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!

Today my sister and I decided she needed a break from her house so we ventured out in the craziness of Friday afternoon traffic to try the new ice cream place in town. Jess had been to the franchise before but this SUB ZERO thing was a whole new concept to me. It was fascinating, first you get to pick the base for your ice cream, they have 4 or 5 different choices....different cream content, yogurt, custard and soy milk. Having my sensitive stomach I had a soy based ice cream today, it was very yummy. After you pick that you pick the ingredients that should be in your ice cream, at this point everything is in a large silver bowl and resembles something you'd have made in your Mom's kitchen as a child when she wasn't looking. Now it gets intense my friends, after thoroughly mixing this "soup" they blast it with what they call the cryogenic solution which makes it very different from regular ice cream.....and zap you have an ice cream treat created just for you. It was so good, my mouth is watering thinking about it. Maybe Mark & I'll will have to make a trip tomorrow......

Last weekend we ventured up to Mom & Dad N's house for Easter. My Mom & sister got creative this year for an Easter activity; an Egg launch with hard boiled eggs & Annie-I-Over with plastic eggs.
I have a few video's of the activities that I am working on getting up, don't hold your breath. I would like to mention I was the closest to the target for our egg launch. That was as successful as I got during the days activities, I am not a sporty person so trying to catch flying plastic eggs was much harder than launching eggs into the air. Mark was much better than I was. My mom gets the award for the most daring catch, yes ladies & gentlemen she tucked & rolled for an egg....it was awesome! Sadly I didn't have my camera at that point :(

The rest of the week was pretty normal. Until Saturday when we ventured to Provo for Emily D's junior vocal recital, she did amazing! Making this event extra special Dad & Mom H flew in so we got to spend Saturday & Sunday with them. This was the first time we'd seen them since Emily's wedding reception in July so it was great that we were able to get to time to spend with them.
Wait there was something during the week; I sewed my first diaper bag (for a friend), but forgot to take pictures. It turned out pretty good, for a first attempt. I am going to try making another one, hopefully I'll remember to take pictures this time.