Around here…

This is our backyard about a week ago. It’s absolutely on fire right now. I love fall. It’s definitely my most favorite time of year. And November is my favorite month of all. Thanksgiving is this month (also a favorite) and our anniversary is coming up. Can’t get much better than that!

I had a Saturday at home a couple weeks ago and finished this:

This was one I started months ago and finally got around to finishing. I pretty much hadn’t touched my art supplies since Artfest (in April). Holy cow. It felt good to get my hands messy! I had to warm up a bit for my Artfest 2010 projects. I signed myself up for a Fatbook project where I have to create 50 4″x4″ pages! Plus I’ll probably do something for trades to take with me. I’m really looking forward to it this year. Since it will be my second time going I don’t feel as anxious about it. But I definitely need to get started on those projects soon or I will be way overwhelmed!

Home again, home again…

Still trying to catch up with everything! It’s weird being offline for a week. Our vacation was just what we needed.

We headed up to Victoria the first day. Took the ferry over and got there in time to check in at our hotel and head out for dinner. We ate at the BEST italian restaurant. They had the freshest pasta I’ve ever had. YUM. The next day we walked all over downtown. Checked out Chinatown and all the shops. They had an open market where we found some cute things and had some organic fudge. YUM again.

Then we drove North to Qualicum Beach. We stayed there for two nights. Looked around town, ate at one of my favorite breakfast places (Lefty’s) and rented Kayaks. WE LOVE KAYAKING. It’s something we’ve been meaning to try, but never got around to it. We’re hooked now! SO FUN. After a couple days there we took the ferry from Nanaimo to Tsawwassen and drove up to Vancouver.

We had the most fabulous hotel in Vancouver with a kitchen, dining, living room and bedroom. On the 16th floor one street off of Robson (the shopping district). We walked an entire day in Vancouver, all the way from our hotel, over the bridge into Granville Island area. I’m not sure if it’s actually an island – I need to look at a map. But they have the COOLEST public market ever. It’s a 1000 times better than Pike’s Place Market in Seattle. If we had a cooler, I’d have brought back a ton of fresh food. DOUBLE YUM. We also stumbled on a TV show filming on our way to the market. We watched for a little while, but I have to say, TV filming is REALLY BORING. They stand around 99% of the time waiting for everything to be ready.

Then we had 4 days at home and got a ton of little projects done! DH got a couple new light fixtures up, one in the “baby room”. And I am almost done painting some trees and owls on the wall in there. It’s looking really cute!!! I’ll have to get some pictures up on Flickr soon.

It’s hot.

My goodness. Yesterday was 104. I know in some parts of the world, it gets hotter than that, but not here. That’s really, really hot. Most people don’t have a/c in this area. Mostly because it never. gets. that. hot. here.

We’ve been trying various ways to stay cool. Cold showers, dips in the kiddie pool, sleeping in the tent, squirt bottles, shade, fans, etc. It’s fun I tell ya! Fortuntely both of us have a/c at work, but then we come home and spend the entire evening trying to cool off. And the poor dogs! We toss them in the kiddie pool a couple times a day. They hate it, but it works.

It’s supposed to start cooling down over the next week, I guess. I think today should be around 98. Still hot, but better than 104!

How’s this for optimism?

We decided that we’d need a bigger car for our growing family. Something we could fit a baby with all the accessories + our 3 dogs. We brought this guy home on Sunday and are crazy about it! Neither of us have had a new car in at least 10 years. I feel a little bit guilty about owning such a monsterous vehicle. It’s not really THAT big, but it seems like it to me! I’m still trying to get the hang of fitting it in parking spots. We had wanted to hold off on a new car until electric vehicles were more available or at least get a hybrid, but we couldn’t afford it and really needed a car sooner rather than later. Our old Honda is still in pretty good shape, but we’ve had to make a lot of repairs lately and we didn’t think it would last much longer as an only vehicle. So, we are officially SUV owners. Although, I prefer to call him, Higley the Highlander.

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Our new Highlander, originally uploaded by eklektic*photos.

On the pregnancy front, things are moving along slowly but surely. 5 weeks, 2 days today. I’ve been in a much better place the last few days and feeling like this might actually work. I know it’s still early and a lot can happen, but I’m optimistic.

I’ve been having some gallstone attacks and that is a little worrysome. I’m working on figuring out the right food combinations to keep them at bay. (Big thanks to Mick for the recommendations!!!)

Tomorrow I leave for Artfest. I can’t believe it’s here already! I still have to pack and have only just begun getting my supplies ready. I’m so far behind. Hoping to get it together tonight!

Symptoms so far:
* Fatigue – I feel like I could sleep for a week straight
* Sore boobs – increasing every day
* Slow BMs – not really something I want to discuss
* Slight nausea – a little, not a lot

Hi

How are you? I’m good thanks.

I’ve been busy with all kinds of things lately. Trying to keep my mind off of which cycle day it is (CD 8 if you were curious). We are remodeling a bathroom right now and I’m in the process of picking tile, fixtures, etc. I am terrible at this. There are just too many choices. We spent all day on Saturday looking at tile for the shower and I couldn’t make up my mind. We already have the floor tile. We used it in our kitchen previously. The house was built in 1952, and in keeping with the era I was kind of thinking white subway tiles. What do you think? If you have any examples of tile showers that you love, please send them my way!

Then on Sunday morning our car stopped running. Dave had to replace the power steering pump. We ended up not being able to get all the parts we needed in town and had to order one of them. So, we were out of a car until last night. I’m so happy that my husband is uber-capable. It’s reassuring to know that he can handle whatever comes our way.

Now we are just waiting for this weekend when we finish up our last two PRIDE Pre-Service classes for foster care. I have yet to really get started on the mountain of paperwork involved. It’s pretty daunting. We still have a little time though. There is one more class we have to take for CPR/First-Aid. Then things like TB tests, fingerprinting and that paperwork. One step at a time!

I’m heading into the RE’s office on Monday for my follicle check. Hoping for some good news. This cycle is going by pretty fast, for which I am grateful. Probably because we are so busy.

We’re Home + 100th Post

This marks my 100th post! I’ve been blogging for almost 2 years, so that isn’t much of an accomplishment. But most of it has been in the last 6 months. Well, aside from that I don’t know what to say about it, except maybe YAY BLOGGING!

We just got back from Arizona yesterday afternoon. After picking up the dogs and getting settled back in we were pretty tired and went to bed. I’ve been having some pretty bad stomach pain along with heartburn the last four days and it woke me up around 1:30 this morning. I couldn’t take it anymore and Dave took me to the ER. We didn’t get home until around 7am. It turns out that I have gallstones. I started to feel much better while at the hospital – it seems to come and go. They said they didn’t need to operate right now and released me, but I’ll be checking back in with my regular doctor next week. Hopefully the pain stays away. I’ve had a few episodes over the last 8 months or so, but never more than one night. Maybe stress brings it on!

There was a lot of flooding in the Olympia area while we were gone. The freeway was shut down South of here. (Evergreen, how did you guys do?) The roads that lead out to the dog sitter were only opened Friday morning. It was fortunate! I’m not sure we would have been able to get to the boys if they weren’t. Everything was fine at our house. We live in such a great spot and never seem to have trouble with those kinds of things.

We’re really glad to be home (even with the hospital visit!). Our trip was really good and the service was nice. We spent a lot of time with the family and going through LaNell’s (Dave’s Mom) leftover things. They needed to be divided up and the rest set aside for donation or sale. I know that was really hard for everyone. I was glad to be able to help in anyway I could. I’m going to miss her and wish that I had more time to get to know her better. I know she felt the same way. We had talked about that when we were down there the week before her passing. Although, I feel like I do after this week. Hearing all the memories shared really seems to have made me feel closer to her.

Happy Holidays

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas or Happy (belated) Hanukkah. For all the girls that are TTC, I am hopeful that we will all find our babies this year. I’ll be toasting to that tomorrow.

Peace and Love.

Snow day

It’s been snowing for a couple days now and I stayed home today. Yesterday was a bit of a fiasco. Dave and I took transit to work, which requires walking a mile to the bus stop. It was fine in the morning when the snow was only a couple inches. By the time I headed home (early) around noon it was about 5 or 6 inches. A lot to trudge through with my arms full and snow pelting me (yes, pelting) straight at my face. And wouldn’t you know it, I left my brand new umbrella on the darn bus in the morning! Grrr.

Other that that, I love the snow. It is so beautiful and the dogs love to play in it. It’s quite an adventure taking them out to do their business. We spend about twenty minutes hopping around in it (them) and throwing snowballs (me). Bubba, the schnauzer, likes to eat snow. Especially snowballs. Good times.

Speaking of doggie outtings, they are calling me now. Hope you are enjoying your day wherever you are.
Love.

things to try once

1. Ride scooter when snowing…check. (don’t recommend this one)

2. Eat breakfast in the kitchen of the house you live in…check. Hopefully this will be a “more than once” occasion.

That’s right, folks. It snowed yesterday (and today). And unfortunately for me, I had decided to ride my scooter to work. It was snowing like crazy on the way home. I made it OK. But my fingers were FROZEN. It took me 5 minutes to warm them up enough to find my keys in my purse. I stood outside the front door blowing on them while the dogs were going crazy. Pretty funny…now that I’m warm.

But the BIG news is: we finished the sink, faucet & dishwasher last night. And we officially have a working kitchen. We broke it in this morning over coffee and cereal. I actually WASHED DISHES. It was fabulous. No, really, it was.

So, go Team Finnell. We are almost there, baby.

I think you can tell

What we’ve been up to:

Sorry for the long delay. Makes for a boring blog! We’ve just been so busy lately getting this darn remodel closer to done. We are VERY excited to be at the grouting countertop stage, which we should have done tonight. Yay! I’ll post some photos of the finished project as soon as I can.

My dear friend, Shelly is at 34 [edit: 35!] weeks today (holy cow) and we celebrated with a baby shower last weekend. She is the cutest pregnant girl ever. I can’t believe how fast it’s gone. Seems like just a month or two ago when they first told us the news! Well, I am very excited to meet the new little member of the Massey family. But no hurry!

This weekend we are heading North to a wedding for one of Dave’s childhood friends. That should be fun. Then we are back to work on the remodel. No rest for the weary.