more TV

I haven't totally managed to catch up on this week's new TV yet. I still haven't watched Grey's Anatomy or Big Shots from last night. (we had childbirth class at the hospital again) But.. . . I did watch Wednesday night and we caught Ugly Betty before we crashed last night.

So, here's a rundown of what I thought.

I was totally torn between watching Bionic Woman or Private Practice while I recorded Private Practice on Wed. But in the end, I chose to just watch PP. I have to admit, there were some moments when I wondered if this show was going to totally tank. BUT, overall, I actually think it's actually going to work. As Ben pointed out, it took a few weeks to get sucked in to Grey's Anatomy too, but in the end I really did. I think I just need to get a feel for the characters on this one. & hopefully the writing will do them a service and give them great things to say.

I was pretty convinced that Dirty, Sexy, Money was just going to be crass and stupid. I didn't expect good writing or acting, and I really didn't expect to care about any of the characters. In the end, though, I actually did. Not that I am wholeheartedly committing to this one yet. It still is a little crass and stupid in parts. But I will definitely give it a try again next week.

Ugly Betty left a lot of things hanging at the end of last season. In fact, the season finale was really kind of depressing. . . But I still wanted to know what happened next. The opening episode didn't answer every question we were left with. . . but it did give a pretty satisfying end to one story line (in a pretty clever way) as well as adding some new twists for the upcoming season. It will definitely have to come up with some fresh new stuff this season, but it is definitely one of my favorite things to watch for the pure joy and silliness of it.

Hopefully this weekend I'll catch up on Grey's and Big Shots (which has huge suck potential. . .) I hear I didn't miss anything when it came to Bionic Woman. True? Anyone watch? How about Life?

New TV

Last night officially started "premiere week" of TV. We have been anxiously awaiting the new season of Heroes, having watched the whole first season on DVD recently. And I must say, it did not disappoint. I don't want to spoil it for anyone that TIVOed, but it sort of went in a Lost direction. They brought up a TON of new questions and didn't really answer any. I am SO excited to see how the rest of the season goes.

Before Heroes was a show I had sort of seen trailers for and never really paid attention to. . . Chuck. I went into it thinking it was just going to be a stupid geek comedy. Nothing interesting. Turns out, it's a spy show! And it was really interesting. I have to admit to having gotten completely sucked in by it. Also, the guy that plays Jayne in Firefly is in it. . . and for half the show we were trying to figure out why we knew who he was! How sad is that? I'm a little ashamed to admit it, actually.

Following Heroes was Journeyman. It looked really intriguing to me, so I decided to watch. Ben was pretty bored by it right away, and I have to admit to having zoned out a few times myself. The thing this show suffered from was actually being too complicated. . . I think I will keep watching it though. By the end I was interested enough to watch next week. . .

There's really nothing on tonight that I'm interested in. . . so I'm waiting for Wednesday and hoping that Private Practice is all I hope it will be. . .

Progress

We managed to check a few things off the list of doom this weekend. . . and while I spent plenty of time with my feet up as well, I am very proud of us for the things we accomplished:

#1-- The finger puppets finally came in the mail and I was able to construct a pretty fabulous mobile for the nursery (if I do say so myself). There will be a picture of said mobile as soon as I hang it up tonight using the fancy plant hanging hook I got at Home Depot today.

#2-- Grocery shopping. OK, for most of you this isn't very impressive, but for us. . . Let's just say it had been AT LEAST a month since we had ventured in to a grocery store for actual food to put in our actual fridge. Once home, I emptied everything from the fridge and freezer that was either gross or expired, and that left us with very little. Luckily, we filled it up again, and we can now officially say that EVERYTHING contained within is edible. . . At least for the next week or so.

#3-- Pantry organization. This one has been like a fly buzzing around my head for months. Our pantry was a MESS. I can't explain it. You had to have seen it. Opening the doors and trying to remove everything was a feat of daring. But, Saturday night, while I sat at the bar and worked on the mobile, Ben was kind enough to tackle the beast. Not only is everything in there edible, it's also organized (thanks in part to something that looks like this)


It is a beautiful thing.

#4-- All of the baby clothes in the house have been washed and dried and are now ready to be put away in the dresser drawers to await the man child's arrival.

YAY for progress!

We went to our first of two childbirth classes at the hospital last night. Lots of people told us that they thought they were just a big waste of time, and I almost didn't sign us up. Heaven knows we have plenty of other things to spend our time on these days. Have I mentioned the LOOOONG To Do list I've been working on?

But then I talked to the doctor, and he pretty much guilted me into it. I asked if they were worth it, and he said "It depends on how seriously you are taking this pregnancy". He really has issues with moms that don't take the time to be pregnant. We all just need to relax more and stop trying to make pregnancy one more thing we add to our list of things to do. . .

So, I decided to sign us up for the class.

In the end, it was really very informative. There wasn't a lot there that I hadn't read in a book or heard on the internet, but it was still good to review. And a lot of it was newer to Ben, as he doesn't spend as much time reading about pregnancy as I do.

My favorite visual of the night (of all of the truly special visuals) was the chart showing where your organs are in your body pre-pregnancy compared to at full term. (I apologize if any of you are squeamish, you may not want to see this)

This is what it looks like before. . .

And this is nine months later. . .

All I can say is, NO WONDER I feel like all of my guts have been shoved up under my ribs! They HAVE!!

ADD

I'm fairly certain that pregnancy induces ADD.

I can't sit still.

I can't wait to try to make it through a childbirth class tonight :)

Things That Are Annoying Me Today

#1-- The AWFUL smell of the new "air freshener" in the office bathroom. It reeks of old lady perfume. And maybe it's just my pregnant nose, but it is MUCH stronger than the previous scent.

#2-- Needing to go in to said bathroom every half hour, ALL DAY LONG.

#3-- People who mark EVERY email with "! this email is of the highest priority"

#4-- Attempting to keep my eyes open and stay on task when all I want to do is take a nap.

That concludes my whining for the day. . .

Baby Showering

I left Ben behind in Salt Lake on Saturday morning and made my way up to Ogden for a family baby shower. My sister Natalie and Ben's sister Kim put it together for me, and we had it at my grandparent's house. It was so much fun. SO many people came and they were all so sweet and generous with their gifts.

Me with my aunt Louise (my mom's oldest sister)

Ben's aunt Marlene and his sister Kim

My mom and cousin Tara at the food table
SO many tasty treats

The DARLING diaper cake that Jenny made
I can't get over how cool it is

When I got home on Sunday I found that Ben had spent his evening on Saturday (before going up to the castle) on moving the baby's furniture into the nursery and setting up the crib. I am so excited to finally be making progress! And when we've made a little bit more and have things closer to finished I will take some more pictures so you can all see it.

RHA Training

I spent Friday night up in Salt Lake with Ben and a bunch of students who have decided to commit themselves to a year of party planning (pardon me, "program planning") for all of the freshman living in BYU's on campus housing. We started at a park and then made our way up to downtown to check in to the hotel and spend the evening gathering information in a scavenger hunt kind of format. The weather looked ready to ruin the evening, but in the end didn't hamper things too much. I did get some cool pictures, though, of the storm blowing over the park.


Lucky for us, Ben will have a lot less to do with these programs this year than he has in the past. There's a new assistant manager on the block and he gets to be in charge of this stuff so that Ben can focus his time on telling freshman not to blow things up in their microwaves or throw bottles of urine out the window.

Don't you wish you had his job?

Yeah, me neither.

Checklists

It's probably the nature of the "nesting" phase of pregnancy that I feel like I'm most certainly going to run out of time to do stuff before the baby gets here. Beyond the fact that I only have 6 weeks left (holy crap!), I feel like I can only accomplish a little bit in any given day. And for a person that normally sets about a really productive day with at least 6 things on her list, and actually accomplishes most of them, that can be very very frustrating. I just get so tired SO fast.

Last night I managed to do 2 loads of laundry, unload and reload the dishwasher, and finish touching up the paint in the nursery. When I was done I was wiped out. That's how pitiful my energy levels are right now. I order things online instead of actually going to the store. I drive through for food so I don't have to get out of the car. It's amazing how tired it can make you to grow a human. . .

So now, I've decided to make checklists. I will endeavor to check 2 things off the list each day. Some of them can be done at lunch time, others after work. If I can manage to check 2 off each day, I MIGHT finish everything I need to do before the baby comes. . . IF I can stop adding 3-4 new things each day.

Celebration

In celebration of Jenny's birthday last night, we surprised her by meeting her for dinner at La Casita en masse. It was a fun sort of surprise, and extremely yummy food.


Tanner had been long convinced that it was his duty as her son to make and decorate a cake. Apparently he spent quite a bit of time flipping through Jenny's cake decorating books trying to pick out the perfect thing to make for her. In the end, he chose a funfetti cake topped with a Lightning McQueen candle. . . because what mom wouldn't love that?!


We all gathered at our house after dinner to blow out the candles and partake of the cake. Jenny's sister Jessica and her husband were there too, as well as my mom, who had been kind enough to drive their truck down to free us of the queen sized bed in our guest room/nursery. We still have a lot to get done in there, so it's nice to finally have the old furniture moved out so we can move the new in. And also, a great bed to sleep on when we're in Syracuse on weekends. Now that all of us are married, there were just not enough beds to go around. Hopefully I'll have semi-finished nursery pictures soon.

Soccer Saturday

Since I just now got around to downloading photos from the weekend, this post is a little bit out of order, but I thought it still warranted a place here.

Saturday morning we got up bright and early and made the trek to Ogden to see Kim's girls play soccer. They are both very talented little girls. Last year Isabella spent a good part of the game randomly sitting down on the field and generally wandering around rather than kicking the ball.

This year, she got 3 goals, the only by her team as a whole.


Helaina had her first game on a big field on Saturday, and holy cow. It was HUGE. It's a miracle, if you ask me, that none of those girls passed out cold. That is a LOT of running. Her team didn't walk away victorious, but seeing as there were only 2 girls on th green team that had ever played before, they held their own quite brilliantly.

Of course the fact that the games were followed by a trip to Dylans and a rousing game of Monopoly just made the day all that much better.

Happy Birthday, Jenny!

How would you like it if your birthday suddenly took on a crazy and scary new meaning to everyone you knew? Well, in Jenny's case, no one ever forgets it any more. And that has to be worth something, right?

Jenny has been a part of our family for what seems like always, but it's only really been 4 years. She married my brother Nathan, and I can't possibly explain how grateful I was that Nate was smart enough to pick a girl like her. She's amazing. Gorgeous, but still low maintenance. A wonderful mom with a great sense of humor. She even puts up with us giving her a hard time the way we do each other. She's an amazing cook, throwing together seemingly unrelated ingredients to make a masterpiece every time.

I am so glad she's one of us.

Happy Birthday, Jenny!!

The Other Perspective

Matt just brought me a page from an Onion calendar. I can't stop laughing.

It's pregnancy from a perspective we just don't hear enough of. . . can't we all imagine this is what the baby MUST be thinking?

Here's the whole Opinion Piece from theonion.com

Ultrasound

It's still a boy.

Apparently a boy that weighs slightly more than expected and also has a really big head.

Oh, the joys of motherhood. I'm feeling it already.

The Lone Princess

Starting the chewing phase. . . there are 2 teeth in there

I bought this dress just in case I had a girl to put into it. . . I don't, but Natalie does, and Aubrey looks awfully cute in it.

With Tanner's squirt doll.

Seriously, could you resist that face? No. You couldn't. I promise you that. Also, I think she has the prettiest eyes ever.

Cute Boys

A few pictures of the cuteness of the weekend. These boys generally make me less scared to have boys. . . although that "I'm so tough" face that Carter is making is a little bit scary. . . just a little.


Carter


Tanner


Ethan

Pennies

My father has a thing for pennies. I'm not sure where it started, though my first memories of it are from Williamsburg when he traveled for work and would always stop at coin shops during his trips to gather rare coins. He had a bunch of those cardboard trifolds that you push the coins into so you know you have one from each year from each mint. . .

I get my type A personality from my father, and over the years I have discovered several odd obsessions that he harbors that remind me that we are truly related. He has, in his golf bag, the cards from every round of golf he's ever played. I have the movie ticket stubs from every movie I've seen at a theater since the age of 12 (he probably has ticket stubs too, I've just never seen them) So, when he developed his "thing" for pennies, it became a bit of an obsession. If you want to, you can trade my dad pennies for "real money". He would rather give you a quarter for your 25 pennies than see you drop a single one of them in a parking lot. He keeps as many as he can, in a wooden bowl in his top drawer, opting to use larger denominations so as to get the greatest number of pennies as change.

Truth be told, he may be one of the reasons the country is having a penny shortage.

There is a tradition in my father's house when his bowl fills with pennies. He gathers his grandchildren together, hoists the large fruit juice jug out of his closet, and sets about having the kids gather the pennies he dumps out on his bed and put them in the jug. One such evening happened Sunday night. I was brought in to document the event:



"This is your inheritance," he tells them. And that's probably true, to some extent. He's been collecting them for a long time, and by the time he finally dies, many years from now, the collection will be huge. I can't imagine the day his progeny has to lug those big fruit juice jugs to a Coinstar machine somewhere and cash them in. . . it will be a sight to behold.

Aubrey offers up an amen to that

1 Lb.

Am I a little bit proud of myself that I only gained 1 lb in the last 2 weeks, and only another one the month before? Yes. A little bit.

Don't worry. . . I'm up 23 for the pregnancy, and I'm definitely not starving myself. In fact, with the number of cheese products I've ingested in the past 2 months, it's a small miracle I haven't gained 50 lbs. . .

But the kid needs calcium!!

Tomorrow is ultrasound day. YAY!!

Laboring the Day away

Now that the youngest of the Webster clan is married, my mom decided it was time to stop devoting the backyard to wedding parties and time to start dedicating it to the grandkids. She found a great metal swingset and trampoline in the newspaper and promptly bought them. This is what the yard looked like to start with at 8 am.


First, the sod had to be cut up. Who knew that they made machines for just that purpose? I didn't. It basically cuts down into the grass in strips and across every couple of feet so that the sod can be rolled up and carted away. . . as you can see Jeremy and Ben doing in the following picture:

Once the sod had been pulled up, the debate was had as to what to do with it. Natalie called a lady in her neighborhood who was still needing to put a yard in, and it just so happened that she had people there working in the yard at that very moment. So, instead of throwing out all of that good grass, it filled this great woman's front yard. I think that part made everyone's day. . .



Once the sod was up, as you can see in the above shot, the sprinklers had to be dug up and moved.

The next step (and the last one for the day) was to start on the hole for the trampoline. In order to save the grandkids from broken limbs, it will sit in a big hole in the ground. Easier said than done. #1, it was really bloody hot on Monday. #2, it was about 3:30 pm before said hole was ready to be started and everyone was already exhausted. & #3, the soil in the yard was made mostly of heavy clay and gravel. Not a lot of fun to dig a shovel into. I would say the hole was about 1/3 dug when everyone finally gave up the ghost. The dirt from the hole was relocated to another neighbor's yard and everyone called it a day.

In my advanced state of pregnancy I wasn't allowed to help with any of this process, mind you. I was in charge of the wee ones instead. This was what I watched (along with Carter, and occasionally Aubrey) for a good part of the day while everyone else dug:


Truthfully, by the end of the day, I was as exhausted as everyone else, just in a different way. I was seriously reconsidering my choice to become a mother. Especially to boys. Not that i have a choice any more, and not that it was a rational thing to worry about at this point. . . but it was a very long day.

Much cuter pictures to come in the next post.

Labor Day

We spent our Labor day up in Syracuse helping to install the new playground in my parent's back yard. There was much manual labor by everyone else and much sitting around watching kids by me.

I took lots of pictures. However, I left the camera at home this morning in my haste to make it back up to work (after driving home early this morning). I will post them tomorrow.

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend.