Alright... back on track...

Really, I'm going to try to get this thing operational again. Wahoo! Look for updates in the near future.

I guess I will start this thing back up...

I'm really only doing this because it will be a good way to chronicle the baby-to-be's life and times in one place. Basically my lazy way out of personal emails.

Anyway. I'll leave a picture of her taken about 10 weeks ago (or more). Here's Squirtle:

She's approximately 24 weeks in this picture and approximately 33 weeks in my belly right now. She also appears to have a thumb sucking habit already... or rather a chin jabbing habit - seeing as she tried multiple times to get the thumb in her mouth, and missed every time (while we were watching.

PS- I think it's super cool that we can see her before she's born, but I feel kinda skeezy for spying on her without her knowing it. We'll see if I feel the same way when she's a teen.

Return from Wonderland

I am back from Burning Man... it was glorious and dusty and hot and crazy and absolutely insane.

I'm going to call it the Honeymoon from Hell... in a good way. Though I have told Nick that our next vacation will involve beaches, massages, and big ass comfy beds in a quiet hotel.

I will post pictures someday... I'm aiming for this week sometime, but realistically... we haven't even unpacked everything because we're tired and I never want to touch the Playa Dust ever again. Unfortunately, everything is covered in it... (we brought you some home as a "gift" from the event. Imagine sweating a whole bunch, then finding a big swimming pool of the suff, jumping in, sloshing about, be sure to swallow a bunch of it too...

Also - sprinkle it on all of your food and add a tablespoon to everything you drink.

Love and hugs from reality.
-A

I rarely admit to crying over a TV show...

... especially a reality tv show...

But this time it was completely warranted. I not only cried, but I sobbed over the breast cancer dance on So You Think You Can Dance. If you didn't see it, you should totally search for it on the Internets. I don't know if I've ever been more touched by a dance...

It's been a while...

Ok - so I apparently can't write on a regular basis anymore, but that's ok. Why? Because I say so.

Life's been extraordinary busy these past few months; ultra tumultuous too. Late January we find out that we are going to be having an unplanned baby. After much stressing and fretting, we figure out the major logistics, and we even became really happy and excited about it. We were going to be ready! Middle of February, we told the whole family and all of our friends. Late February we had an engagement/Nick's 30th Birthday/We're having a baby party. All was well. I went to the doctor a few days later and learned that in fact I would be having a miscarriage. Indeed I did. It started a day before we left for Vegas for a work event/mini-vacation and lasted 3 weeks. I honestly don't know how a miscarriage is supposed to feel (other than not good), but this one was downright awful. Painful and long. So that's how I spent my 26th birthday. In Vegas, drunk off my ass, miscarrying. I don't know that there's an appropriate way to deal with a miscarriage, but that's how I chose to do it.

Less than 2 days after the doctor told me the bad news, our landlord pretty much kicked us out. That was another not cool thing that made me hate everything. Apparently tenants have next to no say unless they can afford lawyers when it comes to rental situations. So we had a little over 2 months to get our shit and get out. Yet another thing I couldn't control... We decided that we'd keep looking at rentals, but maybe look into the prospect of buying a house (something we thought wouldn't be possible for at least another 5 years). We actually qualified for a loan, so that was cool. It wasn't for much, but we decided to start looking anyway. We wound up actually finding a place that we liked with a lot of potential in a neighborhood we love. We made an offer. He accepted. Then everything that could go wrong during that process did. I did a lot of crying. All said and done, we closed on May 8th and we've been living there for a month and we still like it. So that's cool - since we owe for 30 years on the place now!

When I got pregnant, Nick approached the subject of getting married. I made it very clear to him that he wasn't allowed to simply marry me because I was knocked up. He assured me that he had been looking at rings already and that he really wanted to marry me because he wanted to, not because he thought he had to. So (when I was still pregnant) we discussed having a ceremony in April before I started to show. Something simple at a courthouse with parents and siblings only. Then I miscarried (see above), so we had more time on our hands for a wedding of sorts. We decided that we wanted to have our family and close friends there to be a part of it. We also decided that we wanted everyone to be comfortable. So we settled on a backyard bbq with some pause for a wedding.

It of course rained all day - except for about an hour - just long enough to get married on the deck and let people eat at the tables I'd stolen from work, so that was nice. People danced and ate and played and watched Final Four Basketball. There was much folly and beer and food and general delightfulness. Some friends got us a hotel room for the night of the wedding, so we even got complete privacy that night instead of staying at the house. It was all very wonderful and perfect. I couldn't have asked for a better day. We had friends and family from Virginia, California, Minnesota, Arizona, and Alaska make it to Ft. Collins for the event. We are loved.

So while it's been one hell of a year, good and bad, things look good for the future. I'm extraordinarily happy with most things in my life right now. I will still be sad forever about the miscarriage, but I carry and deal with that sadness in a different way, and it's made me a different person. I now know that I want a kid (very badly), and Nick knows that I want one, and we'll find a time that is right for us to have one... Or, we'll have another "oops" and have one that way. We're not really planners, so it would be very fitting that we wouldn't plan that either.