Hodge Podge

Well, no pics of anything to post. It feels like we've been running around like crazy trying to tie up a bunch of Christmas gifts and other assorted errands. My school must be on the same schedule as B - One week left - We're going until the 21st.

On Saturday last weekend we went out to dinner with Andy's dad and step-mom and then did an early Christmas exchange with them. It was fun to tell them the big news. They are sure excited. It's the first grandbaby on both Andy's side and my side. On Sat/Sun, we went to a local tree farm, cut down, put up and decorated our tree and put up the outdoor lights. I don't have a whole lot of other decorations, as we're not typically here for the actual holiday. We also went to the little McMinnville Gallery Theater to see Scrooge, a musical that 2 of my former students were in. It's always nice to throw a little culture into the mix. Other than that, just trying to work on getting most of the shopping done before we fly out next Saturday.

Tonight is Andy's work party, and tomorrow the large family gathering on Andy's side. Should be a lot of fun! I have my next appointment (16 weeks) on Tuesday next week - I'm hoping that they'll schedule the ultrasound then! Take care everyone!

Losing it...

OK - I'm blaming this on being pregnant.

This weekend I was the responsible, sober, wife/sister-in-law while we attended the Holiday Ale Fest in downtown Portland with Andy's brothers and sister-in-law. It was really not too bad hanging out with a bunch of people that were able to drink. I had a nice time. We went to Henry's Tavern (Chad -the orange chicken was soooo good) afterwards to get some cheap (but good) food in our bellies. We called it an early night and headed home about 7PM or so as we started the par-tay about noon. Upon waking up on Sunday, I discovered that my cell phone was missing. We retraced my steps thoughout Saturday, even drove all of the way back to Henry's but could not find the stupid phone. So, I had to get a new one. The worst part is that I can't chalk it up to a crazy drunken night. I still have the same phone #, but I have now lost all of my saved phone numbers. I will try looking back on some old phone bills, but in the meantime, could you guys send me an e-mail with your home/cell #'s. I feel totally lame, but I don't have any of them recorded anywhere.

Other than that, things are going well. I'm feeling a bit stressed about Christmas preparations, as our calendar is getting quite full. Can't wait to get back to MN for the holidays. My folks got about 12 inches of snow. We are in the middle of a big rain/wind storm. We hope to still have power in the AM...

The cat is out of the bag...

Yup, I'm pregnant! I'm at about 13 weeks as of Thanksgiving. Due date is June 1. I have a regular check up appointment tomorrow. I think I'll get to hear the heartbeat. It's nice to actually be able to talk about it now without trying to hide it. I still have not mentioned anything to anyone at school yet. We'll see if I can make it until after winter break (4 more weeks!) before too many people catch on... I've included the first sonogram pic from 8 weeks. I could see the heartbeat in real time on the monitor - it was like 2 pixels. The baby was 1.4 cm long.


My first trimester went very smoothly overall. I had little bouts of nausea, but I just munched on some Goldfish crackers and all was well. I found that I tired a bit more easily than I am used to and learned not to overdo it after a day of 3 coats of paint in a bedroom, intense leaf raking, and some serious digestive issues. I have been having problems with constipation, but it seems to be getting better.

We had a nice Thanksgiving weekend. I had 2 long days of school on Monday and Tuesday with conferences from 7AM-8PM. Makes for a lot of talking -but, I got Wednesday-Friday off! We spent Thanksgiving Day with Andy's family. Friday was spent switching some rooms around in the house. We wanted to switch a ground floor room with the guest bedroom upstairs to allow guests (and us) a bit more privacy. We used to share a wall with the guest bedroom, and we thought with a baby on the way that we could use a bit more room to spread out upstairs, plus guests can come and go as they please downstairs without worrying about waking us up.

We got to test the new guest room out as our friends Jim and Deb and their 10 month old son, Levi, came up from Eugene to visit for Sat/ Sun. Poor Levi had a cold and was teething, but he was trooper and was really fun to watch. He has totally learned how people react to him. Jim started this thing with him where he asks, "Are you OK?", and Levi makes a scrunched up cheeseball face that totally made us laugh. We must have done it like 100 times. What a ham.

Their visit was like a crystal ball to our future... I think it freaked Andy out, but I was fine with it - it made me more excited about the whole pregnancy thing. Jim and Deb have very graciously offered us many of their baby items like the bouncey chair, baby Bjorn, and clothes if it is boy. I am getting excited about setting things up, although I'm trying not to get too "planner" on Andy or he'll freak out. We did take a little walk thru the baby area in Target the other night. I think that was enough for a while. Andy's mom already gave us some baby clothes that she had saved from like 10 years ago at on old job in the clothing industry. We have room all picked out for the nursery - It's got 3 coats of primer to cover up the hideous pink paint that was in there. I think we'll go for a neutral yellow, green or pale orange for the walls.

That's enough baby talk for while. I've been saving it up and had to get it off my chest. Phew.

Leaves and more leaves and Date night

After what feels like the 18th weekend in a row when leaves have been the main entertainment, I think an end is in sight. On Saturday, we spent another 5 hours on leaf duty. Albeit, there were still some leaves on the trees, but it was nice weather, so we raked. And raked, and blew and sucked (with the leaf blower). We ended up with an entire utility trailer full of leaves. I had seen this farm about 15 minutes from here that said "Dump your leaves here!" for them to compost. So, we headed out to dump them, but upon our arrival, there was a "Closed" sign posted - too many leaves. So we ended up paying $8.85 to the local dump to compost them... We were so exhausted when we got home, and I had no energy to cook, so we both showered up and headed out to our first date night in a very long time. We hit Red Robin for some burgers (turkey for me) and then saw a movie, "Into the Wild" - a Krakauer book about a guy that tries to live off the land in "remote" Alaska. Sean Penn directed it - did a decent job - of course, took some Hollywood liberties, but overall good flick. Sunday, we finished emptying what used to be a storage room in our upstairs. We are going to make it into a sewing room/ extra guest room (futon). After cleaning out the room, the plaster cracks were looking pretty bad, so I decided to try some drywall compound to cover them up. As with all house projects, it took longer than expected to mud all of the cracks. Luckily, I have today off, so I was able to sand all of the mud and clean up the drywall mess. I don't have it in me to start the painting just yet. It's all taped and ready to go. Maybe when Andy comes home we can tag-team.

This morning the first Pacific Northwest storm hit the area with serious wind and rain. From about 5AM - 7AM, the last 200 or so walnuts started crashing into the roof, just above our bed. They are totally water logged and sound like bombs going off when they hit. They fell at a rate of like 3 a minute. Poor Andy was trying to sleep because he had to work today... This should be it for the leaves/ walnuts. I think this storm brought down every single leaf. It even knocked power out for about 3 hours today. Later gators!

I know, I know...

Again, it's been quite some time since I've updated. Let's see.

This past weekend was pretty full. Work party on Friday night, then general clean up on Sat. AM, then leaf raking duty. We've been working on a rotation system to try and alleviate last years' horrendous leaf stock pile scenario of 30 plus bags of stinky wet/ sometimes frozen bags of leaves that we had to keep dumping into our yard debris bin over the winter as space allowed. The problem is: we have many mature trees that drop tons of leaves all at once that will not fit into the yard debris bin, so we end up with excess leaves and no place to put them. This year we got a leaf blower/ sucker which has helped quite a bit by breaking the leaves into smaller pieces and we also bought an additional 50 gallon garbage bin to store the extra leaves in a dry place. Also, Saturday afternoon Andy's mom called and offered us their yard to dump any extra leaves. Sooooo, Saturday we raked a bunch of leaves, bagged them up and loaded them into my Jeep. We were headed to Andy's aunt and uncle's house for party that evening, and Andy's mom lives right next door, so we just stopped off and dumped them before heading to the family party. It was nice seeing family and hanging out at a huge bonfire on a gorgeous November night in Oregon.

Sunday, we brewed a batch of Pumpkin Ale, which won't be ready for another 4 weeks or so. we didn't start it until 5PM, and we were still working on cleaning up after 9:30 or so...

School is going very well. I "won" a technology piece that I have to share with 2 other teachers on a rotation schedule. It's called a SmartBoard and is an interactive whiteboard that shows a computer screen on it that is clickable/ and writable with these special pens. The kids are so excited to use it, and it has really made a huge difference in my classroom. It's amazing to watch how fast today's kids pick up on technology. It does take quite a bit of extra planning time on my part, but the pay-off is pretty big.

We are still working on tickets home for the holidays. It looks like it will be almost $600 a piece just to fly to MSP. Brainerd was like $800. I've been watching the prices for over a month and it's not like they have gone way up in the past week or so - They've been pretty close to this high for a long time. Right now, I think we will be coming in on the 22nd or 23rd and flying out on the 27 or 28th. Most likely, we would only be able to see Mpls peeps on the last day before we fly back to Oregon - that is, if people are going to be around... Let me know what your holiday schedules look like, girls!

It's been great reading everyone's blogs. Sorry for being such a lame blogger.

Somebody's Knocking... or something's knocking

Wow - It is great coming back after a weekend away and catching up on every one's blogs! It feels like I had a 10 minute phone conversation with all of my girls! Thanks, girls, for keeping us all posted.

Well, very busy weekend - I've barely has time to catch my breath. Friday was a statewide in-service day, and I went to a Science Teacher conference in Portland that was about 40% worthwhile. I got a few ideas and wasted time at some boring sessions. I got a taste of real city traffic on the way home - Friday afternoon on 205, yuk (90 minutes in the car for what should have been barely 40 minutes). I got home and raked walnuts for an hour then started packing for our trip to San Diego for one of Andy's college buddies' wedding. Andy returned at 8:30PM from a day flight to Seattle for a work team meeting. Our Saturday flight left at 6:40AM, which meant a 4:30AM wake up call. After a small incident with security (corkscrew wedding gift with a hidden knife), we made it on time to southern CA. The wedding was at 2:00, and was nice with a reception in a small hall, but it was still fun to catch up with Andy's buddies. Our flight left the next afternoon at 1:30ish. We were only slightly delayed and arrived in Portland at about 4:30. We headed straight to Andy's grandfather's 90th b-day party. It was nice seeing family and Andy's cousin from San Antonio even made a surprise visit! I had to grade a bunch of papers when we got home at 9:00PM, and barely made it an hour, before I was ready to pass out.

This week at work is a bit hectic with 2 partial days of subs for curriculum crap. I'd rather just teach it myself than to try to write out what to have someone else say/do. I guess it's the control freak in me.

Today the wind is blowing pretty good, and I keep thinking that someone is knocking at our door, but it's just walnuts crashing into the house. I've already picked up about 6-7 gallons and there are at least that many more in the yard right now. I may try to actually process them this year - Peal off the outside, open the shell and roast the nutmeats. Sounds like a tedious procedure. Ill try it out on a few and see how it works.

Sounds like all is well with the rest of you! Keep us posted!

It's Polka Time - Accordian style!

Things are going pretty smoothly at work. I do have a large assignment to grade for my 150 7th graders that I am going to put off for while (about 10 min/student X 150 = insanity!!!). On the other hand, it definitely feels like I am way more on top of things this year.

Last weekend Andy and I went to our 3rd annual Oktoberfest in a small town near Andy's old stomping grounds. We watched "Those Darn Accordions" (a band that, not surprisingly, has 3 accordion players) bust out some great music - From AC/DC to Zeppelin to The Who, as well as many polkas for the Germans in lederhosen. We also picked up some of Andy's old boxes of crap from his mom's house. When I say some, I mean a whole Jeep-full, like 15-20 boxes of crap. We spent Sunday sorting thru old college papers, etc. that needed to just get chucked! There are still plenty to go - we'll see when the motivation hits us to dig thru more junk. It's pretty fulfilling to load up an entire huge recycle bin with papers and boxes!

This upcoming weekend, we are seeing some of Andy's old neighbors on Saturday and getting together with his dad and family on Sunday for a belated b-day dinner for his bro. The next weekend, we will be going to a wedding in San Diego on Sat, then back in time for Andy's grandpa's 90th b-day party on Sunday. Phew, thats a lot to pack into 2 weekends! Hopefully, we'll get a couple of free weekends after that to recover!