A week with Joe's parents

I think I might remember a bit more about this past week than I did about the one from my last blog. I even have pictures of them-but having placenta brain I couldn't remember to bring them with me of course. The reason for all of this was that Joe's parents came to visit . They arrived Saturday afternoon/evening and left this morning. Saturday night it was too late to go out doing things, so we watched TV. Sunday we went to church and then Grandpa Allen watched Tiger Woods play golf all afternoon. Monday we went downtown. As previously mentioned Joe's ancestors came from this area of the country-actually one county away from here-so we went to the library downtown to see if we could find any more information. The lady who was 'helping' us wasn't very helpful at all, but we did find a few things for one of the lines. Monday afternoon we went to a State Historical site-the first-ever gold mine in the US. Once we got there we found it was closed on Mondays (although the website said it would be open), so we went to the mall instead. For any of you who like shopping, Concord Mills is the place for you-even if you don't have much money. There are tons of outlet stores and all kinds of good things there. You can get Nikes or Reeboks for $20, and the Gap outlet is one of my favorite places-and they even have a maternity section!

Tuesday I went back to the mall with Grandma Allen and Karen while Joe went to work and Grandpa went to Asheboro to see if he could find some more information about his ancestors (and he found tons; all of those lines are back across the pond now). Tuesday afternoon I stayed home with Karen (we both took naps) while Joe and his parents went back to the gold mine. They did some panning for gold, and Joe found enough to buy a hamburger (a couple little specks that you almost need a magnifying glass to see). His dad found some too, but not as much.

Wednesday was Joe's birthday. He's now 'for real' old at the good old age of 26. (Sadly at this point I had to ask Joe what we did on his birthday, but I remembered right as he told me, so it's okay I guess.) This was the day we went to the temple. For us it's about 100 miles, or 2 hours from north Charlotte to south Columbia, SC. It's a really small temple and they had only 2 sessions in the morning and 2 in the evening. The first session all of us but Grandpa (who is Karen's new favorite person-because he's so funny looking?) and Karen stayed out. The session had like 50 people even though the room only holds 40, and it went over so much that I barely got out in time for Grandpa to ge into the next session and Joe (who was farther back in the room) didn't make it to the second like he'd been planning. After we got home we made Lasagna and Dream Cake (like Angel Food Cake, only with the egg yolks too) for dinner and watched a movie.

Yesterday I was so tired I didn't want to do anything. Joe's parents went for a walk/hike at the nature preserve over by the church, but Karen and I stayed home and Joe was at work. In the afternoon Grandma and I went back to the mall (yes, again) while Karen was sleeping; Grandpa had had enough, he didn't want to shop anymore, so he stayed home with the sleeping Karen.

The only things left to talk about are Karen's tooth issues. She cut her first molar on Tuesday, but I didn't notice it until Wednesday. The rest of them are close too; she's been really good about it, I didn't even realize she was working on them until I saw the first one. She's also really close to walking. Until today she's insisted on holding one of our fingers in each hand if she was walking; today she only requires one. Also, she stood up by herself in the middle of the living room this morning (not just once but three times).

Well, it has been an eventful week but I think that's about it for now. I don't know how next week will work with blogging-we're watching the house and kids for some people in our ward starting either thursday or friday, and ending the day before we leave for Utah. (so also if you call and I don't answer immediately, I'll call you back, but it might be a few hours). I'm also planning to call some of you regarding our trip this weekend-saturday or sunday, I'm not sure which. TTFN

...memory

Well, thinking back, nothing really happened this week. Monday I ... cleaned bathrooms I think.

Tuesday... oh yeah, Tuesday I went to the family history center at the church to try and find one of Joe's ancestors that we can't find anything about. They were 'helpfully unhelpful'-the lady directed me to a couple of websites to look at, but there was no new (to me) information on any of them. Tuesday was also laundry day.

Wednesday...nope, that day is completely gone. I don't remember a single thing that happened-except I made fish for dinner.

We're up to Thursday now! Yesterday...I dusted, vacuumed, and had a seriously pregnant moment-one of my first this time around. I didn't want anything for dinner-not that I wasn't hungry, of course I was hungry; I just didn't want anything that we had at our house. What I really wanted was a great big juicy steak and a spinach salad (like the one Joe's mom makes, it's great), the thought of anything else was just 'blah'. So we had potato fries at like 6pm, it was a nice 'snack', and Karen really likes potatoes in any form; she's just like her mommy that way. Then at about 9:30 I had Joe make me some Sloppy Joe's. Not that Joe's sloppy Joe's are any different than mine, I just really needed some kind of meat (and so did he) and since steak wasn't available I had to settle for something else.

So...what have I done today? I went and met with my friend Jennifer that I do Activity Nights with (8-12 girls, we have about 15 of them) to plan our activity for next Tuesday. When I got there she was on the verge of a breakdown. Her 2 year old (as I'm sure some of you can relate to) is completely wild, and besides the normal 2-year-old stuff he seems like ADD hyperactive or something. Add to that she has a 4 week old baby and is on antibiotics, at home by herself...Let's say she needed a hug this morning. When I went in I had one of those "what have I gotten myself into?" moments, seeing her with a totally out of control little boy, trying to take care of her new baby and still work on her calling...then knowing I'm going to be in the same boat in about 6 months from now. I almost cried myself, actually. Somehow through our hormones we got our activity planned, and we're going to watch BOM movies next week. Then we came home, Karen had lunch and fell asleep (I love nap time!) and I also fell asleep while reading my scriptures. After I woke up (thanks to Joe calling me) I made a cake for the dinner we're going to at our friend's house tonight. Then I packed up Karen and came to write my blog. Now you know everything I can remember from this week.

I think my memory is getting bad again. One of my professors at BYU called it "placenta brain", where your placenta and hormones take over and a year or so down the road you wake up one morning and you don't quite remember what happened in the past year, except for vague things like "I have a baby, and she used to nurse all day every day but now it's only a couple times a day and she sleeps through the night so it's okay." I'm convinced that placenta brain is the reason people have more than one child. If we remembered in full detail all the things that happened while we were pregnant or postpartum, we'd never do it again and our species would cease to exist. Well, that's it for now. Joe's parents are coming tomorrrow and staying till next Friday morning, so I should have more interesting things to write about next week.

Swimming!

Well, it's definitely a good thing that our AC was out last week and not this week. Surprisingly, for NC, it's only rained about 1/2" this whole month. Now, in places like Utah when that happens it gets really dry. Here, on the other hand, it still stays extremely wet and it gets really hot. So, the temps have been going up steadily all week and we are sitting at a boiling 96 degrees today (plus humidity). We decided this week that we needed to make use of the pool in our back yard, instead of cursing it's existence because people stay there really late at night. So, last week on my grocery shopping trip I picked up the little swimmers diapers and a floatie thing for Karen. It's really cute dolphinesque riding thing she can actually sit in and feel 'secure' in the water. Well, we went out for the first time on Saturday, and Karen screamed for the first 10 minutes she was in the water. She's not used to being in any water cooler than her bathwater, and she's definitely never been in water deeper than a couple inches. She was just freaked out, until we put her in her floatie. She thought it was way cool, but she was still nervous. We only stayed out about 20 min. Yesterday afternoon we went back for a second try, and it went over much better. She only flipped out for about 5 minutes and had a good time for the next half hour or so. Maybe one of these times she won't flip out when we go out there.

As for the rest of the things that we've done this week... To explain that, I need to make an announcement... As of the end of December (or maybe the beginning of January) Karen will be a big sister. Yes, I am expecting again. It came as a bit of a surprise. I only found out for sure in the last week or so, and I'm already 11 weeks along. Most of this week has been spent working out insurance things and trying to find a doctor. The problem with the whole doctor thing is that it's not possible to call ANY office in the city (of nearly 1 million people) and get in to see an OB/GYN within two weeks. The closest appointment I could find was for the 17th of JULY. So, while I am currently expecting and will be in maternity clothes by the time we get to Utah to see most of you, I have not had the confirmation of hearing a heartbeat or anything like that. By my first doctor visit I will be 17 weeks along-almost halfway finished. Everything is going really well so far and I pray that everything is okay, but I don't really know for sure. I just wanted to let you all know before we get there and you all think I'm just gaining a lot of weight or something. Well, that's it for now. Hope you're all staying cool.

Hot! Hot! Hot!

Well, with Memorial Day this last week summer has officially arrived here in NC. While it's nice to go outside and be in the sun for a while, it's not so fun when the 80-90 degree (plus humidity of course) comes inside to stay for a while. This week our air conditioning broke. We had been having some problems with it previously, and the maintenance people came in Tuesday morning to replace the thermostat. I thought, "wow, now we'll actually be able to control when and for how long the AC runs!" because it's been very unpredictable. However, this was just the beginning of our problems. The guys went out back to check that the connection from the unit outside to the thermostat was working correctly-and of course it wasn't. So, the worked on the connection, replacing a part or two, and it still wouldn't work. Actually, it wouldn't even turn on making it now officially 'broke' (not 'broken', we are in the South). So it was Tuesday afternoon, 90 degrees outside, I was doing laundry and something else (maybe the dishwasher was running, I don't remember) and it was miserable. About this time I thought it would nice to go to the mall or something but being the end of the month we were out of money. So I sat at home in my sauna of a living room. They said they'd be able to fix it for sure the next day. Of course it didn't work. Thursday morning they got an entirely new unit in, and finally by around 4pm on Thusday the ordeal was over. It was gross, and we are soooooo glad it's done now. We should have a great reduction in our electric bill now though.

Now to our housing issues...I wrote last week that I saw a house I really liked. Well, it turns out that Joe really liked it too. It's small, in an okay neighborhood (not great schools though) and the yard is really great (as in size, not quality; it needs some work). So Saturday we made an offer. They were supposed to let us know by Monday (even though it was technically a holiday). On Monday their realtor called our realtor and said it would be Tuesday before anything happened. The couple who owned the house were in the process of splitting up, and they were being argumentative with each other. So Tuesday came...and went. Wednesday came, and our realtor called us to say they hadn't responded yet and she wasn't sure if they were going to, there was another offer on the house, and it just wasn't going well. Well, we had to let our apartment complex know if we were moving 60 days in advance of our lease ending (which was June 1). With our house prospects fairly dim, we called it quits on buying and since we have a new AC unit in this apartment we'll just stay where we are for now.

Besides those two stories, the only other thing I've done this week is grocery shopping. Being on a fairly tight budget, by the end of the month I don't let myself leave the house much. If I go anywhere that has things for sale I'm afraid I'll buy something-anything-and I don't really have the money for it. So I go to bed kinda down the last few days of the month because I don't really feel like I've done much. Then magically, I wake up on the morning of the first day of the month and I have money again! And not only do I have money that I can spend, I actually MUST go and spend money, since by this time we're almost completely out of food. So today, being the first, I made my enormous grocery list and headed out. First I bought Karen's baby food (thank goodness she will only need it for a few more months-it's so expensive!) at one store, then headed out to Super Walmart to get most of it. On the way back after about 2-3 hours of shopping, we make a quick stop at the bread store (discount, almost expired bread that lasts really well in the freezer!) and we're back home just in time for lunch. Of course today, like most shopping trips, Karen fell asleep in the car on the way back, which meant that she skipped lunch, but it was much easier to bring in all the food since she wasn't trying to follow me out the door on every trip out to bring in more stuff. Sadly, this is the most exciting shopping trip of the month. I actually look forward to it, plan for it, and feel a bit of a letdown when it's over, knowing I won't do it again for another month. However, now we have our Costco card, so tomorrow is another mini shopping trip to look forward to (especially the free samples!). Well, now that you know all about my grocery shopping obsession, I think it's time for me to be done for now. Here's a picture of the house we almost (kinda) bought.