baby room

Here are the long awaited baby room pictures. We had a lot of fun with the various projects. I'm very proud of how my mobile turned out. And Tristan really likes his night light. The canopy we put over the crib was lots of fun to make though Saphira has taken to hunting the butterflies. She knocked it down then sleeps on it. We have to keep reminding her that the crib is not hers. I'm sure she'll get the picture when the baby is using it. :) For now we just chase her out every once in a while. She really likes to sleep in the glider. That's usually where we find her.

Christmas decorating

Our family rule with Christmas decorations is they must wait until after Thanksgiving to be put up. The day after has been dedicated to the preparation for Christmas. Tristan did a great job putting up the tree. Saphira really wanted to help. She was curious about these boxes we were pulling out. She's also taken a liking to trying to eat the lower branches of the tree. We really have to watch her.

November News

Time for our November update, albeit a bit late. The month started out pretty normal, Tristan swinging along in classes and me keeping tabs on everything at home. I was working a few hours a day, it was all good. Then we had a bit of a scare one Sunday. We took a little trip to OSU's Labor and Delivery because of some worrisome bleeding I was having. They did some tests and an ultrasound and decided to keep me overnight for observation. The bleeding didn't occur overnight and I was sent home late Monday morning with a follow up appointment scheduled for the following Monday and instructions to "take it easy." Tristan took this to mean that I was not to lift a finger (or my body off the couch) for the next six days. He was in charge of meals (with the assistance of some close friends) and cleaning. I dutifully attended my appointment the following week. They did an ultrasound to test more things and sent me home with the charge to continue to vegetate for another week. I'd called my job the week before to let them know I would need the week off. I phoned again to update my boss and let him know I would probably not be returning. They were sad to see me go, as I was a good worker (I am very proud of this fact). Anyway. The doctor advised me to stay home and we adjusted our Thanksgiving plans (as it was that week). He also mentioned NO Black Friday shopping for me. Slightly disappointed we made the appointment for the following week and headed home. We had planned to go to Ann Arbor for Turkey Day, but considering the circumstances, we invited our friends to our house. Wednesday arrived and with it the Abernethy's. We prepared for the big feast the following day. I attempted to man my post on the couch as the boys prepared our Turkey dinner, but I had to get pictures. So...

Kevin and Tristan were on turkey duty. They stuffed it with apples and celery. It was really quite tasty.

Tristan did the honors to carve the turkey with a special set Kevin was so excited to use. The cutting board it came with had a ring with spikes to hold the bird in place. There were also these really nifty turkey lifters and a carving knife included.

We didn't have enough room at our table to hold everything, so we pulled out a second table to hold all the food. Katie set the table with special Thanksgiving candle holders, a runner, and made these cute little place cards with our names on them.

During dinner we talked about the things we are thankful for. Each person was able to share. Much of the same things were said. We are so thankful for family and friends as well as being able to educate ourselves for the benefit our our families (Kevin's in grad school for public health).

We then took a driving tour of OSU's campus and visited the Columbus Temple. When we got home we honored Kevin's Thanksgiving tradition of watching Home Alone as we ate pie.

It was a great holiday. We loved having the Abernethy's with us and are so grateful they were able to travel safely. It really is a blessing to have such great friends so close!

A quick wrap up to the whole bed rest story. After Thanksgiving I had another appointment. The doctor did an examination and took samples for a fetal fibronectin test. I got the negative results the next day and clearance to resume normal activity. I have a follow up to monitor the situation and if I remain stable, I'll be cleared for normal activity in the long term. I'm not working anymore, so I'll be able to take it a little easier until delivery.

Doin' well

We're in the swing of things at school. Tristan has been working hard in his classes, but still finds time to relax at home. I am very proud to announce that he did very well on his first anatomy exam, though it will probably embarrass him.

I spend most of my time doing things at home, but I do have a part time job at Culver's. It's a franchise restaurant home to butterburgers and frozen custard. The food is pretty yummy and there is a lot of variety.

I have been working on baby projects since our recent trip to the doctor revealed that there is an 85% chance we are having a little girl. She was not cooperating much with the ultrasound tech. She was sitting really low and curled up in a ball. It was an amazing experience looking at the monitor and realizing that is a real person. I would have loved to be able to get pictures up, but they are really hard to distinguish what is what. The doctor said everything looked good, but she wanted us to come back for another ultrasound next month. She wasn't able to get a good look at the heart and wants to try again. Hopefully we'll get confirmation for gender, too.

I plan to post some pictures of my projects when they are finished. I am super excited to show off our creative-ness! (Tristan does contribute a lot. That embarrasses him, too, sorry honey!)

We also plan to get a link up to our registry in the next month or so. I know you will be asking. :D

Pictures of our Adventures with the Abernethy's

At the Zoo

Museum of Natural History

Tristan the Mighty opens the clam.
Liz being attacked.
Outside the Museum of Natural History.

Katie, Kevin and Hunter Abernethy showing their Blue pride.

An Eventful weekend.

On the 13th we decided to take a trip up to Ann Arbor to visit the Abernethy's. We had a relaxing drive there... well, almost relaxing. We got about an hour and a half out of Columbus when it started raining. It was heavy, can't-see-through-the-windshield rain. That's kinda scary on the highway going 60 miles an hour. The trip to Michigan usually takes about 3 hours, but we were delayed by the rain. It was pouring when we got there. All the fun outdoors plans we had were shot because of the weather. We decided to make the most of it.

The Abernethy's wanted to show us around the city. We went to the farmer's market and on campus to the Museum of Natural History. Tristan was really excited for the museum. We drove up, found a place to park and walked in the museum to find they were closing in half an hour. We headed right for the dino exhibit. The half hour went quickly and we found ourselves leaving after only seeing a small portion of the displays. We headed back to the undergrad science building to get back into the parking garage and the door was locked. Of course, why would it be open Saturday at 5pm. We wandered about looking for a way in. Each door we came to refused to open. Finally we reached the top of the parking garage. We road the elevator to the ground floor. when we exited, we found this was the wrong parking garage! Pretending we were cars, we headed for the exit. Once outside we found the correct garage. Ignoring the 'Cars only' at the entrance we walked past the gate operator to our car parked in side. Whew! We headed back to Katie and Kevin's apartment to have pizza before heading home.

We left Ann Arbor about 7:30 for the drive home. We got an hour away and thu-thunk! thu-thunk! Our tire was flat. We pulled off to the side of the road to change it. It took a while to get everything finished, especially those airgun tightened bolts holding the tire on, but we got the tire changed. We get back in the car and it won't start. We'd left the lights on so we wouldn't get hit in the dark on the side of the road and drained the battery. We say a quick prayer and call the Abernethy's to get us the number for highway patrol. We called and waited for the troopers to come give us a jump. Thankfully, the rain that had persisted throughout the day had stopped so we didn't have to wait wet. Once we got the battery going we decided to head back to Ann Arbor rather than drive the remaining two hours on a spare tire. The Abernethy's are on their way to follow us just in case. We pulled over in a town called Bowling Green to check the tire pressure on the temp. We figured we might as well check the other tires too, when we discovered the rear passenger tire had a leak in it. There was no way we were driving on that tire tonight. By this time its about 11:00pm and the Abernethy's have met up with us in Bowling Green. We filled the tire as much as we could and drove it across the parking lot to Walmart's parking. We planned to have them patch the tires Monday morning. In the meantime, we headed back to Ann Arbor in the Abernethy's car. What a night! Two flat tires and a dead battery! That's what we get for going to Michigan.

Monday comes around and Katie takes us back to Bowling Green to get the tire repaired. We do a whole lot of running around to find out that we need to replace both tires. They can't be patched. So we do a lot of back and forth across town from Walmart on one end to this tire shop on the other (Walmart doesn't carry the right tires). Luckily, town is short. We get both rear tires replaced and we are two hundred dollars poorer, but on our way home.

The first evidence of the storm we'd missed came about twenty minutes north of Columbus. All the traffic lights are out. We can see trees lying on the ground. Once we get back to our apartment at Golf Pointe, we learned of all the excitement we'd missed. We walked in and are greeted by a hungry Saphira. Not that I blame her. We didn't plan to be gone two and a half days so we didn't leave food. Sorry kitty. The time on the stove and microwave are blinking. We concluded the power must have been out. We didn't worry much, because we obviously had it back. Our upstairs neighbors came to visit and invite us to a barbecue. It'd been planned assuming the power would be out longer than it was. Since all of the apartments run off electricity, the barbecue would be the only way to cook anything. At dinner we learned about the 75 mile an hour winds that had ripped through Columbus. The storm was a remnant from hurricane Ike. The winds caused power outages all over the Midwest, some of which are still out of power now, more than a week later. The rain that we'd had in Michigan was also hurricane Ike. Maybe we weren't supposed to get home Saturday night and the flat tires were a means of keeping us off those roads facing high winds. We are glad we were safe that night and not on the road.

This week...

We've been having fun waiting for school to start for Tristan. We've been checking out things to do around town and making friends with our neighbors and ward members. This week our washer and dryer were delivered and we were able to find a clinic for me to go to. I'm glad that's finally done. We are still working on getting a few more things in place, but for the most part everything's getting pretty normal. I've started looking for a job and hope that chore will be done by the time school starts. Today we visited the Columbus Art Museum. I was very impressed with their children's display. It'd be the perfect place to take an elementary class to visit for a field trip. Of course, that's the teacher in me. It's not very large. We saw everything in about three hours. We enjoyed our visit. We plan to visit some Metro Park gardens tomorrow. I'm excited for that. I'll try to post some pictures.
I do have a funny story to share. A few nights ago we'd just turn the lights off for the night and we hear this weird sound coming from the bathroom. I go to investigate. The noise was coming from the shower. I pulled back the shower curtain and Saphira is in the tub with her front paws on the side, lapping up water that has collected in the soap dish. We make an effort to keep that dish as water free as we can. It was really funny.

652 Trevino Lane

These are pictures of our new apartment. We'll get pictures up for the baby room soon.

Moving!

Our adventure started August 22. We packed up the truck with the help of some of the Elders from the ward. Tristan and four others filled the truck in about an hour. We then did the final cleaning and packed the car. We drove to West Valley to stay with my parents until Monday morning when we set out cross country. Saturday we were visited by friends including a surprise birthday cake for Tristan. (Both of us had forgotten his birthday in the excitement) We went to dinner with Tristan's family at the Spaghetti Factory then a game of mini golf following. Monday morning we left about 8:45 for a long day of driving. We drove to North Platte, Nebraska for our first stop. We rolled in at 11 pm then left the next morning. The second day we crossed the Mississippi River after ten hours in the car to stop in Galesburg, Illinois. Half way through Iowa we got a call from our apartment complex that the apartment we'd been assigned was not ready. Luckily they did have another one available. We got an early start Wednesday morning and arrived in Columbus at 6pm. We unloaded the truck at the Humbert's (the couple we split the truck with) apartment before coming to our own. We unloaded the truck and a neighbor invited us over for dinner. After dinner, we came home and set up the bed.

Saphira was a terrific sport. She slept most of the time in the car. Occasionally she'd meow to reminded that she was there. She did better in the car than both of us. We listened to C.S. Lewis' Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, and The Last Battle on the drive. I think Tristan got board of the drive much sooner than I did. Of course, he's made the trip before and it was all new for me.

Thursday and Friday we spent unpacking everything. We got a call Friday afternoon from our friends the Abernethy's, who'd moved to Ann Arbor two weeks ago. They offered to come down (it's a three hour trip-hardly anything) to help us finish unpacking. We finished before they arrived and decided to visit the Columbus zoo. We are doing well adjusting to everything. We enjoyed church today and were able to meet some ward members. This week we plan to get all the address changes and applications in. We'd already changed all our addresses before we came out here, but need to adjust for the reassignment. We are enjoying our time together before school starts.

Update

Much has happened since I was able to paw my way to the computer. My humans completed a difficult semester in school and both have graduated. The male has secured a place at Ohio State University Dental School for the fall. The humans seem stressed as preparations are taking place to prepare for the move. The humans have boxed up half of their belongings, leaving fantastic hiding places for me to play in. As items shift around, there are new perches for me to observe the goings on as the humans come and go. I am finding interesting new items appearing in the house, I have yet to determine the meaning of the brightly colored boxes. The temperature continues to rise inside as well as outside (so I assume, considering my limited experiences out of doors). I spend most of my days seeking out the coolest hiding places.

I have been left alone as the humans disappear for days on end. A nice lady came to feed and entertain me while they were gone. All that time alone, and I never got any toy or treat from their adventures. I wonder if they missed me at all. The first trip was to Las Vegas and California. The second trip they went to Columbus to house hunt. Last week they left me for a week to visit St. George with other friends. I was left home. At least I have been able to successfully coat their clothes with my fur.