30 Weeks!

I cannot believe I’m at 30 weeks.

Excuse me while I have a panic attack…

It’s the final countdown! I can hardly believe it. I didn’t think the 30’s ever would come. Seriously. I’m trying not to have a complete meltdown, get hysterical, be too anxious as my due date gets closer!

How far along? 30 Weeks!
Weight Gain/Loss:  My next appointment isn’t until the 12th, but I’m guessing I’ve surpassed the 20lb gain mark ;) I think eating that peanut butter ripple ice cream (yes, it was as good as it sounds) helped with that…I don’t ever feel big until I see these pictures I take, whew! ;)
Maternity clothes? Yep! I’ve already packed all of my pre-pregnancy clothes for the move, since I don’t really need them at the moment, ha!
Sleep: Not sleeping too great. I’m waking up super early to snack again, but thankfully it’s not as bad as it was at the beginning of the pregnancy.  My left hip tingles and feels super weird when I lay on it at night to go to sleep, so that’s been super annoying – I’ve been confined to sleeping ONLY on my right side for most of the night. Random, I know. As if only being allowed to sleep on my sides wasn’t enough – now it’s only the right side! Oh well.
Best moment this week: John and I were at Baby Depot last night and we were looking at the cute clothes they have there (I was freaking out about the ADORABLE button up shirts with vests and ties) and at some point while we were perusing, John said something like “Can’t Nathan get here any faster?”. I melted a little.
Miss Anything? I wish I could help move boxes. That sounds weird, but with us moving in a week and a half, I wish I could be a little more helpful, but John has banned me from lifting boxes. I’m allowed to pack them, but then they end up all over the floor because I’m not allowed to pick them up to stack them against the wall. So the boxes hang out in random places until John comes home and moves them. Which is fine until I keep running into them (don’t worry, I don’t fall or anything). My poor legs are covered in battle wounds from running into boxes. Boxes are mean.
Food cravings: Still nothing in particular. I’m so bummed. I’d always looked forward to finding out what I craved when pregnant. ;) Maybe next time around? ha!
Anything making you queasy or sick: Nope! I LOVE IT!
Have you started to show yet: You guys. I can’t see my toes. I have to bend way over to see them. I find this completely hilarious.  
Gender: My wiggly boy is getting stronger and his dance parties make me increasingly uncomfortable, but it’s so cool now that we can see my tummy move from the outside. That has to be one of the weirdest things ever. A few nights ago John said “You have a little boy in your tummy!”, to which I responded “yeah, that’s kind of freaky” “Hmm, yes, when you put it that way…”
Belly Button in or out? It has finally happened. My innie has been outed. Somewhat. The entire thing doesn’t stick out like crazy or anything, but it’s definitely poking out. 
Happy or Moody most of the time: Happy! Lots going on in the next couple of weeks and the time is just flying by!
Looking forward to: Sooooo very ready to be in our new apartment. The last three days have been filled with my neighbor’s bass line and I’m soooooo very over it.

Orlando Trip!!

Whew! I’m finally getting to my Orlando post! I’ve been super busy these last couple of days and of course, editing a boatload of pictures takes a while… ;)

As a premise, Jason got back from his mission to Spain on the 10th (yay!) and so this was our celebratory family vacation so to speak. Saturday was our travel day, we left in the afternoon and got in to Orlando, grabbed some dinner and crashed at our condo after getting settled in.

Sunday we looked up a ward online that was meeting at 11:30am (yay for later church!) and so we got up and got all ready and made our way over to the church building. We were even on time! (this is a big deal in my family ;) To a completely empty parking lot. Not a single car was there! Hm. We’re guessing it was their stake conference weekend or something because that has actually happened to my parents on another trip before. Random? I know. Needless to say but we didn’t get to go to church that day…so we came back and went for a walk at Downtown Disney and looked at the shops and vendors there. After we got back, we played some games (I lost miserably at Ticket to Ride, but my team dominated in Morphology, ha!) and went to bed eagerly anticipating our adventures beginning the next day!

Monday the craziness started!! ;) After lunch we started off at DisneyQuest in Downtown Disney. It’s like a huge arcade, but with some fun extras. Like the virtual reality rides. The Pirates of the Caribbean was our favorite (and I could actually go on that one)! We got into a ship and used cannons to blast other ships and steal their treasure, mwa ha ha haaa. Super fun. Then the rest of the place was a huge arcade, with modern as well as “vintage” arcade games. One of the weirdest things was to see my parents playing arcade games… ;)

These pictures weren’t that great, since they keep the place so dark, but you can kind of get the idea…
I’m not much of a gamer (I mean, I got stressed playing BurgerTime – I know) but we found some very fun games to play and up on the top floor was SkeeBall!!! My favorite!!!

The nice thing was that you pay admission and that gives you access to all the games. You didn’t need a pocketful of quarters to play once you got inside, so that was pretty cool. Especially for me, so then I could play a game multiple times because I’m so bad at it…and you know, get a game over pretty quickly… ;)

After a couple of hours there, we grabbed a quick ice cream treat to hold me us over until after our show that night. Blue Man Group!!! So fun! The theater was over at Universal Studios, so we took the City Walk to get there. And made some friends along the way!
LOVE the Minions!

The show was SO fun! Everyone in the family except my Dad and Jason had seen them before, but the show was as good and hilarious as ever. It was pretty loud in there and it was crazy to feel Nathan reacting to the loud music. I’d like to think he was dancing along ;)

Had to get pictures after the show! (Sorry Mom, this is the only picture I had…what are you looking at?)

We had some dinner and called it a day. And then…finally…the day I had been waiting for… ;)

Tuesday we went to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure Park HARRY POTTER WORLD! AHH! I was so excited!!!!!!! Ohmygosh Ohmygosh Ohmygosh SO COOL! I loved it!

So excited!
We stopped at Zonko’s and Honeydukes first (eeeee!)
So cool! We stopped there again later to get some candy :) Yum!

We explored the Owl Emporium and Ollivander’s and I loved it! I think they did a really good job bringing the books/movies to life here.
We got to try butterbeer! Yum!

After walking around for a while, we went up to Hogwarts castle for the ride there. I couldn’t go on the ride, but I could wait in line with everyone, because the line goes through the castle, and I wanted to see it!!
We managed to get the magic writing in this picture! It says “and the Forbidden Journey”. Awesomesauce.
I loved the castle, it was huge!
The inside was really well done too – we got inside and saw the house points! Of course, Gryffindor is winning ;)
Several of the pictures were made to look like magical moving portraits! We saw Dumbledore’s office and a classroom.
After that I had to leave because I couldn’t go on the ride. I didn’t mind too much. Turns out my mom and sister close their eyes for most of it (I know, I’m not sure why they go on it either ;) so I don’t feel like I’m missing too much, ha!

We went over to the Three Broomsticks for lunch (I know!!!!) and enjoyed a hearty meal consisting mostly of meat, corn, and butterbeer. ;)
Can’t be without a great butterbeer ‘stache’ :)

There were a couple of rollercoasters that some of the others rode before we left Harry Potter world and I went back to Honeydukes to get some candy ;)

We spent the rest of the day around the other areas of the Islands of Adventure park. By the end of the day I thought I was going to die (my feet were killing me!), but I managed to survive the entire day at the park. There was lots of resting in the shade though ;)

Tired and happy we had some dinner after we were done at the park and went back to the condo for the night.

Wednesday was time for us to go home. Our sun lovers were having a really hard time with this concept. It was probably 75degrees when we left Florida and we came back to Maryland to 30degree weather. A little depressing, but hopefully Spring will come back soon!

THANK YOU Mom and Dad for such a fun trip! We loved it! Now it’s back to the grindstone for us as John gets back to work moving into a new position (General Accounting to Cost Accounting), and a new calling at church (Stake YM Secretary) and I’ve got to get on this whole packing situation as we’re moving in 2 weeks!! AND I’m going to be 30 weeks along this week. Eek!!

28 Weeks!

7 Months! AHH! ;)

Oh, and Happy Valentine’s Day!

(I realize my chalkboard is covered in pink. My baby is still a boy. However, I’m taking the opportunity to use pink for love day while he’s not around to care, hee hee ;)

How far along? 28 Weeks!
Weight Gain/Loss:  I’m up to about 122lbs, which makes for an almost 20lb weight gain – I started out at 105. Woo hoo! ;) The only real bummer is that my body is seriously not used to lugging around all this extra weight, my feet ache after walking such a short period of time!
Maternity clothes? Yep! Finding more and more maternity things that fit – I’ve been joking with John that I could probably pack most of my clothes for the move now (even though we don’t move for another 3 weeks or so) because I can’t wear most of it anyway!
Sleep: Sleep has gotten worse. The only up side is when even though it’s 4am in the morning, I can just lay there in bed and feel Nathan kicking. It makes me happy, yet oh so tired.
Best moment this week: Jason is home from his mission! It was so fun to go to the airport with my other siblings and grandparents to welcome him home. I’ll probably have some pictures at some point…unfortunately our camera died about 5 minutes after Jason came through to the baggage claim. Boo.
Miss Anything? Hm…probably being able to wear my contacts (yeah, I just take my glasses off for the pictures…so if I look slightly unfocused, it’s probably because I can’t actually see where the camera lens is ;)
Food cravings: I’m sticking with my made-up craving. Ice cream! Although the Reese’s peanut butter cups John got my for Valentine’s make a good made-up craving too!
Anything making you queasy or sick: Nope! I LOVE IT!
Have you started to show yet: Yep! And thank you to all of you who left me super sweet comments in response to my rant two weeks ago. You guys rock!
Gender: Wiggly, wiggly boy!
Belly Button in or out? Still an “Innie”! I’m surprised it has lasted this long!
Happy or Moody most of the time: To be honest, I’ve been pretty moody this week. (Sorry, John) As my levels of sleep deprivation increase, so does my tendency to get super emotional. But overall, still pretty happy, and thankfully for most of the pregnancy I’ve felt pretty emotionally stable ;)
Looking forward to: Guys. We’re going to Harry Potter world in Orlando next week. I AM SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!!

Air, Space, and the Quest for the Magic Burrito

I know what you’re thinking.

This is gonna be epic.

…Or maybe you weren’t thinking that.

 

That’s okay. But I’m thinking it was pretty awesome, if not epic ;)

At any rate, we went on an adventure today. Several, in fact. Our first was the quest for the Magic Burrito. Wait, let me back up. Our plans for today involved going down to the Dulles Area to go to the ‘other’ Air and Space Museum that the Smithsonian has down there. (I know, did YOU know about that one?! John’s cousin told us about it – AND it has a space shuttle. Like, one that has actually been to space. Like the one we saw over Christmas in CA) Since we were leaving in the late morning, we knew we would be stopping somewhere for lunch (since, you know, I eat as much as the average sloth these days). So we decided on Chipotle Mexican Grill in Tyson’s Corner, since it was on the way. So we mapped it out on Google Maps and printed it. And we have the GPS. So we figure we had this in the bag.

False.

First of all, our GPS is so old, the address wasn’t even in the map database. But that was okay, because we brought our Google directions with us as a back up for this very possibility. We followed the directions…and ended up in the middle of an intersection. Um. What? Tyson’s Corner has a HUGE mall, so we finally found our way into the mall parking lot, with the idea that it would be in there somewhere (after, of course, trying every other direction of the intersection…). We read the signs in the parking lot elevator and they said there was a food court on the 3rd level. Perfect. It has to be there.

Wrong.

After checking the directory, the Chipotle was actually located back down on the first level. You know, where we had just parked. Figures. We finally found it and even beat the lunch rush. We dubbed our adventure the quest for the Magic Burrito. And victory had never tasted so good. The burrito was awesome too.

After eating our magic burritos, we got back in the car to head over to the Air and Space Museum. Thankfully, we didn’t have any problems getting over there. The museum was really cool!John was so excited to see all the planes!
This is the blackbird. A sneaky stealth plane. And it was ginormous.
This is me being a plane before I actually posed for the following picture. I did not know John had gotten it on camera ;)
Oh, there we go ;)

There were sooo many planes. I think one of the museum people said that there were over 200. I believe it. We almost didn’t know where to start when we got there! One of John’s favorites was the Enola Gay. I learned from John that the Enola Gay is the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in World War II. John amazes me with his seemingly random knowledge of so many different things. He could name several aircraft without seeing the helpful plaques and I’m just walking around wondering “how the heck does he know that?!”. I was very impressed. :)

And of course, we saw the space shuttle. This one is named Discovery. The one we saw in CA was the Endeavor. We’re wondering where the other ones are (besides the ones that exploded, of course). We want to see them all! ;)

And look who I found in the Space Hangar?!

Why yes, that IS an R2-D2 mailbox! Apparently in 2007, for the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, there was at least one of these in all 50 states! How did I not know about this?! This one was signed by the Post Master General and George Lucas. Sweet.

This is a very tiny ‘recreational’ plane. Cool, huh?

We walked around a little bit more and went up to the observation deck (and forgot to take any pictures) where we could see Dulles Airport and we watched several planes land while we were up there. That was really cool. We were both totally worn out by then, so it was about time to go home.

We must have been a little too worn out, because neither of us noticed that we completely missed the exit for the freeway that took us home until we were about 20 miles too far…and going in the opposite direction. (If you’ve ever driven I-495, you’ll understand how this is possible…it’s a big circle…) Oops. That makes for another adventure! We made it back about 45 minutes later than we planned, but hey, we made it and we are going to be lounge lizards for the rest of the night.

And after such a long and fun day, I’m thinking some ice cream is in order.

Love Day

It has been way too long since I’ve made some cookies. To remedy that, I made some. Seemed like the most obvious way to go with that one ;)

With Valentine’s Day coming up, I made some heart-type cookies. And I managed to actually do this IN February! (last year I just couldn’t wait and had a bajillion heart cookies hanging out in the apartment in mid-January) Go me!

But like last year, I had a hard time deciding what designs I wanted to do. So I made several. That makes perfect sense, right?

(and I apologize for the sad pictures…my lightbox is packed up…)
Had to do some lace – an old favorite! I really like the look of the red on white; I’m glad I tried that color combo.
I had some fun with my multiple size heart cutters and did a cutout center cookie. So cute!

I hope you all have something yummy to eat for the national day of love. And I’m not talking about the Superbowl. ;)