Sunday, April 25, 2010

Vegas

Ok, I know that this trip was back in the middle of March, but I'm lazy about importing pictures from my camera to my computer. So you get the story of the trip now.

We headed out after Z finished work on a Thursday afternoon, drove straight down to Vegas and got there around 10ish, and promptly crashed in our very nice room at the MGM Grand. The next morning we kind of wandered around the hotel for a while, got our bearings on where we were, then met up with our very good friend Craig (not Wardle, a different one) for lunch. Craig is one of the most amazing, generous, devoted people I've ever met. Seriously this guy is true to his friends, ALWAYS, and no matter what. He works at MGM, that's why we were staying there, and him being down in Vegas is a fairly big reason for us taking this trip in the first place. Anyway, we met up with him for lunch at the Wolfgang Puck restaurant that's there in the MGM, had some good food, made some plans for the next few days, then headed our separate ways. PS. Check out the bathtub in our room!!! It was so nice to relax in, especially with being pregnant.
Zander had never seen Phantom of the Opera before, and we figured that Vegas was the place to see it. We had tickets pre-purchased but wanted to go down to the Venetian earlier than the show to make sure that everything was fine with them. For some reason we decided to walk.....it was a long walk, and we took a cab back. That's a really really pretty hotel/casino though! We got some gelato, wandered around, and felt almost like we were in Europe for a bit. Later in the evening we headed back up to the Venetian to see the amazing show, and holy crap, it was worth every penny. Definitely the place to see Phantom, even if it is the abridged version. You can't take photos (legally) in the theater, so you'll have to be happy with pictures of the hotel instead.

Saturday morning Craig called us bright and early and invited us out to his home for breakfast with his family. He came and picked us up, we went out and met his family, had some breakfast (Tera, his wife, makes GREAT pancakes, and I don't usually like pancakes at all), and decided that we should all pack up in the truck and go see the Hoover Dam. If you haven't seen the dam, next time you're down in the Vegas area, take a little side trip and go out and see it. It's not that far from The Strip, and it was honestly refreshing to be away from the casino scene for a bit. We did the tour inside of the dam and saw all of the huge generators, then spent some time outside looking at the dam, and the cool new bridge that they're building so that people aren't driving on top of the dam anymore.
The original plan was for me and Z to go back to the hotel that evening and go to the Bon Jovi concert, but we decided it was going to be more fun to hang out with Craig and his family. Now don't freak out. They were free tickets, and we're not huge Bon Jovi fans anyway. So instead of Bon Jovi and a headache, we stayed with the family and did a crab boil. LOADS of fun. You buy a bunch of crab, and some shrimp, throw it all in a big pot with Crab Boil seasonings from McCormick, and then dive in. It's my new favorite way to do seafood.

Sunday morning we slept in a bit, took our time getting ready, then met Craig and family over at Mandaly Bay to go to the Shark Reef exhibit. I was honestly really impressed with the variety of fish, jelly fish, turtles etc. they had in there, and how big some of them were. It's not every day you get to see sharks swimming literally all around you, plus the occasional sea turtle. After the sharks we headed out to get some pizza and buffalo wings, then headed back to Craig's house and just kind of hung out for the evening. Next morning we headed home.

I know, you're thinking that we went to Vegas and didn't even do "Vegas" stuff. Well, your right, and honestly it was a GREAT trip. It was the perfect amount of touristy stuff, being lazy in a hotel, and hanging out with good friends. THAT'S the way to do Vegas, and hopefully we'll be going back again soon.

A Happy Saturday

New artwork bought and hungREALLY yummy home made dinner

Games with friends

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Net-flix Mania

About a week ago we discovered that Netflix has created an ap for the wii. You get a disk from them, and when that disk is in your wii, you can stream live through the wii straight to your tv. This has been wonderful, and a curse. We're watching SO much more. But it's led me to discover this really cool show called Dollhouse. Now granted I'm already a big fan of Joss Whedon (Buffy, Angel, Firefly), but this show is really really cool.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Wardle-Indo Birthday Bash

Stephanie and Zander's birthdays are only about a week apart, so for the past 3 years we've always celebrated the two together. And what better way to have that annual celebration than at Tucano's with a free meal birthday card?! We all met up Friday evening for the yearly meat fest, and proceeded to stuff ourselves silly.
Then we headed over to the Wardle house for games, movies, and overall fun. The trouble is by the time we all got there the meat coma started to kick in and we were TIRED. So we put on Lord of the Rings. I lasted about 3 minutes. Z lasted maybe 5. Amazingly Steph stayed awake for the whole time, which was crazy since she's notorious for sleeping through movies.

It got to the point where we all figured that the Indo's might as well just crash for the night. Noah was already asleep, and Z and I were more than happy to just sleep on the couches etc. In the morning we had Huffy Puffy (German Pancakes), hung out for a bit, then headed home. Overall a great little spontaneous sleepover weekend.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Long Story

Ok, here's the whole story, for those of you who are curious. Saturday morning around 2am I woke up, had to pee, which is totally normal when you're 8 1/2 months pregnant. I got back into bed and couldn't for the life of me get comfortable, my right hip was hurting, which again, isn't too unusual for me when I'm this pregnant. But it HURT. I tried my right side, left side, back, etc, nothing worked. So I went downstairs and tried sleeping on the luv sac. Again, nothing worked. I slept maybe 20 minutes there and gave up and moved to the couch. Nothing worked, everything HURT. So I wandered the house for a little while hoping that walking would ease the pain. Nope, made it worse. Finally I went in and sort of woke Z up, not really knowing what he could do for me, but I needed to talk to someone about it. He rubbed my back for a bit, and that helped a bit, then I sent him back to bed and took a hot shower hoping that would loosen the pain. It didn't. Finally around 4 am I decided I should go to the hospital. Even if they told me that I was nuts and just sent me home, at least it was better than sitting around hoping it would just go away.

I got to the hospital, they put me in a gown, had me do a urine sample for them, got me started on an IV eventually. I was literally laying there rolling over from side to side, sitting up, laying down, trying to get comfortable, and nothing was working. Around 5 they gave me antibiotics through my IV and two percocet. They helped a little, but not enough so that I could sit/lay comfortably. So around 6 they gave me some morphine. It's my friend. Somewhere in all of this they took me down to radiology to do an ultrasound on my kidneys to try and get a better idea of what was going on. The urine analysis had shown a fair amount of blood, which meant either a kidney stone, or a kidney infection. Based on the particular pain I was having they decided it was an infection. So they started me on some antibiotics, and continued to pump a ton of IV fluid through me.

Honestly, once the morphine kicked in I was a happy camper. I was finally able to lay down and get some rest. I didn't really sleep very much because nurses were coming in and out, IV pump alarms going off etc. But I was at least able to rest.

And no, none of this was harmful to the baby at all. I was in labor and delivery the whole time, and they had monitors on him to make sure that he was alright. His heartbeat stayed great and he was still kicking like the spazz he is.

Around 6pm, after my third dose of antibiotics via IV, they decided that I was good to go home. So now I'm home, feeling fine, taking antibiotics, and eating lots of yogurt so that I don't lose the good bacteria's that I'm supposed to have. The End.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

The Morning After

Last night we got home, I lounged on the couch for a few hours, Z went to get my antibiotics but the pharmacy was closed (dang weekend hours), our neighbors came to make sure I was alright and brought me some Maggie Moo's (which I'll break into later today), and I went to bed around 10. Sleep is a BEAUTIFUL thing. I tried so hard to sleep yesterday in the hospital, and could have if it weren't for the nurses coming to check on me, my IV pump running out and beeping at me, having to pee every hour because of how much they were pumping into me, my IV pump beeping at me again, nurses coming in to bring me food etc etc etc. I think the most I slept yesterday was maybe 30 minutes at a time. I was still resting, it's hard not to when you've got an IV hanging out of your arm and 2 different monitors on your stomach watching you and the baby, but honestly I went like 40 hours without really sleeping.

So anyway, I slept about 11 hours last night with only waking up 2 or 3 times, which is an accomplishment for any woman who is 8 months pregnant, and I feel really good this morning. I'm still going to force myself to take it pretty easy today, eat really healthy, and drink a ton of water, but I think this thing is past me. Oh yeah, we've got to figure out Sunday hours for the silly pharmacy as well so I can get back on my antibiotics.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Ruined my Record

I was always proud to claim that I had never been admitted to the hospital for any reason other than actually having my child. This morning in the wee hours, I ruined my record.

*Short Story*
I woke up with extreme pain around 2 am, couldn't get comfortable, couldn't do anything to ease the pain. Went to the hospital where they gave me two percocet, didn't help a whole lot, so they gave me some morphine. It's my friend, I was finally able to relax and get some rest. Turns out I had/have a kidney infection. So I'm on antibiotics and lots of fluids to get that cleared out. I'm home now, feeling good, just really really tired from getting literally no sleep last night, and poor/interrupted sleep throughout the day on an uncomfortable Labor and Delivery Bed.

*Long Story*
I'm too tired to tell the story. I'm going to sleep.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Easter Sunday

Easter Sunday of course started out with an egg hunt! Noah very quickly figured out that there were "balls" hidden around the house for him, and they had yummy treats in them! To avoid a complete sugar high we loaded his eggs with gold fish and fruit snacks.



Since mother nature decided to play another prank on us, in the form of four inches of snow, we took advantage of what was likely the last snow storm of the year. We threw on all our winter clothes and headed out. Honestly it was pretty warm out, but the snow pants etc kept Noah from getting soaking wet at least. Zander built is a pretty good sized snowman (which died later that day), and Noah learned that it's pretty funny to have snowballs thrown at him. He also made an involuntary snow angel cuz his mommy pushed him over. Don't worry, he thought it was hilarious.

We had an Easter dinner planned at the Patterson house and I volunteered to bring a dessert. I'm crazy into cooking up new recipes lately, and Noah likes to help with whatever he can. This time he got to help me smash graham crackers for a graham cracker crusted Blackberry Chiffon Pie. It turned out really yummy. We also went to the Indo's for an Easter egg hunt with Eva. Since we had done one earlier in the day Noah knew exactly what to do and was really antsy to go find the "balls" that he knew were hidden for him.

Uh Oh...

My nesting instincts are starting to kick in. The problem is we haven't moved all, or any, of the office stuff out of Kaden's room yet, so I don't really have an avenue to get rid of these nesting urges. So instead I deep cleaned Noah's room this morning, rearranged some of his furniture, and reorganized his closet as well. About halfway through this adventure I realized I should have done some before and after shots. Honestly I'm not totally done though. We're going to go get him a little Noah sized table and chairs to put in there as well.


Saturday, April 3, 2010

Another Reminder...

that I have a food blog!


All of the recipes on there are tried and true, and have my personal seal of approval.