21 weeks

I am more than halfway through the pregnancy, if this girl cooperates and makes her arrival right around 40 weeks! It feels good to be halfway through - and this is probably because I'm smack in the middle of the second trimester. The "I feel like a truck ran over me" period, otherwise knows as the first trimester is but a distant memory, I can still move around with relative ease, and the panic hasn't set in. I'm golden.

I'm pretty lucky that two of my friends are also pregnant right now. One is due a week after me with her second child, and the other is due in early fall with her first. Unfortunately, the latter is still feeling like a truck ran over her, being stuck in 1T, but I'm sure she start to feel like a human again someday soon. I love having people in my life who are going through pregnancy with me. Today at lunch I took off with one of them and we perused Babies R Us for bedding (check out my registry and tell me how cute my bedding is!) and then wandered to Bed Bath and Beyond for some baking appliances. I love that I have friends that will do that with me.

So life is good right now. I'm fatter than ever and it's only going to get worse, but I went on a maternity shopping spree a few weeks ago and I'm set for right now.

In other news, Ian is returning to everyone's favorite country tomorrow (okay, well I know he departs SoCal tomorrow, when he actually arrives to his final destination is another story), so keep an eye on his blog, there could be some interesting stories! Good luck Cpt. Brown - Semper Fi!

Semper Fi! or my flag is cooler than your flag

I walked in my house after a long day and saw a big package in my kitchen. Upon closer review I saw Ian's unmistakable handwriting. Whoo hoo! Real mail! I said outloud to no one in particular "Ian sent us something from Iraq?" to which a disembodied voice responds "Hurry up, I've been waiting for you to get home to open it!!!".

So we open it and inside is one of the flags (we're told it's one of a few) Ian flew when he "got the keys to the car". (The enclosed letter was so full of Ianisms, it was fantastic.) Pretty damn cool.



We're going to fold it up all nice and pretty like (as soon as we google how to fold a flag into a triangle because everyone knows you will be put in front of a firing squad if you don't do it right) and hang it up until such a time comes when we have a big old house with a big old flag pole and we can fly it and tell our kids that the flag came from Iraq when Ian was over there, yes the same Ian who is currently playing Halo with Daddy and talking about treacherous precipices, and don't listen to Mommy and Daddy when we talk about humping snowbanks young man!

the short list

1. Apparently Kuwait is hot and sandy.

2 I have linked two more blogs on the side. The first one is Dooce, which I have read off and on for the past year. I don't know why I haven't linked it sooner. I highly recommend it. The other is Ian's blog (linked in #1 as well). He has promised his blog will become more interesting now that he is in the sandbox otherwise known as the middle east.

3. Yay for the Red Sox. Yay more for the Pats, Yay again for the Eagles.

4. My parents are selling my childhood home on Thursday and moving out for good on Saturday. Check back later this week for a weepy update about that.

California, here we come...

I spent my Labor Day Weekend in SoCal. On Thursday Andrew and I looked at each other and said "hmmm.... let's go to California". So we hopped on the next cross country flight and rubbed elbows with the rich and famous.

Or, the more believable story is we had the whole trip planned months ago and went out with our college friends to surprise Ian for his birthday. I never thought we would actually pull off the surprise, but either Ian is really good at having a completely dumbfounded look on his face or we pulled off the surprise. Actually, both of those instances could be true, now that I think about it. So we had a fabulous weekend in sunny San Diego. It was great to get away from the 100 degree humid hot weather we've had in NE. Wait... Right, it was 100 degrees, hot, and humid in SD as well. Eh, I'm fine with that. That's why god invented beaches.

And speaking of beaches. The East Coast may be superior to the West Coast in every way, except for the beaches.

The mountains back east aren't as big as that cliff right on the beach! I've never seen cliffs like that.

The waves were incredible. On Sunday they were twice as big as I was! Granted I am not that tall, but the Sunday waves were at least 10 feet tall. The above picture was taken on Friday.

All in all, it was a really fun weekend. Seeing the Brown family was fantastic, as they are left coast dwellers and the rest of us are right coast dwellers, we don't see them very much (tear!) and we've never been out to see them and it was the first time for some people to meet Aaron. I would say our surprise birthday trip was a great success.