Alex's Survey

Alex said I would do it so of course I have to do it! Now you do too if you're reading it! Baily won't let me read but she'll let me sit on the computer while she colors so here goes! And I'm sure I've done this one before but oh well!

Four jobs I have had in my life:
1. Grand Tuxedos- Assistant Sales and Tailor
2. Applebees- Server
3. Heartprints- Caregiver
4. Target- Cashier

Four movies I've watched more than once:
1. Last of the Mohicans
2. Remember the Titans
3. Return to Me
4. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

Four places I have lived:
1. big yellow house in Show Low
2. Matt's house in Mesa
3. Aunt Konny's house in Utah
4. my apartment in ghetto Phoenix

Four T.V. Shows that I watch:
1. Lost
2. So You Think You Can Dance
3. Biggest Loser
4. American Idol

Four Places I have been:
1. Boston
2. Washington D.C.
3. Minneapolis
4. New Orleans

Four People who e-mail me (regularly):
1. Mike
2. Robert
3. LDS Gems
4. LDS Living

Four of my favorite foods:
1. shredded beef chimi from Someburros
2. twice baked potatoes
3. minestrone soup at Olive Garden
4. steak from Texas Roadhouse

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. In Utah with my mom
2. In Hawaii on a beach reading my book
3. At my own home!
4.In Venice, not pregnant, with my man!

Four friends I think will respond:
1. Becca
2. Malissa
3. Tamie
4. Janel

Things I am looking forward to this year:
1. Having my son!
2. Thanksgiving pumpkin pie!
3. My baby shower!
4. Halloween

You Might Wanna Get Some Cheese...

Because I have a lot of whine to offer. I've sadly come to terms that I'm officially out of the tiny bit of the only comfortable stage of pregnancy and into the horribly uncomfortable last 2 months of it. So I may not be as big as the picturer but I seriously feel that big. And I thought I'd stretched to my limits when I was pregnant with Baily but I still feel like I'm stretching more and more every day. This uncomfortable stage has been slowly creeping up on my but I was hit with it with a vengeance yesterday. **WARNING** The following is a TMI (Too Much Info) Alert: I don't need to go into detail about the hormones because I'm pretty sure that anyone who's ever read my blog knows that I suffer from this pregnancy problem a lot. So first there's the hemorrhoids... I've never had them before until this pregnancy and they suck! Then there's the no comfortable clothes issue. It's mostly pants- they're either too small and too tight or too big 'cause they're maternity pants. Either way I'm always having to pull my britches up and it gets so annoying. And all my shirts just keep getting shorter and shorter! There's also the lack of sex life. (Hey I gave the TMI warning!) I miss it like crazy but like I feel like being all sexy and freaky when I have a watermelon in my middle! My back pain is almost out of control. I have to sit down every few minutes if I do anything like cooking, laundry, cleaning. It's awful. And I can't take ibuprofen which is pretty much the only pain killer that works for me. And sleep... fahget about it! I'm sleeping in our guest bed for now since it's the most comfortable one and it's so much cooler in that room. Even being surrounded by 6 pillows and tons of comfy blankets I can never get comfortable. There's the back pain and also my arms go numb from sleeping on them since I have to sleep on my side. And it seems like right when I get comfortable and am falling into a nice, deep sleep I have to get up and pee! Arghhh!!! I hate peeing and I have to do it about 76 times a day. I'm glad these last 2 months are during the busiest time of year so hopefully they will go by a little faster. I wanted to keep baby-sitting until the 2nd or 3rd week of November but I think I'll do until the end of this month. It's too hard already with just Baily. But even with all these pregnancy woes I do love to feel my sweet baby moving and the only comforting thought I have through all this is that at the end I'll have a sweet baby boy.

Alright sorry about that... hope you enjoyed the whine! I baby-sat Robert's cousin's 2 kids, 1 1/2 and about 4 months yesterday since her baby-sitter fell through. I was happy to help and they were good kids. It just wore me out. Baily was such a big helper to me. She helped me by playing with them and giving them her toys and whenever they cried she hugged them, patted them on the back and said "I'm sorry baby... it's ok." It was so sweet. She really did help me out a lot which gives me a lot of hope for when Bubba comes. Robert and I took her to the park and even though it was kinda hot (dang AZ heat!)

she had a blast. Then we went by the store, came home and I made dinner for us and for Andre's mutual project. We also helped him write down 8 recipes he needed for the activity. The rest of the evening went by pretty peacefully. I finally had about half an hour to read some of my book which is just not enough time. It's sooo good and I'm disappointed it's taking me so long to read it. I'm only about 100 pages into it but it's got me sucked in. I just honestly haven't had any free time to read it. Hopefully today I'll have more time. It's sooo good already though. I also wanna finish watching my shows I had recorded. Does anyone know of a way to put time on hold? I would really appreciate knowing how to do that.

EDIT (This is some stuff I forgot to write about and still be warned that it still goes under the TMI info file. I write about these things for possible advice and sympathy:)

I forgot to mention under my pregnancy woes that I'm sick of waking up with a wet shirt because of leakage. And those certain areas of my breastesses (I'm trying to be as tactful as possible here) hurt sooo bad! They're huge and swollen and irritated. Any fellow moms out there have any advice on how to handle this annoyance? And also, I was hoping that I had dodged the swollen feet bullet that I was hit with during Baily's pregnancy but apparently not. My feet are getting bigger by the minute. It sucked with Baily but it was during the summer so it wasn't a problem wearing size 11 flip-flops. So if you see me wearing slippers or something you know it's because I would rather wear those than size 11 tennies and because it might get chilly soon and I may not be able to wear the flip flops.

On a less gruesome note I want to mention, more for myself when I look back on this, that Alma 5 is the most amazing chapter in the BOM! I've had the opportunity to read it not only yesterday during my normal reading but a few other times for specialty reading the past month or so. WoW! If I'm ever down or feeling tempted I just need to read this chapter. Talk about changing your earthly perspective to an eternal one and really making you evaluate where you are on your eternal progress. I love it!

Feeling Crafty

So apart from my almost being kidnapped yesterday, it was not a bad day. After Baily and I got dressed and ready for the day we walked over to the scrapbook store to get some paper and ribbon I needed for the Enrichment craft night last night. I love just browsing in this store. I get so excited about scrapbooking even though I never actually do it. However I finally ordered some pictures to actually scrapbook with and I got a lot of cute ideas at the store. Baby steps, but progress. Next door to this store is this awesome little bakery called the Bread Basket. Since I've been on "vacation" this week I've been really wanting to go out to lunch. I haven't been able to find anyone to go with so I decided lunch with Baily would be great. We had a delicious chicken salad sandwich for lunch at this bakery and enjoyed the quaint little atmosphere. We also got a fresh home-made loaf of bread (I'm not as good as you Becca to make my own!), some chocolate covered pretzels and cookies. It was fun. Then on the way home there was that whole kidnapping thing but that's already been talked about so I don't need to go there again.


After Robert got home from work Baily and I ran some more errands. We went and got some pictures that I ordered online at Walmart and then got a much needed car wash. It was so nice to have a clean, nice smelling car afterward. Right when we got in the car Baily said "woooow... oooh nice." I guess we should clean our car more often!

Then last night I had so much fun at our Enrichment craft night. I wanted to do all of the crafts but since I'm not exactly made of money I had to settle with 2 items. But even if I couldn't have done that I still would have gone for the food and company... which let's be honest- that's really the main reason I went anyway. It was so much fun. They had a nursery available but poor Baily was the only kid there so Robert came and picked her up early since she was so bored. I made these 2 cute things- a glass Christmas decoration block and a hanging family initial. My friend Mindy pretty much did all the work since I'm the least crafty person I know so a big thanks goes out to her. I'm really happy with what I made though and I feel motivated to be more crafty and a little bit more able to do crafty things from the knowledge I learned last night.

I had Robert record my shows for me last night and hopefully I'll have time to watch them before the next week's episodes are on. I'm kinda bummed I'm missing Dancing With the Stars this season but I really want to keep my tv watching to one night a week so I don't waste so much time on something so unproductive. And here's some pictures of our Halloween decorations. They're not much but we like them... especially Baily. I'm watching Robert's cousins kids today so I don't have much time to get a lot done but it's all good.

Freaked Out!

Ok I am so grateful that I said my prayers this morning and prayed for the safety of me and my family. Baily and I just got home back from walking and getting some errands done and eating lunch and I'm pretty sure we almost just got kidnapped. As we were on our way home and almost to my street some white car honked as he was passing us on University. I didn't recognize who it was but I waved thinking it was someone I knew. Then right as I was about to turn on my street the guy pulled around a building and pulled over and told me to get in the car because I needed a ride. I said no and kept walking. He told me again to get in the car. I ignored him and started walking faster praying my heart out. I think he realized there was a lot of other traffic around so he finally drove away. My heart was pounding a million times a minute! I'm so grateful for prayer! I don't think I'll be going walking for a little while now. That's sad that in the middle of the day in a very public area I have to be afraid. What is this world coming to?!

Welcome October!!

So I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it about 30 times already but I love the Fall and I love October! You better get used to me saying this over and over because I just love this season!

I woke up this morning to a phone call from Mya's mom telling me that I won't have Mya all week since she has a family member in town that will be taking care of her. It stinks because that means a loss of a week's worth of dough but I'm excited for the "vacation"/break. I have a lot of stuff I want to get done around the house so this should be a good opportunity to "get 'er done!"

Today was super busy as there's always a lot to do when we come home from a trip out of town. I had a ton of laundry to do not only from our trip but also all the sheets and blankets in the house since I always try to get it all done at the first of every month. I started first thing this morning and just finished the last load about half an hour ago... at 10:30. Laundry is so tiring! There was also a lot of cleaning and unpacking to do. We always are so blessed to come home with so much than we left with when we come back from Show Low and this time was no exception. There was a lot of stuff we got from family including all of Baily's birthday presents. I'm so grateful to be blessed with such generous and giving family!

During Baily's nap I was able to catch up on my BOM (Book of Mormon) reading. Sadly I missed the last couple of days of reading and ruined my consecutive reading streak. But I started again today and caught up on the 2 days that I missed. I just finished Mosiah and started in Alma today. I love the book of Alma and just Alma in general. What an awesome man! I feel like I can relate to him and his conversion and repentance process so much. I'm excited to be reading in Alma this month!

After Robert got home from work I headed to the laundromat for the first time in my life. Our comforter is totally washable but our washer and dryer are too small to wash and dry it in. So after hearing that the laundromats have huge washers and dryers I decided to give it a try. I'm so glad I did. I now have a very clean and crisp comforter that was in very bad need of a good washing. I felt like an idiot at first because I think everyone knew what they were doing but me and it was obvious since I was walking around all confused for a while. But I used my smarts and was able to figure those new fangled machines. I enjoyed the quiet time I had to be able to read my new book "Twilight." I thought I would be able to get a lot more reading done but I only got through the first chapter. Not only did it take me a while to figure out all the ins and outs of the place but those machines are fast! If... I mean when... I'm rich enough I'm totally going to buy some of those washers and dryers. It only took 14 minutes to dry our huge down comforter! Awesome! Anyway I already know I'm going to love this book and it won't take me long to finish it. And yes... I know I'm like the last female on the planet to read this book not to mention the 2 sequels following it.

As soon as I got home it was back to a mad rush. I had to finish up more laundry and cook dinner. I tried another new recipe tonight- chicken parmesan rolls and boy oh boy were they tasty! Baily, Robert and I all loooved it! This isn't the picture of the ones I actually made but they seriously looked just as good. I just forgot to take the pictures. I highly recommend this recipe!

After dinner we had a pretty informal FHE evening. We (well more like Robert) finished up decorating the house for Halloween. All the decorations look so cute! We also took a nice family walk and went to Safeway to get strawberries for our treat and got a few more cute decorations at Dollar Tree. I'll take some pictures tomorrow of our cute decorations and post them. After we got home we had a delicious dessert of strawberry and pudding parfaits. Yummy!

I also want to say thanks to the Patriots for winning by more than 8 so my husband could win the football pool at work. That's $40 extra bucks we need. Robert is being very generous and giving me half which is so sweet. I'm not so sure I would be so generous. We also got a payment from the guy who bought the red car which eased a lot of my worry about getting ripped off by him. He's supposed to pay the rest by Wednesday. This money is truly a blessing and I honestly believe it's a direct blessing of paying an honest tithing. I'm so grateful for this gospel principle. I better get some sleep because I have so much I want to get done and I want to take good advantage of this extra time I have. Love you all!

**Amy!!- Make sure you read the comment I left you in the last post!