Finally

So any of you that have known me for a long time will know how much I love swimming pools. Always have and I can't seem to get enough. I think it's one of the reasons I love hotels so much because they usually have a pool. My whole childhood I begged my parents to get a pool, but they never would.

Well, the day has finally come that I have a pool of my very own!!! I've actually had one since we moved to Ohio but I wasn't able to swim in it till yesterday. I'm in heaven, absolute heaven. When it's 90 degrees outside and all I want to do is cool off, I just climb in the pool. :) And even today when I knew it was hot outside but I was nice and cool inside, I still went in the pool. :) Not for very long though because it started storming.

So all of you who were thinking you might make it to Ohio for a visit someday, now know we have amenities. :)

Sick of the rain...

So I was just about to post something about how sick I am of all the rain lately and then I remembered I had a similar post back in November. Seriously, I feel like we're living in Seattle. It has been raining for the last 10 days and it sucks.

Our first baby shower!

Yesterday we had our first baby shower. Tom's Mom put this together for his friends and family. It was a good turn out and we had a great time. We got a lot of stuff too! This baby thing just keeps getting more real. :) Thanks to everyone who came and gave us wonderful presents.

Our progress

Six months down, three to go. Who do you think will be bigger? :) I love you Franklin!

Alpacas

I didn't know that much about alpacas, but I do now! Today I had an interview at an alpaca farm for an event planner position. Franklin can't get over that it's a farm and didn't even know what an alpaca was!! The job seems interesting so we'll see what happens. If you want to learn more about alpacas, visit their site www.alpacafarm.com

Fountain pop is AWESOME!!

You know, I always liked fountain pop better than straight from the can, but now it's possibly one of the greatest things EVER! Other than french fries all of my cravings have been for beverages and right now it's fountain pop! Franklin wouldn't leave the house last night at 11pm to get me one, isn't that awful?? Thankfully the craving passed gently, but he better be prepared to make some trips in the future!!

Franklin's 35th Birthday!

Franklin reminded me yesterday that I didn't post anything about his birthday this past Sunday. I'm terribly sorry Franklin. I was sure he wouldn't want anything posted since he was so distraught over turning 35. But none the less, here is his post. :) His birthday started off with my Dad making him his favorite breakfast. Then Mom and I returned home from a scrapbook weekend with his favorite type of cake. Plus he got presents!

All in all, it was a good birthday. Now he'll probably refocus on my turning 30 this year. :(

Back from Sin City

Believe it or not on our flight back we were with the same group of plumbers! Turns out they're an ice hockey team and went to Vegas for a tournament. They didn't drink quite as much on the way home and were actually quite entertaining.

Here are the pictures for those interested.

Viva Las Vegas!!

Our adventure in Vegas began on the flight here. There was a big group of guys (plumbers) on our flight along with a lot of NASCAR fans. They sold out of liquor!! In fact, they had to leave the seatbelt sign on even when it wasn't bumpy because they were trying to keep the drunks seated. We had an off duty pilot sitting next to us and he had to go and be a bouncer some times! The guys weren't too loud and really I was just jealous they could drink and I couldn't. :)

After checking into the Flamingo we headed to Margaritaville for lunch. It was just as good as I remembered. We gambled a little in our hotel and then rested till we had to meet some of Tom's co-workers for dinner. We headed down to Fremont St. to see the show and then we went to dinner at the Orleans.

The next day was quite the adventure, or marathon as Tom would call it. Now he's been here like 5 times and I have only been here once, but when I kept asking him if he's seen something he would say no. Turns out every time he came here, he pretty much stayed in the hotel that he was staying in. So I took him down the strip! We took the monorail so that it was a little easier on our legs but it was still a hike. We saw the lion exhibit at the MGM, went to New York, New York, Paris and the Aladdin. We went to the top of the Eiffel tower. It was neat, but very cold. The warmest day here was Thursday at 60-degrees. It was only 47 yesterday!! Tom decided he didn't like all the walking. :) But I did win $28 at Paris!!

Friday night we saw Celine Dion. It was an awesome show! I highly recommend it.

Saturday Tom had a meeting and I hung out in the room. I actually slept quite a bit. My pregnant body was trying to recover from all of the walking the day before! After his meeting we headed to Ceasar's Palace to have lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. Then we went to the Conservatory at the Bellagio. Tom had to go to some stupid dinner last night so I hung out in the room again. Thank god for TBS and TNT.

So today we head home, to warmer weather! We're going to try and get on an earlier flight so that we don't get home so late. Haven't won anymore money since Paris, but we did try and spread our money out evenly. We gambled at every hotel we went into. :) I've also decided that I'm never coming here again when I can't drink. It's just cruel walking around seeing everyone with beer and margaritas and other frozen concoctions. I'll post a link with the photos when I get home.

On another note, I like NASCAR a lot and I have quite a few friends who do too. But seriously, it brings out the most interesting people. As my brother in law would say, white trash at its finest.

Hope everyone had a good weekend!!

Two things that happened on the way home...

Today Franklin and I were on our way home from the mall. We stopped at a drive thru car wash. As we pulled up we told the guy we wanted a basic wash and he told us we paid the people down the hall. We were like what?? You had to get out of your car and the attendant put your car thru the wash but then he got out. It went through without anyone in the drivers seat! It was just very odd.

The second thing was we drove by a Beverage center. This is basically a garage that you drive through and on the inside is a bunch of beverage coolers. Like you would see outside of a gas station. You pull through tell them you want a 20 oz. Coke, pay and you're on your way. We saw two of these!!! What happened to just stopping at a gas station? Or going through a fast food place? Kinda makes me wonder if this is a successful venture. Hmm....

Adventures in Houston...continued

So the rest of the trip has been pretty uneventful. There's not much to do around the hotel and we haven't been to many restaurants outside of the hotel. Like I said, kinda boring. We did go to a restaurant in a shady part of town that the concierge recommended. There was a group of us and it was actually pretty busy but there was a security guard out front. That was kind of funny.

Then this one guy that we know from Michigan told us that he went to Galveston to see the sunrise and hang out on the beach. While he was sitting there a dead body washed up on shore!! No lying!

One thing I did have fun with...there's a long red carpet separating the meeting rooms and the exhibitor show. I pretended like it was the red carpet of an awards show or a movie premiere. Tom even took a picture of me! :) Hey, I have to entertain myself someway.

We head home tomorrow, finally.

Adventures in Houston - Day 1

Yesterday Franklin and I headed to Houston, TX for a soccer conference. I wasn't that excited about going to Houston, but I was glad I could be with Franklin all week. Our first adventure was at the Detroit airport. When going through security we had to go through this Ion machine before going through the metal detector. You stand in it, it blows a bunch of air on you and then you wait til it's done processing. My guess is that the air would blow around any bomb making material you may have on your clothes and then it would detect it, but I'm not totally sure.

After a delayed flight we finally make it to Houston, get our bags and get a shuttle. The shuttle drive was very scary. When merging onto the expressway the shuttle driver almost ran into a car that she didn't see. Then we got off the expressway, she was in the right lane but needed to turn left so she went ahead and crossed two lanes of traffic. And what was this for you ask? Well she needed to get gas. So we're sitting at a gas station as she's pumping gas. She puts the nozzle in and walks away. Then she walks back and without even looking to see if the pump had stopped she pulls it out. Gas went everywhere! Then she tried to put it back in and get the $.05 she paid for but didn't get. We finally get back on the freeway and can see the downtown area, everyone in the shuttle feels better. But does she get off at downtown, nope, she gets onto another freeway headed away from downtown! And then finally gets off the freeway, goes under an overpass (which looked like a homemade shortcut) and heads back towards downtown. Franklin and I were happy that our hotel was first. We wished everyone else luck and got out of the van.

The last exciting thing of the evening was dinner. We went to the steakhouse in the hotel and started talking to our waiter. Because the NBA All Star game was just here this past Sunday I asked him about that. He served Kobe Bryant! That was just kind of cool.

So now today is much less exciting. Franklin has a meeting this afternoon and I'm just gonna hang out in the room. Hopefully there won't be too many more adventures to blog about!

Unemployment

Well, two days into my unemployment and things are going just fine. :) I've mostly been catching up on taped shows from when I was in Albuquerque. Today I slept in more than I would like but I figure I'm allowed to do this in the beginning.

We went to the doctor yesterday and everything is moving along just fine. We heard the baby's heartbeat again and it was moving around. I have an ultrasound in 3 weeks and we can't wait to see how much the baby has grown. And I learned that I've gained 5 pounds so far. I took Tom to Babies R Us this past weekend and he was overwhelmed with the amount of stuff. He also said all of the men in the store looked exhausted!

And I no longer have my same cell phone number. I'll be sending out my new number to everyone soon!

I felt the baby move!!!!

Today, in Albuquerque, I was sitting at our registration desk and I felt the baby move for the very first time!! It's so exciting and of course I called Tom right away. He was sorry he missed it, even if he couldn't feel anything himself. :)

Albuquerque...just as brown as expected

I'm in Albuquerque for my very last business trip with Internet2. It has been nice to see the sun and be able to be out without a coat sometimes, especially because we flew out right before the snow came in! But other than that, I'm not that impressed. It's a nice city, nice campus but it's just okay. It could also be that i'm pregnant, can't drink and everything interesting to see closes at 5. :) I would've like to have gotten up to Taos but it's 2 hours away and we don't have any free time.

So I'll continue with this being a downer of a post...I will miss my friends at work and I will miss the job. Sitting here thinking this is the last event I'll be at is just kind of weird. I don't think it's set in yet.

16 weeks and things are looking up

So now that I'm 16 weeks pregnant I haven't thrown up once, nausea has been kept at a minimum and I've had to get out of bed and get dressed in the morning 2 days in a row!! Thankfully this is allowed because my energy has been mostly returned.

Here's to a happy 2nd trimester!

Busy lives

I was sitting here feeling guilty that I haven't really posted much in awhile. But then I take a look at my friends blogs, and they really haven't either. I've always looked at January as kind of a blah month, but apparently it's a really busy month for people. :)

I guess I'll post a little update about myself. I'm almost 14 weeks pregnant. Feeling sick less than I did a few weeks ago but I still have days. And moments. And nightly indigestion. But that's the beauty of it, right? I'm headed to MI to work for a couple of days. This will be my last trip into the office, as an employee anyway. Kind of sad, but life goes on. For those of you who don't know, my company only gave me four months to work remotely and that is up on 2/10. So I am looking for another job, but haven't found anything yet. I'd like to find something before I'm obviously pregnant. Illegal to discriminate against me, yes, but doesn't mean they wouldn't.

Franklin has been busy at work too. Spring time is on the way which means the kiddies all want to play soccer!

Hope all is well with all of you. :)

Is the kiss of death hereditary?

So, it's a sad day in my house. I put on my brand new Peyton Manning jersey this morning with the thrill and hope that they would win their game today. It didn't work. I wore my Giants jersey last week and they lost too. My Mom says that whoever my Dad roots for loses because he is the Kiss of Death. I think I've inherited that from my Dad. :( Oh well, go Steelers!!!

Cute as a button!

I picked up Sophie from the groomers today and she had pigtails!!

Merry Christmas!!

I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas! Hope Santa brings everyone good presents!!