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Dave is in Winter Wonderland

Monday, January 19th, 2009

We have had a very snowy weekend, the bitter cold has left us and that creates Dave’s favorite weather.  We received about a foot of snow since yesterday so he’s happy as a clam outside and playing working with his snow blower.   He’s just funny about snow, he LOVES it.  I must say this particular snow storm left us with an absolutely beautiful scene outside.  All the trees are beautifully covered with a few inches of snow, the pines particularly are bogged down with snow.  The pines make the mountain sides really spectacular right now.  Maybe later when we are out and about I’ll take some photos and upload them here.

Yesterday we did some work in the maple sugar shack putting up trim along the inside walls and started to make a platform where the tank of sap will sit in order to drip sap into the evaporator while its boiling.  I’ll take pictures of the whole process when it is sugaring season, right now we’re just doing all the prep work.  Today, with Dave’s dad’s help, we’re hanging some of the tubing that runs between trees and collects the sap.  We won’t actually be tapping the trees for several more weeks.  The temperatures must get below freezing at night, but to 40+ during the day so that the sap will run in the trees.  There is a short window of about 6-8 weeks during which you can collect sap to make syrup and we’ll be entering that time period about the end of February.  In the meantime, we’ve got tons of work to do in order to tap 250+ trees.

It’s a Cold One Today

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

-12 degrees Celsius outside right now.  Don’t ask me what that is in Fahrenheit though (somewhere in the mid 20s???).  Dave is trained in meteorology and those guys do everything in Celsius.  So all our thermometers around this place are Celsius, but I know enough to know that -12 is pretty chilly in either C or F!

I’m under the impression that my dear friends in IL are having an even colder time of things.  IL has that bitter, body piercing, windy, cold.  Oh, and that wind that would whip around those buildings downtown in Peoria…argh!

Dave is at the dentist this morning and I’m saying prayers for him.  He really doesn’t care for dentists so he has to force himself to go.  Poor guy.  And he’s got a worrisome tooth today too.

I’m puttering right now as an avoidance technique.  I need to go to the grocery store this morning before Bible Study at 1PM, but I’m all nice and cozy wrapped up in a sweater and blanket.  Zipping out into that cold outside just doesn’t sound as enticing as sitting here and being cozy.

My cat, Bailey is even all nice and cozy next to me.  I don’t know what this cat is going to do with the arrival of a baby.  I fear there is going to be some serious jealousy and potentially some ill-behavior on the part of the kitty!  Bailey would love it if I just carried him around all day and if no one else existed beyond me.  I’m less worried about the other cat, Riley.  Riley is a cat through and through.  He’ll run and hide if he’s annoyed/afraid/concerned.  And I have no fears that he would ever become crazy around a baby.  Bailey on the other hand…  He never behaves in a predictable manner, even though he’s 14 years old, he’s never predictable.  He’s much more mellow than he was in his early years.  He even allows Dave to hold him for extended periods AND pet him randomly.  Bailey, in his youth, would pretty much have removed Dave’s arm had he tried petting him or heaven forbid hold him, so this is a tremendous improvement in behavior.  I think I’m going to find a recording of babies crying to play randomly throughout the day so he’ll get use to the sound.  And then once we have the baby, maybe I’ll have Dave bring a blanket with the baby’s smell on it back to the house before we arrive so he can at least know the scent.  Somehow I think that would work better on a dog though.  Maybe Bailey will surprise me and be really interested in the baby, not jealous and actually nice.  (Hey, I heard that, you guys that know this cat are laughing right now!)

Well, I’m off to shop.

Yucky Weather Day Here

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

The heavens are sending down freezing rain today.  It started overnight so by the time we got up there was 1/10th of an inch of ice covering everything.  That didn’t sound like much until Dave went to scrap his windshield after letting the truck run for 15 minutes and ended up breaking the ice scrapper.  And all I can hear outside is the sound of little tiny pellets of rain/snow hitting the windows and the roof.

So it is an inside day today!  No running errands for me.  Hmmm, a whole day and zillions of little projects all calling my name and me with a bad case of the lazyies.  I am recovering, slowly, from the first trimester tireds, but every once and while I’m still pretty beat.

The other day I started a list of mini-projects and bigger projects that I really need to be working on while I can, before the baby is here.  Oh, good golly.  Does anyone ever actually have their home & belongings in tip-top organizational shape?  That project list just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger as I walked from room to room.  My mother might be coming out for a week or so after the baby comes and I have this inner compulsion to have everything “perfect” before she gets here.  Thankfully, I’m blessed with a lazy gene which occasionally trumps my “gotta have everything perfect” gene because otherwise I’d drive myself crazy.

So to get back to today.  I could sew the bathroom curtain that I’ve been meaning to tend too for like a year because I’ve had the material that long.  And I have been meaning to get the sewing machine set up in a semi-permanent location here in the office so it is available for me to sew little baby projects.  Plus, there is a hallway curtain that has been needing attention also.

Last night I made yummy hamburgers.  I have a tendency to turn hamburgers into hockey pucks when I cook them on the stove top, but this time I did good!  I used a fatter hamburger (80/20 vs 90/10), then put in 3 tablespoons of horseradish and 1 tablespoon of worcestershire sauce.  And I flattened about an inch  of the center of the hamburgers so they wouldn’t get thick in the middle, as they tend to do during cooking.  They were so juicy, tasty and didn’t even resemble hockey pucks.  We had those with broccoli and “American fries”.

I’m dilly-dallying sitting here on the computer so I am going to get off and get busy doing something.

12 Days Left in the First Trimester!

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

Wow!  Only 12 days left of my first trimester!  I’m pretty excited about that.  Thus far, pregnancy agrees with me and I’m still feeling pretty awesome, aside from being pretty frequently tired.

It is really neat to think that this is our last New Year’s Eve by ourselves.  Next year, we’ll have a little baby, yeah!

Tired & Dave’s Real Birthday

Friday, December 19th, 2008

I’m tired.  The first trimester tireds have hit me hard.  No morning sickness, just tired.  I slept like 10 hours last night and am tired already.  And it is a weird tired.  I don’t feel like I could necessarily fall asleep, it’s like I need to just lay down and sit still.

Today is also Dave’s 40th birthday.  And he’s on cloud nine because we are supposed to get tons of snow this afternoon and overnight.  I’m baking him a cake, fixing enchiladas (one of his favorites) and have a few little presents to give him this evening.   One of the books I bought him is still not here, but I’m hopeful that it will arrive with this afternoon’s mail.

The enchiladas I make are pretty easy.  I brown hamburger and a small onion, pour in one can of enchilada sauce (yellow can, forgot the brand).  Then I layer small corn tortillas on the bottom of a 9×12 baking pan, put on a layer of the meat sauce, a layer of Mexican cheeses, layer of corn tortillas and repeat.  Then I pour another whole can of enchilada sauce over the whole thing and top with a layer of cheese.  Bake until the top is golden brown (or darker) and very yummy.  I use to actually roll the meat sauce in the corn tortillas, but then it dawned on me that turning it into a lasagna of sorts was easier and tastes exactly the same.  And Dave loves it.  I usually use the hot enchilada sauce and several jalapenos in the meat mixture too.

Behind on Blogging

Thursday, December 18th, 2008

Okay, so I took a little time off from blogging.  At first, it was on purpose because I was busy putting together a surprise 40th birthday party for my dear hubbie.  Well, then I just got generally behind and I’ve got lots to blog about too.  But, today isn’t the day to get caught up, maybe tomorrow because we are supposed to get 10+ inches of snow and I might take part of the day to blog a bunch of stuff.

In the meantime, Dave updated the photos link over to your right (Our Photo Gallery).  He’d gotten stuck at August for a long time, but now it is up-to-date through December.

Today, I must get to the grocery store so I don’t have to go out at all tomorrow during the snowstorm.  Not that I have issues driving in snow, I just believe that the fewer cars there are on the roads the faster and more safely snow can be removed by the plow guys.  And since I’m a lucky stay-at-homer…that’s where I will remain tomorrow!  Oh, and Dave might come home early tomorrow so he doesn’t have to drive through the worst of it in the afternoon!!!  Yeah!

Also today, I need to hit the butcher shop, post office and bank.  I’ve got to get my family’s Christmas presents in the mail today so they will hopefully get them before Christmas.  And I finally finished my Christmas cards last night.  I really was wondering if I was even going to get to them this year, but I did.  I cheated on a huge percentage of them and purchased cards.  I’ve been trying to make most of my Christmas cards for the last few years, but there is always a percentage of folks that end up getting purchased cards from me.  And I was totally lame about not writing much in the cards too and didn’t even bother putting together a newsletter of any sort.  So a whole bunch of people are going to get a card that says:  Love, Dave, Andrea & baby due 7/27/09.  Rather rude to surprise baby news on extended relations & old friends like that, but my excuse is that I’ve been tired.

Well, I hope the sonogram picture below is fixed for everyone now.  My beloved computer guy hubbie knew what I did wrong and why it wasn’t showing up for folks that use Internet Exploder.  I’m telling you, if you use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer try Firefox instead.  Dave made me a convert.  Maybe I’ll put a link here for Firefox tomorrow, it’s free and way easier to use.

ANNOUNCEMENT!!

Monday, December 1st, 2008

We are expecting our first baby July, 2009!!!

I’ve been wanting to update our blog with our news, but it couldn’t be done until after some keys family members had been told in person (namely our parents).

I think it is a pretty interesting story (with an awesome ending), so I’ll repeat it here even though I’ve pretty much told everyone that reads this blog already.

So November 14th, we had an appointment with our reproductive endocrinologist (he’s mentioned a few times in other posts).  He told us that my one centimeter-sized polyp located on the lining of my uterus had to be removed or I was not going to get pregnant.  He also said that I would have to take contraceptive pills for the several weeks leading up to the surgery in order to thin the lining of my uterus to make removing the polyp easier.  When I balked at taking The Pill, because it utterly goes against our decision to follow our faith values, he actually said, “well, I could call it something else if you want me too.” EEK!!…

So the appointment didn’t get any better when Dave & I really questioned the importance of removing this polyp and were unwilling to make the decision right there in front of him, but said repeatedly that we would have to discuss it first.  Then he proceeded to say, “you do your research to find a doctor you can trust.  And then, you do as you are told.” Oh, good golly…

Oh, and he declared definitively that I have PCOS (hmmm, and yet I don’t have symptoms traditionally associated with PCOS except for one, being heavy), hypothyroidism (which my midwife discovered) and this one centimeter sized polyp which he said WILL make it impossible for a baby to implant in my uterus (unless of course he removes it).

We told the doctor I was late and my temps were still elevated.  But he made it very clear that I couldn’t be pregnant, didn’t offer to even contemplate a quick pregnancy test and then proceeded to leave us in the incapable hands of a medical student to discuss further the surgery.  Said medical student then proceeded to explain that during the surgery the polyp would be snipped away and then they would conduct a D&C to scrap away additional uterine lining for analysis and just to make sure they got the whole polyp.

Dave & I left in what I guess could be considered a fog of dismay.  That doctor was so utterly and completely disrespectful of our faith values and was so mean about making awful assumptions based on our being overweight.    So enough of dippy doctor dude.

The next day, Saturday, I awoke with a still elevated temperature and now eight days late.  After about an hour of indecision, Dave finally convinced me to do a pregnancy test.  I think at that time I had actually become afraid of pregnancy tests.  We had used many over the course of two years and none of them had happy endings.  Plus, I was still down about the meeting with dippy doctor the day before.  But Dave prevailed.  I used the test and brought it into our computer room (aka baby’s future room), set it on the desk and we sat casually glancing down waiting for “Not Pregnant or Pregnant” to show up on the digital results screen.   Suddenly the word Pregnant appeared!  I was in shock, a little, I think.  Dave was too, and then he jokingly said, “where’s the Not?”  What an awesome moment in our lives!!  No matter what happens to my mental faculties later in life, I hope I will always remember the moment I found out God graced us with this new life.

So the whole while that we were sitting in dippy doctor’s office the day before I was PREGNANT!!  God is awesome!

Monday morning I called that doctor’s office and asked that all the blood test results and such be sent over to my midwife’s office and asked that they cancel the surgery (which we’d never actually agreed to do yet anyway).  I called the midwife who thankfully took mercy upon my soul and saw me for 15 minutes in the early afternoon.  The doctor had gotten me freaked out about the polyp and my newly pregnant brain was inventing all sorts of ways it was going to cause problems for a baby.  She had blood drawn to conduct an HCG hormone level test and ordered another to be conducted two days later.  My levels more than doubled…exactly like they were supposed too.  So the midwife was comfortable saying things looked pretty good.  WHEW!

So here we are 7 weeks 2 days pregnant!  I’m not experiencing any morning sickness yet.  The past couple of days I’ve been slightly tired and about once a night I have indigestion/heartburn issues.  But aside from that I feel pretty great.  I don’t “feel pregnant”, or really any different physically and that scares me because my brain can make all sorts of stuff up when unoccupied. i realize I need to just be grateful that I’m still feeling well, but still…  Oh, and I’ve noticed that thinking about some foods can make me slightly grossed out.  And certain textures like a ripe banana and a glob of mayo in a sandwich can turn me off eating immediately.

Since I was desperately interested in finding anything I could about what it felt like being pregnant in the early days and I couldn’t find any non-generic answers, I will be blogging about that topic frequently.  So if ya don’t like reading about such stuff…tough…who knows how many times I get to do this pregnancy thing (which thus far is pretty totally awesome) so I’m going to talk about it and write about it lots!!

Just reading & imagining about the raspberry-sized little person developing inside me right now, whose heart is actually beating already, is so incredible.

Two Years!

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

Dave & I celebrated our second anniversary on Tuesday.  We had a lovely day today.  We ate breakfast at a local diner, went shopping (I got new tennis shoes) and had dinner at a different restaurant here in town.  And the owner, very nice fellow who walks amongst his guests when he can, stopped at our table and ask how we were doing.  Dave said we were celebrating our anniversary so he had the waitress bring us each a slice of bakalava.

I must say that marrying Dave was the best decision I ever made!!  May God continue to bountifully bless our marriage.

Good Morning!

Wednesday, October 29th, 2008

Last evening I spoke to a dear friend who I hadn’t talked to in a LONG time.  She works during the day so I can’t chat with her just any old time like I can some other friends.  And she’s got a family to tend too in the evenings so time passes and we don’t get to talk.  But we had a little time to catch up last evening and that was really nice.

I’ll not post my schedule today, but I have found that I’m getting more accomplished by chopping my day into 3 blocks and making myself do those things (or as many as I can) during that time frame.

Yesterday, I’d planned to make oatmeal cookies, but never got the time.  So today I’ll try making the cookies or maybe even banana bread…yummy!  I’ve got about 5 “bad” bananas that need to be used quickly or frozen for later use.

Over the summer, working at especially the Farmer’s Market here in town I learned so much about freezing & preserving from my neighbor farmer gal.   I am letting less produce waste than I use too.  If it doesn’t seem that I’m going to use something before it goes bad, I chop it up for later use in a veggie soup or for when I make broth.

And I’ve discovered the diversity of turnips too this summer!  The other day I made homemade mashed potatoes and I put a small turnip in with the tators to boil.  I mashed it up right along side the potatoes and you could not tell it was there.  Another way to sneak a different veggie into our meals without knowing…I love that!!

Oh!  And it snowed here last night.  It was just flurries, but it was still snow!  Dave was very excited.  He said that early snow fall sometimes predicts a nice heavy snow year.  Yeah!  We’ve had decent snow coverage the two winters I’ve lived in New England, but I’ve heard they haven’t been just really awesome snow years so I’m looking forward this winter.

We still haven’t turned our heat on yet this season.  It is almost becoming a quest to make it all the way through October before turning it on.  It has been nippy here a few evenings, but by the time you are all cuddled and asleep in bed you don’t notice a chill.  During the day, I’m up moving around and cooking so I don’t get really chilled.  Our house leaks air through these hundred year old windows like crazy.  So we’re just trying to go as long as possible without heating the neighborhood.  Thankfully, both Dave & I like it cold otherwise there might be consternation.

Well, it is nearly 8:00 so I’d better get moving on chores.

Vacation at Home

Monday, October 6th, 2008

Dave is on vacation from work this week and we’re actually mostly staying at home.  We are taking a few little day trips here and there this week, but mostly we’ll be at home doing projects.  Saturday we went out to Cape Cod to deliver some maple syrup to a restaurant, then to Provincetown at the tip of the Cape.  In P-town, we saw the plaque memorializing the first spot where the Pilgrims landed and then walked out onto the breakwater.

Sunday we went to Dave’s parent’s church’s picnic and hung out here at home.  Lovely, quiet day.

Today we slept in, watched TV in bed then I made French Toast & sausage for breakfast.  I accomplished cleaning the bathroom while Dave has been working on cleaning his area in the office.  Later today we have an appointment in Springfield, MA with a guy who is supposed to be a really great Reproductive Endocrinologist.  Hopefully, he’ll have some helpful thoughts about our infertility issue.

So that is the start to our little vacation this week.  This evening I’m going to try out a new salmon recipe and if we like it, I’ll post the recipe here.