What a Week!

We have been having a good time with a lot of fun stuff lately.  David's birthday was just what he wanted.  He didn't want much though!  He enjoyed playing table tennis and he talked to his family and we spent the evening making pizza and having his yummy cookies and cream cake.

The cake turned out pretty good!  It wasn't as moist as the wedding cake, but the "wedding cake lady" probably just poured milk on the cake after it was made or something, because my cake was plenty moist!  It wasn't too tough to make and it looked pretty cool too!  I would say I was a little proud of it.

He liked his cake but he didn't think it was very fair that I got to do all the taste testing along the way and I made him wait.  He caught me when I had him take a picture of me with the cake and I asked him if I had any Oreos in my teeth!

By the looks of this picture, it seems that there was a little extra something special in those candles, but I promise, it had to be all the smoke from those candles:)  We had big candles so I had to use two full boxes of candles to get all 24 of them on there. . . . maybe next year I will just get the two number candles so there isn't so much smoke.  

David finished the tax season off at his little business that he has been doing in the evenings.  It has been pretty slow, but even he was bust and had someone new every night for the last week or more of the tax season.  Some people just wait to the last chance they have.  He was glad to be done though.  We celebrated and took off for the weekend for Kennewick.  It was a good quick trip home.  We stayed at Mom and Dad's but they were gone on their trip to Europe, so we let Maggie in to keep us company.  She is still a cute, big, cuddly puppy!  She wouldn't dare just lay down next to you and hope to get a good scratch behind the ears, but she will move right on in and lay down her big puppy body as much on top of you as she can!  Funny puppy.

If you ask David, there was only one thing on David's mind that weekend.  All day Saturday was the spring Table Tennis Tournament in Richland.  David was very anxious to play.  We left right after he got off work on Friday so we could make it in time for the club practice that night.  He wanted to scope out some of his competition for the next day's tournament.  He was very nervous because the last time he played here in Boise, he had a rough time and couldn't get his rhythm down.  He really liked the practice and was ready to hit the sack once he got home.  He needed to get plenty of rest for the big day!

Saturday he got up early and was very excited.  He didn't play until 11 and once he got playing, he just played all day.  I watched him play and even videoed him so he could see how he played. I think I had a headache from hearing too many ping pong balls bouncing around.   He got beat by one guy that was really good, but all of his other matches were better.  He ended up winning 6 out of his 8 games and got 1st in his group.  He loved every second of it and met some new friends who he was able to talk about all the cool table tennis things that they could spend their money on and the complex strategy of the game.  It was fun to see him so excited about the whole thing.  It was cute to see him get nervous about playing people and to get excited when he knew I saw him smash it!  

I started teaching again and now that we are both working, we have nobody to clean up after us while we are gone!  Our place was a deep mess of everything. . . kitchen was spilling over with dishes, we were on our last pair of clean undies, and a pile of all the shoes and jackets we have worn this week were needing to be put away.  We both come home each day and the last thing we want to do is clean.  We both can't wait until summer time when I will be home again and I will be able to keep up with the messes we make.  Today we had a good hour or so of cleaning and it is so nice to be back in charge of the mess!

We have both been tired too at the end of our day.  Today when we both got home, we were just enjoying our time snuggled up together and it seemed like 30 seconds later we were both out of it and I was probably drooling on him :)  A couple hours later we woke up just in time for our cleaning party!  We had quite the date night!  Snuggles, naps, and cleaning!  We are pretty good!  And that is also why we are up at 1 in the morning too.

I am teaching in each of the grades, K-5 in their reading class.  I teach about an hour in each grade to 5-10 kids and I mostly like it.  I just miss my first grade class and wish I could just teach them for the rest of the year!  They were very excited to see me and they all thought I was gone the last three weeks because I was having my baby.  They didn't quite get it when I told them I wasn't going to have a baby until the summer time and that my belly is getting bigger, not smaller.  The girls were very excited that it is going to be a girl.  One student said, "so you are going to name her Olivia."  I was unaware that my first graders had this whole thing planned out.  If I was having a girl, then she would be named Olivia, and if it was a boy he would be named Alvin.  I'm glad they are so on top of it!  

I love that they are always so excited to see me in the hallway or anywhere around the school.  They call me out and wave ecstatically so I don't miss them.  They like to sneak out of line and give me a hug if I am close enough!  Very cute!  

One boy came up to me the second day I was back and was so sad.  I asked him what was wrong and he asked me, "Why didn't you come and teach us yesterday?"  I felt so bad but I told him I had to teach lots of other classes.  He was pretty bummed and has been hopeful each day as he will ask if I get to teach him that day or not.  I was able to sneak in at the end of the day today and listen to some of them read to me, but I stay pretty busy the rest of the day.  Poor little Adam will probably just keep on hoping that some day I will get to come back.  I don't know if 20 minutes a week is enough for them!  I love teaching the kids and my first grade class was just too perfect!

Cruisin' Along

I am at 23 weeks now and I am loving this stage of being pregnant.

Everyone knows that I am pregnant and it isn't so hard for people to tell whether it is okay to mention me being pregnant or not.  Fun time!  I love that I can still move and even exercise without feeling miserable.  I was able to get out a few times a week while I wasn't working to go for a run and I loved it!  It has been beautiful lately so it has been nice and easy to get out.
Our little girl is kicking away.  We had a doctor's appointment this week just for a check-up and everything is great.  As we were listening to the heartbeat, our baby started rolling around and it was fun because I was feeling it and the doctor was having a tough time keeping track of the heartbeat as she was squirming.  We haven't made too much progress on naming our little girl, but we both have our favorites that we are trying to convince each other to like it.  Sleeping is getting to where I don't even think about sleeping on my front or back as it is not comfortable at all, but one side or another works.  It's not too bad, but I think I stretch out and take up a good amount of David's space.  He likes his space while he is trying to go to sleep. . . sorry Babe!

What is it?!

We had our big and exciting ultrasound this week.  We didn't care what we have growing in my belly, but we really just wanted to know what it was. . .boy or girl!  I was very excited and nervous all at the same time just in case we didn't find out because our baby wouldn't cooperate or something.  

So. . . they were doing the ultasound and I was just trying to keep up with what was being looked at and didn't want to accidentally miss the announcement!  The doctor was looking at the head, the spine, the bones, and seemed to be saving the BIG NEWS for last and I was getting ancy.  She finally took a peek between the legs of  our baby who was kicking and squirming . . .probably because the baby was just as ancy and excited as we were. 

So after all of this, we found out that we are having a girl!  My nephew made a comment a while back when my sister was pregnant about how you could tell if it was a girl if the baby had a pink bow!  I hope he's not disappointed, but we didn't see any pink bows anywhere on that baby.  We didn't find anything between the legs and there were some other little things that the doctor saw that didn't even make sense to me, but she said it looked like a girl.  She went back to check to make sure that the baby wasn't hiding something. . . who knows what that could be, ha ha!  But she didn't find it!  

As a little sidenote, during the ultrasound, the doctor was looking around and looking at the different organs and such of our little baby, and would freeze the image, label it, and save it.  She was going through and then I saw her type in ovary.  I perked up and asked, "Oh is that the baby's ovaries?"  Thinking that this was a sure sign we were going to be having a girl, and she kind of laughed and apologized and clarified that those were MY ovaries she was looking at.  How was I supposed to know?  She explained what she was doing a little more after that and made sure to clarify if she was looking at my body, or our little baby's.  

As we watched the whole ultrasound on a tv in front of us, David and I were a little lost sometimes.  The doctor would tell us what we were looking at and sometimes David and I would look at each other and back at the screen, and just shrug our shoulders and smile because it just looked like a black and white jungle in there.  

This picture is one of those. . . supposedly this shows her upper lips. . . of the face, I'm guessing?  Sure why not!

We loved it when we were able to identify what we were looking at.  This is my favorite. . . the bent legs and the cute little baby bum!  The umbilical cord is pretty cool looking too, but the little bum is definitely my favorite!  The full body shots, seeing the ribs and spine, hands, feet, and the little heart were fun!  Everything looks like it should to me and it was fun to see our little girl kicking and squirming as I was even able to feel some of the kicks.  We weren't able to get a good profile shot of our little girl because her face was nuzzled into my lower back or something.  They tried to get a shot of it but it just looked creepy to us.

David really liked the little foot print in this one.  He got to see our little baby for the first time and was really excited too.  He is perfectly fine that it is a girl.  He didn't mind either way because, "table tennis can be played by boys or girls."  No joke, that was his reasoning for why he didn't care!  I think as long as he gets at least one boy along the way, he will be happy with the rest being girls.  

I walked out with an envelope of ultrasound pictures and David was very excited that he got this cool Spider Man sticker!  The sticker was only cool while he was at home, but when it came time to go play ping pong with his buddies, Spider Man wasn't too cool anymore and had to stay home to "protect the girls".  

David is very excited to be a Dad . . . just look at that face!  I think he will make sure he comes to all my appointments if he gets a sticker out of it :)

We are trying to figure out a name that we can both agree on.  We were pretty much set if were a boy, but now we are looking through girl names.  It is so tough!  David thinks a lot of names are weird or that they sound too Asian or African and I think they sound cute.  I think his ideas of names are boring, so we are going to have to figure this out somehow.  There are just too many things to think about and I haven't come across one that fits just right, so we will just have to see!

Today is David's 24th birthday (I think that is a full box of candles!) and he is off playing ping pong, so I better get started on his cake.  I asked him if he wanted cake, pie, or CHEESECAKE and kept trying to convince him that he wanted cheesecake for his birthday, but it didn't work.  He requested a cookies 'n cream cake. . ."just like the one we had from our wedding."  That was the top layer of our cake that we took with us on our honeymoon and ate for my birthday the next week (no we didn't want to save it) and I had one piece, but David was in heaven and I think he ate that cake for every meal until it was finished so I don't exactly remember how it tasted.  So I am going to attempt to make one for our little celebration tonight and we will see if I am just as good as the "wedding cake lady!"  Happy Birthday Cutie Pie!

Fun time at home of course

April Fools Day wasn't nearly as fun as I had hoped. . . I was too nervous all morning about what was in store for me!  Abby, Luke and I stayed up and got a few things ready for Mom and Dad in the morning.  That morning, Dad came in and saw Abby and I in her bed and called us "little turds" and that was it!  I couldn't fall asleep after that and anytime I heard footsteps, I thought it would be Dad coming back with some revenge. . . but he never did!  He is too nice!  Mom was taking Luke to his dentist appointment and as she saw her car she said, "Looks like Lorry has been here."  Sheesh!  I didn't even do the cars! Abby and Luke reclined the seats back in Mom and Dad's cars and turned the windshield wipers and the AC on full blast and turned the radio up a little loud. I guess I have a reputation or something.  Abby and Luke aren't as sweet as Mom and Dad think . . .I have been training them well:)
I was leaving yesterday to come back to Boise, and I was nervous to find out if Dad had anything planned for me.  He and Mom had no intentions of doing anything. . . who knows where I got my pranking mind. . . but I know it wasn't from Mom and Dad.


As for Mom's flowers. . . she finally figured it out. . . sort of.  Here was Dad introduction of the little joke:
"Your mom has all these potted plant starts going, attempting to find out which of our seed stock is any good.  Some of the pots are doing pretty good, but there are others which look barren.  So Lorry & Abby go outside in the driveway and select some leafy little weed sprouts and shove them in the dirt.  Your mom comes back in and is so delighted, saying, "its like they just sprang up overnight!"  the next day Lorry & Abby would totally move them to another barren spot and, "Oh, well, looky here, they are coming up afterall!"  Kids can be so cruel, :) :)  but it was all in good fun, . . . . even Granpa Bob got in on it."


So mom had been watering all of her sprouting little plants and one day she went to tough one of the mysterious new plants and it just fell over. . .no roots at all!  She was a little shocked and went on about how those quick growing ones sure are fragile.  ha ha!  I had to turn away I couldn't help but laugh!
The next day Grandpa Bob and I were asking about her plants.  The "new" ones even had little flowers and were leaning towards the sun.  Grandpa Bob asked what kind the "new" ones were and Mom even said, "They look like some weeds that I've seen around the yard."  But she continued to water them and kept looking at them trying to "figure out how the seeds from the weeds might have got into her potting soil."  She really had no idea.
Mom had been out and when she came home, she came walking in with some weeds in her hand, "Look!  These are the exact same thing that is growing in my pots.  I found these out in the driveway!"  
We all started laughing!  We told Mom that she had figured it out and that we had "planted" those weeds in there.  She was a little confused and still thought that the weeds were actually growing in there.  We had to convince her that we put them there and that's why there were no roots.  Mom said she would have kept on watering them if we hadn't explained everything.  She didn't suspect anything, she was just glad that she had identified the weed and found a match!  She was still smiling about it the next day just thinking about how silly she must have seemed.  It was cute Mom!  You are just such a devoted gardener and so oblivious sometimes for having such silly kids.

We love you Mom and Dad :)

I am home visiting Mom and Dad in Kennewick and let's just say, "the April Fool's Day pranks have been set."  We will have to wait until morning to see if and how they worked out!  I am so glad that Mom and Dad love us!

. . . I am also way nervous about what Mom and Dad might do back!  Abby and I are sleeping in her room together tonight. . .who knows if we will get any sleep!  We're too excited to sleep!!!!