Baby Watch: Week 7

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Val

This was an exciting week for us because it was our first doctor’s appointment and we got to see that there is, in fact, a baby in there! I’m not making light of the situation because I know too many women who went to their first appointment and learned that they’d had a missed miscarriage or false pregnancy. Those first couple of weeks are so scary because so much can go wrong, so we were very relieved that everything was thus far okay.

(This is a look back on week 7. I’m currently at 19 weeks, but want to get these all posted in order.)

Week 7: Feb 26 – Mar 4

Baby Size: Blueberry – my favorite!

Maternity Clothes: Nope. Bras will be the first to need upgrading though, specifically sports bras I think.

Sleep: I need it constantly still. I did go a day without napping at lunch or after work. Baby steps…

Symptoms: Constant need for sleep, sore knockers, constant nausea (but no puking), occasional baby brain (it’s been better this week), having to pee at night (which totally sucks), I get out of breath at odd times and slightly more than usually (which I guess is all the hormones, not because I’m suddenly out of shape). The nausea is in full gear and sometimes I sleep on the way too and from work because I feel so sick. Lo is kind enough to drop me off at the front door of work so I don’t have to walk the 3 blocks from the car. It’s also always freezing and I just want to be warm and not sick.

Workouts: The fatigue and nausea still has me skipping some workouts, but I had two volleyball games, did heated yoga and regular yoga, and another standard workout or two. We ended up deciding to tell my yoga instructor that I was pregnant this week because the week before in class she said “no handstands if you are pregnant, high blood pressure, etc.”, and I honestly didn’t think I’d be limited at what I was allowed to do in the first tri. I was about to pop up into a headstand that day before she said that! So I talked to her before our next class and she said I should avoid deep twists, binds, and full inversions (concern is with placenta detachment and such). I love those parts of yoga and can get pretty deep in twists and binds, so that sucks to have to modify so early on. I fully expected to have to take prenatal at some point, but I thought I could continue as usual until my belly got in the way.

I was also disappointed to learn that I’ll have to quit playing volleyball sooner than I expected. At first the nurse practitioner said “no more playing starting now”. That’s crazy so I talked to the doc and she said she could give me until 12 weeks and then my uterus will be too high for it to be safe. I know a lot of people who were allowed to play up until 20 weeks or more (!) so I was a little sad about that because I have a league that starts in two weeks that I was really looking forward to, and I’m going to have to find someone to play for me. I was hoping I’d be allowed until at least 16 weeks, unless I show early. But to be honest, I dive A LOT in volleyball (and land on my torso, not my knees) and I’m not sure of my ability to hold back all of the time and I would rather be safe than sorry. Kelley has been told me for the last two weeks “no diving!”, though it’s technically still safe at this point – so she’s probably happy to hear that the dr. supports her thoughts on it and I straight up won’t be allowed to play. That being said, I dove in a game last night (it was an amazing save, if I do say so myself), and I landed on my side/hip (so it was safe), but it hurt my boob so BAD!

Best moment of the week? Tie. My sister, who lives out of state, emailed and asked if I was far enough along in my pregnancy to start telling people. She doesn’t know – only 2 people know so far – and we were planning on telling her next week. We have had no conversation that would lead her to think I was – and only communicated via a few facebook messages and texts about her upcoming wedding. I tried to answer in a way that made it sound like we weren’t yet, but she was misunderstanding and then not buying my attempts to correct her, so I just told her that I was. It’s a weird sister connection that we have. My parents are visiting her this weekend and I wanted to tell her afterwards so she wouldn’t accidentally slip and tell them before we did (actually more so her friends slipping, in case she told them). I’ll still skype with her next week to tell her fiancé, but it was just crazy that she knew. She said she told her co-workers 2 weeks ago that she thought I was, which was right around the time that we found out! We are waiting to tell our families until after our first appointment.

That leads me to the second tied best moment – our first appointment and ultrasound! Seeing that there is something in there is pretty amazing, though it still doesn’t feel quite real – even with all of the symptoms. Maybe when it starts to look like an actual baby. What you’re seeing in this picture appears to be a baby head on top of a lump of a body. Actually, the baby is between the plus signs (crown to rump), and the round thing is actually the yolk sac. The yolk sac will disappear in the next few weeks. I don’t know what yolk sac actually does, but apparently baby eggs have egg yolks too.

Movement: Nothing for a few more months probably

Food cravings: Very little. Plaintain chips were a hit this week for a salty nausea helper. I really wanted mangos for a couple of days, and fruit in general sounds pretty great to me right now. Occasionally I’ll think I’ll want something, but then if I think about actually eating it, I’ll get really nauseous – like with sweets.

Food aversions: Almost everything. Food just sounds terrible to me. Eating doesn’t make me feel good. I’m eating just enough to get by (and still try to workout most days). Normally I love sweets, but I haven’t had anything sweeter than a protein shake this week. The other day I said I wanted frozen yogurt and then I literally gagged. I also really want Easter candy in theory, but cannot think about eating it. If that doesn’t pass before easter, I’ll be stocking up for later because Easter candy is my favorite (mmm, Cadbury mini eggs – how I would love to be able to eat you right now). It’s a little hard being GF and pregnant, because I can’t just eat saltines if I’m not feeling well.

What I miss: Sleeping through the night without peeing, enjoying food

What I’m looking forward to: Telling our families over the next couple of weeks. We are hoping to try to tell most people in person, but will only be telling family for the next couple of weeks.

Milestones: 1^st ultrasound, first time someone asked me if I was pregnant (see above – luckily it had nothing to do with my body).

Boof’s Big Adventure (and lack of common sense)

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Val

I always thought our dog was really smart because she listens to NPR every day while we are at work. We usually listen in the car on the way to and from work, so it gives us something to talk to her about when we get home. Just kidding. Anyway, I assume she was well-versed in public issue and what’s going on in the world. Unfortunately, she seems to be one of those dogs who is very intelligent, but has no common sense (or self-control for that matter).

Last Thursday I finally unpacked my backpack from our Vegas trip and set my empty backpack in our room. Boof seems to think there are lots of goodies and food in every single bag or backpack (which is sometimes the case), so even when the bag is completely empty, she can’t control herself from turning it inside out searching for something delicious.

We have a webcam set up in our living room, where she is 99% of the day while we are at work. Usually sleeping. On Friday around 8:30, Lo emailed and asked what was on the couch with Boof. I pulled up the website and it looked like a backpack was in front of her on the couch. Her whole body was blocked by the bag, except her face and her tail and back legs. I didn’t remember if my backpack was in my closet or my room, and since it was empty, wasn’t really concerned. Lo thought his was in another room with the door shut. He was worried that she had the backpack stuck on her because she usually just gets into a bag where she finds it, and leaves it there. She appeared to be sleeping peacefully, so she didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger (unless she got it caught on something), but he sent our friend who lives nearby over to check on her.

We each sat in our respective offices staring at a webcam of our dog for several minutes. At one point, I click away from the screen and when I looked back she’d moved to the chaise part of the couch and was completely obscured by the backpack, so it was clearly stuck on her somehow.

When our friend got there, she sat up and I caught this pic of her with the pack around her neck, kind of like she was waiting on the bus, but not really.

He let himself in and she ran over to him and took the bag off her neck and put it somewhere that she couldn’t get it, in case she was determined there was something good inside. (she’s not angry or trying to bite him in this pic – she’s mid-yawn)

Apparently she had the HANDLE part on top of the backpack stuck around her neck! I don’t even know how that would have happened! We’re lucky that the backpack was empty, because if it were heavy and got stuck, she could have strangled herself if she tried to drag in anywhere. (see all of the dog hair below the handle?!)

We joked that maybe she was trying to run away. She’d stayed the previous weekend at our friends’ house with their 3 dogs, and we highly suspect she wants to live there instead of at our house because it’s boring at our house. But truthfully, she just has no common sense or impulse control. So don’t feel bad if your child has ever stuck a pebble too far up his nose or in his ear, or got his head stuck in a banister. Making him listen to NPR isn’t going to help the situation though. Some people and dogs just can’t control themselves.

Discovering I was pregnant, and the first couple of weeks

Posted on May 21, 2013 by Val

This is a long one, so if you don’t care, skip it. I promise I won’t write about pregnancy every day, but I have some catching up to do.

On discovering I was knocked up…

I kind of always worried that I would find out I was pregnant after a vacation or a week when I had been drinking a ton. I know that in the early weeks of pregnancy, the baby isn’t getting nutrients from the mother yet, but it still also didn’t seem like a good plan. I’ve never really had any valid pregnancy “scares” (whether before we were ready or after). I don’t even really understand how accidental pregnancies happen. 99% of the time, you take birth control (whatever your preferred method), do it, and don’t get pregnant. There was one time a few years ago that I thought I was a week or so late and I think I even called my doctor (I didn’t realize at that time that you just take a test at home first). The doctor told me to take a test and call back if positive. I bought one on the way home from work and when I walked in the door to our place, I remembered that I actually had my cycle the week before and had forgotten. See that week before I had PRK, which is a more painful version of LASIK eye surgery with a 4-5 day recovery time, and I was on plenty of meds and sleeping for 3-4 days, so I had totally forgotten about it. I was pretty embarrassed that I’d already called the doctor and it turns out I’d just forgotten I had a period a week after it happened.

Anyway, when I actually was pregnant this time, I pretty much knew as soon as possible. I started to get a feeling that I was, so I tested about 4-5 days before my cycle. With the first test, I forgot to look at it within the 10 minutes (who does that?!) and then I couldn’t tell if what I could see was a shadow or evaporation line, so I tried not to get too excited by it. I took the second test the next day and the was definitely darker, so I was pretty sure I was pregnant. Lo was at a hockey game, so I took some pictures of Boof making the announcement so I could tell him the next day. I still wanted to take one more test – using digital this time so there could be no mistake. I would have hated to tell him and then it turn out that I was wrong – even though I was pretty certain that I already was based on the fact that I couldn’t keep my eyes open by the end of the day already. Boof wasn’t super impressed with taking the photo and until I got a treat to tempt her with, she wasn’t participating.

But I finally got a decent one, though she’s clearly concerned about getting the tiny piece of carrot I was holding.

I bought a digital test to take the next morning just to make sure. It was positive! I wanted to wait until after work to tell him so I didn’t have to spring it on him first thing in the morning before work and we could actually enjoy the moment. It was hard to keep it to myself all day and I was so tempted to just tell someone, but obviously I thought he should be the first to know. When we got home he was going to finish putting his car back together. I wanted to have dinner ready for him and then was going to text him the picture of Boof with her sign. About halfway through the evening, I realized I was getting the flu. What I initially thought was muscle soreness from workouts was getting worse and worse, and I started to get chilled. He came in to get something and I said “bad news – I’m getting the flu”. He said “are you pregnant?”. I knew I couldn’t lie and then tell him that I was in an hour, so I just said, “well, actually I am – I had a whole plan to tell you”. He was so excited and shocked and completely forgot what he came in to look for. He had no reason to suspect that I was pregnant except that in the 7 years he’s known me, I’ve only had the flu once – I don’t get sick often and being pregnant ruins your immune system. By the time he finished up his car, I was useless. I was wearing flannel pjs and a thick full length robe and I was freezing. So he had to make his own pasta (the sauce was made the night before) and take care of me instead of me surprising him with a nice dinner and good news! I was about 4 weeks at that point.

The first people we told were Chuck and Kelley over the weekend. We knew we had to tell them early on because we are with them a ton and I usually drink. Not having a margarita at a Mexican place would have been pretty obvious. I showed them the picture of Boof with her sign and they weren’t sure what to think right away. Their first thought was that we were getting another dog, but they figured it out pretty quickly and were so happy for us. We don’t plan to tell anyone else until after our appointment on March 1. We are very realistic that every pregnancy doesn’t make it to term unfortunately. We can’t control what’s going to happen, and can only hope for the best!

Week 5: Feb 12-18

Baby size: Apple seed
Sleep: I need it constantly. It was actually my first sign that I was pregnant even before I was late. I pretty much have to nap once a day or I can’t function. Luckily I can almost always ride to work with Lo, so I can sneak a nap in on the ride to and from work, and sometimes I have to nap in my office during lunch. Other times I have to nap right when I get home, especially if I’m really nauseous.
Symptoms: Constant need for sleep, sore boobs. Midway through week five, my arm brushed my chest when I woke up at night and I thought I had a lump because it was sticking out where it shouldn’t have been. As it turns out, my boobs grew overnight. I swear it was overnight because I hold my chest when I’m running down the stairs into the basement, and I went down in the basement 3 times the night before and they felt normal. Crazy. I only get small bouts of nausea, usually if I don’t eat soon enough after I’m hungry. I also get full really quickly and when I don’t stop eating, I feel terrible for a little while.
Workouts: The fatigue and nausea has me skipping some workouts, but I managed a few workouts, volleyball, and yoga.
Best moment of the week: Realizing that I can still enjoy parties without drinking (though I was drinking alcohol-free wine to trick some friends). I assumed I could enjoy without drinking, but I didn’t often do that before – which is also why I was fake drinking because it would be a dead giveaway if I didn’t drink at this specific gathering. Luckily, the others were drinking enough that they probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway!
Movement: Nothing for a few more months
Food cravings: Nothing specific. I wanted ice cream a couple of times, but I like ice cream anytime. Oh – and cottage cheese – but I also regularly eat that.
Food aversions: Nothing, though I find myself being turned off by sweets at times (but not at other times).
What I miss: Sleeping through the night without peeing, enjoying food
What I’m looking forward to: Our first appointment and ultrasound in two weeks. As I told Lo this week “this pregnancy is taking forever!” I know, it doesn’t bode well for how much longer I have. I think it being a secret is what’s so hard.
Milestones: Nothing comes to mind – being pregnant is a pretty big milestone to begin with!

Week 6: Feb 19-25

How big is baby? Sweet pea
Maternity Clothes: Nope. I’m also fortunate (?) that sometime between week 1 and week 6 I lost about 5 lbs, so I have room to grow in my clothes. I don’t know when the weight loss happened exactly, but if I had to guess, it has to do with the nausea/food aversions recently. Oh, and maybe not drinking too.
Sleep: I need it constantly still. Naps all of the time.
Workouts: I’ve had to skip some workouts because of nausea or necessary naps, but I had two volleyball games, did heated yoga twice, and another standard workout or two.
Symptoms: Constant need for sleep, sore knockers, constant nausea (but no puking), having to pee at night (which totally sucks), I get out of breath at odd times and slightly more than usually (which I guess is all the hormones, not because I’m suddenly out of shape). The nausea has become pretty constant. I thought since I wasn’t puking it wasn’t so bad – JUST KIDDING! Constant nausea is terrible because there isn’t even a few minutes of relief. Usually by dinnertime, my nausea subsides enough for me to have a good meal, only to return shortly after I eat. I asked Lo how many weeks I was the other day (he has more pregnancy apps on his phone than I do) and he said 6 weeks and my response was “this is taking FOREVER”! That doesn’t bode well for the next 34 weeks!
Best moment of the week? Having a three day weekend, which means extra sleep. And extra sleep means I get to sleep through some nausea. Also, my husband and I don’t cuddle during sleep, but before I fell asleep one night (but after he was asleep), he rolled over and spooned me and was holding his hand on my belly. He didn’t know he was doing it, but it was sweet. I probably wouldn’t have been able to fall asleep like, but a few minutes later he woke up rolled over. The next day I asked if he was awake when he did that and he said no – that he woke up and thought “oh- I guess we’re spooning”.
Movement: Nothing for a few more months.
Food cravings: Very little. Plaintain chips. Once I thought I wanted a milkshake when Lo was stopping at Chick-fil-A for dinner, but that was a mistake and it made my stomach hurt. The food was fantastic though. Fries and ketchup sounded good a couple of times. Luckily we usually make frozen fries at home, so they aren’t as bad as fast food fries.
Food aversions: Almost everything. I hate eating because I don’t know if I’m hungry or feeling nauseous, so I don’t know if I’ll feel better or worse after. Dinner is my only “safe” meal.
What I miss: Sleeping through the night without peeing, enjoying food. Not feeling sick
What I’m looking forward to: Our first appointment and ultrasound in next week. I need to see that there’s actually something in there! Then we can start to tell our families too!
Milestones: I found a couple of gluten-free, but cooked rolls at our favorite sushi place that were decent. That’s harder than it sounds, because so many cooked rolls also have tempura. I told some people that I gave up drinking for Lent so I don’t have to explain when we are in social situations.

Menu Monday: Back on Track

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Val

I’m late posting [again], but this time only a little! Monday’s are hard for me, because if I don’t remember or am not able to prep the post on Sunday morning or before, I’m usually busy with dinner and movie night with our friends all Sunday evening. Anyway, now that you know I’m knocked up, it may make more sense why my meals of the last month or two were very simple and not well-planned. Until a month ago, food sucked. I always felt sick and I never could plan anything. Lo was in charge of meals a lot of times because I just couldn’t handle it. But now that I’m feeling better, I’ve been trying to make things more well-rounded, sometimes with little success of course. Thankfully I haven’t any crazy craving or strong aversions, so meals aren’t too difficult. I’m still feeling weird about chorizo since about my 5 week when I just started to get nauseous and Lo make a quinoa and chorizo dish. It was tasty, but I couldn’t handle it and the thought of chorizo isn’t appealing.

Monday: (As I posted last week) On Monday we were still in Vegas. We went to brunch at Slice of Vegas because they had gluten free pizza. Lo ordered a Hawaiian pizza with spam and dehydrated pineapple, and I ordered one with ricotta, proscuitto, grilled red onion, and arugula salad. They were both really good, but I give the edge to my choice. We pretty ate the leftover pizza on the plane for dinner. I’ll definitely want to go back here on our next Vegas trip.

Tuesday: Gouda Chicken Burgers (frozen from Costco and they were great!), baked beans, and asparagus. It doesn’t look great, but it was.

Wednesday: Leftover dinner for lunch. Lo had volleyball (and thus pizza that night) and I went to dinner at Chuck and Kelley’s: They served cheese and proscuitto, bison burgers on grilled portobellos, angus beef hot dogs, broccoli, sweet potatoes, and Mediterranean chickpea salad (that I brought). Dinner was capped off with Talenti gelato (which is AMAZING) and gluten free cookies. I had a headache brewing since about 4 p.m., and by the time I got home, I was in misery. Thankfully it went away by morning.

Thursday: Soup for lunch for me. We needed something simple for dinner and had some thawed chicken, so we made fajita nachos with grilled chicken, peppers, onion, avocado, cilantro, and cheese.

Friday: For lunch, leftover fajita nacho fixings, minus the nachos and cheese. For dinner we had a 1/2 grilled cheese and chicken sandwich before our friends came over for a bit, and then some pizza later. I had some frozen homemade gf pizza and Lo made a DiGorno pizza for himself.

Saturday: Lo was at Indy Pole Day all day, so I just had soup for lunch, a pint of blueberries, carrots and broccoli, and a little leftover pizza for dinner. The pizza didn’t tide me over, so I made some chicken nachos later with baked tostitos.

Sunday: For brunch Lo made yolky eggs served on a piece of toast and then we had Sunday dinner and movie with our friends at our house. It was Lo’s turn and we made grilled cedar plank salmon with horseradish honey mustard, proscuitto-wrapped scallops, and veggie skewers. It didn’t seem like a lot of food, but it was filling! We watched Bernie, which is one of the only Jack Black movies that isn’t terrible, and then had leftover gelato from Tuesday and some leftover gluten-free Texas Sheet Cake that I had thawed the day before. YUM.

So even if I had more dessert than necessary, and not-so-healthy food food like nachos and pizza, they were healthier versions of those and I had a TON of vegetables through the week. It was also kind of a ton of food. I need to slow up – once I was able to tolerate food again, I was able to tolerate it A LOT!

Our Secret: Revealed

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Val

I’ve been hiding something from the blog lately and it’s time to come clean. I feel like I should have admitted what’s been going on a long time ago, but we had our reasons – and since those reasons passed, I’ve just been too busy. It’s time for the truth!

No, we are not getting another dog. We’re having a baby! A human baby! I’m due October 15, 2013, so I’m currently 18 weeks and a few days along. We were finally really ready, and it happened quickly after that. It’s crazy that I’ve waited so long to post about this, but we wanted to tell most of our family and friends in person, before we announced it anywhere. So it’s still not out there on Facebook, but now it’s okay for people to find out. We didn’t want to do an announcement on Facebook for our friends to find out because it’s so impersonal. While there are still some friends we haven’t been able to tell in person yet, it’s time to get it all out there.

My pregnancy so far hasn’t been uneventful – which is why it was crazy trying to hide things. I tried to surprise Lo when I found out, but I got a 24 hour flu the night I was going to tell him and he totally guessed that I was pregnant. A few days later, my sister who lives across the country text me to ask if it was too early to tell people I was pregnant – and she had no way to know that I was – she just had a feeling. I had about 7-8 weeks of 24/7 nausea in the first trimester, so life was a little miserable for awhile. I could barely eat, I was sleeping constantly (like 2-3 naps a day), and I couldn’t work out more than a couple of times a week.

Things are much better now. I have some energy, can eat, am starting to show, and the baby is doing really well according to our ultrasounds and appointments. Now comes the craziness of prepping for baby and getting stuff done around the house before the fall.

I’ve been writing weekly updates without publishing, and even though they are pretty far in the past now, I’m going to post them over the next couple of weeks so I have them all in one place. We started taking pictures around 12 weeks, though for several weeks, the only difference was only how big of a meal I’d had that day.

I’m not sure how thrilled Boof is going to be about the baby, but once he or she starts dropping food all over the place in about a year, she’ll get over it. We got this shirt for her to wear when we announced to my family. White ribbed shirts aren’t flattering on anyone, but as much as Lo swears she doesn’t like wearing clothes, she’d run over to me and sit down anytime I picked it up and she perfected her model pose immediately.

Oh – and there will be no Weekly Workout post because other than lots of walking in Vegas, I haven’t done any workouts! I’ll be back on it next week!

Menu Monday: Vegas Edition

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Val

We arrived back from Vegas late last night after attending my sister’s wedding. It was a great trip with most of the family present (all of the sisters and my parents, at least – which is no small feat). I’m going to go ahead and post Menu Monday, even though it won’t make it until Wednesday, because we had some great meals out there. Even though we were on vacation, I don’t feel like we ate as bad as we sometimes do – especially since we really only ate twice a day each day.

Monday: Burgers, Asparagus, and Ranch Potatoes with our friends at our house.

Tuesday: For lunch, burgers, asparagus, and ranch potatoes. Cap City for dinner with a friend. We split GF calamari and housemade chips, and I got a chicken salad of some sort that I could only eat 1/2 of.

Wednesday: Lo had pizza at volleyball. I ate the other 1/2 of my salad from Cap City. It was getting a little wilty, but it was fine.

Thursday: Grilled cheese with chicken breast for lunch before our flight. ~~Snakes~~ Snacks on the plane (trail mix, apple, and a cookie for me). A LATE dinner after arriving at some Taco place in the Monte Carlo food court around 12 a.m. Vegas time (or 3 a.m. our time)

Friday: For lunch: The best burger in the world at Hubert Keller’s Burger Bar at Mandalay Bay. They have gluten free buns that were awesome and I built my own burger with organic beef, avocado, smoked gouda, and caramelized onions. The onions were like a sauce they were so tender and abundant. It was so amazing. I let Lo eat most of the fries we were sharing and got a salted caramel milkshake to go. Again….amazing.
For dinner: My sister and her now-husband hosted a BBQ for the families after the rehearsal dinner. I had pulled pork, mexican dip, fruit, and I can’t remember what else…but it was good!

Saturday: Wedding day! Before the wedding, I had some gf banana bread that my sister made, yogurt, and a banana. The food at the wedding was so good – I had caesar salad, truffle twice baked potatoes, roasted vegetables, and salt crusted beef filets (I think that’s all). Oh – and some French macarons.

Sunday: Mother’s Day brunch with most of the family at Hash House A Go-go. These were the biggest servings of food I’d ever seen. Mine was crazy because it was just eggs and such and I couldn’t eat the biscuit, but my dad’s pancakes were bigger than his head (and there were several), the chicken and waffles were ridiculous, and Gary’s pork tenderloin sandwich was also bigger than his head and 2 times bigger than the bun it came on. We weren’t ready to eat until after 8 p.m., but we went to Gordon Ramsey’s Burgr at Planet Hollywood. It was good – the fries were spectacular, but my burgr wasn’t as good as Burger Bar – though Lo had the most flavorful Chili dog ever.

Lo’s chicken and waffles that he obviously could never eat in one meal (which he was disappointed about):

Monday: I’ll just include Monday since we were still in Vegas. We went to brunch at Slice of Vegas because they had gluten free pizza. Lo ordered a Hawaiian pizza with spam and dehydrated pineapple, and I ordered one with ricotta, proscuitto, grilled red onion, and arugula salad. They were both really good, but I give the edge to my choice. We pretty ate the leftover pizza on the plane for dinner. I’ll definitely want to go back here on our next Vegas trip.

So What Wednesday – too busy

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Val

It’s So What! Wednesday over at Life After I Dew and I’m linking up!

This isn’t going up until late Wednesday or on Thursday, because I’ve been too busy lately!
When I was walking to yoga yesterday, I older man with what I suspect was a thick Scottish accent said to me “Ahh, sports lady”. I don’t know what it meant, but I was kind of proud. Despite being a great athlete, I always say I don’t look like an athlete because I’ve got all kinds of boobs and hips.
I wore my Tom’s all day at work today and got away with it. They are dark colored, so it doesn’t look too obvious. And I hardly leave my office, so no one sees me.
I STILL haven’t divided my hostas yet and they were ridonkulous last year. So now I’ve text a friend and told her if she wants some, she can split them while we’re out of town. She’s probably better at it than us anyway.
I have a ton to write about and haven’t had time to do it!
We’re going on vacation for my sister’s wedding in Vegas (woohoo!) and I haven’t been very concerned about packing even though it usually takes me awhile.

I’m going to add on a Wednesday Worry, because this isn’t a “so what” topic:

Our dog gained a stupid amount of weight sometime since February. It’s embarrassing really. I thought she’d gained maybe 2 lbs…not oh no…more like 8! Which is like 1/4 of her body weight. No wonder she won’t walk normal anymore! We feel like bad parents but it isn’t our fault that we can tell. We give her the minimal amount of food for her weight and she only gets tiny pieces of carrots for snacks – NO table food. She gets at least one, sometimes two walks a day, and she wanders around in our back yard as much as she wants. Something else is obviously going on. Lo emailed the vet who didn’t seem too concerned, but we got her prescription diet food to see if it helps.

So that’s what is going on around here lately. What’s making you say So What! lately?

(A Late) Menu Monday: Not a virtuous week

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Val

I had most of this post ready to go – just had to add the last few meals. And then the weekend happened and I haven’t had time since then to do anything! It was just an incredibly busy weekend with running around on Friday after work, an early Saturday 23 mile bike ride, followed by my favorite craft show of the year, followed by a Crew game and dinner with our friends. Sunday was making food for a potluck at Lo’s family for his brother’s graduation. We were gone from 1 – 10 p.m. that day. This week isn’t going to get much better before we head to Vegas for my sister’s wedding!! And I have so much to write about and no time to do it!

So here’s the post that I had written with the intention of publishing on Monday.

I’m linking up for Menu Monday again, so these were our meals from the last week. I usually have yogurt or cottage cheese with fruit for breakfast, and Lo eats 1/2 of his lunch for breakfast. For lunch we usually have dinner leftovers, salads, or soup.

Monday: I had Chick-fil-a, Lo had Graffiti Burger. He went with his brother and his girlfriend while I was at yoga, and then he picked up chick-fil-a for me later when he went to run errands. I had my usual – bunless chargrilled chicken sandwich with waffle fries.

Tuesday: Homemade Sloppy Joes and waffle fries – Lo made these while I was running errands. I have no idea what recipe he used, but he tweaked it a lot with spices anyway, so no sense sharing which one it was anyway.

Wednesday: I had Chipotle, Lo probably had pizza after volleyball. We took Boof to her first Paws on the Patio (Pups and Drunks) at Powell Village Winery and I got Chipotle with Chuck and Kelley afterwards while Lo went to volleyball. I had my usual – 1/2 of a chicken salad and chips and guac (I should have skipped the chips). I ate the other half for lunch the next day.

Thursday: Dinner at our friends’ house. It was amazing. Halibut with fresh mango salsa, grilled potatoes, asparagus, grilled romaine salads…yum. Food there is always amazing, so it wasn’t a surprise! Dessert was a gluten-free cupcake from Cherbourg Bakery to celebrate Kelley’s birthday (late). It’s ridiculous how good their gluten-free goodies are.

Friday: Pizza Night. Lo made DiGiorno for him, and he grilled Bob’s Red Mill GF crust for me. It was topped with turkey pepperoni and balsamic mushrooms.

Saturday: Cinco de Mayo- our favorite restaurant, which Chuck, Kelley, and their nephew Jordan. I had 2 tacos and way too many chips.

Sunday: We had a potluck with Lo’s family for his brother’s graduation and ate at about 230, and didn’t really have dinner after that because we were driving back. At lunch I had pulled pork, beans, coleslaw, corn salsa, fruit salsa, and cheese. On the way home we ate tortilla chips and chunks of cheese in the car because that’s what we brought back with us. I was so hungry by the time I was getting in bed that I didn’t know if I’d fall asleep, but I didn’t want to brush my teeth again, and I fell asleep anyway.

So that’s our less than virtuous week of meals. I need to get back on a better cooking/planning schedule when we return from Vegas. Hopefully we’ll have some lettuce from our salad table soon too!

Sunday Social: 4 Things

Posted on May 5, 2013 by Val

It’s Sunday Social day where Ashley and Neely post questions each week for people to answer on their blogs and a linkup.

1. 4 favorite things to do on a weekend (it depends on the season, but I’ll go with spring/summer)

sleeping in
hanging out with friends
catching up on dvr’d shows
being in the sunshine

2. 4 favorite things about your best friend

She’s loyal and sticks by the people who are important to her – after good times or bad. She’ll do anything to help or protect those most important to her, and she’d go after someone if they tried to hurt her friends or family.
She’s incredibly thoughtful and is always thinking of others, sometimes to a fault by putting others’ needs before her own.
She’s compassionate for those who deserve it, and isn’t afraid to stand up to those who don’t. She doesn’t judge people unless they’ve given her good reason to do so.
She’s fun. She can laugh at herself and others without making them feel stupid. She’s willing to try anything, and just as willing to just hang out and talk (often over several bottles of wine).

3. 4 things you would do with $100,000 (I don’t know if this means 4 things to spend 100k on total, or 4 things to spend 100k on each – I’ll go with total)

Pay off Lo’s student loan and our car payment (our only non-mortgage debt)
Go to Hawaii and Ireland again (in separate trips, of course)
Home upgrades
Buy an SUV to replace our other car

4. 4 favorite books you’ve ever read

Black Hawk Down and In the Company of Heroes (you have to read them both because they are companion stories and so important to read both)
Bridges of Madison County (I always forget how much I loved this, but I was sending something to Madison County at work the other day and remembered. I love the movie too because I love Robert Redford so much [even if he has old balls and loose skin now])
Silence of the Lambs trilogy (includes Red Dragon and Hannibal) – these made me want to be in the FBI and I’ll always regret not trying. Now I’m too old and not brave enough anyway. But I still love serial killers.
I don’t know how to pick just one more (so I won’t)!!!!!! Just off the top of my head, I can’t pick between Hunger Games (mostly book 1 and 2) and The Time Traveler’s Wife. But I’ll think of something totally different soon and regret these choices!

5. 4 favorite snack foods

cheese
chocolate
ice cream, preferably Jeni’s
blueberries (not typically a snack for people, but I will totally each a pint as a snack) and be so happy about it

6. 4 things that you must do daily (I honestly couldn’t think of things that I have to do every single day – I don’t even like showering on Sundays unless we have something important). I’m not a super habitual person.

Brush my teeth immediately after I get out of bed (after I pee)
Love all over Boof. I have to get in her face at least 2 times a day and kiss her cheeks and forehead until she moves her head away.
Eat something sweet (even if it’s just fruit)
ugh…this is so hard. I guess I usually check my email, even on Saturday and Sunday.

Did you link up? Leave me your link!

That's What We Did

just our day to day life

Baby Watch: Week 7

Boof’s Big Adventure (and lack of common sense)

Discovering I was pregnant, and the first couple of weeks

Week 5: Feb 12-18

Week 6: Feb 19-25

Menu Monday: Back on Track

Our Secret: Revealed

Menu Monday: Vegas Edition

So What Wednesday – too busy

(A Late) Menu Monday: Not a virtuous week

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Week 5: Feb 12-18

Week 6: Feb 19-25

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