Lent

Lent starts this week, on Wednesday I think (a quick google check verified that this is correct). I've decided that I am going to participate this year by giving up one vice every week.  I know that isn't actually how Lent works, but since I am not actually Catholic and under no obligation to observe Lent, I've decided I can pretty much do what I want.  Here is my outline:

Week 1: No internet surfing
         What this means for me in no Pinterest, Facebook, blogs, etc.  I can use the internet for homework and checking bank statements, that's pretty much it.  This serves two purposes.  First, I am having a hard time getting my rear in gear when it comes to my homework, organ practicing, and other personal obligations this semester.  Part of the problem is that I got into really bad habits when I was so sick during my first trimester, and now I basically waste a lot of time.  I have a lot to get done before Baby K makes her appearance in May, and I would like to build up a little more self-discipline.  Second, while I love Pinterest, blogs, and Facebook sometimes they make me feel bad if we're being perfectly honest.  I have a hard time feeling content with what I have and what I do when I am continually bombarding myself with stuff from people who are more talented than me.  I think I can use the break to refocus on getting important stuff done and being happy with my life, because it turns out it's actually pretty dang good.
Week 2:  No TV*
    I follow every TV show.  Like all of them.  This is another bad habit stemming from my first trimester/first 22 years of life.  I really like TV.  The exception I am making to this rule is shows Erik and I watch together when he gets home at night.  It's our couples hobby and I think that's important.  Some couples go hiking together/cook together/study scriptures together.  Erik and I watch Hulu together. So I guess what I am actually giving up here is watching TV during the day while I cook/exercise/sit on the couch.  I can listen to music, to an audio book, or just have it be quiet in my house and probably not die. I'm hoping this will help me trim down the list of shows I watch regularly to just the really important ones, like Dance Moms and Modern Family.  
Week 3: No gossiping
        Don't call me this week, I won't be that fun to talk to. 
Week 4: No Whining
         I whine a lot.  It's kind of a major part of my personality.  It's also really annoying so I'd like to do less of it. 
Week 5: No eating out
           Some women have crack babies that have to be given small amounts of drugs through and IV to help the children break the addiction that was given to them pre-birth.  Unfortunately I am on the fast track to having the first McDonalds crack baby who will have to be given small amounts of fast food grease after birth to help ween her off of it.  This habit is neither cost effective nor healthy. 

What's that you say?  This isn't that hard and you don't do any of these things anyways?  Well bully for you, and also your life sounds very boring.  I think this will be a good experience for me and help me reign in some of my less-good tendencies and make time for things that should be bigger priorities.  Plus, it will give me something to blog about every week, so that will be super.  To avoid a picture-less I'm ending with a belly shot taken last week at 25 weeks.

What Pregnancy Looks Like

This is what pregnancy looks like on Facebook.

taken 2 weeks ago at 22 weeks

This is what pregnancy looks like at 8:30 in the morning at my house after I finish my morning puking ritual.

"Get pregnant," they said.  "It will be fun," they said.

23

Tomorrow is my 23rd birthday.  To me, 23 seems a lot older than 22.  Like when you're 22 it's still okay to be sleeping indefinitely on your friend's couch and getting gas money from your parents, but at 23 you better have your act together.  Erik is out home teaching tonight, so instead of watching Miss America like the rest of the country and resenting the contestants for their flat stomachs (which I once had) and long legs (which I have never had) I thought I would list the ways that I feel like a grown up and the ways that show I'm not even close.

Ways I feel like a grown-up

• I'm pregnant and it was planned.  Teen Mom has proved that you don't have to be an adult to have a baby, but the fact that we meant to get pregnant feels "old" to me
• Many of my favorite pins on pinterest deal with topics like pantry organization and how to get sweat stains out of garment tops
• People refer to me as Mrs. K or Sister K and I respond
• Most of the time I would rather be dressed warm than dressed cute.  This is especially evident to me when I go to the high school in 14 degree weather wearing slipper socks stuffed into my boots and see girls in mini skirts.  Seriously. 
• While we're on the topic of the high school, I am not up on current lingo.  For example, I just recently learned what YOLO stands for.  This, along with my 8:30 bedtime makes me feel more 73 than 23.
• I have a mortgage.  That's a 30-year commitment folks.
• I go to the same person every time I need my hair cut or my eyebrows waxed instead of just whichever stylist is on shift at Fantastic Sam's. 
• I filled out and sent in my graduation application for my MPA this week.  After May, feel free to refer to me as Master Shanna. 
• I have my own checks.  Once again, I realize you can get checks when you're like 14, but I remember being little and being at the grocery store and thinking that having checks is what moms do. Having my own really makes me feel like I've made it in life. 
• I have lunch dates.  When I was younger "hanging out" meant laying on my floor talking about boys, celebrities, and clothes.  Now hanging out means sitting in a restaurant talking about boys, celebrities, and clothes. Like a grown-up.

Things that prove I am not

• I think cereal is an acceptable option for any of the three daily meals
• Two of my top three favorite movies are made by disney
• I still tattle on people to my mom
• I have given people the silent treatment within the last year.
• I frequently wear footie pajamas (see my 4th bullet of the previous list)
• I try and make other people (Erik and my mother) make my appointments for me.  I hate calling the dentist, doctor, etc. and I always feel like I sound stupid to the receptionist. 
• It is possible that I DVRed the cartoon Arthur recently
• My very favorite food in the entire world is french fries
• I have the skin of a 13-year-old boy mid-puberty
• I fully expect to be treated like a princess the entire week surrounding my birthday.  None of that making-your-own-birthday-cake crap for me. I am surrounded by very, very tolerant people.

Maybe 23 will be the age where I fully shift into adulthood.  Probably not.  It will be the year that my weight fluctuates more than ever before, that I don't go back to school in the fall for the first time in 17 years, and I explore a whole new set of excuses to get out of speaking in church.  Erik switched his day off so that we could spend tomorrow together.  We are meeting with our financial planner and painting the nursery (tallies in the adult column?) and then going to my favorite restaurant (McKenzie River-- tally in the non-adult column) and to a movie.  It's going to be a good day. 

Year in Review--2012

It's the end of another year!  We had a wonderful Christmas, which I documented with approximately zero pictures, but I did steal this one from my mom's phone.

Our visit was way too short, but one fun thing was that we found out the gender of our baby the day before we went to Idaho.  We are having a girl.  I was so happy I may have cried in the ultrasound tech's office.  We would have loved a boy too, but I can't even wait for a cute little girl!  I'm not big on belly pictures.  I'm never particularly photogenic, and what no one tells you about pregnancy is besides a cute little baby bump you also get cute little muffin top, but yesterday marked the halfway point of my pregnancy, so I snapped a quick shot.  This is me at 20 weeks pregnant with our baby girl.

On to the actual point of this post-- 2012 in Review.  It was a big year for Erik and me.  This is what we have been up to during the last 12 months.

January:  In January I turned 22.  I love my birthday more than any adult should, and I'm lucky to be surrounded by people who put up with that.  My parents got me an Iphone so I could document my free birthday cookie.  My birthday is also the day that we went and saw our new house for the first time.

This is the birthday quilt.  You get to use it the week of your birthday.  My mom mailed it to me from Idaho

February:  In February I out-ate a bunch of NFL linemen.   Football season ended, which makes February one of my favorite months of the year.

March:  In March we were knee deep in the house buying process.  I also traveled with the cheerleaders for the state basketball tournament. I also ran over a rock in our driveway.  It was weird, I don't really want to talk about it.

April: In April my mom came to help us move across town.  We got a lot of great help from both our old ward and our new ward, and we worked my poor mother to exhaustion.  However we got all our boxes unpacked, all our furniture arranged, and most of our wall hangings up in a weekend, so that was great.

We also went on a cruise to Bahamas in April.  It was so fun.  Moving is really stressful and it was nice to get away from moving stuff as well as the cold weather for a week.  The food was yummy and plentiful, the weather was warm, and the karaoke was awful.  All in all, a pretty perfect trip. 

May: In May I had my Spring piano recital, finished up my year at Head Start, and completed my second semester in the MPA program.  My family came up the last weekend in May for a relaxing few days of yardwork and home improvement projects.  I loved having them, but I had to resort to having a baby to get them to come back.  Erik and his buddy Travis did a great job building and installing our home theater. 

June:  The business entered its busy season and I saw a little less of Erik.  I hosted my first Princess Camp and found my true calling in life.  Alex and Emily came to visit us.

July:  July was a really fun month.  My darling friend Heather came to visit us, and I went to Idaho for Emily's bridal shower and kept moving south to Utah for Alex and Emily's wedding openhouse.  While I was in Utah I saw Chris and Beez and Larissa and went to my mom's family's family reunion. Erik traveled to Denver on a business trip and got to see a lot of his college friends.  At the end of the month Erik and I celebrated our 2nd anniversary and Erik's 28th birthday.

August: In August Erik and I traveled to Virginia for my brother's wedding.  We hung out a couple days and spent some time in Washington DC.  We had a great time.

August is rodeo season in these parts.  For one week a year I get Cowboy Erik.  I love it.  This was the month that Erik won our trip to Mexico, so we started planning for that.  Fall season cheer started.  Erik judged a vintage car show, which he is in no way qualified to do.

September:  Erik went on a business trip to Vegas.  I painted our doors black. What's much more relevant is that this is the month that we found out we were expecting a baby.  I was five weeks along when I got the positive test, and enjoyed a week of knowing before the sickness set in.   I told Erik at McKenzie River Pizza, which is my favorite place ever to go.  Equally exciting (for Erik at least) is that we traded in our Subaru for a Jeep.

October:  Worst month ever.  I threw up the whole time, got out of bed only when absolutely necessary, ate a ton of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and watched Newsies like 8 times.  I did get to go to scrapbook weekend in Logan at the very beginning of the month, which was great.  Erik had a good month at the dealership though.  He dressed up like Clark Kent for Halloween.

November:  We had an amazing time in Mexico.   We also had a great Thanksgiving with Erik's family.


December:  I finished up my fourth semester.  Just one more left!  I had 90 people show up to the winter piano recital, and we had a great time at the business Christmas party.  On December 21st we found out we are having a girl and so far she's looking healthy.  I gave up on the idea of going off of Zofran during this pregnancy.  We drove 22 hours round trip to go spend Christmas in Boise and it was worth every minute.  We have big plans to eat dinner and watch a movie and try and stay up until midnight tonight, but more likely than not we'll celebrate the new years with the east coast and then go to bed.

This year definitely brought the most changes for Erik and me.  A year ago we were living in a different house, I was still working at Head Start, and Erik had to watch the Seahawks on a small screen.  This year we (I) have a belly and a mortgage, and are expecting a new family member in the Spring.  We can hardly wait to see what next year brings for us.   Hopefully lots of visits!

New Years Resolutions Report Card

I love new years resolutions in that I love planning 15 wonderful things I'm going to accomplish/change and then following through on maybe two of them.  In an effort to avoid doing that, for 2012 we set fewer goals, and taped them up on our dresser mirror where they stared at me every day while I looked for zits.  Since I am now technically in the 18th grade, I only know how to relate to success in terms of grades, so I've compiled the following report card based on our/my completion of our 2012 goals.

Goal #1 Category: Health---Try at least 2 new healthy recipes a month
                    I did pretty well at this, with the exception of October, which is the Month We Shall Not Speak Of.  I made up for it by trying several new recipes a month over the summer, when I had no life.  Last night I made Brazilian black bean burritos, recipe courtesy of my friend Beez.  They were a pretty big hit around these parts.  Last week I tried a crock-pot Hawaiian meatball recipe from pinterest that garnered a "thanks for trying" response.  You win some, you lose some.  I give myself an A on this goal.

Goal #2 Category: Financial--- Save $X amount each month
           Erik and I had a goal to save a certain amount of money each month.  I thought it would be tacky to say the amount on my blog.  Anyways, in April we also switched to a commission plan at the dealership, which made this goal much more interesting.  We saved a little more or a little less some months, but overall we've exceeded our savings goal for the year.  It was a group effort.  Erik rocked it at the dealership and I got too sick to go shopping.  Way to go team.  A on this one.

Goal #3 Category: Social:  Make more girlfriends
            Is it pathetic that this was one my goals?  Ummm kind of.  But it took me a long time to feel integrated after we moved here.  I was pretty busy last year and didn't really put myself out there to make friends, and it was a little lonely.  I didn't want that this year, I wanted girlfriends to have lunch dates with and to borrow cans of chicken broth from.  I lucked out because I made some great friends this year.  Last year Erik would insist I had friends when I whined about how I didn't, so I came up with this criteria for determining friend vs. acquaintance:  A friend is someone you feel comfortable calling up to do something that same day and who you feel comfortable borrowing/asking favors from.  Under this definition I have 5 good friends in the neighborhood.  I'll take it.  A on this one too.

Goal #4 Category: Spiritual-- Go to the temple 4 times, read the Book of Mormon with Erik, have 100% visiting teaching
                 And......the party ends here.  We went to the temple twice.  The temple is about 2.5 hours from here, so it's kind of an all day thing.  We were planning on going a lot in the fall because it's a rough drive during the winter and during the summer we selfishly spent all our time at the lake.  Unfortunately I was sick all fall, and now I don't think I could make it through a whole session without having to pee....so we failed at this one.  Erik and I started out reading the Book of Mormon together, then decided we would read the same amount of chapters each week and talk about them on Sunday, and then just decided to read it individually.  So yes I read it, but not with Erik.  However I was pretty good about scripture reading overall this year, so B--.  I did pretty well with visiting teaching, but even though I visited every month I don't feel like I was a huge service to any of my sisters, so i give myself a B+ on that one.  Overall my spiritual GPA:  76%, C

Goal #5 Category:  Work/School-- Finish 21 credits toward MPA
                    Not a lot to say about this one.  I did it.  I have two classes left next semester and then I'm done.  A.

Goal #6 Category:  Family-- Two goals here:  1) make Erik lunch twice a week, 2) Get pregnant
                       Goal 1. was a fail.  While it's healthier and cheaper for me to make Erik lunches, turns out I cannot compete with the local BBQ shack, and this goal pretty much fizzled.  I have been pinning healthy and creative packed lunches and may or may not try for this goal again next year.  F
                       Goal 2.  We accomplished.  Of course now we are questioning the wisdom of that decision, but technically we met our goal.  A.  Average for family goals: C

Two C's and 4 A's.  Brings my GPA to 88.3 for the year.  Not amazing, but I really did think having our goals posted on the mirror helped me work harder and keep them in mind this year.  We are going to discuss next year's goals on the drive back from Boise (the drive to Boise is reserved for talking about baby names and creating a plan for buying all the baby stuff we need.  I love road trips.  Erik does not). 

To avoid a pictureless blog post I'm sticking in this picture of my cheerleaders from their Christmas routine.  Due to last minute injuries we had to make some adjustments to the pyramid, but I was proud of how well the new girls handled it.  It was a decently tricky pyramid sequence. Cheer in this area is kind of weird, we have tryouts for football season and then again for basketball season, so several of these girls have only been cheerleaders for like 3 weeks.  They were adorable.

Oh Christmas Tree

When I got home from cheerleading yesterday this was waiting for me--

It's not decorated yet.  I'll work on it this week.  I got a killer deal on a huge tree this year, but I had to order it online and wait for it to come.  People who are jealous of my ginormous Christmas tree Some people say you can't put a price or height on Christmas spirit.  I've got 12 feet of woodland beauty in my family room that says otherwise.

November

Overall November was a really good month for us.  We had a wonderful Halloween, trip to Mexico, and Thanksgiving.  Just this week I'm finally starting to feel less nauseated, and it's been so exciting to re-enter the world of the living.  As we speak we're having maintenance done on our fireplaces, and I'm looking forward to putting up our new Christmas tree while drinking hot chocolate next to a roaring fire while listening to the Neil Diamond Christmas album tomorrow.  Come on by.

Going through our month chronologically, here is Erik on Halloween (technically October, I know).  He was Clark Kent and he was adorable.  The lower picture was taken at the business, where everyone was supposed to dress up.  I still hold that if you dress up like a hunter in the Northwest that's not technically dressing up...

Halloween was also my last doctor's appointment.  Our little kumquat had grown so much!  Everything was looking good, and we couldn't even get that clear of a picture because the little gummy bear was bouncing around so much.  I also got to hear the baby's heartbeat, which was pretty cool.

The baby is still looking like Smeagol from Lord of the Rings, but we're hoping he/she outgrows that.  I have another doctor's appointment tomorrow, and then one two weeks after that to find out the gender.

Mid-November Erik and I went to Cabo.  Erik won a competition, so it was all-inclusive, all expense paid.  They even sent us a prepaid card to cover our luggage fees.  It was awesome.  The plane rides weren't great for me.  They were either really early in the morning or really late at night, which was not exactly my best time, especially 3 weeks ago.  However it was well worth it.  I slept and slept and ate enough to gain back some of my first-trimester weight loss, and ordered room service as much as I wanted. We swam with the dolphins (ours was named Ariel and she liked me best), went on a sunset cruise, shopped, played in the ocean, and laid by the pool.  It was a week in Heaven.  It was probably my favorite trip Erik and I have gone on together, and I'm glad we got to spend that time just the two of us.

Coconut Creme Brulee.  I think I would eat anything brulee-ed.

Enjoying room service breakfast. I crave egg mcmuffins and they actually had them on the room service menu, actually called egg mcmuffins, so that was good

Sexy beach hunk

Sunset cruise past the arch.  What looks like a baby bump there is most likely actually an egg mcmuffin bump

Early morning sunbathing while Erik waited for breakfast

It was amazing.  I want to go back and never leave.  I drank diet cokes and strawberry daiquiris brought to my beach chair by cute cabana boys all day long.

We had another great Thanksgiving.  I brought cinnamon rolls and fudge and particularly enjoyed mashed potatoes and green beans.  Don did a great job carving the turkey, and Debbie did a great job spending roughly 14 zillion hours doing everything else.  Erik and I have so much to be grateful for this year.

I'm looking forward to a busy December with Christmas cheer performances, piano recitals, finding out the gender of our baby, and traveling to Boise Mary-and-Joseph style for Christmas.  We are currently accepting any and all holiday baked goods.