Laborious Labor Day

For Cody and I, Labor Day was full of.....well, labor. By choice, though! And no, not the baby kind of labor. I've got another four months before I have to endure that. The labor we were involved with today consisted of me moving into a new salon, and then helping Cody build a table for our dining room.  

Tomorrow, I will be starting work at Options Salon. Yay! I'm pretty excited about it. The people there seem very nice. We moved most of my stuff in this morning, but I have yet to situate or organize much of it. I guess I'll finish that when I go in tomorrow. 

After we moved my things in, we hopped over to Sonic and got some delicious beverages. Cody got a cherry-vanilla Dr. Pepper, and I got a strawberry lime-ade (extra strawberries). I'm always between that and Ocean Water. Yummmm.

My husband is such a handyman. He's quite the perfectionist too, so he's very thorough with his projects. We've been working on this table for most of the weekend and still have a long way to go. Cody decided to make it out of concrete and wood. So you can imagine how incredibly heavy it's going to be! It's going to look so awesome when we're finished with it. I can't wait to show you!

Most of my helping with the table consisted of watching.... or over-seeing the project. With a belly like this, that's nearly all I can do. I'm not even huge yet, but it's already becoming a chore to bend over, crouch, and lift things. I'm nearly 5 months now, and I can feel my little critter moving and kicking around inside. It's really strange, but also incredible. There's a living creature - human - in my belly! Ahh! We'll be finding out what it is within the next couple of weeks. Soooo close!

 Labor Day has come to an end with a little extra fun and relaxation. I played with Harper in the back yard, then cooked a delicious quesadilla dinner. Now we're lounging on the couch, watching Best of YouTube videos as I type this post. 'Twas a good day. How did you spend your Labor Day? 

Pregnancy Progress

I've been in the second trimester of pregnancy for a little while now, and I'm definitely enjoying it a lot more than the first! The nausea has subsided for the most part, unless I've waited too long to eat something... then it hits me with a vengeance. I've gotten some energy back, though. Not all of it, like before I was pregnant, but I'm feeling lively enough to actually perform regular, everyday tasks again. As you can see, I have a little bit of a bump! Some of that is a food baby, though, because I had just eaten a hearty lunch. Yummm.

The downside to this stage of pregnancy is that I'm not "obviously" showing yet (unless I'm wearing something very fitted). So I get those quick glances towards my belly where the person isn't quite sure so they don't want to ask and possibly offend me. Or maybe they're just thinking, "Wow, she's packed on a few pounds". I just want to wear a shirt that says, "Yes, I'm pregnant" or fast-forward to the stage where I am obviously showing. I know, as awkward as that makes me feel now, it'll probably be more awkward in other ways when I do have a huge belly. 

I haven't mentioned this to very many people until now, but I'm planning on having my baby completely naturally. My awesome sister-in-law let me borrow her Hypnobabies study guide and CD set. I just started it, but I'm loving it already. It's very calming and reassuring. It basically teaches you how to manage pain and gets you in a positive mindset about birthing. As of right now, I don't really have any fears about labor and delivery, and I'm hoping to keep it that way. So if you had a bad experience, don't tell me about it!

I'm trying really hard to enjoy my pregnancy, but I'm the type of person who always looks into the future and has a hard time just living in the present. Yes, I'm impatient...very much so. I can't wait for my little critter to arrive! ....Or at least know if it's a he or she. We'll be able to find that out early next month. Yayyyyy! I feel like it's a boy... sooo it's probably going to be a girl. Haha. 

What would be your guess?

Road Trip (Part 2)

When we finally got to Washington, we drove to Seattle to spend a day exploring the city. It was a really fun and interesting place! We found the famous and disgusting gum wall...or alley (the walls on both sides of the alley were covered in chewed up gum). It was so gross and smelled really bad! I didn't get very close to the wall, much less, add any gum to it. I did see a little girl do something terrible, though. I watched as she walked up to the wall and slapped both hands onto it and ran them down, feeling all of the gum pieces. I thought to myself, "Noooo, tiny girl! Whyyyy???!". Barf.

We also took a stroll through and around the Public Market. We watched guys throw a giant fish back and forth to each other, saw some people making fancy cheeses, and sampled pieces of chocolate pasta! 

After Seattle, we headed to Yakima, where Cody and Josh were going to film a documentary style video for one of Mabus Agency's clients. This part of the trip was really weird to me because the terrain changes so drastically from one side of the mountains to the other. If you're from there, you know what I'm talking about. The Seattle side is lush, green mountains, and the Yakima side is scorching hot desert. The mountains were beautiful, but very scary to drive through. As I said in the last post, I really don't like heights. It doesn't help much, either, when the winding road doesn't have any railing in some of the highest points. I could just look out of the window and see straight down the mountain side! Barf again.

The desert side was very hot. Like, 100+ degrees hot. There wasn't a whole lot out there either... just some hills and crunchy plants. It was pretty in its own way though. We stayed in Yakima for about three days for the work portion of the trip - the real reason we went out there. It was fun and we met some interesting people. 

After shooting on the second day, we decided to take a dip in the nearby river. Little did we know, the river ran straight off of those snow capped mountains we drove through a couple days before. It. Was. Freezing!! I waded in until the water was up to my thighs when I decided I couldn't handle going in any further. After several minutes, though, my legs went numb and I was good to stay in. Imagine walking through three feet of snow in your swim suit. That's what it was like. Maybe you've done that before, maybe you do that regularly, maybe you're crazy. I like being cold about as much as I like heights. Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of that adventure, but I wanted to share the story anyway.

If you have ever been to Seattle, what were some of your favorite places or areas to hang out?