Tadd's Birthday

Tadd's birthday is in March and while we don't really celebrate birthdays I always use his to do at least something. And while buying items for Tadd doesn't make much sense, considering Austin and I were shopping for a new watch with him the other day that was worth five times more than my first car, I do like to use the excuse to make some kind of memory. Most of the time he and I go and see a comedian we have seen Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld, Ron White and countless others in our years of birthdays. But for the last two years since the comedians have been slim pickin's we have watched basketball. This year we are heading back up to the Nuggets on Wednesday night, we have center court 4 rows back and they were not quite as expensive as the earlier mentioned watch. :-) Probably because him and I have played basketball all our lives together, but we just sit there in amazement as these giant men check into the game, we have seats right behind the statisticians bench so the players all check in right there. I guess you can't understand how big a 7'2" man is until you see them standing there. Watching a TV screen you would think the refs are all very small men/woman (yes there is one woman ref in the NBA) but they are at least as tall as I am and most are taller. But the players just dwarf them. I can't wait! I have always lived by the motto that life is about the memories you take with you since you can lose everything else (spoken as a true house fire survivor) this is no exception.

My new favorite website...

So I bought the movie "Waiting For Superman" and while I sat there crying watching how we are failing our children, I noticed a gift card for $25 to donorschoose.org in the DVD box. Intrigued by this card I went on line and clicked through a truly mesmerizing website. On this site teachers make a project request for something that they need in their classrooms, the request comes with an invoice and exact product details of what they need along with a page dedicated to their classroom and a bio explaining why the materials are needed. I read through the need in Colorado Springs and was touched by one teacher who wanted life science supplies for her first grade classroom. Science was my favorite subject in school, at one point I was taking 4 sciences in one year and my lowest grade was a 104%, needless to say I had some drive. So the thought of being able to give first graders a small taste of my passion meant the world to me. She needed close to $600 to fund the entire year's curriculum in her class so I gave the $25 gift card and matched that with my own $25. Then 5 other donors got on and donated some money too and within two weeks her project was funded. Once a project is fully funded a representative from DonorsChoose.org buys all the supplies and delivers them to the classroom. I didn't think much of it after I donated until I received this email yesterday from her...

Dear Crystal Wells,

It was such an unexpected surprise when I opened my email to find that my project had been funded! Since I have submitted it, we began studying living organisms and the students have been so excited! I purchased some meal worms from the pet store and they were a big hit. Little do they know that more living organisms are on the way!

They continually ask when it will be science time and that brings me the greatest feeling that I have somehow contributed to their interest in the world around them. Hopefully this curiosity will be the catalyst for their future contribution to the community in which they live.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for recognizing the importance of this project to the education of children and finding the funds to support it.
With gratitude,
Mrs. L.

What an amazing way to match people like me who are willing to give with people like this teacher who want to change children's lives. So today I had to go back on the site and donate again, this time to a literacy program that needs new books because lets face it we are a super power and the thought of children not being able to read here is disgraceful.

And our new fence...

The two new side to the fence.





The old one that came down today to be replaced tomorrow.

More Little Gym

I took more videos today at Little Gym of Austin being a big girl. ;-)

Austin learning a front roll on the "hot dog".

Austin learning how to jump on two feet.

Austin finally being able to hold herself up on the bar, and my big ol' belly! :-)

Front roll off the big donut.

Alexis teases that Joe should be a class helper since the kids (especially the little boys) all flock to him.

Bubble time!

Austin beating to the sound of drums.

20's vs 30's

So obviously there are a lot of differences between your 20's and your 30's. Let me talk about a new one that I just noticed. I get a bonus every year, well god willing and the creek don't rise, I get a bonus. Back in my 20's a bonus would surely be spent in Vega$ or some other form of questionable means. Now this 31 year old sits here and stares at her new fence in the backyard. We decided that the one side of the fence that we got done was too beautiful to pass up, so we spent the rest of the bonus on the other two sides. Money that was once a glimmering token from Caesar's Palace can now be found in pre-treated wood. I've always embraced getting older, I love the feeling of becoming wiser and more patient...so it's not really a bad thing looking at my fence, just more of a "thing". An observation for the universe. You know, a gentle reminder that some day I will be wearing dentures and talking about when milk was 3 bucks a gallon. :-)

My weekend

So J and I "raced" in a 5K on Saturday. The day was beautiful and Austin had fun with Grandma and Uncle Dane while we "ran". Notice all the quotes every where. Turns out even walking was kicking my butt, we got passed at one point by a guy who bless his heart was limping and dragging his 85 year old leg behind him. Yep you read that right, a gimp passed us. To which we could just laugh. Of course J being the ever supportive friend didn't even give me the patronizing don't worry you're doing great speech but instead would go tit for tat with my complaints. You would have thought we were war vets if you had the patience to walk along side us and listen.

Got home and all hung out for a while before I had to start working. My evil workmates scheduled a maintenance window for me that started at midnight EST. So I powered up my laptop here at 9PM and started making my changes. Of course Murphy and her laws got all caught up in my business and managed to blow my maintenance window right out of the water. The next day I took a nap around 1ish in the afternoon for a couple hours and back up until midnight last night. My ever wonderful team must have missed my voice though because they paged me before 6 this morning too. I have to say that watching the terror in Japan and the fact that they are facing a nuclear disaster that will eventually melt their fish to the ocean floor makes me feel better that it is only Verizon's Customer Service reporting that is down when I have a bad day. Not sure how good everyone else is at math, but lets just say I have already put in over 40 hours for the week just this weekend. :-( And I can also tell ya that I can't remember ever pulling an all nighter where I wasn't at least a little drunk and as it stands now I can't even have more than one lousy cup of coffee a day. Like that can possibly touch the fatigue that I am feeling.

On a brighter note, I am sitting here watching my new fence go up. We are just replacing the whole backside for now since it had blown down and fencing is incredibly expensive, so we'll do it one side at a time. Luckily it is my main focal point from my office so it makes me very happy to have replaced it first. :-)

Meet the newest DiFabio!

Our Doctor gives you a 3D ultrasound in the third trimester as a gift, which is a great way to see what the baby looks like at this point.

I thought it was cute that she was giving us the peace sign. :-) I can feel her ability to change the world already.



And here's her precious little face....with a clip of what Austin looked like. Hard to tell if they will look just like each other from the pictures but I thought it was cool to be able to compare them even in utero.

And the belly...

So here I was on Sunday, which is the start of my 30th week.

And here I was with Austin at 28 weeks, told you that belly was bigger. :-)

Oh yeah and just in case anyone was curious as to what my stupid arm looks like. I was very happy to hear today at my doctors appointment that I passed my glucose test and will not have to repeat it. Thank goodness I don't think my arm could handle anymore blood draws for a while.

A Quick Update

Wow, I can't believe February is already gone. I turned around and had to start writing 3/1/11 on documents...how did that happen?

Austin -

We'll do her first since she is by far the most fun. She is moments away from speaking in sentences, she can already put words together but just skips the helper words. The little spider monkey stopped my heart by jumping out of her crib yesterday. She was taking a nap and had woken up but I could just hear her in there playing so I was finishing up some work, when all of the sudden I heard a big thud and then crying and when I got in there she was standing next to her crib sobbing and saying "fall". At least she wasn't hurt but it still stopped my heart. I find it increasingly harder not to repeat her words back to her rather than correcting them with what the actual word is, some of them are so darn cute. Bummie = Sponge Bob, Mankie = Blanket, Meow = Cat, Wanna = Water and by far the word that is the furthest from the actual one is Ball-Sa which is her version of toothbrush. She enjoys closing doors but can't open them yet. We got her a little potty but she just plays with it so far, we haven't actually started the potty training process. She still eats anything we put in front of her and sees all spicy food as a challenge, one that must be met and exceeded. The other day she had eaten so much spicy food that her lips swelled up. Goof ball.

The business and Joe -

Joe has been enjoying an "Epic" year of snowboarding with more snow than anyone knows what to do with, I am hoping for these same results next year. :-) The business is doing great and he continues to be the leader in the industry and is known as being the go to person. We actually just celebrated the 1 year anniversary of being open on February 25Th. Hard to believe that one full year has come and gone.

Pregnancy -

Well I am into the third trimester without even realizing it. I still feel good although I am starting to waddle, my belly is definitely bigger this time and if I run up the stairs I start to wheeze. I went in on Tuesday for my diabetic screening and if how you feel is indicative of whether or not you failed, I failed that SOB with flying colors. For those of you that have not recently been pregnant, you spend 12 hours fasting and just when you think you can't take it anymore and are going to gnaw your arm off they give you a super sugary drink - for one moment you think to yourself thank the stars that I got something in my system but the spike in sugar makes you feel light headed and "funny". You then sit there for an hour all while the blood tech asks you every 10 minutes "how ya feeling?", and desperately wanting to tell him "like crap" but if you do you know that he will whisk you away in an ambulance because something most be going wrong. So instead you smile, nod and say never better. By the time they drew my blood I was shaking and had sweat running down my face. Let me put it this way if I passed that damn test and that was how I was supposed to be feeling, that is just torturous and mean. If I failed I have to do the same test over but this time with a 3 hour window rather than just one, I hope they have a cot for me to pass out on. I don't remember the test for Austin being that rough, perhaps I was still in denial and thinking that pregnancy was a weakness that I was going to overcome or maybe my body has changed that much is two years. Oh yeah and when he drew my blood apparently something went very wrong because I now have a 3"x5" bruise on my arm that Austin calls "messy" and attempts to scrub off with one of her wet wipes. At least the swelling went down but I am still stuck in long sleeves so child protective services doesn't yank Austin away from her heroin addicted mother.