32 Week Appointment

I went yesterday (Thursday) for my 32 week appointment. I saw the nurse practicioner (or something along those lines), Shannon yesterday. I had seen her once before I got pregnant for my annual exam and I really like her a lot. I had gained 1/2 pound since the last appointment bringing my total so far to 12 1/2 pounds. She said there was a little protein in my urine sample but they would just keep an eye on that. Blood pressure was good still. Even a little lower than last time I think. Baby's heartbeat was in the 140's and Shannon was able to give me a good idea of how little Bailey is situated in there as well. She is head down with her back coming up my left side, with butt at the top and legs folded on my right side. I guess she won't necessarily stay that way, but that's how she is for now. I've definitely been feeling that little butt up against my ribs making me uncomfortable! :) That's okay, I'll take the discomfort any day.

And.... I had a discovery this evening while we were at Trunk or Treat. Let me back up one day first. Last night while I was making dinner, I just felt like she must be growing leaps and bounds right then and there, like there was just no more room in there and I was feeling really uncomfortable. That's the best way I can explain it, but I didn't think much of it. Then it happened again tonight around the same time while we were at Trunk or Treat. So I told Ashley about it, and she's like "you're having Braxton-Hicks contractions". Oh. Yeah that makes sense. Haha. So there you go. It has started. It was really a little bit painful so I hope this doesn't happen too often in the next 7 weeks (unless she wants to come before that!) but it also is kind of encouraging to me, since I haven't felt anything like that up till yesterday. I've still got the January 1st insurance deal on my mind, so although I know these don't mean anything at this point, it's hope for me that she will come before then!

Well, I think I'm off to bed. I have had a cold this week and not sleeping the greatest because of it, so hopefully I can get some extra sleep tonight.

Insurance & Taco Bell

Today was kind of a fun day. I got to leave work at 3:00 so that is always fun. The purpose for that was to attend Anthony's open enrollment meeting for insurance. They are changing the dental insurance from Delta to Guardian. I'm actually a little familiar with Guardian because that is what we had at my work during 2007 (I never was a member, but I am basically the insurance administrator, so I deal with the companies). Turns out this is actually better insurance than Delta, and CHEAPER. So that's some good news.

I also had a lot of questions about our insurance because we were hoping to switch to the cheaper plan that has the deductible and trying to figure out how/when to work this out with a baby on the way. So my questions got answered, and I'm mostly happy with the answers, but some new questions were created. The billing lady at The Women's Center (my ob/gyn) told me that the only thing we would have to pay was $50 at the time of delivery. But that is not the case according to the literature we received today. So I'm wondering where the billing lady got her information from, but I have an appointment on Thursday so I plan on finding out. So here's the thing.... we will remain on the plan we are on now until January 1, which has better coverage for in-hospital stays, so the only thing is, in order to avoid paying the deductible AND the higher percentage on the hospital stay, Bailey needs to come by December 31st.

SOO.... I am asking that you would pray that she would be born by then. I really hadn't been worried about that, and still feel like she'll be here by then, but it just makes me a little nervous since 1 day (December 31st to January 1st) could mean a difference of more than $1000 for us. :/ So please pray for that if you remember. I plan on asking about how long they will let me go overdue at my appointment on Thursday as well. I'm sure it varies depending on the doctor, health, etc. but anyone have any input on that?

After the meeting we ran to Taco Bell to get a free taco for each of us. Thanks to whomever stole a base in the world series. :) And I feel good about myself cause we only got the free tacos, and that's it. Because I'm sure they rationalize giving away free tacos by saying that people will come for that and then go ahead and buy more for dinner since 1 taco is not enough for a meal. So they probably end up making more money than what they would have if they did not have the free taco offer. Well, I beat the system. Taco Bell made no money off of me today. :) We got our free tacos, and made dinner at home. Good job me. I'll try not to strain my arm as I pat myself on the back. :)

Well, I think I am going to go clip some coupons now and maybe watch Jeopardy in a few minutes. Later this evening, a date with House and some yummy frozen coffee made special by my hubby.

32 Weeks

My face looks dumb in this picture, but the others the hubby took were kind of blurry, so I went with this one. Just look at the belly, not the face. :) I just can't believe I only have 8 weeks left! It is all the time getting harder to get up from the laying down position and to turn myself over in bed. And every now and then when she makes a drastic move in there, it is somewhat painful. But I am still enjoying being pregnant. Wonder how much longer I will say that? Haha.

I am having a baby shower at work on November 18th so that is exciting. I worked a little more on the baby room this past weekend, so I am making progress there. I just wish I could know when she will be born! Christmas is so up in the air right now, who knows what we will be doing on Christmas day! Will I be miserably pregnant? Will we have a newborn? Will I be in the hospital? I guess the not knowing makes it more fun, so I'll just keep being patient. :)

Boring Update

I feel the need to blog but don't really feel like I have anything to blog about. Nothing too exciting going on around here.

Monday evening I went to Anthony's quiz bowl match at Lee. They were missing some kids and they didn't do so great, but I had a good time. Tuesday was a stay home night and I made some yummy chicken alfredo! Wednesday night we had church of course. And tonight is a stay home night with Survivor, Grey's Anatomy and a cup of yummy coffee my hubby made for me!

I cannot believe that I am 31 weeks pregnant already and we have less than 9 weeks to go now! I had one of those moments last night where I was totally in disbelief that I am pregnant at all. Like, why is my stomach so huge!? I guess I just feel like I have waited so long for this. Ever since I was a little girl I couldn't wait to be a mom, so it is so amazing to me that it is actually about to happen.

Well I guess that's about it for now. I'll leave you with a couple of pictures from the baby shower.

Weekend Fun

Well, here we are, Sunday evening, another weekend almost over. :( We are skipping church tonight because Anthony has homework he has to get done. So I'm here trying to leave him alone and kill some time till 8:00 comes around to watch the Red Sox play! Hard to believe they actually made it to game 7. I hope they win tonight cause that would sure make for one happy hubby for me. :)

Friday evening, we stayed around the house. Had some pizza for dinner, Anthony did homework and we watched the episode of Fringe from Thursday that we missed. I got caught on up Grey's Anatomy and laundry while he was doing homework.

Then Saturday, we headed to Lynchburg for the day! We got there right before 10 and then Vicky, Amanda, and I went to Starbucks for some catching up and good coffee. It was so wonderful to be with them again, we don't do that nearly enough. After coffee, we went back to Amanda's and just hung out for a while. Then the shower started at 3:00 so I got to see all my Lynchburg friends! It was really fun and it was great to see everyone again. I got lots of goodies to use for Bailey. It was a little surreal that the shower was actually for me! I just still have those moments when I can't believe I'm pregnant. Before heading home, we stopped to get some gas and to get some Tokyo for me! I ate about half of it last night and will finish the other half tonight! Yay! Oh, and during the shower, Anthony, Matt, and Evan (Vicky's brother) went to Buffalo Wild Wings and got 100 wings to share... yeah... crazy boys. And Anthony volunteered our debit card to pay with the other guys giving him cash, so he handed me a lovely $78.00 receipt when they came back. Thanks babe. But Evan gave Anthony cash for about half of the bill, so that was nice of him. Apparently the Geek Squad makes good tips. :)

And on a sad note, on the way to Lynchburg, we hit and killed a squirel. :( It was sad, and I cried. (Insert laughing here.) I know, pathetic, right? Can I help it that I'm an emotional person? But Anthony made me feel a little better by telling me that the squirel was lucky that he got hit by us and not someone else, because if it was anyone else, they wouldn't have thought twice about it. But me, no, I actually shed tears for the squirel. So at least someone had a little compassion for him. RIP little squirel.

So today we went to church and Mom's of course. And then I went with Ashley to one of her friend's houses to a Pampered Chef party that her mom was having. It was fun and there was some yummy food, but I did control myself, and not buy anything. And it turned out I actually knew Ashley's friend's mom because she teaches at Shelburne, so I taught with her for a year. Small world.

Well, I guess that's about it for the weekend. I'm excited for tomorrow evening because Anthony has a quiz bowl match at Lee in Staunton so I am going to go to that!

Well I'm off to go make myself productive for a little while at least. GO RED SOX!!!

Almost Friday!

Almost Friday! Yay! Well, the busy week isn't going too badly. Last night Anthony stayed home while I went to church. He had homework that was due this morning, so he had to get that done. Then this afternoon we both went to Kevin & Sarah's and Anthony helped move some furniture around while I played with Trinity to keep her out of the way. She is such a little cutie!

Went to the doctor today and I saw Dr. Hoover. He was the last doctor (who delivers babies) in the practice that I had not seen, and I liked him a lot. So now I have at least spent a few minutes with every doctor who could deliver Bailey. The appointment was fine, just the normal stuff. My blood pressure was good and he said the baby is growing fine. I have gained 12 pounds now. Maybe I can keep it to one pound a week from here on out - 22 pounds would not be a bad amount to gain. I won't count on that though. :) My next appointment is two weeks from today.

We are not going to be able to make it to Lynchburg tomorrow evening, so we'll just head over there Saturday morning. I am so excited to see all my friends! I wish we could get together more often, but it's so hard to coordinate everyone's schedules! Someone needs to go ahead and come up with the next big event to get us together! :)

Well, I'm off to watch Survivor. The Red Sox are about to play as well, but I'm not expecting much out of that. :(

Unusually Busy Week

So this week is a strange one for us. Here's a sneak peek...

Monday - Anthony was not home until 10:30 because of a quiz bowl match at Broadway. Tara playing bachelorette, but pacing the floor with boredom till Anthony gets home.

Tuesday - Anthony goes directly to church after school to meet up with 7-9th graders and Summer, Megan, and Steve to go to Buffalo Wild Wings in Charlottesville. Tara leaves work at 4:30 and meets them there for wing night with the kids. Both home around 7:30.

Wednesday - Church, but Anthony may be staying home because of the amount of school work that has been accumulated due to the strange week. But hopefully not, since he is getting some done tonight.

Thursday - Going to Kevin & Sarah's to help move furniture (Anthony) and corral little Trinity (Tara) to accomodate their recent increase from a family of 3 to a family of 6, due to their amazing huge hearts and taking in 3 foster children. There will be pizza.

Friday - May be heading to Lynchburg after work, or might be a night at home. Not sure yet. This will depend on how Anthony's work load is looking in a day or two. If we don't go Friday night, then probably just myself will head there on Saturday morning. I have a baby shower and some seriously overdue hang out time with my girls!


This is so not a normal week for us! We are stay-at-home people, and usually the only "outing" we have during the week is to church on Wednesdays. So while we are busy, these are all great things so I can't complain. Also can't complain about not having to make dinner any night! Wednesdays we just have sandwiches since we don't have much time at home before we go to church. So yay for no cooking! That means that it's okay that I'm not going to make it to the grocery store this weekend. We'll just use what I had planned for this week.

Well, that's all for now. Off to watch the Red Sox get crushed, I mean, win, yeah! :\

Fried Beans and Red Sox

I wanted to blog about these things while they were on my mind, because if I wait, I'll forget!

We tried out that new Fried Beans restaurant that I had mentioned last week. If you are in the Waynesboro area and have been wanting to try it, I suggest you do it soon because that place will not be open long. At one point, for probably 10 minutes, we were the only people there, and this was like 6 something. The busiest restaurant time of the whole week probably. The food was not bad, but nothing special. My burrito consisted of a tortilla filled with beef, and that's it. So it tasted fine, but I could have made that at home very easily. The only "pluses" I saw there was that their salsa was like the fresh made, has-tomato-chunks kind, you know what I mean? It was necessarily better than El Puerto (our regular place) but different. And they were playing Spirit FM over their sound system. So after my long analysis of the restaurant, here is my conclusion. If they had food that was super great, they MIGHT be able to make it. But with mediocre food, and El Puerto practically across the street, they won't be there long. End of story.

Oh, but since our dining experience wasn't impressive, I thought we deserved Sonic milkshakes, so we got those after our Walmart shopping. :)

And my other thought was on the Red Sox/Rays game last night, that lasted FOREVER. The Red Sox did not win, so that was a bummer, but we had already won one game, so no big deal. And the next 3 games are at Fenway, so that's an advantage for us. The game started at 8, and was not over till close to 2am if I am remembering correctly. I fell asleep on the couch probably around 11 and slept till close to the end. Well when I woke up it was the 11th inning so I had to see what happened, so I got in bed and turned the tv on and finished watching there. I really enjoy watching these games with Anthony although he was commenting last night on why you can't watch these things with women, since I would make random, non-related comments at important times during the game. I REALLY do like watching them. :) I guess I can just think of two things at once. I'm spaghetti, all my trains of thoughts cross each other and I can think of multiple things at one time. He is a waffle and he was in his baseball box last night so he can't think of the other things I wanted to talk about. Fair enough. I'll try harder Monday night. :)

Now, I'm off to get ready for church. Hopefully I can get in a nap today...

Life is a Cookie

Also, forgot to mention, my wonderful friend Laura Williams has a blog now, so check out her blog-- Laura Williams on my links!

Update for the Week

Sorry about taking a week to update! I've been keeping myself busy most of the week actually.

I never got a call from the doctor's office about my bloodwork, so that is good news, meaning I do not have gestational diabetes or anemia! Yay for that! I can't believe I will be 30 weeks pregnant tomorrow.... 3/4 of the way done... only 70 days or 10 weeks left. While I am in disbelief, I still don't think that reality has hit me yet. I don't know when that will happen. I guess when I start having real contractions, haha. I've had a couple of times where I *thought* I might have had some Braxton-Hicks, but it could have been gas, lol. Not really sure. Probably just gas. :) We all have gas, that's okay to say, right? :)

On Wednesday we went to State Farm to meet with the girl there to talk about our policies with them. We actually adjusted a few things so Anthony's car insurance will be a little bit cheaper now. Cheaper is always good so I'm glad for that. (And I love the girl that works at the insurance office - she is super sweet and nice). Especially seeing as how our health insurance premiums are going up 12% from what I understand. The open enrollment meeting for that is October 28 and I am leaving work early so I can attend that. Hopefully, if things go according to my plan, we are going to change the plan option that we are on, so we'll be on the cheaper one, which of course will still go up once we go on the family plan when the baby is born. Sigh. Life is expensive. I think I should be a health insurance executive. They must make a killing. How do they sleep at night anyways?

What else? Let's see.... well I'm already done cleaning the bathroom, changing the sheets, taking the trash, and one load of laundry. So I feel pretty good about myself so far. I need to finish the laundry, vacuum (might save that till Monday), and work on getting "stuff" out of the baby's room and into the shed. We'll go to Walmart and get groceries at some point today. And of course the Red Sox play tonight, game 2 in the American League Division Series against the Rays. I was thining of getting pizza or Sonic or something and bringing that home to eat during the game, cause we have spend more than usual on eating out this week. I don't know what we'll do. We'll go wherever the wind blows I guess!

Last night, my friend Malisa from work, had a Creative Memories Framing Party that we had here at the house. It was fun and there were some great framing designs that people did. I did one with an ultrasound picture, a picture of me holding the belly, and a portion of Psalm 139. I'm excited to see how it turns out. And awesome Malisa used a lot of her hostess discount to pay for my piece. So I got it at a really good price. And I got a Mini Everyday Display (except mine is black) as a gift for hosting the party at my house. So I think I made out like a bandit.

Well I need to get busy on what I have left to do today before some relaxing and cheering on the Red Sox! I'll leave you with the picture I used for my framing project last night. I'm not crazy about it, I just had the idea yesterday, so it's definitely not professional quality or anything, but I think it will do the job just fine. The miracle of a baby and God's amazing handiwork is what the piece is all about anyways!

A Good Day

It has been a good day so far, and it's still not over yet! Anthony got up around 6:15 this morning because he had to be at school at 7:00 to proctor SAT's. I woke up too, but ended up going back to sleep until 9:15! So then I got myself out of bed and got ready for the day. I had loaded up all the new computer/new crib trash in my Jeep last night and then this morning I gathered up the regular trash and I took all that to the dump. The dump is only probably about 2 miles from us, so that makes it nice so we don't have to pay for someone else to take our trash, we just take it ourselves. This is a good money saving tip.

After the dump, I went to Wal-Mart and TOOK MY TIME. :) Don't get me wrong, I love having my husband with me when I go grocery shopping. He is so efficient and quick about it. I have a hard time keeping up with him sometimes, and he is the one checking off the list. But sometimes it's nice just to be able to take my time and go look at other things that are not groceries. It was especially nice since it wasn't too packed yet, since it was still morning. Random comment - the check out lady who I had was super fast. I think she set a record. I was impressed.

After Wal-Mart, I ran to the library to take back some books I had checked out for my dad. I tried to find him some other books he wanted, but they didn't have them, go figure.

Then I came home and put my groceries away. Then I dove right in to cleaning the bathroom. (Still no husband home yet.) Oh that's not completely true. I tried out the Sundried Tomato & Basil Wheat Thins I bought. Very yummy. I recommend them. After I finished my snack/lunch I got the bathroom knocked out pretty quickly.

Then I proceeded to begin vacuuming (since it's not like I skipped doing last weekend, no way, not me). I got about half of our bedroom done when hubby pulled up in the driveway! So I knew he was home, but he still managed to scare me when he came in the bedroom. Well, of course I had to stop to give him a hug to help him recover from his 6 hours of the type of boredom that will nearly kill you. And then he laid down in bed, and I couldn't stand to see him there alone, so I just had to cuddle up to him. And that, my friends, led to a nap. That was great, since he doesn't get to do that very much these days. We got up about 3 something and he started on schoolwork while I finished the vacuuming.

Now he is still doing schoolwork, and I'm killing time till we go out to eat for dinner. Not sure where we will go yet. Maybe T-Bone Jack's, Applebees, or there is this new Mexican place called Fried Beans that I would like to try. I can't find anything about them on the Internet though, so I don't know how it will be. It's just in a little strip mall, so I'm kind of thinking they might not be around for long. But maybe I am wrong.

Tomorrow is Homecoming at church! One of my favorite Sundays of the year. I am making Pineapple Cheese Casserole. I know it sounds strange, but I promise it is delish. I first tasted it when I was at Shelburne, and my good friend Fred made it to bring to one of our potlucks. It is one of my favorite potluck dishes ever since then. Anthony loves it too, so that is a plus.

Now, I think I'm going to try to convince Anthony we need to go eat now, since he must be famished since he didn't eat any lunch!