Clean-Up Time

Hello everyone,

So we have been doing pretty well. I had a great Mother's day-- complete with a gourmet breakfast (french toast made with Great Harvest cinnamon chip bread, scrambled eggs, sliced bananas and a triple berry smoothie-- yum!) and multiple presents from Jared (a hand-decorated pot, two pictures and a school worksheet =] ), and even a present from Camryn (a random household item lovingly and creatively wrapped up in wrapping paper). After church, we had some friends over for Mother's Day dinner and had RIB-EYE steaks, courtesy of Dave and his mad grilling skills. The menfolk took care of everything from steak to dessert to clean-up, although I managed to get Dave to let me make my herb goat cheese toasts as an appetizer. Dave even cleaned up our fairly messy kitchen BY HIMSELF before they came over. I was very impressed.

After our friends left, Dave and the kids brought down my presents. Dave took the kids shopping with him Saturday and they had wrapped up my presents with his help-- two of them were in "Cars" wrapping paper. =] I got a nifty cool crockpot that's programmable with a built in meat thermometer (so it can switch to "warm" when the meat is done). This was good since I accidentally killed my other crock pot by leaving the "crock" part on a stove burner and then accidentally turning the wrong knob on the stove.... between the crockpot, a slicer, a spice rack and a "cooks illustrated" cookbook (does anyone notice a theme here?), let's just say Dave outdid himself. =] I was kind of expecting flowers and a card and instead I got Christmas!

We had a busy Saturday. We did some house cleanup and some shopping and we... dum, dum, dum, dum.... bought a trampoline with enclosure for a backyard. Or dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb if you believe Consumer Reports' opinion on the safety of trampolines. Risks of death and dismemberment aside, we found a good deal on a trampoline, so we just went for it. Now all we have to do is hack off our deck so it will fit in our yard. =] Right now the trampoline is assembled on our deck-- and covers almost all of it. We have started the process of disassembling half of our deck (which covers most of our yard) and we can only hope it will be done before Camryn's birthday party on Saturday.

Last Saturday, we also bought Camryn a real bike with training wheels to surprise her with for her birthday on Friday. Then we went to dinner with some friends on Saturday night. We were going to go to Outback, but there was an 85 minute wait, so we called PF Changs, but there was a 2-hour wait. So we went someplace else entirely and were left to ponder on the wisdom of calling ahead to get on the waiting list.

Friday-- as you all have heard by now-- I finally had my first OB appointment. Now instead of listening for the heartbeat, they do an ultrasound and you can see the heartbeat. It's pretty amazing, even at 9 1/2 weeks. Our little baby has a light-bulb shaped head, a very round little body and teeny stubby arms and legs.=] He/she is very active-- the baby kept turning, flipping and switching positions during the ultrasound. My "official" due date is December 11th, but after looking at Camryn and Jared's birth weights, the OB asked how I would feel about being induced a week early. I was quite agreeable to the idea and happy that she is on the same page as me. =] So it looks like baby will probably come about December 4th. I probably already told you that.

Dave's job is going well, but it is CRAZY. The new project he is working on gives him a lot of responsibility, aside from the normal huge amount of work. His new group is in charge of maintaining and fixing problems on a tool that is already out in the field with customers. Which would be great except the tool has had problems out the wazoo and the customer has NOT been happy with how his company has handled it so far. I guess the beauty is there's nowhere else to go but up. =] When he first started the new project he had a DAILY conference call with Taiwan at 6 pm (9 am Taiwan time-- it was a great time for the other guys...) that usually lasted 60-90 minutes. That was getting REALLY old -- especially 7 days a week. Finally this week they were able to cut it down to twice a week. Thank goodness!! Dave feels like they've been able to make some progress, but it has been --and still is-- a big learning curve. Dave went on a business trip last Mon-Wed. to Monterey, California for a training conference. It was exhausting for him-- and me. We're really glad that he's back!! He will probably go on another business trip to Taiwan and Singapore at the end of the month. He just keeps getting busier and busier!

The kids are both doing well. Jared had his kindergarten music program on Thursday night. He looked so grown up as he sat there on the school auditorium stage, picking his nose, waiting for it to start. =] OK, joking aside, he really did look grown up and it was hard to realize that he really isn't a toddler/preschooler any more. He's an honest-to-goodness grade schooler. It made me feel a little pang to realize that he really has grown out of being our baby "Mr.-Honey-Guy." It even made me emotional listening to them sing "Hop Old Squirrel"-- OK, I must be pregnant. Incidentally, the kindergarten kids were 100+ and took up the entire stage while the parents filled the whole auditorium.

I'm starting to have a little more energy. Aside from going semi-comatose for 10 hours a night, coming up with strange meal combinations like tacos and Stove Top stuffing, fighting off morning lethargy and emotional mood swings, having trouble summoning enough energy to leave the house, craving Top Ramen (yes, me the would-be gourmet.... I've made Top Ramen once since we left BYU, only to say, "Yep, it's as gross as I remember it," but now I have it about 2-3 times a week...mmm.... so good), feeling queasy at strange smells, and obsessing over whether I show yet (no, I just look like I've gained 3 pounds... and I have), I'm almost back to normal.... ha ha. I got my ten-week pregnancy email yesterday, informing me that our almost-one-inch-baby-the-size -of-a-grape has grown into a just-more-than-an-inch-baby-the-size-of-a-kumquat. Our baby is "officially" no longer an embryo. The most important (brain, etc.) development has already taken place and now the tissues and organs will mature rapidly. Sniff.... they grow up so fast.
My new project is trying to attack our backyard. At the end of the summer, we were wise enough to mix compost, manure and topsoil into the edging borders of our yard, making the soil rich and fertile and perfect for growing... weeds. Tons of them... the whole winter long. So I have spent hours upon hours over the course of days-- and maybe weeks now-- removing knee-high weeds from the border of our yard. Ah yes, there are few things I enjoy more than lovingly, tenderly attacking weeds with shovel and bare hands, trying to remove patches of knee-high grass that is firmly entrenched in soil that is now rock hard. I much prefer my container gardening: it's efficient and works for the lazy. You just dump dirt, dump a plant and you're ready to go. If only it all could be so easy.

While I was gardening today, Camryn fell asleep on the Lovesac in the middle of the afternoon. That should have been a tipoff that something was up. I took Jared to T-Ball practice at the YMCA and Camryn didn't want to go to childwatch or rock climb. She just wanted to sit and have me hold her on my lap. Tipoff number two... On the way home, I decided to stop and get gas and halfway to the gas station I heard the lovely sounds of regurgitation in the back seat and Jared yelling, "Mom! Camryn's barfing! Mom! It stinks in here! Mom! This is gross! It stinks!" After throwing up for what seemed (from the front seat) an interminable period of time, Camryn sagely observed, "Last time I barfed it was white. This time I barfed orange." It made me feel bad that I pushed her to finish her carrots at lunch.

So we turned around, went home and I spent 45 minutes cleaning out Camryn's clothes, car seat and the car upholstery. I figured I should clean up the archeological ruins under and around Jared and Camryn's car seat while I was at it. The floor of the car and the crevice under the front seat were like Mary Poppins bag: stuff just kept coming and coming and coming... stuff that had no business fitting in a space that small. Among the ruins was... an umbrella, 5 water bottles, a red robin cup, 1/2 a ream of paper, an ikea box full of markers and enough food to feed a third world country. Despite the unfortunate incident, Camryn seems to be feeling a little better now.

I hope you all are doing well. Love,

Karen
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Quotes of the Week:

Mom: Camryn, change out of those brown pants to some that match your pink striped shirt.
Camryn: No mom, these brown pants WORK with the pink shirt, just like your blue pants work with your red shirt.

Camryn: I always like my Hello Kitty backpack. It sparkles. If the arm thing breaks than you can just sew it on with your sew-er thing.

Jared: One day he had this 20 minute spiel about how he is going to build a space ship and go to space and how Cameron Olsen was going to fly in his space ship and Cameron's mom could fly in my space ship and how it will be so fun. At the end of the spiel about how great this would be, he said, "I will fly the space ship and If I don't know how to fly a space ship, I'll just go to spaceship.com."

Jared saw me writing this just now. I told him I was telling our family about how we are going to go to space. He said: "They would want to know that we're going to space. I can't wait until we build our spaceships and go to space. It will be fun!"