Monday, March 31, 2008

Baby Showers and much gratitude.

My coworkers and department threw a lovely baby shower for me and another woman on the floor on March 21st. We had a tasty cake and everyone was way too generous. I have no pictures to share, but much thanks! Particularly to Molly who organized the whole thing. It was really wonderful of you guys.

And then…

My family and friends all gathered up north for a baby shower on the 22nd hosted by my loverly sister Kim. Before we went up, I made cookies as table décor/favors – I am really proud of the way they came out. And before you all start wondering why I made cookies for my own baby shower, I wanted to. My dearest friend Sarah found the cookie cutter for me; I had been searching for ‘the perfect’ one for a few weeks “with a tail”.




It was really great to see everyone and just have a good time. Unfortunately, after double and triple checking that we had the digital camera with us when we drove up to Mass, we left it at home the day of the shower. One of these days we’ll figure out how to have a camera when we need it. The only pictures I have were taken by others – and I want to thank you all for sending them my way. Here are a few of the highlights.


28 weeks along - and all belly (photo courtesy of Ann)


Justin and the dino sweater grandma Ann made for the Baby (photo courtesy of Ann)


The obligatory gift table picture. (Photo courtesy of Sue)


Mo with the cookie she decorated. (Photo courtesy of Sue)


One of the many (and my favorite) gifts that grammie Sue made. (Photo courtesy of Sue)

While ‘real’ thank you cards will be coming soon, I wanted to say thank you to all that were so thoughtful as to bring me and the baby gifts at both showers. You were all so very generous. I wish I could see you all more often.

Friday, March 21, 2008

Lots of excitement.

And this time, it's the good kind.

Baby showers!

Today my coworkers are throwing a baby shower for me here at the office (in a few hours) which is so incredibly sweet of them.

Then, tomorrow Kim is throwing me a shower at home with the assistance of TC and Ann. For this one I made a bunch of bunny cookies...yes, I made cookies for my own baby shower, but it is OK I asked to. As soon as I download all the pics from my camera I'll get to show them all off. They are SO cute.

It means I get to go home and see the family this weekend, which I am really looking forward to. It's probably the last time I'll make it up there until after June.

Other than that - things are, well, things. Being pregnant is really a roller coaster. Sometimes you don't even realize you're pregnant, and some days you either emotionally or physically cannot function within the real world. There's no predicting it.

Anyway, I promise pictures early next week.

Happy Easter everybody.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Murphy's Law

I know, delinquent blogger...it's been more than a week. More than two to be fair. But at least one of those was spent in total chaos. The proverbial Murphy came to visit, and stayed for a week.

In my last post, I mentioned tangentially:

...on Friday we discovered that due to a clerical error at the DMV, our plates came up surrendered, a fact explained to us by the very nice cop who pulled Justin over and confiscated our plates. Not fun. Now we expect to have quite the adventure trying to get it all straightened out and getting new plates for our car.

Right now, we're just lucky to have a backup vehicle (THANK YOU GRANDPA) otherwise we would be totally up the river. Go figure it happened on the President's Day Weekend so we can't even start to straighten it out until Tuesday morning.


Well, it turns out that was only the tip of the iceberg.

Friday night (in a bit of shock after the nice officer confiscated our plates from car #1) we took car #2 to our optical appointments, which we were running late for.

Which means on Saturday, when we went to go shopping, the battery was dead (yep - I *still* cannot remember to turn my lights off...) and we had to jumpstart the car. Minor details, easily done. (Since I so often do this, we own a pair of jumpers, and a car doesn't have to have plates to jump start a battery).

Sunday and Monday, as I recall, were unblemished by Murphy. Ironically, I had to cancel my oil change appointment on car #1 for Monday, because I couldn't drive it the mile to the shop with no plates. On the bright side, Mom, Jimmy and boo came down to visit for the night, and we had a loverly evening visiting.

Then Tuesday hit, Murphy was back.

Plan: Jus goes to work with car #2 at 7am for scheduled data collection and returns by 8am. We both then take car #2 to the DMV to get plates straightened out for car #1.

Reality: Jus leaves the front door at 7am, only to return 10 minutes later. The transmission won't engage on car #2. Now we have 1 car with no plates, and 1 car with no transmission. Fantastic.

Thankfully, mom and Jimmy were still about, so Jimmy drove Jus to work and back and I got everything together for the DMV (and made a transmission appointment for car #2 at the shop). Then mom drove us to the DMV. An hour+ later, we had determined that something 'unexplainable' had happened and that while we were still responsible for the tickets at least we had new plates for the car. The woman at the DMV was very nice, and recognized that we were somehow the victims here, but there was simply nothing she could do. (Try proving you didn't make a transaction. Good luck with that.)

When we got home we put the new plates on car #1 and drove it down to the autoparts store to get transmission fluid to fill car #2 with in an effort to drive (as opposed to tow) car #2 to the shop. SUCCESS!

Thursday we dealt with the fixing of one car and the replacement of the front plate bracket on the other (plus the delayed oil change.)

By the end of Wednesday, things were looking up with the car situation, and a friend of ours was in town visiting. It was a pleasant evening. More wings. Good times.

But Murphy was not done.

Thursday night, our DVD player died. In the middle of a very special movie night. With 12 people watching it. Argh.

All day Friday we were waiting, but with the end of the week (Fri-Fri) came the end of Murphy's visit. We were drained, and tired, and were muchly glad to be done with Murphy.

Since then, things have been uneventful - knock on wood - and perhaps even (dare I say it) normal.