Kicking the Habit

Oh nasal spray decongestant... You're so good to me when I need you, but I just can't get rid of you when I should.

I've once again become addicted to breathing clearly by means of Afrin, and once again starting the process of kicking the habit. By now I've got it down, though it's still no fun. I spend 2 days spraying only in one nostril once per day. (These are mostly days of suffering, but they pass.) Then I hide it/lock it up/throw it out the window and completely replace it with saline nose spray, spraying as often as necessary, and blow, blow, blow. Today is my first saline nose spray day, and I can already tell I'm Afrin-free! Yippee!!

Attempt #2... Success!!!

I have the force!!!

Attempt #1...Failed...

I gave up at attempt #1. But at least I've had a good laugh about it so far. The story?

It all started when I saw this post on one of my favorite recipe blogs, Annie's Eats. Star Wars is a pretty big deal in my family, so I made sure to forward the link to my mom and sisters, jokingly asking who wanted to buy a set of the cookie cutters for everyone?! Well, a week later I checked the mail and lo and behold... there was a package from Williams Sonoma with a set of Star Wars cookie cutters inside and a note from my sister Amy saying that she expected cookies when she came to visit! :) I was so excited to try them out!

Tonight was the night. Joel is off studying so my Friday night became Star Wars cookie night. I'd made the dough and was ready to try my hand at something I've never done before: ROYAL ICING. Little did I know that royal icing was about to royally kick my butt.

I started off rolling the dough, cutting the shapes, and baking the cookies. That sounds easy enough, right? Here is where my problems start. Problem 1: I rolled the cookies too thin... The last batch was the only one that didn't turn out to be crispy cracker cookies. Dang... But I don't give up that easily.

Next step: discovering how to make royal icing. I got the recipe from Annie's Eats and followed her instructions. Man, it is time consuming. And messy. My hands and pretty much my entire kitchen is covered in food dye and sticky icing. Problem 2: I made this process go about twice as long (and messy) as it needed to be because I wasn't organized enough with my thought process of how to work with the "edging icing" and "filling icing."

Last step and problems 3 and 4: Ice the cookies. I tried to comprehend the instructions... I edged, I filled, and then I realized I had just ruined the cookies. I could no longer see the indentations for the details that make up the characters' faces. Apparently I didn't edge enough of the details and my filling was WAY too thick to see anything underneath. Also, my icing tips were too big so the details I tried to do just blobbed. I tried free handing one Storm Trooper and you can just tell by the look on his face that he's a sad one...

It's now 11:00 pm and my kitchen looks like this:
I'm feeling a little defeated. Not to mention Joel walked out just as I reached my breaking point and said, "wow, you look a little disheveled."

I took on the challenge of the royal icing and it won the first round. But don't worry! Now that I've done everything wrong the first time, I'm ready to go for round 2. Tomorrow. And they're going to be awesome.

Stay tuned...

The Grand Tour

I've been busting out the blog posts lately because I want to make sure I've included everything I want to share before this baby comes! I've had requests to post pictures of our new place, so I figured now would be the best time before our clean, new apartment becomes "baby-ville!"

Here we go! (Click on any of the pictures to enlarge.)
Our apartment is on the second floor, but our front door is actually on the first floor. So here's the view from the top of our stairs looking down to our front door. At least we get our daily workouts in!

Next I'm going to turn around and show you the general view of our living space from the top of the stairs (it's hard to squeeze everything into one picture!):

Alright, time for the kitchen! I'm SO in love with my nice, spacious counter top! We've upgraded ourselves to an actual dishwasher, too! Also - we have an ice machine in our freezer! How great is that! It's the little things that count...

Here's a little peek at our dining area where we host our weekly Sunday dinners with the family in town!

Alright, the living room is next. I love it! We've got tons of space in this area and plenty of seating. As you can see, I haven't done much with the decor. The walls are still pretty bare. I figure they'll be filling up quickly with photos of a sweet baby though...

Let's take a peek down the hallway now...

On the right we have Joel's bathroom. Yes, we have our own bathrooms... it's heaven. Although I have the luxury of the attached bath in our bedroom, his bathroom boasts an enormous shower with a seat! Lucky, lucky...

On to my absolute FAVORITE part of the apartment. The nice, big laundry closet with loads of shelving! No more quarters! No more lugging laundry baskets to and fro! Yay! (Sorry, you can only see about half of it in this picture, but you get the idea.)

Next we'll move on to the baby's room/office/guest room! I love this room because it has a humongous walk-in closet attached (not pictured) and it's just so darn cute filled with baby things!


Finally, we've got our bedroom... where the magic happens. It may be smaller than the baby's room, but we've also got a walk-in closet AND my attached bathroom. I'm not complaining!


My bathroom!

That's about it! We're loving it and so excited to be here for the next 2 years! Come visit anytime! (You can use Joel's bathroom.)

37 Weeks Later...

Well, here I am!

I've reached the near-end of my pregnancy. Hopefully these last couple weeks will continue to treat me well! I thought I'd take this opportunity to document how this whole experience has been. Here are some fun facts about my first pregnancy!

First Trimester:
I only threw up once, and it was after a huge coughing fit so I don't even blame that on the pregnancy nausea. In fact, I didn't feel too bad at all! I always felt just a little icky and had no appetite a majority of the time. I absolutely REFUSED to eat meat, especially chicken. Ewww - it grossed me out! Joel had to man our cooking blog all by himself for a good two months, and I have no idea what he made during that time because I pretty much didn't want to be around it. Besides my aversions to most all food, I'm going to say that the first trimester was doable. I definitely had it better than a lot of other pregnant ladies out there, so I consider myself lucky. I'm not sure if anybody around me knew I was pregnant because I wanted to be careful to keep it quiet until I was 12 weeks along.

Second Trimester:
One day during week 10 or 11, I woke up and thought to myself, "wow! I feel really good!" I had a ton of energy, that "icky" feeling had disappeared, and I had an appetite once again! During week 12 Joel and I went ahead and told our close family and friends the good news! Whew! What a relief to had made it through that scary 1st trimester! We packed up and moved from Utah to South Dakota during this time. We also took some fun trips, including vacations to Florida and the Black Hills. My sisters even threw me a surprise baby shower during a family reunion! I was grateful to not be too big that I could still comfortably enjoy myself during our travels! Some of my favorite moments from this trimester include: feeling the baby move for the first time - (was that a gas bubble?), feeling the baby "dance" on my pelvic floor, finding out he was a "he", and seeing his sweet little face and body during ultrasounds. I finally had some real pregnancy cravings during this time: Pizza, Tomato Soup, and Sweets/Candy.

Third Trimester:
Well, here I am. Amazingly, I feel really great for being as big as a house. I did find out that I've developed a mild case of gestational diabetes, so I'm just watching my diet, counting carbs, and testing my blood sugar 4 times a day to make sure I don't get out of control. (Darn those candy cravings...) The boy is doing great, even though his head is a little bigger than the rest of his body - due to the diabetes. I'm hoping that my doctor will plan to induce me a week or two early so I'm not having to push a freaking bobblehead out of my body! I'll find out more about my options this Thursday during my appointment. At this point, my hospital bag is packed and ready to go. I am so ready and so excited! I am so in love with this little boy (who by the way, has no name yet - suggestions???) and can't WAIT to meet him! Hopefully sooner rather than later!

Auntie Amy Strikes Again

I had to laugh when I received this large unexpected package today:


I knew exactly what it was because I've already received 2 other packages just like it earlier this summer! Want a peek at what was inside this one? (Click on the picture to enlarge.)


Just another arsenal of clothes to get my baby boy through the next year of his life!

Now that is one lucky, lucky, loved little boy.
Thank you, thoughtful sister of mine. We love you! :)

Life as the Wife of a Medical Student

Joel has been in medical school now for a 1-1/2 months. How is it going? To put it bluntly, he considers this to be his primary home...


and this his secondary home...


I happen to reside primarily in the "secondary" home.

Actually, I have a very plush life as the wife of the medical student - especially since I'm not working. I can keep busy during the day running errands, keeping up with housework, cooking, and working on my own projects without any disruptions. Then, when Joel eventually finds his way home in the late hours, I get to hear all about the most amazing and interesting things he learned or did that day. I totally try to be a medical student right along with him when I help him study at night. It's so great to learn right along and not have any of the actual pressure and stress sitting on my shoulders.

That being said, I have had many opportunities to practice being the calming force, de-stresser, and cheerleader in our household. It's true what they say about medical school - it's hard. Very hard. Very demanding. Very much meant only for top-quality, driven, highly intelligent humans. I'm very lucky to have married such a person, and I consider my job in all this is to help keep him sane.

Overall, I think we mentally prepared ourselves well for this venture. It's been exciting, we've learned tons, and Joel is honestly happy and enjoying himself. I've got to share one med school experience that I found particularly hilarious.

A couple weeks ago, the 1st year med students were scheduled to participate in their first preceptorship, which sent them out into the surrounding hospitals to shadow practicing physicians. Joel was sent to work with a family practice doctor. He was required to wear his white coat and bring along his stethoscope, which was brand new/never used/straight out of the package. Right before he left he looked in the mirror, dressed in his suit, tie, and "doctor gear", and told me he felt like a little kid playing dress-up! He was just there to shadow, for goodness sake!

He got to the clinic and was introduced to Dr. X (for anonymity's sake.) Right off the bat the Doctor immediately said, "put that stethoscope around your neck like a real doctor, go on into the exam room, find out what the chief complaint is, take the patient's history, listen to their heart/lungs, take a look in their ears, and come back out and tell me about it."

So much for merely "shadowing the Doctor!" Joel, completely taken aback, blinked and said, "we haven't learned how to do all of that yet." Dr. X chuckled and replied, "Well, it can't be any worse than my first time in the exam room. I was listening to the patients' lungs and didn't realize that my stethoscope was on the pediatric side so I thought every single patient was walking around without a heartbeat!"

Well, Joel trucked on in to the exam room, introduced himself as a Dr. X's medical student, found out the reason for the visit, took the patient's history, listened to the heart and lungs, (even though he wasn't so sure what he was listening for!!!), and "sort of" examined their ears. You know when you're in the exam room and your Doctor puts the little plastic sanitary cap on the otoscope? Well, it must be harder than it looks to attach the little sucker because Joel couldn't get it to stay on! He had to fumble with his fingers and sort of hold it in place while he examined each patient. Ha ha...

Well, he stumbled through and had lots of funny experiences with individual patients. At the end of the day it turned out to be a very humbling, humorous, and great learning experience! I guess you have to start from somewhere! While he finds it to be somewhat embarrassing, I know that 25 years down the road he will look back on this unplanned "first time clinical experience" and giggle about his naivety.

I'm looking forward to him coming home and sharing great stories like this throughout the rest of his career! If nothing else, at least I know that being the wife of a medical student/doctor is bound to be entertaining!