Vegas Baby!

Sunny and over 100 all week! We leave at 11 tonight to drive to Chicago to catch our super cheap buddy pass flight. I'll try to post pictures during the week. We're taking our laptop. We're going to get out picture taken in front of The Golden Nugget....for obvious reasons. :)

*wink wink*

In response to Karen, Sarah W, and Laura....oh, I'm already having them! LOL!!!!!!!!! And at least they're with my own husband!

Randomness

Well, the spotting has stopped. I'm not going to worry about it since it wasn't red and it's not constant. I have my own theories on what was going on. I'm definitely going to take it easy in Vegas and spend most of my time sitting at a slot machine or laying by/in the pool.

Just wanted to share a few random things about my pregnancy that I've never heard anyone else mention....maybe for good reason!

1. Gagging- My allergies are definitely up and running and in the morning, I have a lot of phlegm. Since pregnancy started, every time I cough up that phlegm, I gag. It's gross. And slightly fascinating at the same time. Every time I cough, I wonder if I'm going to gag. And every time I gag, I wonder if I'm going to throw up. :P

2. Aversion to meat- I love meat. I'm a carnivore! But since pregnancy started, all meat tastes funny and usually dry. I have to order a steak medium rare to even think it tastes slightly juicy right now. I usually order them medium. That tastes like cardboard. Hamburgers, I only get half way through before I start gagging. Hot dogs, if I eat them fast, we're okay. (Don't worry, they're the all beef kind.) The only way I can eat chicken, is if it's covered in some type of sauce. Weird....

3. Absurd craving for Lemon Lime Sno Shack- yes, it's shaved ice, with flavor. But it just tastes so freaking good. And surprisingly, it's the ONLY food I currently crave. I have an entire list of aversions, one craving.

4. Strange dreams- Even stranger than I'd normally have, and I have strange dreams. The worst dream I'm had happened just the other night. I had a dream that Kendall died of a heart attack. I didn't actually see him die in the dream. I just knew he had died. And I went back to work like the next day, and I was sitting at this picnic table crying, telling my co-worker how now Kendall would never get to see his baby. It was bad. I woke up crying. Other dreams are just bizarre. Like the one I had about teaching a classroom full of teenage hoodlums that I screamed at. Or the one I had last night where I overheard a conversation between two of my students and the boy was implying that he had a huge penis. Yeah, that one was hilarious.

Okay, that's enough. We're leaving for Las Vegas tomorrow, so I probably won't post til we get back on the 28th. I'll try to take pictures of some of the hot girls. :) And hopefully we strike it rich on the slot machines!

Stressed

Sorry I've been MIA all week. I have had an upset stomach pretty much every day and I've had two random days of very very very light spotting. It's freaking me out. The first was Tuesday at the Dr's office. They found some blood in my urine. The lab work came back fine, and they did an ultrasound and the baby was fine. Good heartbeat. Squirming around. My cervix looked fine too. But it's hard to tell until 20 weeks if your cervix is really strong enough to hold the baby. The dr doesn't seem concerned. Kendall doesn't seem concerned. I can't stop thinking my baby is going to die.

I had some more spotting today. Just once. Again, extremely light. Not red. I'm still hoping the nugget is fine. If I have any more I'll go to the Dr. again. Anyone else have random spotting ever? *sigh* It just can't be uncomplicated, can it? Just when I get my confidence up and feel like things are "normal", something abnormal has to happen to make me believe everything is going to go wrong. I'll be 14 weeks on Tuesday. I'm supposed to be out of the "danger zone". What the crap?

Postive vibes needed.....

Swimming Anyone?

So we had heavy rain on Wednesday. Our power went out. Which means our sump pump went dead. And 4 hours later, we got a phone call from our cleaning lady telling us....we had water in our basement. 4 INCHES of water. It came up over your ankles and was freezing cold. And that's why I've been MIA all week. Below are some images of the damage. If you click on each one, it should enlarge them.

It's been a nightmare. From coming home to the damage and carrying stuff up through the water (we saved Kendall's drums before they got wet, but that was about it.) to hooking up a generator to stop the water from getting any higher, to staying up until 1am pumping water and vacuuming water out to stop the mold, it's been exhausting.

To top it off, we found out our home owner's insurance doesn't cover this kind of stuff. Our insurance agent never advised us to get the extra policy. And we spent 4K on a professional company to dry it out. Not to mention that I've had to have my FURNACE on for the last 3 days at 90 degrees. No open windows. We lived in our bedroom with a window unit.

We turned the air on yesterday and it's finally cool again. Our gas and electric bills are probably going to be sky high this month.

We think we were able to salvage almost everything. It's all being housed in our garage right now. And the best news is that this company saved our carpet AND drywall. We have to wait two weeks to put the baseboards back on to make sure mold doesn't form, but we're 90% sure we're okay. So we saved ourselves about 20 K in demo and remodeling. So now we just have to get everything back into the basement. And get battery back up for our pump....OYE!

The furnace room. To the right of this photo all of our Christmas stuff was stored on the floor. Fortunately most of the bottom boxes were plastic tubs (which we just transferred things to this year- LUCKY!) and both of our Christmas trees have dried out.
This DVD player is completely submerged if you can't tell. We think we lost this.
You can see how the water soaks up into the bottom of the love seat in this shot.
Kendall's drums were on the platform in the back corner. You can still see the cymbals. They're metal so we weren't as frantic. In this shot the carpet on the stage they were on is starting to soak. We got them off just in time. It was intense. We also think the treadmill is trash.
You can see how the bar got soaked. And the boxes on the floor are submerged in water. Note that we saved the VHS tapes by pulling them out before the water level got too high. Kendall was very happy. I really love my husband. I helped him save a lot of his crap.
Another shot of the flood. We were able to save the coffee table. It dried out okay. So did our fancy futon.
Our storage room was full of boxes...cardboard ones. Full of our childhood stuff. We salved most everything. It was so awful. Kendall worked very hard to get everything out of boxes and get it drying. I couldn't really help lift anything. Props to my in laws, all of them, who were there with us til 1am getting it all out and cleaning up the water.

They're Mowing.....

We just had horrible thunderstorms, there are more on the way for later tonight and there was a tornado warning. My neighbors are mowing!!!!!!!! OBSESSED!!!!!!

ps. Keep my mom in your thoughts. She has bacterial conjunctivitis in BOTH eyes right now. Swollen shut, green sheets of pus, and she has to put eyedrops in all night every 10 minutes. Ick. Poor mommy. :(

Just a Bit of Bitching...

So I don't recall if I mentioned how I bitched out my annoying co-worker a couple of months ago? It felt awesome, word spread like wildfire that someone had FINALLY done what no one else had the guts to do, I was a celebrity in my building, AND it stopped her annoyingness (not a real word, I know) for a while.

Well over the last two months she's slowly built back up to her annoying ways again. Sulking and pouting when she doesn't get her way or she feels ignored. Walking out of the room because she's angry. Saying things to people that are inappropriate. Butting her nose in other people's business. I've been pretty happy about The Nugget (FYI, not Golden Nugget, just Nugget) so I haven't really felt the need to kill her.

Then today happened. We were getting the kids ready for our graduation ceremony that we throw them. While putting kids into rows alphabetically, we discovered that the program had some serious flaws to it.

We're not sure how they got there because several of us had looked it over and made some changes, and none of it appeared that way when we looked at it. The annoying co-worker had taken it upon herself to print a copy of the program and make all of the copies on the nice, fancy, EXPENSIVE paper we had purchased. She didn't proof it for errors one final time before copying it.

Now this is a woman who is super anal about everything. I'm SHOCKED that she didn't proof the copy before running several hundred on expensive paper. Who wouldn't check it one last time?!?!?! So she's upset. Obviously. Many of us were slightly upset, but figured it was no big deal. We'd just have to print new copies on cheaper paper. We've done it before.

When I say, "We're going to need to recopy this tomorrow," she gets upset and says, "But I already copied it on the fancy paper." I said it wasn't a big deal, I'd just use some lavender paper that I had in my room. She proceeds to storm out of the room and mutter under her breath, "Well that's a waste of paper..." So I couldn't help myself. I knew she didn't think I'd heard her. So I snippily replied, "It's fine if you want to hand out the bad copies on your fancy paper, but make sure you let everyone know that it was YOUR idea to hand out something with so many errors." She stormed away. And I stormed away....before I ripped her face off.

The Baby List

Okay, so here are some things I can tell you about our baby.

1. We're calling it The Nugget until we find out the sex. YES, we are finding out the sex. We're calling it The Nugget for two reasons. First, because we ate at the Golden Nugget (best breakfast EVER) the day we went to the doctor and got pregnant. Two, because this baby costs as much as a golden nugget!

2. I'm due December 18th. I'm now in my 12th week of pregnancy. The secret has been VERY hard to keep. We started leaking the news to people along the way, but waited for the bulk of people until this week. We really just wanted to make sure this one was THE one. And Martha, I was already pregnant when you sent me the Chinese food email. So it really made me smile to read it. And REALLY hard not to just tell you.

3. I haven't had any complications except for some early bleeding in the first two weeks. It had me freaked out, but it stopped relatively quickly. I was on restrictions including, sitting all day, not lifting anything over 10 pounds, and NO exercise.

4. We've now "graduated" from our infertility doctor to a regular OB/GYN. We go to see him for the first time next Tuesday.

5. I've had 4 ultrasounds. They're all amazing. Even that very first one where all you could see was a tiny blob with a heatbeat. It was the greatest sound I've ever heard. And every time we hear it it's even more amazing. Because we never thought we'd hear one.

6. At my appointment in mid-May the baby was dancing. It was hilarious. This last visit, it was sleeping. But it looked HUGE on the screen. And it's really only like the size of a plumb. But that's still bigger that any other baby I've ever had!

7. Only 8 more weeks til we hopefully know if it's a boy or a girl. We already have names picked out. I'm not posting them here though. I don't want anyone stealing my names. HAHAHA.

8. I have been sick all day, every day for the last 6 weeks. It's just now starting to abate. No medication really worked. Almost everything I ate gave me heartburn. If I could even eat. It was pretty bad. Like I said though, thankfully it's starting to ease up. I've been able to eat more and more. I'm hoping by the end of next week that much of it will be gone.

9. I probably won't post much about the pregnancy here. It just feels like it would jinx it. Plus, plenty of other people have already done it. You don't need to read it again here. I'll keep you posted periodically about what's happening, any big moments. But my family doesn't read this, so there's no need for explicit details. If you really want to know, call me. I'll complain. HAHA.

10. Here are some fun facts I found on a website and my thoughts on them.

Fun Birthday Facts for Baby Erdahl
Your baby's birthstone will be Turquoise (Prosperity) (I don't know how I feel about this stone.)
Your baby's Astrological Sign will be Sagittarius (I like the qualities associated with this sign, but our kid could be born in another if it comes late.)
Your baby's Flower is Narcissus or Holly (Indigo, Green, Greenish-Blue) (Holly? Really? They couldn't come up with something more creative for December??)
Your baby will be born in the Chinese Year of The Rat (I don't know why, but I find this hilarious.)
This time next year your baby will be 24 Weeks Old! (And that will be AWESOME. We'll probably already be trying for baby number 2!)
Your baby will start kindergarten in 2014, be old enough to drive a car in 2024, finish high school in 2027, and will graduate from college with the class of 2031, give or take a year. Can you imagine? (Dude, these all boil down to one thing- I'll be old. And that's okay. :)