Puzzles, Docs and family.

November 25 - Today I am thankful for puzzles.  I love building puzzles and am trying to pass along my love to our kids.  I bought one of those packs of puzzles that contains four different patterns and the girls managed to while I was not looking, open more than one bag so the pieces got all mixed together.  The only way I know of to successfully get them back in their respective bags is to build them.  It made me happy to sit around building puzzles with my favorite two little helpers (well nearly three but he just pinches nerves and causes my legs to fall asleep). :-)

November 26 - Today I am thankful for an OK from the doctor.  We went in for our biophysical profile and while everything else looked good they normally like to see him move more during the 20 minutes of monitoring.  Luckily the doctor was not as worried as the technician but it did cause me to instantly start sweating and feel like I was going to pass out.  An emergency C-section to potentially save a baby in distress does not sound like a good Wednesday.  The doctor just thinks he is getting SO BIG in there that he is sleeping more in his cramped space which was a complete relief to hear and enabled me to then go to the store and pick up the necessary supplies that I needed for Thanksgiving.  My Grandmother used to work at a florist shop during the holiday season making wreathes and centerpieces, because of this I decided to make a live centerpiece this year.  It took me hours to make and I referenced a lot of images online all the while being some what sad that I never really knew my Grandma.  We saw her once maybe twice a year and would wave Hi and then run off to play.  I couldn't for the life of me even tell you where she was from - other than Grandma's house.  I wish that she had been alive when I was older and cared more about people's stories.  I bet that she was a lot like my Mom and I, boy would the three of us had some good universe solving conversations.

There's my pride and joy!

November 27 - Today I am thankful for my family and tardiness.  I was petrified that I would be sitting in the hospital during Thanksgiving this year, obviously all of that was wiped away when the little guy gave us a scare the day before - at that point I just wanted him healthy.  Thanksgiving is by far my favorite holiday, I consider it Christmas without the uncomfortable presents.  The big meal, the fancy China place settings, the centerpieces, the laughing until it hurts.  All of it is just magical to me.

Catch up again...Ooopps!

November 19 - Today I am thankful for Starbucks.  After Goose and I were all finished up at the doctor's for our Wednesday morning check we drove through Starbucks before heading over to Joe's shop to say Hi.  With my last two pregnancies I was very cautious as to how much coffee I would drink in the morning, always limiting myself to one cup.  But with this one I have been drinking several and just more winging it with most of the rules.  We will have to see if I have caused this poor little boy to have extreme amounts of energy or some other type of side effect.

November 20 - Today I am thankful for Grandparents day.  Austin's school hosted Grandparents day and we were able to go to Austin's school and eat lunch in the cafeteria with her.  She is only half day kindergarten right now so she doesn't get to eat there either so it was a big deal to everyone.  It was fun to watch my Mom's face as she walked through her school and notice how different each generation must see things.  From Tyler that sees it as intimidating, to myself that sees it as more of a necessity to my Mom that was looking around in amazement.  I am sure it transported her back to the days when she was in the necessity role and how that must feel like just yesterday.

Enjoying lunch with Gram!

November 21 - Today I am thankful for sleep.  Friday mornings are the only morning that I do not have a meeting at 8AM that I have to wake up and be ready for, so it is the one morning during the week that I can take my time getting up and drink some coffee before firing off emails.  I tend to also sleep in just a few minutes later.  Of course this particular Friday morning I was called by work early and as I mumbled to myself and powered up email I thought about the sleepless nights I have coming up right around the corner.  While I was saddened to miss out on that little extra sleep this morning it made me realize that at least I have been fortunate enough to have some sleep for a while now as I get back into the sleepless zombie stage of parenthood.

November 22 - Today I am thankful for good friends.  It seems as though we get older and have less and less time for friends, each time we see them it was an actual act of carving time out of that day to make it happen.  No longer are the days when you can call someone and have them just hanging out on couch doing nothing.  We celebrated one of our friends 40th birthdays on Saturday night and it was great catching up with everyone.    

Someone managed to snap a picture without me noticing but it included the belly. :-)

November 23 - Today I am thankful for due dates.  While I am still pregnant so in this case the "due date" was not exactly that, at least we have some kind of idea as to when the baby should come.  If you had asked me honestly at the beginning of this pregnancy I would have guessed that I would have delivered just before the due date, only because it's my third...and at some point don't they just fall out of you?!?!  But no here we go with the waiting game.

November 24 - Today I am thankful for Thanksgiving Break.  Austin is off all this week for holiday break and I am super happy to have her home.  Of course my happiness is not quite as massive as Goose's who is ecstatic to have her home.  They are getting more and more excited to meet their little brother, I don't have the heart to tell them that meatloaves don't do much at first but they are definitely already preparing to teach him how to walk and talk.

Sick kids, movement and chats.

November 16 - Today I am grateful for days at home with sick kids.  Yep, you read that right Anne...I now officially have two sick kids, I must have jinxed it by telling you that I didn't have anyone sick.  On Sunday we were supposed to do all kinds of running around to watch football games but instead Joe went out and ran the errands and checked on things while I stayed home with the booger noses.  Austin has now been out of school for two days and we are hoping that tomorrow will be better.

November 17 - Today I am thankful for movement.  This little baby boy inside of me was resting on a set of nerves for the last couple of weeks that made my left arm swell up and I lost all grip strength in my hand.  It was somewhat comical to watch me not be able to pick anything up with one hand but it sure did hurt to have that much swelling.  Magically I woke up yesterday morning and picked up my coffee with "the wrong hand" but it didn't drop it.  Wow...I feel like a whole new person having both hands in action now.  My To-Do list is long today!

November 18 - Today I am thankful for help desk chat sessions.  I am attempting to get something fixed on my work laptop and normally you would have to call the help desk and deal with an hour of clarifying questions but since we have implemented the new chat service I can now blog while I am trying to explain what I need and why I need it.

Ooops - Catch Up!

November 12 - Today I am thankful for my flexible schedule.  Every Wednesday I have my biophysical profile (which we got another 8 of 8 at this week) and I have to take a few hours off to get there, get all checked out and get back home.  I have to work some off hours here and there like this week both Wednesday and Thursday night I worked until almost midnight but because of that additional work I put in everyone is very willing to let me take any time I need.

November 13 - Today I am thankful for snow days.  I still am not the biggest fan of school, and every time I start to warm up to the idea they run another active shooter drill and I am back to where I started.  At least this year we have a teacher that both Joe and I appreciate.  Even with the acceptance of school this year, on this sweet Thursday we got to stay home and enjoy a snow day.  It was fantastic!

November 14 -  Today I am thankful for family dinners.  It was Carri's birthday and Tadd organized a family dinner for her.  There never feels like enough time at these dinners, we could sit around all night and talk.  On this particular night the girls never left my Mom's lap and the food was amazing.

Look Uncle Dane even came down for the occasion.

There's the birthday girl!

 And Sunni came too!

Yep, Grandma didn't let go of them pretty much all night.

 Joe and I...not sure how Papa got out of the pictures.

November 15 - Today I thankful for gingerbread cookies.  Much like so much at the end of a pregnancy things start to change it's possibly the universes way of preparing you for the changes that are coming.  Joe is taking all of his employees out tonight for a dinner thing - but since we don't really have a babysitter and my Mom is already on call for baby time I chose to stay home with the girls.  Tadd and Carri headed up to Blackhawk, CO to go gambling and stay the night along with 25 of our friends - I REALLY wanted to go with them but Blackhawk is nearly an hour outside of Denver and being as though if I went into labor we would have to name the little guy Craps or Poker, I skipped it too.  Oh yeah and Hoss and Leslie are having their house warming party tonight but again it starts pretty late and I didn't want to drag the girls and my big ol' belly to it.  My silver lining after canceling all other plans were some delicious gingerbread cookies that the girls and I made and decorated.

I haven't even sat down yet to help decorate and they are already eating the icing. :-)

The sugar is starting to kick in. 

 No cookies would be complete without the help of the cleanup crew under the table, patiently waiting.

Maternity Leave

November 11 - Today I am thankful for my upcoming maternity leave.  While I tend to fight my leave and login as soon as I get home from the hospital just to make sure I haven't missed anything, apparently in this country I am very fortunate to have a company that not just allows for me to take it but actually demands it.  I am required to take a minimum of 6 weeks and can extend that to 12 weeks paid if I so choose or even up to a year if I only want 75% of my pay.  Here is a recent statistic that I read this morning in the news, it was kind of shocking.

"Even if you're lucky enough to be gainfully employed in the U.S., there is indeed only an 11% chance you have access to paid family leave. And as many as 40% of workers don't even qualify for unpaid leave."

Delivery, my brother & half day kindergarten!

November 8 - Today I am thankful for delivery, we have one pizza sub shop that delivers out here in Black Forest and on Saturday it was a nice treat to have them provide dinner.  I find winters especially hard with meal preparation, during the summer we have volleyball and softball and what not so I don't actually have to cook every night.  Here it is winter again and the sun sets at 5 and the days feel longer than they did and the meals are harder to come up with.  I try to come up with new recipes and try new things but some days are nearly impossible.

November 9 - Today I am thankful for my brother.  Joe and I didn't have any plans for our football Sunday so we invited ourselves over to Tadd's house to cook and watch the game.  It's always nice to hang out with him and now Carri too.  He loves to cook as much as I do so we sit around inventing new things and laughing and joking.

November 10 - Today I am thankful for half day kindergarten.  It started out a very nice 65 degree day and by lunchtime it had dropped 20 degrees....by now another 15.  I was very happy to be able to pick Austin up, run to the store and make it back for my afternoon meetings and before the snow blew in.

Mud & Home

November 6 - Today I am thankful that Joe has so much experience in construction.  I find myself watching a lot of You Tube videos and reading instructions but it is much nicer when someone else at least has an idea of what needs to be done.  Pretty much every wall in our house has been painted many times and in order to get a new fresh coat of paint to look nice we (read Joe) will probably have to re-texture each one.  Here is the wall in the little boys room - or as the girls have named him - Button's room.  By the way if we can't start narrowing down some names soon his name very well could end up Button.


After the first layer of texture.

And then the second layer.

November 7 - Today I am EXTREMELY thankful that I work from home.  It was supposed to be nice but has been mostly cloudy and windy all day thus making me very sleepy.  If I worked at an office I am sure by now I would be sleeping in the storage closet, but I have managed to find a ton of things around the house to keep me busy.

10,000 Words

November 5 - Today I am grateful for my 10,000 word count and a friend  to listen to them.  I half joke about having a 10,000 word count that I must get out each day, one which I try to fulfill before Joe gets home so he doesn't have to listen to my incessant ramblings of the day.  On a normal day the person that I talk to the most is my Mom but she is traveling this week so luckily for me J wasn't too busy at work and could listen. :-)

Voting!

November 4th - Today I am thankful for the ability to vote.  I know today is an easy one to come up with a thankful post since I choose it every voting day, but I can't help myself.  The older I have gotten the more I like to vote, from research to talking through the issues with people I enjoy everything but the political ads on TV. :-)  In fact there were actually two separate issues on our ballots this time that I needed outside opinions to help form my own, so it made it extra fun to talk through them with anyone that I could find.  We'll have to see how the polls favor the choices I made tonight.

While digging for some paints for Tyler to work with last night I came across these in a box.  Some people may recognize this first one from our wedding invites.  It took over a hundred pictures to find one that worked and I still had to borrow Tyler's head from another photo and Photoshop it in here.

One of the hundred that was just too cute.  I cannot believe how young Tyler looked here.

30 Days of Thanks!

My favorite time of year for blogging!

November 1 - Today I am thankful for how well my body does during pregnancy.  We were all set to host the 8th Annual Chili Cookoff at our house on Sunday, and by we were all ready I mean that the girls and I got the place ready.  Joe worked on Saturday and then we went to Chris and Heather's daughter Hannah's birthday party so the girls and I had to get the inside and outside of the house all done.  While I must admit my body is slower to respond, runs out of breath faster, and needs to stop more I am still impressed with what I can get done even being three weeks out.  Oh yeah and did I mention that Hannah's birthday party was complete with ponies!  Boy was that a hit with the girls.

Here's Gram and the girls visiting with the pony, not sure who loves this more her or them.

There's the birthday girl, Morgan and Tyler..

Tyler didn't want to ride the pony but Austin sure did, she even waited for over 30 minutes in line.

November 2 - Today I am thankful for traditions like the Chili Cookoff.  While it started with a measly three pots of chili between me and two of the guys I used to work with it sure has grown.  We had a house full of people and 14 total chili's.  This year Tadd  won with an amazing green chili spin off of posole.  First year ever that a green chili has won.  Way to go Tadd, he took home the trophy "Frank" (we call him Frank as in Frankenstein because one of the winners dropped him and my Mom - the next year's winner glued all the pieces back together except one missing one - perhaps she is where I get my love of puzzles).  You can't see the back here but it has each winner's name and year written on it.  Pretty cool little guy that has traveled so far for eight years.

November 3 - Today I am thankful for business relationships.  When I first got transferred to this new team I was responsible for bringing the team up to speed on the day to day tasks I take care of.  My now boss said that while it may be impossible to do, he would like for the other people on our team to hold the same amount of notoriety as I do going forward.  I didn't think much of it at the time but then outages happen like they did this morning.  I bet I have a friend on each team throughout all of Verizon, so this morning when there was a network outage I was able to hit up someone who is a friend of a friend of mine and get everything up and running without even involving the normal processes since they take forever in a company this size.