A few Sundays ago I stayed at my parents house while Mark had to work 3 shifts at the boys home in a 2 day period. I always love being at my parents house 1-I grew up there 2- It's just a beautiful relaxing place to be. 3- Who wouldn't want to put their book down, walk outside & see this.....

Pelicans chilling on the pond, have you ever just watched a group of pelicans? They seriously look like synchronized swimmers, beautiful!

This past weekend we tried to pull one over on my Mom and have surprise Birthday party for her. We sort of succeeded, she new we were planning something but didn't know when so we did kind of surprise her with the time people started to show up. We had lots of family show up, lots of yummy treats & nice weather! I believe it was a successful Birthday Bash! Happy Birthday Mom!

I am pretty sure I have the greatest Mom ever!

The only thing worse than a Monday is a Tuesday after a Monday off, trying to do the Monday stuff & Tuesday stuff all in one day of work is so stressful. A few other things added to my stress level today, causing multiple tear outbreaks. All of which happened in public places, ordering a shirt that reads: Caution, walking cry bomb, would be a really good thing so I can warn people I am approaching. In the midst of my crazy day I did have one happy moment when I got a text from Mark telling me he was price shopping. This was slightly confusing since I didn't know we were shopping for anything, when I inquired further he was out price checking, drum roll.....

That's right, my amazing hubby drove all over town checking prices so I could use some of my Birthday money to get Alice in Wonderland. I know many people thought this movie was really strange, but I love it. Tim Burton & Johnny Depp just make me happy, even if there movies are strange. Yes I did just say that, we own Charlie & the Chocolate Factory and it is safe to say I watch in monthly if not more often. Sometime just going to a strange place where nothing is suppose to make sense for 2 hours is nice!
The following are for the benefit of Mark's Mom who doesn't get see her pregnant Emily's as often as she would like. We are due about 3 days apart.

I think I'll go watch Charlie & the Chocolate Factory now, I promised Mark I wouldn't watch Alice in Wonderland with out him & he is at work :(

We have had a few people gasp & possibly have heart attacks over the fact that we don't have much ready for our little man to get here, maybe I am just a huge procrastinator (okay I am a huge procrastinator) but I figure I am only 31 weeks if we actually had him this early he'd be in the hospital for awhile so I have time. FYI he isn't coming this early. Last weekend my Mom & Sister took me baby gift shopping, even though they haven't had the shower yet they let us keep the gift....I think they just didn't want to store it. They sat in their boxes for a few days before we finally opened them.



Look Dad H a spot on the stroller for your Diet Coke!


Now we can bring our baby home, even if we don't have the crib set up....which we do have it is just still in the box :)
Thanks to those who are helping us get ready for baby.

I have not been very good at cooking real meals lately, poor Mark, I plan the menu but usually we eat hot dogs or cold cereal. Exciting hu? Well last week I decided to put biscuits and gravy on the menu, always a very yummy meal...breakfast, lunch or dinner. Friday evening I was working on getting my motivation to make a meal when Mark took the cookbook & proceeded to
make a very delicious meal. Shout out to Mom H for teaching him to cook, I hear there were some rough spots when he miss read instructions.
Honesty ~ it isn't really so much the cooking that I don't want to do it's the clean up after, I must be the worlds messiest cook because the simplest recipes always create huge messes. Someday I'll become an organized cook, for now I'll just be messy & Mark can be the less messy cook....maybe he can teach me.

Lemons to Lemonade

A couple of weeks ago we had a fantastic weekend planned to escape the coldness of this Valley. Due to unforeseen events we didn't get to leave it behind. Now me being the emotional woman I am was not very happy with this, my wonderful husband on the other hand decided to make lemonade with lemons we'd been handed. (Side note: Mark really wanted to write this post and had a huge story about lemons to lemonade & probably some great way to tell the story, I do not and since Mark is always busy you get my writings). As we were feeling sad for ourselves, okay I was feeling sad for myself, we decided we should enjoy the weekend since we had work of anyway. We had Mark's Mom look up when the tulip festival was, it happened to be going on. So we ventured out into the cold, yes it was very cold, rainy & wet. Trying really hard not to complain about being cold my husband decided he should warm up by jumping around in the kids play area.



As you can see I am no great photographer, but by the time I actually caught him jumping we were laughing so hard the coldness has melted away. Isn't he great?
The tulips were really pretty, even if some of them were not surviving the cold weather.

As most of you know Mark & I love Chicago, we haven't been back in almost a year (very sad). One of our favorite things to do, besides see family, is eat the yummy goodness of Chicago Style Pizza. No the stuff from Papa Murphy's is not Chicago Style!! (That deserves extra punctuation). One of our friends on facebook is a fan of Sweet Home Chicago Pizzeria so we thought why not try it while we were in SLC. Walking in the man said hello with a slight Chicago accent, oh this place has promise I thought. Behind the counter & basically everywhere on the walls there was memorabilia of Chicago sports teams...mostly Sox :) Starting to have more promise by the minute. Could this place really satisfy the craving for the cheesy, saucy, bready, meaty goodness? The owner is actually from Chicagoland (this brings more promise), he smiles with appreciation when we don't freak that the Pizza is going to take 30 minutes to cook....you can't rush the process. We sit down anticipating the arrival our pizza. Almost exactly 30 minutes later we see the wonderfully thick crusted pizza coming towards us. It LOOKS like the write kind of pizza, there is TONS of cheese, could it actually be? Mark picks up his fork, cuts his pizza and takes the plunge. VICTORY, it does taste like the goodness we've been missing! Joyous Day! Now if only they delivered to my house :( I could use a slice right now.


The adventures of that weekend do not stop here, however my Camera batteries did. For information on the rest of the adventure check out my sisters blog It is worth popping over to read.

GASP, COUGH, CHOKE, GASP. Yes that is pregnancy picture of me on the internet. Why the overreaction you ask? I told myself I wasn't going to post any but I've had a few requests from friends and when great friends who have been there for you through happy & sad times make a request you grant it (obviously there are times you don't but this was legal so I figured it should be granted). So here you go my dear friends, this was taken 1 week ago at just over 27 weeks.

Reality Check

As usual I am procrastinating in getting out the door to work so I signed on to our blog to see if anyone had updated since I was on last & happened to glance at the baby ticker, I almost fell of my chair when it said:


I know it's getting closer, the growing stomach is a pretty good hint but for some reason seeing than 100 days really made me think....holy crap! I am not posting this for people to be like ah you can make it or you'll be a great Mom, I just had to share my holy crap moment & Mark is at work.

Saturday is a special day it's the day we.....have some serious crafting! Anyone who has gone shopping with me that last few months knows that I have been trying to find a new purse since my old one started to fall apart at the seams....I mean this literally! Don't believe me I can show it to you. Who can't find a purse in a couple months time, me! A couple years ago my sister started making purses and since she's amazing she made me one. Following that my Mom made me one for my Birthday last year. I loved both these purses, you get to pick the fabric & pattern making it unique to you. I have tried going back to purses from a store but always end up moving my "purse supplies" back to one of my homemade purses. You just can't beat them! Well the purse from last year just wasn't going to live much longer so I began the quest of replacing it when I decided no store had one that would meet what I wanted I was really glad my Mom has been working on teaching me so sew. I decided to practice my sewing skills, eeekk. I found the pattern, searched for fabric for a few weeks and after a few errors followed by some unpicking the project is complete. I didn't even call my Mom for help, besides making sure I had the correct interfacing. Now it's not going to win a blue ribbon at a fair or anything but I am pretty proud of it.

In the middle of my sewing project my sister called to tell me her friend was coming over to make jewelry later in the afternoon & wanted to know if I'd like to join them while our husbands were off flying together (Mark took Mike on one of his lesson yesterday). Of course I had to say yes, 1- I love jewelry 2- it sounded like more fun than cleaning my apartment. When I finally got there, later than planned due to some sewing misfortunes they let me join the party & after about 2 hours of playing with beads I came up with the following:

Okay so it's not spectacular but it matches my pearl earrings from Mark so I love it! Thanks for letting me come play with the beads!