Big Belly Picture

37 weeks and one day. The clock is ticking...

Baby crafts

Knit bees, thanks to the pattern at SweetP-Knits. L is putting together the wires and strings and such so I can turn them into a mobile for the crib.



Closet dividers, so I can organize all the cute baby clothes people have been giving us.

Halloween craft

As usual, I'm behind on everything. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays and I usually try to really decorate the porch for the neighbor kids. Didn't happen this year....too much work, not enough energy. I managed to put together a moldy old wreath for the front door, however.



A close up of the cobwebs, spiders, and mold.




The finished product. It's a little bit of variation on a Martha Stewart wreath, made with a straw form and reindeer moss.

Baby knitting

We made it back from Ireland. We're fighting off colds and jet lag. I get to work four days and immediately leave for Oklahoma for a quick trip before I get too big and irritable to travel. I'll post more Irish pictures eventually, but until then, I wanted to brag on myself a bit. I knitted my first baby sweater! I have to say that self striping yarn is fun!

Last night

We're spending our last day in Dublin and flying home t0m0rr0w m0rning...

Connemara and points south.

Not in any particular order...


In front of the cliffs of Moher (otherwise known as the Cliffs of Insanity for all you Princess Bride fans). These are just south of an area known as the Burren. We are over 600 feet above the ocean here.


The very barren Burren. South of Galway there are 10 square miles of this limestone formation. People managed to live in this area and raise cattle. No wonder there are so many stone walls. There is a never ending supply of rocks here.
The town of Westport. It was originally a planned community built to support a local manor house.


Our drive through the Connemara region. A one lane road, lots of sheep and the occasional donkey surrounded by beautiful fields and mountains. There are a lot of peat bogs in this area. A peat bog tried to eat me, in fact.....nearly got my shoe.

C., enjoying the local Guiness. Much better than the bottled stuff in the States. We are at a local Galway pub listening to traditional pub music.

We are now in Dingle, where Gaelic is still the predominant language.

Galway

We've driven across Ireland and have stopped in Galway. It's a good size college town on the western edge of Ireland. Spent most of the afternoon wandering the old town and eating fish and chips. We'll go out tonight for pub food and traditional Irish music. Debating on going to the Aran Islands vs Connemara and the bogs tomorrow.

The Sheep Gate in Trim. The last standing gate from the city walls built during Norman times.

Us in front of the Spanish Arch in Galway. So named because it opened onto the docks where the Spanish used to deliver wine. Galway had the monopoly on the wine trade for a while.

Trim Castle. The oldest Norman castle in Ireland. Parts of Braveheart were filmed here.

Ireland

We landed in Dublin this morning after 3 hours of sleep. We're in the town of Trim. Sleep now and more travel in the morning!

A couple pictures from the nursery

Just to keep vaguely up to date...


C. installed this closet system in the nursery.


In the meantime, I painted bees on the wall.


My version of Pooh.


A tree that will hold the beehive.

Breaking news

I guess it is time to finally let the cat out of the bag. Way back in March, I was knitting booties for a friend. At the end of the month, I got one of these:




8 weeks later, we met with our perinatologist and got to see our little critter in
lots of detail.



Top view is the back of his uncooperative head. Middle is a profile. He's looking downward and you can see his brain on the right of the photo. Leg is stretching down in the bottom left hand corner and spine stretches across the top. Bottom,is a profile shot of him looking upwards and to the left side of the picture.

It is ia little boy and we are thrilled to pieces. We have as much confirmation as one can get that everything is in the right place and growing on schedule. I've had the most amazingly boring pregnancy so far....no morning sickness, no nausea, no feeling bad at all. I had a bit of fatigue in the beginning, but I've long outgrown that....and all my pants. We've been busy getting the nursery put together and I'll post pictures when the furniture starts arriving this week.

Cat fur miracle!

I wouldn't usually rave about a random product that seems too good to be true at first glance, but this one is true and it IS as good as it claims! The Furminator is really THAT good! Our black kitty has a serious hairball issue and hates taking medicine to help. It's hard to get her to sit still for a good brushing as well. The Furminator was getting huge handfuls of fur out with just a couple of strokes. We have used all sorts of brushes on her...slicker brushes, combs, anything you can imagine and nothing has worked as well as this thing. I even used it on Zoe....who has the shortest, flattest, least likely to shed fur ever and was getting great gobs of loose fur off her as well. Zoe really went nuts over it, coming back again and again for more brushing when she will usually tolerate it for about a minute before she is done with it. If you have cats, you need this brush! I can only imagine that it is just as good for dogs!

Belated Fourth of July

We're only most of the way through the month and I'm just downloading photos from our trip. Turns out this is a very busy summer with work and stuff. We ended up in Naples, Florida with our friends, Bill and Helene. We mostly napped and ate fabulous meals, but we managed to get out a bit, even though it was sweltering hot and stupidly humid.



C shooting skeet in Everglades City.



We took a boat out into the Everglades, looking for manatees. Here is C with Bill and Helene in the background.



Cute manatee snout coming up for air. When we got too close to the mangroves at the edge of the water, the mosquitoes descended fast and furious.



An alligator making its way towards the marina.

More Changes

Our Brazilian Cherry is being delivered tomorrow afternoon to give it a few days to acclimate. It's getting installed on Monday. We are also getting a new upstair AC unit installed on Tuesday. It's getting pretty busy around here.

House update.

The painters are cleaning up on the main floor. Everything looks so clean and fresh! We didn't do anything too exciting...just an antique white on the walls and a linen white on the ceiling. My flooring guy is coming tonight to give us an estimate on hardwood for the upstairs. We will probably go with the Brazilian cherry again so everything connects with the stairway and downstairs. We also ordered a new couch this week. It'll show up sometime in July. I sold the couch and love seat to a local college kid that works for me, so we are pretty much sitting on the floor for the next month and a half. It's already getting a bit steamy outside, so my garden seems to be getting neglected again this year. If it cools off a bit this evening, I'll go out and do a bit of weeding in the front and deadheading in the back.

Spring cleaning

Things are feeling a bit stale and we've decided to get some painting done. Neither one of us feels like sanding and painting the ceiling in the kitchen so we are currently getting estimates from some recommended painters. I have this vague feeling that the process will be very annoying and dust filled. Anyone have pointers or advice?

Bacon Explosion

Maybe I missed this when it first made the internet rounds, but I have it now and I'm not giving it up. We can get decent smoking action from our little Weber grill. As soon as we both have a whole weekend off to digest we are making THIS!

Baby Project

No! Get all your dirty minds out of the gutter. I am not with child despite everyone's fervent wishes and hopes. Two babies, two different sets of friends. Gifts must be created. I bring you:


Hot pink angora baby booties! I think they are super cute. Super easy as well. Each one takes about an hour each to knit up. Pattern is thanks to Purl.

More about my Valentine's weekend

I'm heading into a huge crunch at work....minimum 6 months, but for now with no end in sight. C and I decided to have an over the top vacation to make up for it. We also really needed to escape the cold, cloudy weather here. We made it simple and stayed in the continent states. We ended up in Key West, Florida and spent most of our time at Little Palm Island. It was warm. It was wonderful. It ended all too soon.
We did a lot of lounging, reading, and soaking up the sun. I went on a snorkeling trip to Looe Key. It was the first time I had been snorkeling in "open" waters that were not near shore. It was a bit nerve wracking and I quickly got used to it. I was also out there by myself, as C decided to stay on the boat and chat with the Captain. I got to see a lot of barracuda, yellow snapper, many types of coral and a baby blacktip reef shark.


The sunset from Little Palm Island.


Many things to do on Little Palm Island.


Sunset from Key West


Key Lime Pie...on a stick...dipped in dark chocolate. YUM!


Tropical refreshment for a tropical vacation.

What I did on my Valentine's Vacation

More to come later when I'm not working crazy hours.

Pictures from the Long Inauguration Weekend.

No pictures, however, of the actual inauguration. We are locals. We are too smart to be caught up in the maddening traffic, numbing cold and overwhelming crowds. We will, however, provide good eats for anyone who wants to visit. We met up at Fogo de Chao for wine, conversation and copious amounts of meat.


Tom prepares to dig in.


Carrie, well into the face stuffing.


Jon, caught red handed in the midst of gluttony.

Martinis and wine kept us well lubricated.


Chocolate mousse cake....nomnomnom

What's for dinner?

Herbed lamb chops with onion compote and balsamic reduction
Parmesan polenta
Wilted spinach with garlic and lemon

Dessert: More chocolate cupcakes and peanut butter frosting.

Yum!

NomNomNom

Thank you, Martha Stewart, for the delicious recipe for chocolate cupcakes and peanut butter frosting.