a pothole (which is common here). Then I notice a sound and start hoping that it is coming from someone else's car. I tried slowing down and sure enough the sound slowed down too, so as I am on this interchange I realize I need to pull over, which is anyone's worst nightmere. I get over and as cars are zooming past me I get out to look at the damage. Sure enough, I have blown a tire! I am standing on the side of the freeway, six months pregnant, fighting the flu and with a flat. I thought it was the funniest thing I had every heard. Being the stubborn person I am I decided that I can take care of this myself and lug the spare out of the trunk, set up the jack, hoist up the car and am just starting on the lugnuts when my angel, Sunny, shows up. He is a little foreign man, whos english is not very good, but he sees me and pulls over. He looks at what I have and announces he is getting the proper tools to change a tire and returns from his car with power tools to change a tire. He had it changes in minutes flat! As I get back into the car I call Jeff, who has since left his house in his sick state to come help me. He met me at the next exit, took the busted tire and fixed it while I ran my errands. Thank you Jeff and Sunny for making this day much better than it should have been!

25's

So, during my 25th week of pregnancy we celebrated my 25th birthday. We had a fun night of mexican food (the best you can get here which isn't that great, but you live with what you can get) and going to see Juno. Kevin was a good sport to sit through the movie. I guess it is official though, as Daniel told me, my life is officially one third of the way through!

The Down Side of Up

So the other night Kevin and I were having the age old debate about what to have for dinner. Considering my aversion to chicken this is actually a hard thing to come up with. We FINALLY settled on homemade nachos and got out the stuff to start making it, but we had one big problem, the ground beef was still frozen. Kevin started defrosting the meat while I pulled out a frying pan to cook it in. I put the pan on the stove and turned it on. Kevin brought over the meat and chipped off the first bit of meat that had defrosted on the outside of the ball before throwing the rest in the microwave. I started to cook the meat he had thrown in only to notice a roach walking across the meat in the pan. Kevin reached in there and got it out and was shocked when I told him I REFUSE to eat that meat now. So, the meat had to be thrown out and we started all over again. The wonderful thing about living in Hawaii is that no matter what time of year or how clean your house is there is always a roach to be found! I more than happy to send some to anyone who feels roaches are just what their house is lacking...just let me know.

Hiking Diamond Head

On Friday we decided to go hike Diamond Head, an inactive volcanoe not far from our house. The hike isn't too bad but it was packed with tourists. We did the hike Hawaiian style, in flip-flops. It really was pretty from the top!
Here is the view from the top of the crater of the volcanoe. The only thing in the crater is the visitor's center and the people collecting money for you coming in. For walking into the park we had to pay $1 each. I figure that money goes to pay all the employees they had down there to insure they got their money. They even yelled after a couple that didn't realize they had to pay.
Here is a look at Waikiki and downtown Honolulu farther in the distance. It looks like quite the mass of buildings when you look at it from this angle.
Isn't Hawaii pretty?!? It almost looks like a painting because the water is so clear. Proof that we really were up there and didn't just steal the pictures from someone else's website and post them as our own! The sun up there was so bright it hurt to look at the camera.
The worst of the staircases we had to climb. In my dislike of heights I was not excited about having to go up these, knowing that I would have to come back down them. As you can see people go up and down these at the same time when really there is only room for traffic going one way. Definately not my favorite part of this hike.

Christmas Came and Went

We hope that everyone had a wonderful holiday. It always seems like Christmas takes forever to come and then is gone in a flash. We went to a holiday party for the firm Kevin will work for next summer. I definately felt too poor to be there. It was interesting to watch their gift exchange. Lawyers jumping up challenging the rules about how many times a gift can be stolen and whether or not a trade counts as a steal. Very interesting!

We had a wonderful holiday and hope that you did as well!

Christmas Rush

You know, every year you have good intentions of doing nice things for people. You start early and you think you have planned well until it all blows up in your face. Take for example, our adventure the other night to deliver goodies people. Kevin and I came home and started making the goodies right away. Then we realized we needed wax paper which really only set us back by about 10 minutes, but the whole process of making the goodies (seeing that we decided to double the recipe) took longer than expected. By the time we got in the car with our 14 plates it was 7:20. We decided to hit the people close by first and get them out of the way. Now, driving in the dark to places you have been only once is hard enough but over half of the people we had never been to their houses before. We made it through our neighborhood and then set off for the directional nightmere that is Waikiki. We went to the places we knew for sure first and then tried to find a place that we thought we knew. We drove down this alley of a road in what looked to be a shady part of town (later confirmed by the person who USED to live there). We knocked on what we thought was their door only to be greeted by an elderly man who was very confused as to why we had knocked. He said they didn't live there, but we were so sure, so we looked around a little, decided to go another place and come back. Again we still didn't see their car, and seeing as it was after 9 and we were counting on them to give us the addresses for the other places we called it a night. This is why we now have something like 7 plates of our goodies in our freezer to save for another night, or to eat alone in pleasure.