You had a glimmer of hope that I would post more regularly now, huh? Ha Ha! (Nelson laugh)

Every time I thought about posting, I was thinking about food and how delicious it is. And since my last real post was a food post, I thought I'd spare you. Although, it was really tempting to write about the fried okra I had for lunch the other day. Mmmmm....delicacy in Idaho... Anyway, enough about food. I'm not hungry right now. And according my scale I'm still not gaining much. I've just been yo-yoing with water weight. But I've been eating. No more morning sickness here. And about the only thing I can't stand is yogurt. Oh, and I have totally been eating sweets like there's no tomorrow. Okay, I lie. I won't eat more than, like, four cookies in a day. But still, every one counts for something, right?

And at Eve's request, I finally have a belly shot. This was taken today with the self timer on the camera. I had to sit the camera on Chris' desk, so it cut off my head. So this is me at almost 17 weeks. I was looking more pregnant than usual, so I decided I should hurry and take a picture before my tummy deflated again.


I wonder how small my butt will look when my stomach is finally the biggest thing on my body. Heh, I find that thought to be hilarious. Don't ask me why I do, it just makes me laugh to think about.

So Chris has been gone for the past week for National Guard annual training. Holy crap, it sucks. Yes, that's why I had to take my belly picture myself and cut off my own sweet pretty head. Aside from the obvious annoyance of not having my husband around to do my bidding (another thought that makes me chuckle), and well I'm pretty attached to the guy and I hate it when he's away, my main complaint at his absence is that his dog is driving me COMPLETELY INSANE. Buddy has always had the occasional bout of managing to get out of the back yard while we're not paying attention and wreaking havoc (read: sniffing butts) around the general vicinity, but he usually stops doing it after a couple of days of us keeping a super tight watch on him and taking some sort of measure to find and close up wherever he has escaped. Right now, however, he has gotten out pretty much every day that Chris has been gone.

This little dog may seem like he's a sleepy, droopy eyed, and laid back basset hound, but he has a secret side of neurotic thrown in there. Any kind of change completely flips him out. Like when we moved the dogs' kennels from the living room to the back bed room, he started peeing in the house randomly. Um, what? And he completely adores Chris. If I wake up before him on the weekend and I come into the living room, Buddy will go and wait for Chris in the hallway and scratch at the baby gate that we put there to keep him from scratching on our bedroom door. If Chris takes too long to get up, Buddy will whine. So I'm pretty sure he's breaking out because Chris isn't here, and he's a nervous freak. Well, my single consolation is that he hasn't been eating his poop lately. So at least I have that.

Anyway, you should see the mess of scrap wooden boards I screwed and nailed all of the whole at the bottom of our porch (where he was getting out this time). He's a crafty little butt and kept finding flaws in my defenses, so I'd have to add another board or two every time. Ha! Man, is it ghetto. But I think I've finally defeated him... hopefully. Every time I think I have, he gets out again.

So that's my news. I'm ready for my husband to come home because he's pretty entertaining and fun to be around. Oh, and also, a friend of mine at work told me her daughter is getting her maternity clothes together and is going to give them to me. How awesome is that?! And yes, I am wearing some maternity tops, and yes, it is only so people will think I'm actually pregnant and not just chubbing out. I'm still roomy in all my pre-pregnancy pants and I'm still comfy in all my old tops, too. I'm really interested in knowing how I'm going to be carrying this baby, and if it will be anything like what I imagined. Oh well, I guess we'll find out soon. This baby is definitely wiggling and growing and will make his/her presence known to the public soon.

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Mmmmmm, hot red breading...

Let's talk about food, yes? More specifically, foods that are bad for you. Even more specifically, one food that is bad for you. There are some times in your life when you need to eat spicy chicken sandwiches with cheese, no mayo, and drizzled with ranch every day for every meal OR YOU WILL SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES. I guess I would like to call that time of my life the pregnant time.* Yes, I just ate one, and I am happy. Anyway, I don't really need to regale you with the loveliness that is a spicy chicken sandwiches with cheese, no mayo, and drizzled with ranch, do I? Doesn't the juicy chicken breast breaded with that hot red breading speak for itself? Of course it does! I'm mostly speaking of THE CONSEQUENCES YOU WILL SUFFER, ahem, well, the consequences I will suffer if I don't eat them more often in this pregnant time of my life.
I had my OB visit yesterday. I found it humorous that I've seen her several times in the past year or so, and this is the first time I didn't have to take off my pants. Score one for me! Anyway, I mentioned it to her, and she laughed. Heh, I'm glad she didn't think it was creepy. So, OB visit, right. Baby is fine. I heard that little "whoosh whoosh" heartbeat for the first time. That was pretty cool. She found it really quickly, which made me happy. Everything else was fine, well, except that I lost 4 pounds in the past 4 weeks. Um, what? That's kind of freaks me out a little. I know many people will tell me it's fine and all, but let me tell you why it freaks me out. My morning sickness was negligible, people! As in, puked less than once a week! Also, I GORGED myself on pizza, pizza, pizza! Well, not all of the time, but more than I felt I should. My doctor wasn't necessarily worried a lot, but she was surprised and told me not to lose anymore weight. So I've decided to allow myself some more of my favorite cravings, even though I was trying to avoid them for the health of my little one. Maybe this kid is taking after me. Maybe the baby wants a spicy chicken sandwich, too. *sniff sniff* So much like your mama! Now let's go to McDonald's and get 2 Big Macs for $3. *kiss kiss*



*I would also like to call it every other time in my life. If you were to, hypothetically, try to win my undying love and affection with said regimen of food, I would be undoubtedly yours. However, be warned: If your offering is missing either cheese or ranch, it will be for naught. Oh, I'll still eat it, but I'll glare at you with pure hatred while licking the morsels from my fingers. But if you forget both cheese and ranch, I will behead you. And then I will eat your sandwich.

Check me out

Jamie did a hair post last month, and it inspired me to do one of my own. This is really only a partial review of all the hairstyles and colors I've had. I wish I had thought to at least take one picture of each of my different looks, if some of them could be called as such. There are also periods of time for which I know pictures exist, but I don't have them. I'm hoping my mom does. Anyway, here we go!

Look at my adorable fats. Well, maybe not adorable, but definitely fats! This is how my hair started, you know, non-existent.


I love this picture. My brother and I looked like such good friends. This is the youngest picture I own since my newborn picture in which I'm not naked. I must have been around three or something. My hair grew! This is obviously before I took a spoon and made a game of twisting it around in my hair and pulling it out. It got stuck, and I think I cut it out (am I remembering this right?). My mom had to take me to get my hair cut. She was pretty pissed. But sorry, I don't have any pictures of that.



I think I was in first grade in this picture. I'm pretty sure this is after Sarah cut my hair. She kept cutting shorter to make it even, lol. Never let your 15 year old sister cut your hair, no matter how much she threatens you if you don't.



I'm going to fast forward through the early years. It was really just all varying lengths of straight brown. And this is sixth grade. The longest straight brown of my childhood.

This is the first drastic color I ever did to my hair. I dyed it pitch black for the majority of my seventh grade year. This was Halloween. Guess what I was that year?

Eighth grade, eighth grade. This small collage is still missing at least three other hair colors or styles that I had during that year. Hmmmm, looking back, I think I can understand why I intimidated boys my age at that time. I just thought I was ugly. Don't most eight grade girls?

This is what my hair looked like in 9th and 10th grade. Just growing it out to be straight and brown again. Although, my ends were awfully unruly. At this point, I'd given up on "fighting" the system (read: no more grunge era angst or detention). But man, I hated high school.

This is my junior year. My hair grows pretty fast. And it also grew out really wavy, which was weird for me. It was always straight before. And I decided to go red for awhile, I think for a year. This was me being Tori Amos for Halloween that year.

I went platinum and short for a while when I worked at a couple of salons. I had other colors during that time, but no pictures. *sigh* Oh, I guess I should address the ears. They were for my fairy costume for the next Halloween when I actually got to see Tori Amos in Houston.

And a tongue ring, too.


Another growing out phase. This is the time period that some guy on LDSpals told me I looked like a lesbian. And I also met Chris on the same site shortly afterward. My hair was just a little bit longer when we met each other in person in Utah.

This was when I lived in Moscow, ID when Chris and I were dating. I think this is one of the pictures I took to send with him to training before he went to Iraq. I don't think it made the cut, though. My hair was pretty much the same when we got married, just longer. Another thing I noticed when going through all these pictures is that my eyes have gotten a lot lighter as I've gotten older. My eyes were a lot darker brown when I was little than they are now.

While Chris was in Iraq, I dyed my hair a semi-permanent dark brown. I really liked it a lot.

I got my hair cut short again the spring after Chris came home. I really liked this hairstyle, but it involved too much work for me. Since my hair became wavy, it doesn't like straight anymore, particularly when it's short. So, I loved it, but I didn't keep it very long.

So this is how I look now, but it is a little longer. It's not a very exciting look, but it's pretty low maintenance, and therefore suits me the best.

I hope you liked my hair post. I'm sure it was a little boring because I didn't talk it up very much, but I guess I just don't have much to say today. I wish my sister Rachel had a blog. She would have an awesome hair time line (hairline?).

Row, row, row your boat

I'm not really very good at updating. I would like to say that it's because nothing has been happening, which is mostly true, but it's more likely that I'm just really really lazy. I think of things that I want to write about ALL the time. It's just that the motivation required to actually write any of it is scarce. If my head had a USB port, you'd have almost daily updates.

My father in law took all his daughters (and me- daughter in law) as well as my mother in law and one of her sisters to see Celtic Woman. The opening act was The High Kings, and they were pretty awesome. I also really liked the main event, but I'd have to say The High Kings had more of what I expected, considering I had never heard anything from either of them before.

Also, I just spent Friday night and practically all of Saturday reading The Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer. I'd been hearing a lot about the series from oh, I don't know, EVERYONE. My mom even called me to beg me to read them, so she could talk to me about them. I happened to be in the parking lot of the place I was getting my haircut, so I had to cut the pleading short a little. Then my hairdresser couldn't stop talking about it! It's an epidemic, people! Anyway, through my mom's gracious assistance, I did obtain these books (which are on a three month waiting list at my library, I'll have you know).

Now, I know I have a problem with really good books. When I start reading one, I physically can not put it down. I pretty much try to ignore as many of my bodily functions as possible until it is finished. If I have the next book, I allow myself a second to eat, brush my teeth, shower, you know, whatever I've neglected to do for myself in the past several hours, but then I immediately start the next book. I know this about myself. It's a definite pattern. So even though I got the books on Thursday, I didn't start reading them until Friday night after I had done everything I needed to do for the evening. And then I read and read and read. Poor Chris. I mean, I really ignore everything (and consequently everyone) while I'm reading. I only had four hours of sleep between the the first and second books because my brain told me to wake up and start reading the next book at 8 am on a Saturday! What is wrong with me? Anyway, it's over now, and I'm jonesing. I should never start reading a series of books before they're finished. I've already pre-ordered the next book, but I have to wait three months! My obsession demands it now.

It all started with Piers Anthony novels when I was 11 or 12. The summer before my sixth grade year I spent many many many sleepless nights and days reading the Xanth series. There something like 15 or 20 books already in that series, so it felt like an unlimited supply which I kept eating and eating and eating. I remember reading the last book (at the time; there are many more by now) in between classes the first couple of days at school. Any interruption by my new classmates who really just wanted to be friends caused me extreme irritation. It's an addiction, I'm telling you. But I blame my mom. I totally get it from her.

As far as baby updates, I don't really have any. My first trimester symptoms are all but gone now, so I'm officially considering myself to be in the second trimester. 13 weeks, 14 weeks, you know, whatever, I'm totally there. Yay! Go baby! It's just kind of weird because now I don't really feel pregnant anymore. So now it seems less real. Even my extreme bloat is receding enough that I don't look pregnant. I have barely a paunch that isn't even noticeable really unless you know to look for it. So, I'm looking forward to this baby growing and making him or herself known. I have an appointment next week, and holy crap, my June appointment is my anatomical scan (read: gender ultrasound)! Initially, I wanted to find out the baby's gender, and later I changed my mind. Then when a friend of mine found out she's having a girl, I really really wanted to know what brand of baby we're having. I kind of feel bad because my husband doesn't want to know and I do (which means we're finding out), but with any luck hopefully we'll have another baby or two in the sometime future. Maybe those babies will be surprises (or maybe only one will be, whatever). It feels like it's all happening so fast, but at the same time, it isn't fast enough. Sure I won't be able to read any books the way I do now ever again, but hey, that's a small sacrifice for our little one.