5 years of awesomeness

I almost can't believe that I've been married to the ear doctor for 5 years now. 

And at the same time, it feels like he has been a part of my life forever. He's the kindest, funniest, most thoughtful person I've ever met. He is so smart and hardworking and I am SO proud of the work he has chosen to do.

To celebrate our anniversary I really wanted to get out of town. So, 2 weeks ago I went online and found that the cheapest airfare of the day from Denver would land us in Chicago. I'd never been to Chicago before...and I love being in big cities. So I booked the tickets.

My mom, who is awesome, graciously let us use all her stored up Hampton Inn points and got us a hotel right downtown for 5 nights. She's the best!

We ate like kings, walked all around the city and had a great time. Even though we were there for 5 whole days I felt like we barely scratched the surface of all the cool things that city has to offer. We'll be back for sure!

 Getting our tourist on while listening to a Chicago Architecture Foundation tour.

Doughnut Vault...a MUST! Delicious doughnuts. But get there early! They open at 8:30 and by 9:45 are usually sold out!

 

Riding public transit...a huge perk of being in a real city. (no offense, Denver)

 

Me with Apollo 8 at the museum of science and industry. This is approximately the same area of the new vehicle that I'm designing!

 

Obligatory top-of-Sears-Tower shot

 

 I couldn't resist...I love everythingl red-head themed...

Gender confirmed

I'm thinking of buying this t-shirt:

because we are having a

BOY!

making money on the side

This weekend we hosted a multi family yard sale in our front yard.

When I agreed to host the sale I had NO idea how much work a yard sale is. The only yard sale I've ever participated in was hosted by my amazingly hard working mother who makes everything look effortless. Preparing for a sale is ROUGH. You have to go through all your crap and figure out what you think someone might actually buy from you. If your storage areas are like mine you stuff is crammed in, totally unorganized and covered in an embarrassingly deep layer of dust.

After deciding what to keep, sell and throw away you then have to decide how much to sell it for, take good pictures of it, post it every day on craigslist, make posters and run around your neighborhood like a crazy person hanging the posters.

Luckily, the other people selling at our sale were awesome and did a large majority of the work.

The day of the sale I had to go in to work REALLY early so I wasn't there to help set up.

When I pulled into my neighborhood I saw a mammoth amount of stuff and about 30 people milling around my yard perusing my stuff. It was awesome.

All day I barely had to do a thing! We devised a sticker method to keep track of who was making what money so we could just put it all on one pot all day long. At the end we separated it all out and it worked like a charm.

The real MVP of the day had to be the ear doctor. I never imagined how important it would be to have a fluent Spanish speaker wheeling and dealing at the sale. I'm sure we made more money simply because he was able to really negotiate with the 50% of our buyers who were much more comfortable speaking in Spanish.

All told, the sale generated about $700! And we took about $200 of that for ourselves. Not a fortune, but enough to say that it wasn't a waste of our time.


Plus now my kitchen cabinet that used to hold all my baking tools doesn't explode every time I try to pull out a pie pan.


Mission accomplished.

New Mantra

I'm thinking of getting a tattoo.

I've never really been a tattoo person...ever. I think it may stem from when I was little and my mom let me put up wall paper in my room with bunnies on it. In 6 months when I was tired of the bunnies and wanted it taken down the work was staggering. Well, watching my mom do the work was staggering.

I shudder at the thought of putting a real bumper sticker on my car. What if I change my mind in 3 months and no longer can really support the idea of COEXIST-ing.  It could happen. And then I'd be stuck with a razor blade trying not to ruin my paint job.

But since finding out that we were having a baby one overwhelming sentiment has powerfully affected my soul.

Faith, not Fear

Moving confidently in a direction, despite the unknown. Knowing that there is a plan for me, a guiding influence that is purposefully shaping my course. The idea that even though I can't see how the dots are going to connect, they will. And the picture they make will be awesome.

how a dork experiences pregnancy

You know you're a nerd when you attempt to describe the feeling of stepping off a curb with an enlarged womb as a spring damper system.

Finding out

A few weeks ago we went to the doctor for my 16 week appointment. We both thought that you absolutely had to wait until 20 weeks to find out the gender of your baby, but the first words out of my doctor's lips when she walked into the examining room were, "so, do you want to find out if it's a boy or girl?"

We looked at each other with excitement and exclaimed, "YES!"

She wheeled in the ultrasound machine, gooped up my stomach and flipped the switch. I was so surprised how much bigger the baby looked than last time. The ear doctor was excited to see both sides of the brain looking symmetric. I though the seeing each of the little spinal vertebrae was breathtaking. After taking some measurements, the doctor rotated the paddle around to attempt to determine the gender.

Our baby's little legs were shut as tight as can be. The doctor poked and prodded to entice it to move. I jumped and jiggled to get a better view, but we were stymied.

We'll have to wait another 4 weeks to find out what we're having.


As we walked away from the office the ear doctor admitted that he was glad we had a dry run of that moment. A first stab at running through those emotions without really having the deal with them. Whereas I was unreservedly excited to find out, he was a bit anxious and nervous.


So we don't know if we're having a boy or a girl yet...but we do know one thing: our kid's a modest little thing. The ear doctor is so proud.