i love being pregnant

at about 8-9 weeks, i thoroughly despised pregnancy.  i was tired, so nauseous (thankfully i never actually threw up), and simultaneously needed food in order to be less nauseous yet the smell of cooking food, particularly cooking meat inspired nausea ... blech.  vicious circle.  i told scott at one point that i was quite content never being pregnant again - and honestly, having friends who have lost a first pregnancy in the first trimester, i have absolutely no idea how they decided to try again, because if we had been put in that situation, i probably would have said that's it, we're done, we're adopting.  (which we'd like to do at some point anyway.)

anyway, now that i'm at 25 weeks, though?  love it!  everything about it.  nausea died down by around 11 weeks, tiny belly bump started to appear around 15 weeks, energy started coming back around 17 weeks, started feeling baby boy move around 18ish weeks - i've heard the 2nd trimester referred to as the "golden age of pregnancy", and i fully believe it.  i love having a distinguishably pregnant belly, yet not looking like a whale; i love feeling matson thump around in there and trying to figure out what he's doing (summersaults?  kickboxing?) and what limb i'm feeling; getting to plan and anticipate the delivery and the nursery and what he's going to be like without feeling like it's right on top of me.  it's awesome.
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unrelated to pregnancy is my my love for the christmas season.  i've been listening to christmas music off and on since the day before thanksgiving, and was thrilled when we got to put up our tree last weekend.  i even bought garland to decorate the banister between our main level living room and the upstairs bedroom hallway (along with a set of icicle lights i bought a few years ago in an after christmas sale to use outside, but forgot about the following year when we went to decorate, so we bought big colorful bulb lights instead) - it's cute.  our plans for the weekend include a date night tonight of going to goodwill to look for tacky christmas sweaters and stopping at a giant christmas superstore in town to look at ornaments (along with going out for burgers), and on sunday night hosting an ugly-sweater christmas party for our sunday school class!

why i'm glad i live now

being the optimist that i am, i've always found it really easy to idealize earlier decades and, growing up, wish i lived in them: the hard work and loyalty of the 30's and 40's, the idyllic 50's, energy of the 60's.  even the adventurism of the pioneers settling the west in the 1800s!  (all wars aside, of course.)  then i realized a few years ago that you don't get to pick a decade and stay there - my grandparents were married in the 40's, had my parents in the 50's, and then had to live also through the 60s, 70s, 80s, etc.  right-o.

anyway, i'm very glad that i live now, in this time.  why?

1.  modern conveniences.  washing machines, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, cars with power steering, thanksgiving turkeys that come by the hundred, pre-cleaned and wrapped in plastic at my local grocery store, strawberries anytime of year i want them, leafblowers/mulchers, etc.

2.  technology.  laptop, ipod, tivo, cell phones, etc.  sure, they probably help in productivity to a certain extent, but they also make life really fun.  (oh, and scott doesn't have to do his financial reports at work with the use of a slide rule and a typewriter.)

3.  feminism.  yes, you heard me.  i pretty adamantly consider myself not a feminist, but i really appreciate early feminists who worked hard so that i can do things like vote, go to college, and have a job if i want one ... in short, be considered a person on equal footing with guys.  theologically, i consider myself a complementarian, which means that i believe god created men and women on an equal plane, but with different (complementary!) strengths and giftings, each with our own role to fill within life, marriage, etc.  but i don't think that means i need to spend my life barefoot and pregnant, chained to the stove, or that scott should never have to help clean or cook.  i'm grateful that i live in a time where i can have a career if i want one or can stay home with kids if i want to and each is a totally viable option.

4.  ease of travel.  i'm very grateful that i live in a time when scott and i can get married and decide we want to pick a new city to move to, literally 1000 miles away from any family, but that we can still see our families regularly.  i'll be glad when my parents eventually move out here and live 1.5 hours away rather than 15, but in the meantime, it's really nice being independent but not cut off.  (rather than the 1800s when you moved west and probably never saw your family again.)  oh, factor into this #2's technology, so that i can do things like talk (long distance for free!) to friends and family who don't live here regularly via e-mail and phone, not, you know, pony express.

5.  recreation.  probably attributable to #s 1 and 2, we have plenty of free time to do fun things that we want to do, like hang out with friends, watch football, read books, and hike - i don't have to spend hours cranking my laundry through a wringer or hanging it out on a line and baking all my bread from scratch.

6.  hygiene.  everyone has running water, toothbrushes, aisles of shampoo, body wash/soap, and facial cleanser options, and even my gym has anti-bacterial hand gel in every room.  showering and brushing your teeth daily is not only an option, it's a cultural norm (as is shaving, 1960's!).

i'm sure my list is much more extensive, but those are a few reasons that come to mind.  thank you for having me, 2010.

odds and ends

so two days after my last post (don't know why i didn't write about this then!), we went in for our 20 week ultrasound ... and found out we're having a boy!  you probably already know that as i think everyone who still reads this also follows my life in other contexts, but hey, has to be written.  and is exciting!  i kind of sort of was leaning toward wanting a girl, but if i had had to guess, i would have said that pinto is a boy ... it's fun to know for sure!  his name is matson, which is scott's middle name and his grandma's maiden name - so yes, it's technically not a first name, but whatever, this is 2010 and you can name your kid banjo if you want, i think matson is a perfectly cute and acceptable name.  we're still working on a middle name for him.  on to odds and ends:

1. no, we haven't started any work on the nursery yet, but it's all decor related, so it won't be too bad.  we painted that room yellow when we moved in so that it'd be ready to go whether we had a boy or a girl and can be used as a nursery again without repainting if we have other other gender next time, so that's staying.  i was planning to get a white crib and changing table so that i don't have to worry about matching wood stain colors and can buy a changing table via craigslist, and my mom and i covered the glider in dark brown fabric (no i haven't finished the ottoman yet, mom!) so we're good to go on that front.

the room already has nice white wood shelves on either side of the window, so we just need to touch those up and put the actual shelves back on (just the brackets are left on the wall, from when we painted over two years ago - whoops).  so other than that, it's just getting the furniture, finding a few cute boy accents (which i already have visualized), and we're good to go!  oh, and cleaning things like spare sheets, broken sewing machines, and christmas wrapping paper out of there.  i think i might start working on that over our long thanksgiving weekend.

2. as regards our mouse travails ... well, we're still in progress with that.  we've been setting up traps and poison like crazy and were getting ready to declare victory over the mice when scott saw one scamper under the dishwasher last week.  bummer.  i googled mice and dishwashers and found this blog detailing mice coming in from a sewer pipe behind the dishwasher, eating plastic piping, water leaking, and ultimately having to replace the dishwasher ... aaah!  i had this image in my mind every time we ran the dishwasher last week, but come saturday, we decided it was full on cleaning and war-against-the-mice day.  we can't pull out our dishwasher because we had our wood flooring installed in front of it, but thankfully scott put his engineering degree to work and figured out how to remove the bottom faceplate from the thing so we could see what was going on ... and breathed a sigh of relief.  no mouse droppings or nests, no chewed pipes, no mouse-holes gnawed into the cabinets back there.

we did find mouse holes on the cabinets behind the stove, so we threw some poison packs back there and jammed up the holes with steel wool (which they allegedly won't chew through).  scott put steel wool under all of the floating walls in our laundry room downstairs, we sterilized our whole kitchen, and now we're just waiting to see if any mice continue to creep through.  i think we've killed maybe 10 or so mice over the past two months, but i'm semi-optimistic that we're nearing the end.  fingers crossed.

3. scott was finally able to feel matson move the other night!  admittedly, i had had both soda and ice cream with dinner, so the kid was quite literally bouncing off the walls, but it was really fun getting to share that.  i've been able to feel matson move for the past probably 4-5 weeks, and it's neat to feel him getting stronger and more active (or maybe just bigger so there isn't as much space to absorb his movements!) - at first i would maybe feel him move once a day at the most, but now it's pretty frequently throughout each day.  also fun is when matson curls up on one side toward the front of my stomach - i'll poke my belly and one side is rock hard, the other is soft and normal.

4. i had a craving for corn dogs yesterday, but couldn't justify having corn dogs for dinner.  (maybe this weekend. :))  in trying to talk myself out of it, i decided that rice sounded really really good ... so i went back to my midwestern roots and made my dad's classic chicken breast in cream of mushroom sauce over rice.  and it was amazing.

5. a few months ago maura asked how much we paid for our trash service because she wanted to know that she got a good deal on her company (one of their neighbors had recommended it when they moved in).  her company charges $45/quarter for trash + $5/quarter for recycling, whereas we pay $45/quarter for trash and $12/quarter for recycling.  turns out, though, that her company doesn't charge any extra service fees, fuel surcharges, or taxes on top of that rate whereas mine does.  in the end, we were paying $77/month (they just increased the rate this summer) while they were paying $50/month for the same thing from a locally owned company.  switching's been on my to-do list for the past few weeks, and i finally got around to it this week.  $108/year savings, here we come!

food

i cooked dinner tonight!  a real dinner!  considering my history of loving to cook, you may be asking why this is so exciting?  because i've been an awful cook since i got pregnant.  (awful in the sense of having the energy and making the effort to cook, not as in making awful food.)  most of the stuff i've made has been things like pasta or chicken legs, and i've probably cooked fewer than 20 times in the last three and a half months.  yikes.  (we've filled in with a lot of cheesy crisp, eggs, and frozen chicken nuggets in there.)

once you get out of the habit of cooking, it's so easy to stay out of the habit.  i don't think about cooking, so i don't think about menu planning or grocery shopping, so i don't grocery shop, and then even if i want to cook something real, i have to go to the grocery before i can make anything, which means that it's easier just to heat up some chicken nuggets for dinner.  if i take the time to think about what i'll want to cook and what nights we'll need to cook, though, and make sure that i have cookable real food in the house, i get to cook and remember that i enjoy cooking!

not to mention, tonight's meal does double duty, which is awesome.  i made spicy honey brushed chicken thighs (which is one of my fallback easy, quick, tasty healthy-ish foods), steamed broccoli, blueberry muffins, and fresh pineapple and strawberries.  all quite yummy.  and then for tomorrow night, we'd signed up to bring dinner to some friends with a new baby, so i'll chop up the leftover chicken thighs, layer with rice, black beans, avocado, and chopped tomato and lettuce, and voila - burrito bowls!  speaking of, i need to go get my rice going.

big week

as long as everything goes right, we'll know pinto's gender in a mere 3.5 days!  (or, as scott says, we'll find out what flavor pinto is.)  our appointment is first thing in the morning on friday, and then saturday we get to go start looking at baby things!

it's exciting in that i feel like it'll make everything more concrete - we get to see an ultrasound of a real baby rather than just a little gummy bear, we can decide on a real name for pinto, register, look at cutey boy or girl outfits, start working on the nursery, etc.

and at the same time, the "big appointment" is frightening in that it means that we're halfway to the end of this pregnancy!  (halfway!  crazy!)  which means we have a lot of work ahead of us - starting (and finishing) work on the nursery, taking baby classes, prepping for labor and parenting, and coming to grips with the facts that we're going to be actual parents to a real child and our lives will be changing A LOT.  which isn't a bad thing ... it's just big.

motivation

i am utterly unmotivated to do my budget.  a few months ago, i was excited for the end of the month to come so that i could balance out and do my projections for the upcoming month, make payments, etc.  i mustered enough motivation to sort of halfway do september's budget, but now come october, i find myself putting it off and wondering if it's really necessary.  why the change?  i think because we paid off my students loans.

when we were still working on my students loans, i was so excited to see how much we could put toward the loans after each month's budget was balanced up.  we still have financial goals, but nothing as concrete as that, and nothing with as much immediate impact as being able to pay off a loan.  my current goal is basically to save as much money as we can, but it's more or less going into bulk savings fund that will eventually be distributed to pay for baby stuff, go into a roth ira, or toward the grad program scott wants to start next fall.  all good things ... just not as immediately exciting as paying off a loan.

plus, with the loan, i knew that i had $x left to pay down, and if i was averaging paying $y onto the loan each month, i could figure that it would take me z.z number of months to pay off the loan.  very tangible!  paying for baby stuff?  no idea how much we need set aside for that.  roth ira?  more like we need to be saving every month for the rest of our lives, not z.z number of months left to go.  grad program?  totally depends on whether his company is able to help out, if he gets financial aid, and how many classes he takes at a time.  all very ambiguous!

but i still need to do my budget.

baby on board

so by now clearly everyone who reads this realizes that i am pregnant - yay!  i think i scaled back on the blogging after i found out we were expecting because we didn't want the whole world to know yet, but that's what was primarily on my mind ... in the process, i got out of the habit of writing.  anyway, fun facts for faithful blog readers:

1. i am due march 22 according to my doctor (march 28 according to me ... i know due dates don't really mean much, but i like to have appropriate expectations), which puts me at 16 weeks 2 days according to dr and 15 weeks 3 days according to me.
2. i am kind-of-sort-of starting to show.  when i wear jeans, it's currently at the point where i look like i need to work out and/or like i just had thanksgiving dinner, which i find annoying.  if i wear a tshirt and yoga pants (ie, more fitted clothes), you can see my bump more clearly.  it's still not huge, though, and i don't think anyone would guess i'm pregnant just by looking at me.
3. yes, i really am feeling good, i promise.  i was fairly nauseous from maybe weeks 5/6 to 10/11, but by the end of week 10, it started fading away (pretty abruptly, actually).  i am also perhaps more tired than usual, but that's harder to gauge since i've always enjoyed a good nap.  i'm trying very hard to not get too hooked on a daily dose of caffeine, less because i'm pregnant (you're still allowed up to two cups of coffee a day, i think, or a few sodas?), more because i have never really done daily caffeine and don't like the idea of being reliant on it to get through the day.
4. in the last few weeks, i've gotten super excited about the whole pregnancy experience.  we were trying to get pregnant, so this was very much a wanted thing, but feeling sicky and not many people knowing that we were pregnant kind of put a crimp in the fun of it.  now that i'm feeling good and everyone's in this with us, though, it's awesome!  i'm having a great time researching things like cribs and strollers and enjoying poking my belly to feel where pinto's hanging out.
5. baby's pre-name is pinto.  we felt like we wanted a name to call him/her before we know the gender so that we're not walking around calling our child "it" all the time - i suggested "bean", since babies kind of look like a bean at first, but scott thought that was too generic.  he said we should specify the type of bean, and we landed on "pinto".
6. yes, we will be finding out the gender.  i love planning way too much to not find out!  plus, as i said, i am all about expectations.  scott's discovered that even if he wants to surprise me with something, i'd much rather know to expect a surprise on say, friday afternoon, than to just have it come out of the blue.  with finding out at 20 weeks, i can have 20 more weeks of excitedness that i'll can look forward to having a son or a daughter ... and plan appropriately. :)
7. i really like my doctor.  i just had my 16 week checkup with her this morning and think she's fabulous.  we've been leaning toward doing a natural labor/delivery (by which i primarily mean no epidural) and i wanted to get her input on that.  apparently she did both of her own labors without pain meds and said that she and the rest of the practice fully supports women who choose that route, and also highly recommended getting a doula (which was another question i had) and said that she thinks very highly of the hospital's doula staff.  she also said that they are the most midwifey practice of doctors you could find, which i think is awesome.
8. friends have given us a few baby things here and there - scott's aunt sent us a baby sweatshirt from our alma mater, another friend gave us a cute onesie set, and some friends last weekend gave us a super cute elephant toy that clips onto the carseat.  my first official baby project is coming up this weekend, though, when my parents will be out here - my mom's going to help me recover the cushions on the glider rocker that i got on craigslist last year!  i'm excited.  i've been wanting to do it ever since i bought the thing, but just can't commit to a fabric on my own or conceptualize what the process will look like, so i'm glad that she'll be here to help.

i promise to post belly shots soon.  i had scott take a picture last weekend, but am approximately 4 months behind on sorting and uploading pictures, so that'll be my project next week when everyone's out of the office for board meetings. 

happy first day of fall!

happy first day of fall, friends!  no, it's not technically the first day of fall, and yes it did hit a high of 87* today ... but it IS the first day of september, which begins fall in my book.

i think that overall fall is my favorite season.  you have the pretty colors on the trees, the mornings and evenings start to cool off, so you can wear sweaters with your jeans and flip flops, and i think the nerd in me is still linked to the school calendar and just feels so many possibilities at the beginning of a new school year.  and, even though i unfortunately don't really like football in practice, i love the idea of it and the social aspects of it, and football comes with fall.

this weekend, scott and i are off to a cabin in the mountains, and i'm so looking forward to it.  it's the same cabin at the base of mt. elbert that we stayed in for a long weekend last summer and i have high hopes for a refreshing and relaxing weekend.  in case you forget the details, this cabin is surrounded by aspens to the extent that their quaking is all you can see out the windows, a creek runs right behind the cabin with a private fire pit on the creek, and hummingbirds flock the feeders in droves.  sounds lovely, right?  our plans include hiking along the twin lakes and possibly renting a canoe or paddleboat, but that will depend on pricing - i found one place's prices listed online, and it was $60 for two hours!  we'll also do a daytrip up to aspen along the independence pass to see the maroon bells.  there's no tv in the cabin, which is unbelievably relaxing, but we are planning to bring a laptop and the last two "lord of the rings" dvds from the library - we watched the first movie again a few weeks ago and it was SO GOOD!

anyway, one more day of work for me, then we're off for a four day weekend of sleeping in and sunshine!

refi, baby!

yellowstone was last week, and it was so fun!  i went in with basically no idea what to expect, and was very pleasantly surprised.  we stayed at a camp site right next to the grand canyon of the yellowstone, so lots of tall pine trees and waterfalls and rivers in the area.  hands down our favorite area of the park.  we did a day over in geyser country - old faithful and all that - and it was neat, but not a very comfortable place to be, if that makes sense.  a) the geysers smell like sulfur, which is gross, b) watching the ground randomly jetting out steam and hot water and seeing mud "boiling" is cool until you think about why it's happening, at which point you remember that you're on top of a gigantic volcano.  there are some truly breathtaking places up there, though!  and, i saw a bear for the first time in my life!  actually, five of them.  one set of mama grizzly and her two babies just off the road, one grizzly from a really far distance, and one black bear (which allegedly had another one with it, but i only saw one at a time) on a nearish hillside.  also, lots of elk including a massive bull elk, some deer, tons of pronghorn antelope, and herds of bison.  i highly recommend a visit to yellowstone - they have great roads with amazing sights very accessible to the road, plenty of good day hiking trails with

the highlight of this week so far is that we just locked in to refinance our house!  when we closed on our house at 5.875% two years ago, we thought that was amazing and were so excited to get such a great rate.  a coworker refinanced earlier this summer and said she's saving a fair bit of money, so i started looking up rates through our current mortgage company and bankrate.com - i was slightly overwhelmed with the multitude of info, though, so we e-mailed the mortgage broker we'd used when we bought the house, and he just locked us in at 4.375%!  all in all, it should save us about $260/month since we will hopefully not have to pay mortgage insurance anymore - wow, right?!  even paying closing costs out of pocket, we should officially be saving money within the year.

mice

pardon the interruption to my normally scheduled blogging; my life has contained much drama over the past few weeks, including things like friends visiting from out of town and mice in my pantry.

first the friends - we've actually had three sets of nu friends come through town over the past month, which has been so much fun!  first was chris and lesley, who graduated from nu a year after us, moved to wisconsin for her to go to grad school and him to work ... then up and moved to kenya for a year!  they just got back earlier this summer, and passed through denver with their moving truck on the way from the midwest to northern california, where they have lots of friends and family and she has a job.  we had a great time hearing about their time in kenya, seeing pictures, hearing what they're looking forward to in california ... just generally catching up for the four years it's been since we last saw them!

next was andrew and anne, a friend from nu and his new wife as of last labor day weekend.  they had originally planned to be moving from wisconsin to portland, oregon, but there are still some question marks surrounding andrew's job status there - but they'd already booked his mom a one-way ticket from denver back to illinois so that she could join them on the roadtrip through kansas and see her family with them.  since they knew they had to be in denver and didn't have any commitments until late july, they figured they may as well seize the opportunity to take a three week camping roadtrip around the national parks of colorado, utah, and arizona.  why not, right?  so we got to see them for a night between roadtrip with mom and camping adventure and had a lot of fun.  we went out for their wedding last fall, but hadn't really had any opportunity to get to know anne at all, so their stop with us was doubly fun in that we got to catch up with our old friend and also get to know his new wife who we thought was fabulous and perfect for him.

third nu friend of the summer was clair, one of my best friends from college (and my maid of honor), who was in town for a few days for a training seminar for her work.  i don't think i've seen her for more than maybe a day at a time at the occasional wedding over the past few years, and that was always in the midst of tons of friends coming together, so it was extra nice having her stay with us and getting more time to catch up.  we went out for pizza, took a long bike ride, ate ice cream, stayed up late talking, she told us all about her new boyfriend, and i tried to sell her on moving to colorado.  and, the night that she got to our house, i discovered a mouse in the pantry, which leads me to my next point:

we have mice in our pantry.  ick.  i had scott stop on his way home to get traps the first night i saw the mouse (last tuesday), and it took until thursday morning before we found him in the trap.  hooray!  we were mildly optimistic that he was the only mouse, since our kitchen's right next to the garage and we didn't think it was unreasonable that he might have hopped in from there when we left the door open at some point.  sadly, that night, we were in the kitchen talking, and scott saw another mouse scuttling under the stove - boo.  we went to home depot and got another 8 traps, which we placed throughout our pantry, next to the stove and behind the fridge, and in the crawl space under the kitchen, and got this thing that you plug in and it sends vibrations out through your house's wiring that is supposed to annoy mice that may be nesting between walls so that they want to leave.  no sign of mousey in the trap yet, and i saw him running into the pantry when we got home from hiking on saturday ... but last night, i bought a bunch of plastic bins, cleaned all of our non-canned goods out of the pantry, and didn't see anything that had been nibbled on other than an open bag of pine nuts (that was cleaned out!  the first mouse had found an open bag of chopped pecans that he had been going to town on) ... so i'm unsure what food they think they'll be eating from our house.  i'm hopeful that the mouse realizes that he's cleaned out his food sources and moved on, but i don't know how realistic that hope is.  any idea how long we need to wait to sound the all clear?

the boring list

haha!  i was just reading a column on msn listing out the top ten "boring" (reliable rather than flashy) vehicles on the road.  while i've expressed my deep-seated love for my forester, apparently it makes the list, with the following commentary:

If the rally-romping WRX is Subaru's wild child, the Forester is the nurturing big sister, always thinking of others and their well-being. Man, that's boring. And so is the Forester. While the redesigned model is clearly "better" than the old Forester in terms of performance and appointments, the former model's quirky, Subaru wagon vibe has been washed away, replaced by a generic crossover design. There's nothing bad to put your finger on, but not much of a pulse, either.

i'm pretty sure they're referring to the new 2010 forester as the generic crossover design and my '08 model as having the "quirky wagon vibe".  (for the record, i love the wally's styling, and think that the '10 models are pretty stunning.)  oh, and out of curiousity, just checked kelley blue book - if i were to sell wally right now private party, i should be able to make about $3,000 more than we paid for him!  (i'd probably have to get the non-functioning cd changer fixed, though.)  the article made me laugh because i can see the validity in their point, but i'll take boring and lovingly reliable any day.

while i (clearly) love cooking, i've never been a huge baker.  i think i made a cake once for scott, back in our first year of marriage - he was just reminiscing about it this weekend - but it was from a box.  i made bread and banana bread a few times, but it just made me cranky.  i knew there was potential for me to love baking, particularly for the fresh baked breads, but it just wasn't happening.  i think this is all about to change, though.

my parents got "us" (me) a stand mixer as an early anniversary gift, and i'm smitten.  i just used it for the first time this last weekend to make those homemade hamburger buns, and it was such a joyous experience - no more wresting with the hand mixer, muscling it through stiff doughs, splattering all over the kitchen, getting massive shoulder knots and snapping at scott ... just dump in the ingredients and let it merrily go to town!  (so really, the stand mixer is a gift to both of us - makes me a cheerful baker and therefore scott a happily un-snapped at husband, and he gets to enjoy the fruits of my labors.)

my next project for the stand mixer is sugar cookies and frosting.  i'm helping throw a baby shower for a girl from church this weekend, and volunteered to make gingerbread man-shaped sugar cookies that we'll decorate with frosting onesies.  the idea originally came from abba's bachelorette party 5+ years ago, when we decorated sugar cookies with icing lingerie.  i've since done it for maura's baby shower with frosting onesies, and for christmas parties with ornaments - very versatile and yummy craft!  in the past, i've always used tubes of premade sugar cookie dough and canisters of frosting because i couldn't bear the thought of trying to make it with my mixer, but this time i'm going all out with from-scratch sugar cookies AND frosting!  the results will hopefully be delicious.

in case you're reading this asking yourself, "um, didn't she just write a post about doing a no-dessert july?"  well, yes.  i think i'm going to have to rename the month "no-daily-desserts july", because going an entire month without eating sweets is super hard!  the other girl planning the baby shower with me is having a cake made - white cake with raspberry filling and whipped cream frosting.  i seriously don't think i can be in the room with that thing for the entire afternoon and not have any.  *sigh.  being conscious of what desserts i'm eating and when is probably a good habit to get into, at least ... and i can still shoot for a dessert-free last half of july, right?  (if you're now telling yourself that i have very little willpower, you're probably right.)

cooking kick

i think i'm on another cooking kick.  i can tell when one is coming on because i find myself spending inordinate amounts of time thinking about food ... and i know it's here when i actually cook a real dinner at home several nights in a row.  the products of this cooking spree have been particularly tasty, though.  meals we've enjoyed in the last week and a half:

• country ribs on the grill with corn on the cob and french bread
• fried rice made with leftover ribs and corn on the cob
• chicken fajitas made with leftover spicy honey chicken thighs
• homemade margherita pizza with garden fresh basil
• whole wheat pasta with broccoli and broiled chicken breast
• burgers on the grill with homemade hamburger buns and homemade salsa and guac for the 4th of july
• grilled rosemary lamb chops with basil, chive, and sundried tomato couscous

hmm, apparently me being on a cooking kick means scott grilling out.  (i think i've also been on a grilled meat kick!)

the homemade hamburger buns were super easy to make - it was my first expedition with the stand mixer my parents got me/us as an early anniversary gift a few weeks ago, and i love it already!  the buns were so fresh and tasty, although i will say that without the preservatives stores add, they start to dry out by the next day.  the recipe made 16 buns (next time i'll likely do a half recipe, unless we have a giant bbq at our house), so i sent a handful off with our friends andrew and anne, who were in town for the 4th before they set off on a grand three week camping expedition through the national parks of colorado, utah, and arizona.

the rosemary, basil, and chives were all from my little herb planter and so tasty!  in addition to those three, i planted cilantro and sage.  the cilantro has really struggled - a few of the stalks have died off, and the one remaining has really skinny, lacey leaves (rather than the broad cilantro leaves you think of) and has started to flower and seed, even though i tried to stay on top of chopping off flowers when they popped up.  according to wiki, the seeds are coriander - who knew!  oh, although this page suggests that's normal, and that cilantro just has a quick life cycle - also, who knew!  the sage is going strong, but i have yet to actually use any of it.  i need to figure out what sage goes in ... suggestions?

world cup scrooge

call me scrooge, but i don't think america should win the world cup.  (admittedly our chances aren't great, so it's kind of a moot point.)  i love living in and being from america, and when the game is on, yes i will cheer for our team.  but there are countries where people live and breath soccer year-round, and this isn't one of them.  realistically, thinking about major sports in america, soccer comes in what, fifth?  maybe?  canada may dominate us in hockey, but football, baseball, and basketball - those are OUR sports.  we cheer our usa soccer team on because we are a nation of winners and thus we want to win this world sporting event because that's awesome ... but not because we love the game of soccer.  let a country who cares about the game take the glory on this one.

relatedly, i decided today that part of the reason why we think soccer is a great sport for our kids to play is the same reason why we don't love watching the sport professionally: lack of structure.  when you're 5, it's the perfect game because you just get out there and run and kick the ball and it's all great.  to watch the game, though?  yikes.  yes, there are rules, but there are like five of them, and overall it's more about skill than play-by-play strategy.  no time limits, no special teams, no time outs, and at the end of the game, the ref adds time to the clock based on a formula known only to him!

pre-use pack review

got my mountainsmith tour lumbar pack in the mail today, and having tried it on for a grand total of 10 minutes thus far - i like it!

since i hadn't looked at them in stores, i was unsure how big or small it was going to be (other than the fact that i knew it's only like 488 cubic inches, but it's hard to visualize what that really means).  it looks a little smaller than i had hoped, but once i put my camera and extra lens in there, it actually felt more spacious.  we just got scott a camelbak backpack a 100oz water reservoir and 1500 cu. in. of storage - ie, he'll have more than enough space to carry most of our food and whatnot on hikes, which he has typically been doing anyway.  in addition to my camera and extra lens (and i may end up finding it unnecessary to carry both lenses), i have compartments for two water bottles, a strap on front that i can hook my rain jacket or extra layer onto, and two big-ish pockets for things like cell phone, keys, bandaids, map/compass, and still have plenty of room inside for some snacks and other incidentals.  not to mention, if you've ever seen my purse you'll notice that i tend to fill whatever space i have available, and i really don't to be lugging around a massive, heavy pack.

scott asked if i'd like having the weight around my hips, and i think my answer is a resounding yes!  it honestly felt way more comfy to me than backpacks usually do.  granted my backpack to date has been the jansport i've used since high school - thus i've never used a properly sized backpack with the waist belt and chest strap and all that to really distribute the load - but i usually find hiking with a backpack draining and end up with really tense shoulders.  when i'm actually on a trail for a few hours above 10,000 feet, ask me again how i feel about the lumbar pack, but so far i think i'll like it.  as i was playing around with the tour, i noticed that adjusting the side compression straps distributes the weight more evenly against my back, which is handy.

we have a meeting on saturday morning, but afterward scott wants to head up to the mountains for a short-ish day hike ... as long as our plan pans out, i should be able to give you an action-shot and full review next week!  and hey, if i end up thinking it's too small and hating the experience, i can always sell it on craigslist for probably close to what i paid (since i got it for around half off online) and upgrade to the 854 cu. in. mountainsmith day pack.

july commitments

for the last year or two, scott and i have instituted july as a no tv month in our house.  july's a good month for it because, well, all of our shows are on summer break and there aren't any sports scott'll be missing (although we do allow for watching major sporting events, like the world cup or olympics).  it's oddly refreshing, too.  we usually allow tv to be our relax time at home - get home from work and working out and veg on the couch watching tv for the night.  when tv's not an option, though, we talk more, read more, get more little projects done around the house, are more active, sleep more.

last july we were in the midst of our commitment to explore colorado with our vacation time, so we had a few small trips lined up that month, which made the no tv thing easier.  my favorite was a two day trip to a cabin in twin lakes, co at the base of mount elbert - no tv, just a two room cabin in the cool mountain air surrounded by aspens with a hummingbird feeder hanging in the window and a babbling brook running behind.  it was glorious and refreshing, and made us really glad we didn't have tv to distract us from relaxing and enjoying the world around us.

anyway, this july we're again doing the no tv thing.  we don't have any trips planned (i'm sure we'll come up with a few hikes to throw in), but we do have several friends coming in for a day or three at a time.  it'll be very different from last year's experience, but hopefully just as refreshing and meaningful.

in addition to no tv july, though, we're also doing no dessert july.  (this is beginning to sound like "no fun july"!)  i've been working out more regularly for the past year or two and have certainly gotten into better shape and maybe lost a pound or two but have been holding pretty steady for a while.  not that i think i have a ton of weight i need to lose, but i could stand to give it a shot.  anyway, i realized over the past month that i eat a lot of sweets.  chocolate chip cookie dough ball after i get home from work here, mid-afternoon cupcake from the denver cupcake truck (yumm) there, brownies with small group on occasion, etc.  anyway, i decided that it can't be good for me.  not in terms of the fat and sugar i'm putting into my body, and not in terms of the habits i'm getting into.  so, i'm taking a break from it.  (as is scott.)  i think i'm going to have a lot of sugar cravings at the beginning of the month, but hopefully by the end i'll be happy i did it.

bargain hunting

in case you're curious what i decided on scott's ipod situation, i opted for choice "d) none of the above": a newer shuffle for his birthday, procured (used) for about $20 off on ebay!  i decided on this largely because i'm curious what features the new nano will have - specifically, if they'll add a built-in app for the nike+ like they have with the touch and iphone 3gs.  if they do, great; if not, they'll still have dropped the price on the current 5th gen nano to close it out - either way, i can get scott a nano for christmas either at current price or (likely) lower, and if we want, we can sell the birthday shuffle on ebay.

bigger bargain, though: a hiking pack!  i've been in debates about this for a few months - constraints on my pack purchasing have included 1) the fact that i'm short and have a small-ish frame (ie, men's sized packs don't fit me well, and a good fit is kind of key for longer hikes), 2) i have a dslr i'd like to be able to take hiking - but i also want to be able to fit things like layers and water into my pack, and 3) i'm picky.  i'd been leaning toward a lumbar pack for ease of use with getting camera in/out and the fact that they allegedly work better for women since the weight is around your hips rather than your shoulders - center of gravity and all that.  anyway, in my recent infatuation with amazon.com and their wishlist feature, i've been stalking the mountainsmith lumbar packs for a while now, and today happened to notice that the price range on the recycled tour pack started at $34.37.  the only color they had for that price is the cobalt blue which may not have been my first pick, but hey, those packs normally retail for $70 (although amazon seems to have them for $58)!  for 40-50% off, i'll take not-my-first-color-pick.  plus, free shipping and free returns, so if i get it and hate the color or find it won't work for me, no biggie!

next up on my list is finding an inexpensive neoprene camera sleeve (i'm envisioning the dslr inside the neoprene camera sleeve, and then rigging up velcro to keep the sleeve in-place-but-removable inside the pack) and i'll be ready to go for our summer adventures!

birthday gifts

i'm very up in the air about what to do for scott's birthday.  we normally don't exchange birthday gifts, just get an extra allowance for buying whatever we want (which normally goes into scott's play-poker-at-a-casino fund).  a few months ago, though, scott declared that he wanted a new ipod for his birthday.  right-o.  i started pondering the idea and thinking about it in terms of christmas.

then a few weeks ago, scott got back from picking up a new sprinkler head (to replace the one he'd shattered with the lawnmower), pulled the ipod shuffle out of his pocket where he'd left it from doing yard work that morning, and found that he'd apparently sat on it in the car and broken off the clip.  as in, the thing that attaches the ipod to his clothes while working out and running.  it's still useable, but it's now a four year old, 512mb ipod shuffle with a broken clip.

as regards the new ipod, i had been thinking of getting him an ipod nano, you can connect to the nike+ipod system so it keeps track of miles run, time, calories, that sort of thing.  you can even set a special song to play for your cooldown every run.  he'd love it!  and apparently you don't even have to get the special nike+ shoes to hold the sensor anymore - you can get a thing that straps onto any shoe's laces to hold it in place.  i was thinking of doing the nano for him and having his sisters get him the nike+ipod kit and armband.  perfect, right?

well, according to my wikipedia research, apple has released a new nano every september for the last 5 years.  which means that if i get him a nano now, in less than three months, there'll be a new one on the market (and the current one will be probably dropped by 1/3-1/2 the current price).  scott's not really up on gadgets, so he probably wouldn't care, but i remember how bitter i was that apple released the color ipod within months of me getting my "classic" ipod for graduation from my parents.  so what to do?  get him the nano now, or wait and make him use the old one in the meantime?

family week

this is a good week for my family!

today (june 2) is my parents' 31st wedding anniversary, which is pretty fabulous.  growing up, i always took for granted that my parents were together (yet loved getting to put their wedding ornament on the christmas tree every year), but as an adult i am thankful that i have parents who are still happily married and enjoy being together and planning a future together.  happy anniversary, parents!

today also happens to be our housiversary - the 2nd anniversary of the day that scott and i closed on our house!  while i went through a bout of buyer's remorse a few months after the purchase, two years in i'm heartily convinced that we have the perfect house in the best location for us.  it has its quirks, takes work, and there are always projects on the horizon, but its ours and i like it.

coincidentally also this week last year (june 4), scott and i bought sir walden, affectionately known as wally - my highly anticipated and much beloved subaru forester.  one year and 16,000 miles (yes, you read that right) later, it still makes me smile to walk down to my parking garage, click my unlock button from across the garage, and hear his perky "chirp chirp" in response.  my mental image of wally includes big pink heart bubbles hovering over his roof.

sunshine times eleven

we had a positively blissful weekend.  in eleven parts:

1. i learned that wd-40 can fix almost anything.  cases in point: we spent 20 minutes trying to screw a fresh blade onto the lawnmower but it kept sticking - lathered it all up with wd-40 and voila!  also, scott ran over a sprinkler head with said lawnmower, and it turned out that he broke not only the head, but also the plastic stem that connects the head to the sprinkler lines a foot into the soil.  part of the stem was broken off inside the little junction, and pliers alone weren't able to unscrew it - add wd-40, though, and scott had it off within minutes.  (which was doubly awesome because then we didn't have to pay the sprinkler guy to come out and fix it for us.)
2. i found my broom after 3 weeks of being without and was able to give my floors a good sweeping - the dust mop just can't do everything.
3. we finally caved and signed up for trugreen.  we have just had a super weedy yard, to the point where if it had been a week or so since scott mowed, i'd be embarassed to be seen out there even picking up mail because of all the dandelions.  scott's opinion was that trugreen is an unnecessary expense and we can do it ourselves, but as we currently don't do anything about it on our own, i figured that we need some professional help to get our lawn on the right track, and we'll see next year if we want to take it from there.  sadly one of our next door neighbors doesn't do anything about her weeds, so i'm not sure how much good it'll do with all of her weed seeds still infesting our yard ... but it can't hurt.  their first visit is today.
4. we got wally's oil changed and tires rotated for a grand total of $23.xx!  since we faithfully take all of our service to firestone, they sent me a gold club membership for free in the mail a few months back which entitles me to free tire rotations (although i'd get that for free from the tire shop we use anyway), and i got a coupon for a $20 oil change from the back of a grocery store receipt.
5. we turned the heat off on saturday morning and haven't had it on since then - plus we had the windows open all weekend and got to enjoy lovely warm, sunny smelling fresh air.
6. i finally got my vegetable garden planted!  two cherry tomato plants, one regular tomato, one zucchini, one yellow squash, one green bell pepper, and one red bell pepper.  i also finally took back my dead basil plant to home depot and got it replaced with a living one, and picked up some petunias and moss roses for my front porch planter.  i feel sort of like an odd mother hen over my little veggie garden now - i got home after dark last night (had dinner with some girlfriends) and went outside to check and make sure my little plants all survived the crazy windstorm we had yesterday, and this morning got ready earlier than i normally do so that i'd have time to water my garden before leaving for work.  we'll see if i keep it up for the next two months until they start to give us fresh produce.
7. i had a $30 pre-paid gift card as a rebate from buying my contacts lenses earlier this year, which paid for my flowers and veggies - i bought some miracle gro, too, though, and paid maybe $8 out of pocket!
8. we enjoyed chicken tikka masala with naan for dinner on friday night, and grilled steaks to go with fresh corn on the cob, steamed artichokes, and baked potatoes on saturday night.  (sunday night we had salad.)
9. we watched the last king of scotland on saturday night which was intense but really good.  sunday night post-suns victory we caught up on our tivoed episodes of lost; we still haven't seen the series finale - sniff sniff - so don't ruin it for us!
10. i went grocery shopping on sunday and actually stayed on budget with groceries this month!  i guess dave ramsey's cash method really does work.
11. i made a mid-may resolution to like yard work, and so far so good.  i don't naturally love working in the yard - i see the benefit of it, but when i think of things i can do with my free time, yard work just doesn't ever spring to mind.  similarly, i've historically had the same attitude with things like reading the bible and exercising.  i see the benefit and i know i should do them, but i just have other things i'd rather do.  i found that once i put my mind to enjoying them and seeing legitimate benefit in doing them, though, it's not as much of a struggle.  so, i'm going to attempt the same practice with my yard.

okay, in retrospect, it sounds like we had a very work-ful weekend.  which i guess it was.  it was also just so gloriously peaceful and sunny and warm, and we got to enjoy being outdoors and didn't have any outside obligations (other than that scott had to go in to work for a few hours sunday afternoon).  it was nice, and oh-so relaxing.

the glue gun incentive

i've been on a want-to-be-crafty kick for the last few weeks.  at least i am during working hours when i can dream big but can't do much about it - i seem to lose motivation at night when i'm at home!  the same holds true for working out.  between 10am and noon, i can't wait for evening to roll around so i can go to the gym and hit the running track, but the motivation and energy steadily dwindle over the afternoon, til by 5:45 when i get home i'm pretty content to sit on the couch, eat frozen chocolate chip cookie dough balls, and watch "house" on tivo.  which i may or may not have done earlier this week.  (for whatever reason, i feel the need to defend that decision by stating that i did get several lovely workouts in this week.  i'm not a total sloth.)

anyway, i found this crafty project that has, for the first time in my life, made me wish that i had a glue gun.  (i know, it is a little surprising that i haven't acquired one to this point.)  making the wreath cost that blogger a grand total of $2, and she said that she was inspired to make it after seeing one in a flea market stand for $40.  lo and behold, on the sidebar of her page is selections from her etsy site - including that very wreath, selling for $50!  i have toyed with the idea of making something to sell on etsy, and i'm sure there are plenty of people who do quite well with it, but i feel like most things (other than, say, clothes, graphic design, and jewelry - none of which i do) on there are easily replicable with a little crafty knowhow, and that most people who visit are window shoppers like me who see stuff and get fun ideas of what they could make.  ah well.

happily, i was able to not take a three hour sunday afternoon nap today, and instead set up my sewing machine in the basement and got a pair of jeans shortened!  it's really remarkable how the length of your pants being right makes the rest of the pant fit better.  still on the sewing to do list: shorten my other pair of too-long jeans, sew together my picnic quilt top.  and then on to fun home decor things like making curtains and a slipcover for the glider i got on craigslist a few months ago.

my illogical brain

so (background) my laptop is making a super funky noise whenever i move it.  as i have a lot o' pictures and music on there that i'd like to not lose (as in my last laptop's 4 hard drive failures in 2005-06), i was just researching pricing on big flash drives vs. external hard drives.  yes, i do feel a little bad now that when scott wanted to get an external hard drive last fall, i said no and got him 4gb and 8gb flash drives with a giftcard.  best buy has some multi-terabyte networked external hard drives (i fully realize that i don't need that much storage, but they're so cool) which reminded me of the pioneer woman talking last year about how many external hard drives she'd gone through backing up pictures while she was shooting in RAW.  as they're pricey little suckers (but nothing compared to her amazing cameras and lenses!), that prompted me to ponder how much money she makes blogging.  that's a logical progression, right?

apparently i'm not the only person to wonder that since my google search bar filled in "how much money does the pioneer woman make" by the time i got to the "pi" part of the question - and the answer is a lot!  based solely on ad revenues from her pw site, she probably grosses around $1m/year.  not to mention her cookbook sales, endorsements, or any revenue from the tasty kitchen - but obviously she pays for her giveaways and for her contributors out of that, too.  from the same search, there's also a lot of speculation on the web about how much she and her husband are worth - estimates vary, but consensus is that they're pretty well off.  some people said $15-20m, which seems high, but if they are - hey, go them for still working and living in the middle of oklahoma and not relocating to a beach in hawaii.

speaking of pw's giveaways, though, i struggle with them and here's why: i don't want my affection to be bought.  (or feel bought to my crazy brain.)  i genuinely liked her website before i saw her first giveaway, and while i don't enter each giveaway she has, i wonder sometimes if i continue to like her website because of the possibility of winning a sweet stand mixer or a shiny new nikon d90 (which i really don't need thanks to my loving parents, but still enter giveaways for anyway).  i want to like her blog because i enjoy the recipes and pretty pictures and funny stories - and i do like it for those reasons - but i don't like feeling as though there's the possibility that my affections are being bought.

goodbye spring

we had a very productive weekend if i do say so myself: we actually installed both of our new toilets ON OUR OWN relatively quickly and with no problems - wow!  we took scott's truck in to get the snow tires taken off and squeaky brakes checked out.  we got our outside water turned on so that our roof guy could come fix the masonry on top of our chimney (that was supposed to be monday, but it's on hold for now due to cold and rainy weather - not great for what he needed to do).  we installed my new bird feeder "kit" that i got with birthday money (thanks, mom and dad!) and hung up my also-newly-acquired seed feeder and hummingbird feeder.  we got another estimate for landscaping work, and while the whole project is going to be a little pricier than we initially realized, no better time for it than now, so i think we're going to go for it.  i spent yesterday examining the landscaping plan we had done last year and trying to figure out how much plants and trees cost.  we also enjoyed the lovely and sunny spring weather with a walk, grilling, and much relaxing and movie watching.  please note that as i write this, our lovely spring weekend has disappeared into a chilly and overcast week - complete with a snowstorm last night/today.

the drive-in on friday night was fun in my mind and a little disappointing in scott's.  it was chilly on friday night, so we took wally, laid down the seats, and camped out in the tailgate ... but unfortunately that means that we were looking through the rear window which has big black defrosting lines across it.  it didn't bother me at all, but scott wasn't thrilled with the situation.  scott thought the theater was dumpy and the radio quality staticky - i thought it was a normal drive-in.  combined with the 40 minute drive and our 1:15am return home, i don't think we'll be making the drive-in a weekly destination, but i relatively sure i'll be able to convince scott to take me back by next summer.  movie reviews: "how to train your dragon" was cute, well done, fun, and i highly recommend it!  "iron man 2" wasn't quite as amazing as the original, but it also started after 10pm and both of us were falling asleep by the end, so i don't know that i can give a realistic review.  (saturday night's movie-at-home - thanks to our blockbuster rewards card and a free old-movie monthly rental - was john grisham's "the firm" from 1993, back when tom cruise was successful and un-crazy, and 17 years later the movie is still pretty fabulous.)

drive-in date night

so excited that it is once again drive-in season!  there is only one drive-in movie theater left in the metro area, about 40 minutes away, but since we haven't been to a drive-in in two years (three?), we're going to brave the drive on friday night.  we were originally aiming for saturday night to go with friends, but everyone has other plans so we moved it up to be our regularly scheduled friday night date night entertainment.  on the docket is how to train your dragon and iron man 2 (both of which we were already excited about seeing, and make for a pretty rockin opening night at the drive-in if you ask me) and approximately 15 blankets and pillows in wally's tailgate.  even if it is mid-50s and rainy today, summer, here we come!

scott had originally wanted to do a full on 50's date night and go to sonic or culver's for hamburgers and custard before the movies, but in reading the drive-in's website, i saw that they ask you to eat at their snack bar because that's how they make a profit and stay in business.  since i'd like to not start having to drive 90 mintues each way to get to the next closest drive-in, i voted for giving the snack bar a shot at least.  i may still whip out my thick-rimmed-and-rhinestoned 50's cat-eye glasses that i wore to a costume party last halloween, though.  :)  yes we do have fun together, why do you ask?

mulch, take two

my wise husband listened to my mulch research and reminded me that we have a few trees yet to be taken out this year and were hoping to have a landscaper pull out the existing rock and weed barrier (and dirt covered rock and weed barrier along the wall in the back yard), which is going to add up.  so, the mulch plan is that we'll clean up the rock in the front, put the rock back in over new weed barrier and potentially add some fresh rock over top, and do mulch in the back yard without weed barrier (to make it easier to have lots of plants and flowers growing there).  whew.  i think it'll look better, particularly once we actually have bushes and living things in the midst of our rock, and have everything cleaned up a bit.  price-wise i do like the plan better than paying $1000 just for mulch ... especially when our tree guy came back with an estimate of $1100 to finish taking out our russian olives and dead aspens!  sheesh.  we'll be getting some second opinions.

soapbox

so we were taking a lunch break from housework, flipping through the channels to find something to watch and there is seriously some crappy tv on.  we watched a show called "basketball wives" on vh1 for a few minutes, and the wives are just so catty and trying to create crazy drama!  they were talking about the tiger woods scandal, saying that they find it hard to believe that there is any professional athlete who remains faithful to his wife (these are nba wives saying this - yikes!).  anyway, it reminded me of one of my latest soapbox thoughts: can we please stop making women famous for having sex with married celebrity men (john edwards and tiger woods' mistresses, i mean you)?  i'm sure there are plenty of famous men who are out there propositioning women with no provocation, but sadly i'm also quite sure that there are women who see a guy like tiger woods come into a bar, think, "hmm, he's married ... but he's also famous and if i get with him i could totally sell my story someday and be famous too!" and go for it.  (maybe tiger woods is a bad example here ...)  it is ridiculous, and makes me sad for the state of marriage in our culture.

friends' babies

not one but two of my dearest girlfriends had babies this week - what a week!

jami texted on saturday night to say that her water had broken, contractions hadn't really started yet, but they were planning to head to the hospital by 6am sunday unless thing picked up pace that night.  i didn't hear from her or her husband naseem at all on sunday, but finally monday checked facebook and saw that her sister-in-law had posted online late sunday that they'd had their baby boy, kaiden, on sunday.  (i still have yet to see pictures or meet him, but she e-mailed wednesday saying they were a little overwhelmed with the adjustment and would be in touch when they're ready to see people, which is of course fine with me!)

then this morning i got a text from alison that miranda was born early this morning - wow!  from pictures and commentary that her husband matt posted on facebook later today, it looks like she went into labor late last night and things progressed quickly enough that miranda was born by 6:30am.  she is absolutely adorable and has a full head of hair - so excited to meet her this summer!

mulch

one of the big things i'd like to change with our landscaping is the river rock we have going on in our yard.  rock seems to be a big thing for landscaping in colorado, and i kind of get that because it never needs replacing, doesn't require water, and doesn't blow away ... but it's just not pretty.  maybe i say that because i'm a midwesterner used to lush growing things and rich dark dirt, but as much as inanimate ground covering can say cozy and homey, mulch just says it to me and rock doesn't.  rock is fine in moderation, but i don't love it as a covering for the 800 or so square feet (very rough estimate) that it is currently occupying in our front and back yards. and that's not including the side yards!  since our rock is old and desperately in need of removing, washing (to get out all the weed seeds), and replacing the weed barrier under it bare minimum, we're trying to balance wants, price, and, to a certain extent, environmental impact.  research thus far reveals:

• river rock
• cost:  free.  even if we needed more to cover thin spots, there's always some for free on craigslist.
• pros:  only cost is to replace weed barrier underneath.
• cons:  we (i) don't love the look.
• wood mulch
• cost:  about $300.  consumer reports says wood mulch averages $1.50/cubic foot, recommends wood mulch 3" deep, which over 800 square feet would require 200 cubic feet of mulch (according to gardenplace.com).
• pros:  up front inexpensive replacement option.  if used without weed barrier, provides organic material to the garden as it decays, which neither rock nor rubber mulch do.  no need for weed barrier as with rock, but weed barrier can help the decay problem and thus mean less potential upkeep cost.
• cons:  needs a top coat of mulch each year or so to replace decayed/blown away stuff - averaging an extra inch of fresh mulch every year would cost about $100/year.  bugs love decaying wood mulch, and i don't love bugs.  environmental impact depends on source of mulch (ie, cypress mulch is bad, pine mulch from colorado potentially neutral).  if use weed barrier, mulch decay on top of barrier can provide material for weeds to grow on.
• rubber mulch
• cost:  about $1000.  lowes.com has .8cf bags for $8/each, consumer reports recommends 1.5" depth, so 100 cf total would require 125 bags.  we also have a 10% off lowe's coupon that may work with rubber mulch, so that could bring the cost down a bit.
• pros:  doesn't blow away, run off with heavy rains, or fade.  guaranteed for 10-15 years.  made 100% of recycled tires.  no need for weed barrier, and bugs don't like the stuff.  no annual upkeep.
• cons:  expensive out of pocket (although after 7-10 years the rubber mulch would likely pay for itself).

honestly, my gut instinct is to go with the rubber mulch - put in something environmentally friendly and low upkeep and be done with it.  clearly that sort of out-of-pocket outlay of cash requires some input from scott, though, so we'll see what he says!  i dubbed tomorrow a homey day - cleaning, mowing and pulling weeds, finishing laundry, grocery shopping, calling the tree trimmer/landscaper for an estimate and the masonry guy to set a date to fix our chimney, and maybe making a lowe's trip to get the water rebate toilets (and maybe mulch, and maybe light fixtures to add on the back of the house).  here's to productivity and trying not to sleep in too terribly late.

green thumb in training

i planted my little herb planter garden last night!  i planted from plants this year - maybe next year i'll brave seeds, depending on how this year's expedition goes.  we now have cilantro, sage, sweet basil, onion chives, and rosemary growing in a lovely green planter.  it's a little more crowded than i thought it would be, so i may have to separate them at some point.  again, we'll see.  i'm so excited for a summer full of tasty cooking, though!  especially the basil and rosemary - yum.  i saw an article a few months ago suggesting that you cut long sections of rosemary, strip the herby leaves, and use the wood as skewers for kabobs.  i'm not sure my rosemary will get big enough for that this year (it's a perennial, so hopefully i won't kill it this season), but how lovely does that sound??

when our friends jordan and miranda moved to minnesota, they gave us their railing-mount plastic planter.  i dumped out the soil last night, cleaned it up, and am spray painting it the same cappucino color as our shutters, with plans to mount it on the iron railing in front of our front door with some pretty flowers in it!  i have a notoriously brown thumb, so i'm not sure how my forays into gardening will go, but i'm mildly optimistic.  i also have plans to start a mini garden in a bare patch in our lawn next to the back patio - cherry tomatoes and zucchini are currently what i'm planning, but i may branch out.

oh, after pictures of the roof project are finally posted on facebook!  (as well as an early look at my gardening attempts.)

overview

ooh la la, a non-bargain-hunting post!  as i find the boundaries provided by numbering things comforting, i'll do list form (also to keep my verbose narrative in check):

1. we officially have our camping reservation for yellowstone in august!  plus, i spent the morning reading my frommer's yellowstone guide, and i'm getting steadily more excited.  there's just so much to see and do, i'm starting to wish we'd planned more than three to three and a half days there.  our campground is near the grand canyon of the yellowstone, and near the upper and lower falls, which are two of the things that i'd most hoped to see.  it's going to be challenging to balance getting out and hiking and experiencing the nature of the park with driving and wanting to see everything because it's all so cool and beautiful.
2. whoops, went onto facebook to find a link and got totally distracted!  our friends zach and casey, who were our first friends in denver, are moving to africa to work with friends at the recreation project.  their website explains it better, but basically uganda has tons of kids (and adults) really emotionally scarred from the history of war in their country and from being forced into fighting, so they're building a ropes course and sports rec leagues as a sort of recreational therapy, to help the kids channel their aggression and competition and passion into constructive things, and help build leadership.  we went to a fundraising bowling night last night to see them before they leave.  (we haven't seen them as a couple in ages, and casey and i haven't hung out since we both left our first apartment complex, but scott and zach still play poker, watch football, and do the occasional sports team together.)
3. in celebration of being alone in the office today, i had a diet coke with lunch (which i just finished drinking now, four hours later - i'm a slow drinker), and i've totally got the post-caffeine jitters.  i hate that feeling.
4. scott and i pulled our first weeds of the season yesterday.  we do have some more to do, but thankfully it's way less bad than last year - i'm hoping that if we start early, we can keep it under control and not have a thistle forest in our sideyard by mid-june.  we're also planning to call our tree trimmer who also does general landscaping work to get a bid on taking out some dead aspens and pulling out one of our dead-bush-and-dirty-river-rock areas so that we can start making our yard look pretty.  (it desparately needs new weed barrier and bushes, and we're debating whether to clean up the river rock or switch it out with mulch - either the traditional wood stuff or the rubber stuff.)  we're undecided how much to do ourselves vs hiring someone else to do ... it's just so much easier to write a check to someone else, but also obviously more costly.  also, we're excited to start re-planting trees this year!
5. tonight is my last night of tutoring gerardo.  (actually, not tutoring - it's the end of year celebration/dinner.)  he's ending 5th grade, which means that next year he starts middle school.  whiz kids is thinking of opening up a middle school tutoring site in the area since there are so many 5th graders moving up, but i'm not sure if he'll continue with it next year.  we shall see - it could be my last night with him ever, or i could get three more years!  (when i asked him about it last week, he said that he wants to not do it so that i can stay with the elementary school kids and tutor his little brother, who'll be in first grade next year.  how sweet is that??)

heart amazon

i love amazon!  i just ordered an svga cable to hook my computer up to the tv to do things like watch hulu.com on tv for $6.99 including shipping, an audio cable also for computer to tv usage for $6 with free shipping, a wirless rain sensor for $45 with free shipping that will be eligible for full rebate from our water company, and two filters for our vacuum for $8.15 each with free shipping.

for comparison, bestbuy.com listed a comprable length svga cable for $45, had a shorter audio cable for $9, and the reason that i haven't changed my vacuum filter in close to two years is that the filters at target/walmart cost $15-20 each which made me cranky.  that's a savings of approximately $55 total!

now, off to watch lost.  we decided that we're doing nothing but laundry and lounging today.  so far, we're on target!  (slept in til 10am - love it.)

slightly less cheap phone service

our magic jack is back in working order, by the way.  we started using it at the beginning of january, i think, and at the end of march i noticed that the little blue power light in the magic jack that was flickering.  hmm.  i found that if i wiggled it down it would power off, or wiggled up the power would stay on.  i tried using electrical tape to hold in the "on" position, but finally it just refused to power on any more.  right, i wasn't thrilled.  scott contacted customer service and ordered us a new one ($20 since the old one had a physical defect), and we're back in business.  we had kept the old magic jack plugged straight into my computer, but it's like 2.5 inches long x 1.5 inches wide, and i think it got bumped around on my laptop often enough that the usb connection broke.  so, learning from our mistake, we got a 10 foot usb extension cord and now have the magic jack safely extensioned away and taped into place on top of the little power cord box for my laptop.  so far so good, and if you ever decide to give magic jack a whirl and use a laptop as your primary home computer, i highly recommend the usb extension cord route.

2012

scott and i really like watching movies.  as such, redbox is approximately the greatest thing since sliced bread to us, and we rejoiced when one came to the grocery store across the street from us.  anyway, on easter weekend scott came home with the movie 2012, and it was awesome - wonderfully cheesy action, so much unintentional comedy, and somehow predictable yet suspenseful at the same time.  if you're not familiar, the premise of the movie is that the earth's core heats up which makes the plates of the earth shift, which in turn leads to crazy huge earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and megatsunamis, wiping out everyone on earth except a few hundred thousand world leaders and super-wealthy people who can afford tickets on huge arks.  oh, john cusack and his family survive, though, because they manage to get their car/rv/plane out at precisely the right moment - specifically about two inches ahead of the giant chasm opening up in the earth, wheels spinning wildly on the crumbling pavement, but then speeding away ahead of the death crack in the nick of time.  their plane runs out of gas in china rather than the pacific because of the earth's crazy land shifting, and then mere moments later they happen upon a tibetan monk with a pickup truck who happens to have a brother who can sneak them onto one of the arks - something that apparently no other ark workers considered!

when it all comes down, the movie is totally absurd and laughably wonderful - BUT, because we watched it in the midst of this year of heightened awareness of earthquakes, i just can't stop thinking about it!  everytime another major earthquake is reported on the news (and i think there have been six in the week and a half since then), i find myself wondering if this amount of earthquake activity is normal.  when i heard the news of iceland's volcanic eruption and that the subsequent ash cloud is prevent air travel across the uk and europe, i a) wonder how many active volcanoes there are and if they're related to the earthquakes at all, and b) laugh because in the movie they fly their plane through tons of volcanic ash with no problems.  i saw an article this morning about earthquake swarms in yellowstone and found myself pondering the state of the yellowstone caldera, and specifically wondering what the odds are that it would erupt when we're up there this summer.  silly, i know, but still things my brain hangs on to.  no, i am actually concerned about any of it, just something i find myself pondering occasionally.  besides, as the book of matthew says, no one can know the time or day of the end times.
____

vaguely related, we're planning a trip to yellowstone for august, and i'm excited!  i have a copy of the 2010 frommer's yellowstone/tetons guide on hold at the library for poring over this weekend.  we're doing the trip with mike, maura, and kinley, but i'm hopeful that it will work out with both of our schedules and with camping availability to do the first week of august to coincide with our 5 year wedding anniversary.  (5 years!)  if so, we were talking about maybe stopping in jackson, wyoming (an hour or so south of yellowstone, through grand teton national park) to enjoy the view of the teton mountain range, explore and stay the night at an inn somewhere in the valley.  fun, right?

is droughtish a word?

my blog has gotten boring and neglected and for that i apologize.  i think its writer needs a mental revamping.

in the meantime, while i miss hardwood deciduous trees and the bright greenness of spring and early summer in the midwest, can i just say that there are some pretty huge benefits to living in a slightly-droughtish region?  specifically: water rebates.  awesome!  $150 for an high efficiency washing machine, which we took advantage of; $125/ea for 1.28 gpf (gallons per flush) toilets (the general standard since the late 90's is 1.6 gpf, and from the 80s to that point was 3.5 gpf ... before that i think it was 5, 6, 7 gpf depending on the decade), $50 for a wireless rain sensor for a sprinkler system.  amazon.com happens to have a toro wireless rain sensor for $45, so we'll get it for free after our rebate, and lowe's has qualifying toilets for as little as $4 over the rebate price!  yes, i made a spreadsheet, why do you ask?

two of our toilets have had some running issues (which i discovered via our water bill, when i noticed that we were using about 3-4k more gallons of water per month more than we had been last year this time), so scott took approximately 8 trips to home depot, lowe's, and ace, and spent three afternoons trying to fix the toilets.  one seemed like it was fixed only to start running again as soon as we flushed it, and hasn't stopped since, and the other did well for a week or so before we noticed it.  consumer reports suggests that 1.6 gpf toilets are worth fixing rather than replacing, whereas older 3.5+ gpf toilets should just be replaced ... but if we can get a whole new toilet for $4, why not just replace them both?  (one of the toilets is a 3.5, the other is a 1.6.)  my current pick is actually for a toilet that's $35 over the rebate cost as its flushing is rated better, but still, two new toilets for $70 is not too shabby - we'll see what scott says.  in the month since we turned off the running toilets, our water bill went down by 4k gallons, which saved us about $10, by the way.

in other news, some friends posted this link on facebook earlier today that made me laugh because i am a grammar nerd (even though i never capitalize my blog).  the rest of the site also made me laugh, but has some language going on, so if you're sensitive to that stuff, you might just stick with the alot post.

*** google tells me that "semiarid" is the word for which i'm looking, which is too bad as droughtish is a cool word.  it also informs me that colorado is in an overall wet period currently, with the last real dry spell being in '00-'03.  duly noted.

brown rice

so i was just looking on cooking light's website for recipes to make brown rice fun - i have a bunch of it in my pantry because i was ambitiously healthy mood like a year ago and bought a bunch, but it turns out brown rice just isn't as tasty as white rice and scott isn't a fan.  anyway, i have a bag or two to use up, so i turn to the web for help, and what does the web give me?  brown rice and mushroom pancakes.  um, what?  it could turn out to be really good ... but i doubt it.  plus i think scott would be out the door for taco bell in two seconds flat if i tried to make that for dinner!

granola

i think colorado is making me granola-y.  (or maybe the world is more granola-y and i'm catching the vibe at a point in my life where i happen to live in colorado.)  cases in point:

• i love craigslist not only because it allows me to be more frugal than buying all-new stuff at stores, but also because it keeps some older-but-still-useable stuff out of landfills.
• i'm not pregnant, but have already firmly decided that i will be using cloth diapers, and have contemplated how to let people know that it's okay with me for them to get (nice) second-hand stuff for my future baby showers.
• when our washing machine broke, we got a high efficiency model not only because of the sweet water rebate, but also because we liked the idea of using less water and less electricity to wash our clothes.
• i just spent the past hour researching local grass fed beef ranches, comparing quarter-share prices, looking up chest freezers on consumer reports (to hold the hundred pounds of beef) and debating whether i'd rather spend less on a slightly less energy efficient freezer, or slightly more on a freezer with an "excellent" energy efficiency rating.  then i realized that i might should start out with buying non-bulk grass fed beef that would fit in our current freezer to make sure we like it before dropping that kind of money on meat.  right-o.  i'm smart like that.
• i drive a subaru and own chacos.
• i think it's absurd that people don't recycle solely because it costs $4/month, and made scott take our old gutters to a recycling place rather than tossing them in the dumpster.  i thought they were aluminum, but apparently they weren't, so we only ended up getting about $15 for them ... oh well - still recycled, and still $15 we didn't have before.
• i saw an article on easy composting using a rubbermaid tote and got really excited.  then i realized that i think we already have a little composting area next to our house, behind our little storage shed, and got less excited because there are thistles and spiders back there and as such i have yet to brave it (two years after moving into our house).  but i think i'll have scott go back with me and help me clean it out later this spring, so that we can compost our yard waste and banana peels and whatnot at the very least.

lest you think i'm bragging about my green-ness, i'm not - i happily use paper plates and plastic utensils when we have groups of people over, i eat kraft mac n cheese with hot dogs on a regular basis, i bought the car i like rather than the one with the best gas mileage, and i willfully have trees in my yard chopped down without necessarily having an immediate plan to replace them.  i appreciate that the culture in colorado makes me think about how my actions and food choices impact the environment and my own future, though. 

i want sunshine

in honor of denver's second winter storm warning in a week (5-10 inch forecast this time), i am officially looking forward to summer!  we still haven't made any plans or reservations yet (but it is only march), but i am researching.  the three specific things that have me excited for warmth and sun:

1. my parents got me a subscription to outdoor photographer magazine*, and the april edition has a fabulous article about the national parks.  there are some beautiful pictures, and it reminded me of all the fun we had exploring our lovely state last summer (even though we didn't hit up any national parks).  and, it got me excited to play with my lovely new-to-me nikon d50 this summer.
2. today i was reading an article about the rockslide on i-70 up in the mountains, and it mentioned its proximity to the hanging lake exit, which reminded me that scott and i have wanted to go hike hanging lake for the last four and a half years, which reminded me that we want to get daypacks since both of us are still rocking the jansport college backpack, and then THAT reminded me that i need to figure out the daypack/dslr thing.  the daypack/dslr is slightly challenging only in that i want to have water and normal daypack stuff - layers, food - in my pack in addition to my dslr and maybe an extra lense, but a lot of packs i was initially seeing were these $200 monstrosities with spots for the huge pro-size camera bodies and like 5+ lenses, and that's just not my style.  so i've been shopping around online for packs, and i think i'm coming up with some good options, including getting a neoprene pouch for the camera and just putting that in a normal daypack.  anyway, back to why this gets me excited for summer - bike rides and hikes and camping will all be enjoyed much more with more appropriate gear ... plus i'll get to play with my lovely nikon d50!
3. daydreaming about where we'll go this year - i think i've mentioned before that we've talked about yellowstone, durango, and aspen among others.  i also want to go to the black canyon of the gunnison, and to the grand junction area, and and and ...  i think we've mostly nixed the long distance travel vacations for this year, which i'm fine with - i'm looking forward to road tripping around the region!

* - outdoor photographer also had a neat article in the march issue about shooting abstract bird pictures that looks like a lot of fun to play with.  (btw, parents, i got my first issue of op on my birthday, three days after i got your card mentioning it ... and then got my second issue a week later!)

roof

the house is looking SO GOOD!!!  we woke up saturday, went to look at the trim, liked it, and have liked it more and more the more we see it.  which is good, since we're not re-painting.  :)

turns out the roofers will likely be able to finish the job tonight yet - i am so excited.  (they may still have a bit to finish up in the morning, and the gutters are still going on wednesday.)  even by the time i got home from work tonight, the whole house looked SO different.  it's honestly like a brand new house.  i don't think i realized how dated i thought the house was until i saw it looking so sleek and updated.  yay!!  pictures will be forthcoming.  and, as a side note, now that it's 7:30pm and there's still occasional pounding, i think we might should bake the the neighbors some cookies as an apology for the noise ...

hmm

well, the trim doesn't have quite the zesty contrast that we were going for ... hmm.  in the parts where the trim is against the siding closer to eye level, it looks good, but the trim on the high trilevel peaks sort of blend in with the siding.  scott pointed out that the sun was setting when we got home, which could impact how the color looks, and that we really need to wait for the gutters and new roof to be on before we can really judge the full effect.  i'm a liiiittle bit disappointed thus far, but i'm trying to reign it in.  plus, as i pointed out to scott, we'll likely need to paint the siding at some point!  :)

high gear

• january 27 - we had a handyman out and he told us to call a roofer about the flashing.
• january 30 - we had steve the roofer out, he mentioned that we have hail damage and should call our homeowner's insurance to have an adjuster come out, and left us with sample shingle boards "just in case".
• february 11 - tedd the adjuster finally made it out (after a few delays due to snow storm), confirmed that we're eligible for full replacement, and wrote us a check to get started on the roof.
• february 25 - we had our friend nick the painter out to give us a bid on trim painting
• march 4 - steve the roofer came back out to answer my myriad of questions regarding the project, and gave us a ring of sample gutter colors.
• march 5 - i faxed in a signed acceptance of the roofing company's final estimate.
• march 6 - we finalized our color picks, e-mailed them off to steve the roofer to place the order, and took the old gutters off our house so that we can get the trim painted pre-roofing.
• march 7 - we gave nick the painter the trim color chips.
• march 10 - steve the roofer says that our materials are set to be delivered on the 12th and that they are on schedule to start early next week.
• march 12 - nick the painter is painting our trim to a lovely clay color as i write this!

and weather permitting ...

• march 15 - over two days, steve the roofer's crew will tear off the old roof, put on the new roof, and maybe replace a piece of water damaged soffit board or two if we ask nicely and pay them on the side.
• march 17 - daryl the gutter guy will install our lovely new galvalume gutters.

wow!  things have really kicked into high gear in the last week.  things went from "yes, we're getting a new roof at some point in the next month or so." to "our house will look completely different by the time we get home from work next wednesday."  very exciting!  i was feeling a little anxious about the process before the meeting with steve the roofer last thursday, but hearing the whole process laid out, and getting to sit down with scott on saturday and make the final color picks together, i'm just looking forward to seeing everything come together.  now i'd just like the get the second installment check back from insurance ...

sunshine!

we are having such a lovely sunshiney weekend!  we slept in this morning til 9 (ooh la la), finished picking our house colors, and went on a nice bike ride in the 55* sunshine for an hour or so.  so fun - i love lazy saturdays!  we also had leftover pizza for lunch, which i think is the 4th time this week that i've had pizza for a meal.  we had planned to hang out with friends tonight and bring over a pizza, which will make 5 meals.  i love pizza (truly, it's one of my favorite foods), but healthwise i think i might should take at least a week off of it.

last night was my birthday date, and it was super fun.  we had another 5280 dinner at the melting pot which was soooooo good.  i love fondue.  we had fondue once at geja's in chicago and loved it, and i have been wanting fondue again ever since (wow, just realized that our geja's date was six years ago).  i decided that if the melting pot participates in 5280 every year, i will happily make it my annual birthday dinner.  in keeping with our tradition of doing a cultural date activity for my birthday each year, we got tickets to guys and dolls at the littleton town hall arts center, conveniently located three blocks from the melting pot.  also very fun!  the theater is small, maybe six or seven rows deep, but they do seating in the round, sort of a semi-circle shape around the stage so there really aren't any bad seats in the house.  the musical was funny, engaging, and well acted.  had i known at the time that the melting pot extended their 5280 special through the whole month of march (it was supposed to end last night) i think we would have done dinner and the show on a saturday night rather than after work on a friday, but still, very fun birthday date night!

vacation planning

i keep trying to convince myself that vacation traveling isn't really a necessity, that i'd much rather do something pracical and useful with the money we'd spend on a vacation - like putting it toward student loans, or into a retirement account.  i'm not sure i have myself convinced, though, since i've researched five different vacations in the past week.

the vacation i had talked about surprising scott with was to san francisco.  (i told him about it this last weekend - i just can't make that level of decision by myself!)  i had great plans of renting bikes to ride over the golden gate bridge, taking the ferry to tour alcatraz, riding the cable cars, etc.  i couldn't commit to it, though, and plane ticket prices went up a bit, which made me waffle even more.  then last week i saw a 50% off special on rooftop seats for a cubs game, so i was looking into a springtime trip back to chicago - fun, right?  i've also researched cabin rentals in yellowstone for the late summer, going to a marriage conference (campus crusade's "a weekend to remember") in lake tahoe, seattle, and spring cabin rentals here in colorado to go snowshoeing.

i finally told scott this weekend that i don't really care what we do, i think i just want to have something on the calendar to go somewhere fun this summer, even if it's just back to the mountain cabin where we spent a lovely long weekend last year.  it's entirely possible that i was spoiled by the last two summers of amazing vacations - alaska two years ago, and our grand tour de colorado last summer.