I couldn't resist

Today Dustin, Cocoa, and I went to Virginia to SHOP!!! I was having shopping withdrawals and needed to get outta town!! When I saw these shoes I knew Baby had to have them. I know she won't be doing much walking when she is a newborn, but she still needed these precious shoes. You can see how small they are in relation to Dustin's hand. He is holding both shoes in one hand.

Cajun Cookin'

We had a few friends over for a Mardi Gras get together this weekend. Dustin showed off his wonderful cajun cooking with a gumbo, and I tried my hand at a King's cake.

The gumbo was delicious, and I don't even like cajun food that much.

The King's cake....well, let's just say that I am glad our desserts include chocolate, strawberries, lemon, etc. The King's cake is really more like a sweet bread....not what I would call a dessert or cake at all. Whoever gets the baby that is inserted into the cake is supposed to hold the Mardi Gras party the next year. Here's an interesting tidbit of information for you. During the Great Depression many children would get in trouble with their parents if they brought home the baby because money was so short they were afraid they could not afford to host a party the next year. It's not like the poor children could help it. The baby is hidden until you bite into it.

Dustin preparing the gumbo


Finished: Gumbo with rice


Braided bread with the baby I inserted into a seam of the bread


Finished King's cake with icing and traditional Mardi Gras colors
Purple=justice (I used blue because I couldn't find purple)
Green=faith
Gold=power

What Dustin Has Been Learning

Dustin has had some interesting labs at school lately, and I thought I would share what he has been up to.

He recently had suture lab. Here he learned how to stitch a wound and a few different types of stitches. Here's the fun part.....he learned on a pig's foot.

Death and dying lab has also been completed. In this lab he had an "actor" as a patient and he had to inform the patient that she had a terminal illness that could not be cured. These patients are not really terminal; they are just actors for the students to practice on.

Scrub lab consisted of Dustin learning to wash his hands. That's right....they teach that in medical school. Not really. But the scrub lab showed them how to properly scrub in on surgery.

Ophthalmology lab was an afternoon of learning about the eyes and how to diagnose problems with the eyes. In that lab he found out what the yellow bump is on his eyeball. He has had it since I have known him. It is called a pinguecula. It's not harmful and is caused by irritation and UV rays. Wear your sunglasses this summer!!

I will keep you posted on his interesting learning endeavors!! I know that he is super excited about spring break coming up the entire last week of March!! Unfortunately I do not get this time off with him because I do not have a spring break. But this will be a much needed break for him!! We are traveling to Huntington sometime around then to hopefully find a house to rent!! YIKES!! I am tired of moving every year. Finding a place to live can be stressful.....especially when you have only been to the city twice and we will be moving with a one month old baby. I'll keep you posted.

Boring or OCD!?!??!

So I haven't posted in a few days mainly because I haven't had anything to post. Our life has been uneventful but I have also been busy cleaning. So I came to the conclusion that we are either boring or I am OCD (hence the post title).

Here's how it went. Tuesday evening I got on the cleaning craze!! Everything had to be spotlessly spic and span....at that instant....no, it could not wait one more minute. So, I started with the floors. After much vacuuming, sweeping, and mopping I decided to move on to laundry. I did a few loads of laundry and noticed that the washing machine could be a little cleaner. Therefore, after my last load of laundry I took it upon myself to wash the washing machine. That's right, you read it correctly....I washed the washing machine. While I was doing this washing of the washing machine it made complete sense. But, after I had finished I realized that it might have been a little obsessive. Well, the evening progressed and after more cleaning we headed to our child birthing class. The instructor was talking about some things you might notice as the due date approaches. She then proceeded to ask the question, "Has anyone experienced the nesting syndrome"? At that moment, Dustin and I looked at each other with out loud laughter.

I am noticing as I am typing this that I didn't think to DUST!! That is my lease favorite thing to do because I always just feel like when I dust I push the dust around and hope it collects on my dust rag. That's never fun! So maybe I will tackle dusting tomorrow.

Inflated Face....and everything else!!

Then


Now


After I posted the last picture about the volunteer event from last night, I noticed that even my face looks inflated!! Sometimes it's difficult to see the weight gain until you look at a picture. I sure cannot wait until that extra fluid goes away so my face can DEFLATE!!!! I just thought I would reminisce from the thinner days. Only about 9 more weeks and the deflating begins!!

Volunteer Event

Just over 30 weeks: 9 to 10 left!!


From time to time we volunteer at Carnegie Hall, and last night was one of those nights. The event is called Monte Carlo and it is a fundraiser for the educational programs that Carnegie implements for the community. The event consists of faux gambling for the interested participants. So the participants get fake money and play table games for fun. No real money ever has to be exchanged, it is just an event for entertainment.

So I don't know how to play cards unless it is Old Maid or Uno, but Dustin participated in the events when we were not signed up to volunteer. He started out with $2,000 (remember this is like monopoly money) and turned that $2,000 into $260,000. Wouldn't that be nice in real life. We could really benefit from finding that amount of change in our couch cushions.

crAvIngs?!?!?

I really can't say that I have had intense cravings during pregnancy, but if there is one thing that I have wanted, it has been beautiful, red, ripe strawberries!! YUM!! Don't they look delicious! I just had to put a picture of the wonderful strawberries I found. I guess someone must be having good weather to be growing such delicious strawberries. They sure are yummy!!

Baby Loot

I was going through my coupons the other day and noticed that I had clipped some baby product coupons a while back and they were going to expire next week. I had saved them because I would have felt funny buying diapers so early, but to save the "big bucks" I knew that I couldn't pass up the great discounts through the coupons. Here is a picture of the first baby products we have purchased.

I haven't actually decided if I am going to use cloth or disposable diapers. I think it will just have to be a trial and error thing. I have 3 BumGenius cloth diapers that I am going to use, and if it works for us I am going to continue with those. However, I will need some disposable diapers for going places.....like shopping!!! So that's why I went ahead and used my coupons. Anyway, I am hoping that we can effectively use cloth diapers for so many reasons such as $$$$, less environmental waste, and many others. However, I know that the cloth diaper path is much more difficult to manage, clean, and plan for. I'm completely willing to do it if it really will save us money in the end though. I'll let you know how it goes. We have just between 9 and 10 weeks left!!! YAY!!

Verse

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

Jeremiah 29:11

Toilet Drinker or Bathtub Sneaker?

What would you rather have....a toilet drinker or a bathtub sneaker? Well, tonight this is where we found Cocoa....sneaking in the bathtub. What a strange dog!!! She doesn't go into the bathroom to drink out of the toilet, rather she goes into the bathroom to get in the bathtub. We think she is sniffing out the soap and licking it. When we called her name, she barely poked her head out from behind the shower curtain to see if she was in trouble. What a dog!!

Roses are red, violets are blue

Dustin and I have never gotten very excited about Valentine's Day. Our Valentine celebrations in the past have included trying to be creative with a gift under $10, making old school homemade Valentine cards, or doing nothing. This year we decided we were doing NOTHING so that we save money. Well, I came home on Friday and there were 12 red roses, a box of DOVE chocolates, and a card. He broke the rule!! When I told him he shouldn't have done that, he responded with, "You're worth it". Let's all pause for a nice... "AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH! How sweet!"

So he did break the rule, but I couldn't get mad with that response. Here is a picture of the pretty roses.

Toe to Toe

Cocoa and I took a nap on the couch the other day. While we are enjoying our lovely sleep, Dustin was taking pictures. Here Cocoa and I are sleeping after our feet migrated together. It looks like my foot was beginning to invade her bed. She must have been making sure I didn't take too much of her space.

NAME!!!

WOW! So it is set up so that you can only vote once on a computer in the baby name poll. I checked a couple of days ago and noticed that 20 some people have voted. Today there are OVER 50!!! Either someone is voting on several computers or tons of people have voted in the last day because the poll closes tomorrow. HA HA!! I am guessing it is someone who really doesn't like the name Olivia or really loves the name Abby because two days ago Abby was down by half the votes and in the past two days it now has the most votes.....making that about 15 votes in the last day or so. How funny!!!

Well, we still haven't decided and I am doubting we have a decision by tomorrow (our hopeful deadline). It is a tough decision and we are afraid to nail down one name in case another one we haven't thought of comes along that we like even better. I know, she isn't even born yet so we could change the name if we wanted. However, between Abby and Olivia, I think we do like Olivia better. My top pick is Elise pronounced like "alease". The i in Elise would not say "eye" but would say "e". That's difficult to explain in writing. But Dustin isn't very excited about that one because he says it makes him think of having 'a lease' on a car. HA HA. It has a good meaning (concecrated to God). We will have to see if he comes around on this one. The only thing is that Gail doesn't really fit as a middle name for Elise so we would be back to square one with the middle name.

So, the name search continues....send any great ideas our way!!

"Cankles"

After coming home from work on this beautiful 60 degree day, I kicked off my dress shoes for a minute before I re-socked and re-shoed my feet with athletic socks and shoes for a workout. I sat down for a moment to prop my feet up. I looked down at my feet and was surprised to see that they were LARGER than normal. Everything from my calves, ankles, feet, to toes were swollen. I usually drink about a gallon of water each day to keep swelling down and stay healthy, but today I was unable to drink that much water for various reasons. Well, this is proof that the more water you drink the less you swell. I know, it kind of sounds backward...you would think the more water you drink the more you would swell, but it is the other way around.

So.....

Dustin was studying across the room with his back to me, and I said, "Whoa, Dustin, look at my swollen feet!" His honestly innocent immediate response was a special one!!! He replied, "Whoa!!! You've got cankles!!" (By the way, cankles are the technical term when someone doesn't really have the ankle bone definition and it looks like the calf extends down to look like it connects directly to the foot.) My first reaction was LAUGHTER!! It was hilarious!! I wish you could have seen the look on his face when he realized that he just told his expecting wife she had fat ankles...cankles.

Oh well, I will just have to fix the situation with more water from now on!!! He's lucky I'm not a hyper-emotional pregnant female.

Here is an example of a cankle..... in case you were having trouble visualizing a cankle from my definition. I hope you could get a laugh out of this one too!!



Cankle n. A fusion of the words “calf” and “ankle,” a cankle is a very thick ankle - one which appears to be a continuation of the calf itself.

Cocoa's 1st Birthday

Today, February 9, is Cocoa's first birthday!!! She had a great birthday!! The weather was 63 degrees and I took her on a long walk as usual. She even got a birthday cupcake and a purse. I saw the purse at the pet store and knew it would be the perfect birthday gift for her. The handles are ropes so she can play tug of war and the purse part of it is a squeaky toy. SHE LOVES IT!! You can see that she is carrying it around like she is ready to go shopping.

As for the cupcake, she of course loved that too. I made sure it was a small one and with no chocolate icing.....she devoured it as soon as we gave her the OK.....and after we took out the candle of course!

Cocoa's Birthday Cupcake


Cocoa's Birthday Present...A PURSE

Snow Days and Cold Temperatures

School was cancelled on Tuesday and Wednesday due to snow. We already have a two hour delay for tomorrow so we will see if school is cancelled in the end. As we drove home from church tonight the temperature reading outside was 14 degrees!! That's not even wind chill!

I'm ready for warm weather or a relocation to a warmer climate.

28 Week Appointment

Today marks 28 weeks of pregnancy COMPLETED!!! Twelve weeks left!

We listened to the heartbeat which was strong and rhythmic and they measured my stomach to make sure it was growing according to schedule, which typically means the baby is also growing appropriately. At 28 weeks my stomach should measure about 28 centimeters, and the measurement today was 27 centimeters...which is just fine.

I also took the test for gestational diabetes today. No news is good news, so I hope I don't hear any results because that means the results were fine. For this test they recommended that I not eat many sweets that day, so of course Dustin reminded me early this morning not to eat ANY chocolate. He said it would be best not to have to retake the test and pay for another Dr. visit because my sugar levels were too high because of eating too much chocolate. Well, I didn't make those chocolate chip pancakes I was planning to make this morning. I settled for cold cereal. Bummer!! But I will say, he did have a piece of chocolate waiting for me as soon as we left the Dr. office....what a great guy!!!

Verse

So at church we have been focusing on PRAYER and I have been going through a prayer devotional. Often times when I sit down to do my daily reading, I find myself unfocused, thinking about the dirty dishes, or painting my toenails....I know, I know, I have vain distractions sometimes! Well, I decided to go through an actual devotional that is pre-structured so that I could have something to follow and be able to stay on task. It is going well!! I am loving it! With all of that said, I wanted to have a verse this month on prayer, so I chose this verse which tells the importance of having FAITH when we pray. Prayer alone is not enough....that faith part is pretty important. What an easy concept, but yet so difficult sometimes.

But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. James 1:6

So we've actually gotta have that faith part when we pray or we are considered unwavering and unstable. I think we are supposed to go for the tree planted by the water that will not be moved rather than the unstable sea.

Faith, a crucial part of the prayer equation!! I think I already have my second verse for the month, which will be about having CONFIDENCE when we pray. Can't wait, but I better get this one memorized first!!

Spring Fever

We took advantage of the 60 degree weather and went for a walk at the trail today after church. It was a beautiful day and we didn't even need coats!! Of course this only makes SPRING FEVER even worse!! We are supposed to get SNOW, SNOW, SNOW this Monday and Tuesday! I knew it couldn't lasts forever, it is only Feb 1!!

Dustin and Cocoa Walking Across the Tree


Icy River


Dustin and Cocoa Climbing the Ice Wall