Pumpkins, Costumes, and Candy!

We started the "Trunk or Treating" marathon last night. Emma seems like a real pro. I think she may have done this before in another life (do they do trick or treating in heaven?). Anyway, she carried her pumpkin around even after it was dragging on the ground from being so heavy with candy. She refused to let anyone help her with the load. What a trooper! Trunk or treating is particularly popular around here. In fact, it seems that most kids never do the door to door, at least down in our neck of the woods. The wards have all
started up trunk or treat traditions, in which the kids can collect candy from the back of everyone's decorated vans in a safe contained area. We've enjoyed it and you get a lot of candy without a whole lot of walking! What a bonus. Candy, without exercise. My favorite. So, last night we went trunk or treating in Ben's family's ward and tonight we went out to a friend's ward. We were all dressed up in a theme with Ben's family. Emma was Tinkerbell, I was Tiger Lily, Ben was a Lost Boy, Emily was Wendy, Ben Lee was a pirate, Adam was Peter Pan, Carol was Smee, and Clyde was Captain Hook. We were quite a sight. I never did get a great picture of all of us together, but I've included some scattered photos, so you can get an idea as to what some of us looked like. I hope to get some better pictures on Halloween night, particularly of Emily and Ben Lee because I never did get a decent shot of them in their costumes. Anyway, the trunk or treat we went to tonight in our friend's ward was particularly popular. There was a ton of cars and some great decor. We were laughing at the fact that 95 percent of the cars in the lot were vans. I fear we will be falling into this same mold soon enough. (Gasp!) We ate dinner at Ryan and Taya's home just before going out for our candy exhibition. Taya made a gormet meal of homemade bread and stew and other great goodies. It was wonderful! Below is a picture we tried to take of all the kids on the couch; it was tricky to get everyone to look at the camera.

Before and after our outing with our friends, Ben and I successfully completed carving our Halloween pumpkins. Ben had the clever idea to make a Pumpkin Man. He got three large pumpkins and stacked them on top of each other. We carved the top one with a great silly face. Currently he is out on our closed-in porch, instead of at our front door, so pumpkin smashers won't mutilate his body. I think this is my favorite Jack-O-Lantern we've ever done. Pumpkin Man makes me laugh... a simple face, but full of personality.

Slide Show

I discovered another fun photo gadget, called slide.com. I love the internet! There are so many fun free things. :) Anyway, I just wanted to experiment with this, so I took all my flickr photos and used them for my slide show. Pretty fun, eh?

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

Recovery

As many of you know, I've had an aversion to hamburgers since I started to get morning sickness with this pregnancy. However, I must truly be recovering, because I ate a hamburger today and I very much enjoyed it! :) What a breakthrough. Ben and I ate a fun restaurant called Firebirds this evening. We went out with friends from school... kind of the calm before the storm of finals which will be starting up in a couple of weeks. We even went without Emma! A friend of mine was so nice as to watch her for us. It's been great because we've just started a babysitting tradeoff. It's wonderful to have someone you can call to babysit, especially someone you trade off babysitting with because then you don't have to pay. I'd much rather pay in labor, instead of cash. Anyway, it's a wonderful feeling to be fully recovered from the sick part of being pregnant. Speaking of recovering, I am finally over my cough. I went to the OB/GYN this past Monday for my second prenatal exam (and the baby is doing great; he says that Lumpy has a good strong heartbeat). I told him about the cough I've had for the past 6 weeks. He listened to my lungs and said that I do indeed have bronchitus. He gave me some great medication and I felt 95 percent better the day after I started taking it! Anyway, he gave me a antibiotic, steroids, chest congestion pills, an inhaler, and some great cough syrup for nighttime. I told him that I hadn't had a full-night's sleep since the coughing started and he prescribed me some really powerful cough syrup that just puts me in a coma at night. I was so excited that there was something safe I could take that could do that for me. I've been sleeping so wonderfully the past few nights. I feel so much better for just finally getting some sleep. Before, I could hardly even nap during the day because I would start coughing whenever I'd lie down. It was incredibly frustrating, because I was absolutely exhausted. I'm just so grateful to finally be better! Oh, and we really love this doctor. Ben came with me this last time and we both agree that he is a great, trustworthy doctor to be taking care of me and little Lumpy. And the most exciting part of all... we have our ultrasound to determine the gender scheduled for Friday, November 17th at 8:30 am. We are soooo excited! I'll start up a poll in a couple of weeks in which you can vote for boy, girl, or other. ;)

Ben is away right now at the hospital working with his preceptor. He needs 10 hours completed before the end of the semester in a few weeks. He's going to spend at least 5 hours tonight and then he'll go again another evening later on. He really enjoys spending time with this ER doctor. It sounds like he keeps things challenging, but fun. Ben seems to really learn a lot while he's there. It's exciting because Ben only has one more semester of classes and then he starts up with rotations. At that point, he'll be moved around every month to a different specialty. He'll get a wide variety of experiences and this will really be when he makes a decision as to what field he wants to work in. It's exciting to see him progress through medical school, especially since he's doing so well!

After 5 months, I finally posted another book review (how embarrasing!). I'm now starting to read the final book in the Series of Unfortunate Events, entitled The End. I'm so excited to see how this story concludes! View my most recent book review for The Screwtape Letters here.

Halloween is approaching...

Oooo yipee! Halloween is almost upon us as we enter the second half of October. I love Halloween... I think this is mostly due to it being the beginning of the holidays. I tell you, though, who arranged the holiday schedule to have the 3 biggest holidays 3 months in a row. Shouldn't we spread the excitement throughout the year a little better? Anyway, I also love the fall and Halloween is the perfect fall holiday. I love Halloween colors and I really love pumpkins! It's fun to decorate with pumpkins and it's great to carve and light a pumpkin to create a lovely Jack-O-Lantern for the porch. For Family Home Evening today we made and decorated sugar cookies in the spirit of Halloween. Emma and I went to the grocery store earlier and bought some things for our cookie extravaganza to be had this evening. She was quite excited to get started. She helped put flour on the counter when we rolled out the dough (and also helped put flour all over herself). Her favorite part, however, was eating the frosting. She alternated spreading frosting on her cookie and taking spoonfuls for herself. It was lovely to watch. Ben did a great job as well decorating his share of cookies. I've been eating his first, because I think they look the most fun. I like to eat fun looking cookies.

Emerging from the Cave...

I've had a leap of hope the past few days that I may actually return to civilation. I think I'm actually beginning to feel better! It's always hard to believe ever actually getting better when you feel so horrible. Anyway, my cough is on the outs and my nausea is much more tolerable.... my appetite is returning... I've been eating foods I haven't been able to eat for the past month (such as pasta, bagels, cheese, etc). Don't talk to me about hamburgers or salads, however. Those are still on my hate list. I was recently watching a DVD that my dad had burned of my mom doing an interview of me while I was 5 months pregnant with Emma. Apparently at 5 months, I was feeling very well.... I was no longer throwing up and I had even gotten over my aversion for hamburgers and salad. Surprisingly, my food likes and dislikes have been the same for this pregnancy as they were the last. (Does that mean another girl?) I thought it would be really different, but they haven't so far. My favorite foods right now (which were the same with the last) are fruit, peanut butter, orange juice, and cereal.

Anyway, since I've begun to come out the fog I've been in for the last while, I finally left the house for a decent outing. (If only the outside of my apartment looked like the picture above!)Ben was so happy that I was feeling better today that he took time off of a few classes and took Emma and I to the zoo. It was really fun! We even bought Emma a very cute "zoo hat" from the gift shop. She actually picked it out. She refused any color but blue. She wore it around the whole day and even went to bed with it. What a funny girl. Ironically, we didn't actually see many animals while we were at the zoo. We spent most of our time eating and watching Emma play on the spray pad and then in the playground area of the farm. We even took some time to eat some ice cream. Yum! We did see some animals, however... all of which Emma really enjoyed. She said "hi!" to them all and got rather affectionate with the goats in the petting zoo. She was petting and hugging all that she could get her hands on. Those poor goats didn't know what hit them. ;) As I write this, I'm uploading some videos of our zoo adventure to add to this post. They are taking forever, because I finally remembered to switch it to high quality video. So, this time they won't seem so out of focus. While they continue to upload, I'll move on to another topic...

Emma's been really getting into dress-up as of late. It started with the Nemo costume we got her. Since then she's gained a growing love for hats, purses, dresses, etc. For Halloween she is going to be Tinkerbell (as part of a family theme of Peter Pan... I will be Tiger Lily and Ben is going to the Indian Chief... the rest of Ben's family will taking the parts of Peter Pan, Wendy, Captain Hook and others). Anyway, Carol and Emily put together a lovely Tinkerbell costume for her. Here's an early photo of Emma trying on her new costume. There are actually some darling shoes with ribbons and bells that go with it, but they are still "under construction". Emma also had fun wearing around some wild rainbow pants (which were actually Ben's when he was a kid. You'll have to ask him why and for what purpose he wore these). So, I'm going to try to compile a dress up box for Emma, since she enjoys it so much. Carol gave us a good start with some hats and other clothing items. I'd like to get her some fun scarves and jewelry and other accessories that she can put on herself and strut around all she pleases. What a good activity for her. ;)

Oh lovely! The videos finished. Enjoy!

Childless for a day

Today was much different than most days. Carol picked up Emma this morning a little after 6 and took her to their house for the day. She wasn't returned until this evening! So, we were Emmaless for the day. It was wonderful! I hope that doesn't sound insensitive, because of course we miss our Emma any time she is away, but it sure was great to have a repreive. I took a great long nap this afternoon and pretty much just spent the day relaxing. It was fantastic! It reminded me a little of when Ben and I were in our married with no children stage of life. We didn't have Emma until 3 years into our marriage, so we had a good long time alone together. It's definitely a different dynamic and lifestyle. But as much fun as it is just the two of us, Emma is just way too amusing to imagine life without her. She keeps us busy and also extra happy. She adds some real purpose to our life. In fact, one of the main reasons Ben and I are so motivated to get through medical school is so that he can be a good provider for our family. We really love being parents! Speaking of parents, just last night, Ben and I stumbled across a Power Point presentation that Emma and I had made for him for this past Father's Day. I've uploaded it to FileFactory. It isn't the most user friendly of file hosting sites, but it was one of the few I could find that would let you upload and share a large file. To view it click on the following link:
Father's Day Presentation. Then scroll down about a third the way down the page to where it says in itty-bitty letters "Downlaod for free with FileFactory Basic". Click on this and then once again scroll down and click on the link that says "Click here to begin your download". The pictures gave us a good laugh and reminded us of how quickly Emma is growing up. For example, she no longer has her pacifiers and she has much more hair! I'll leave you with a picture of Emma when she was a mere 3 months old. What a cutie!

There's a fetus in my belly...

It's been a little while since I blogged, so I feel like I should think of something to blog about. I'm still morning sick (or really, "all-day" sick). I don't know who coined the term "morning sickness", because I'm never just sick in the morning. Anyway, I've been plagued with other illnesses as well, such as a bronchitus-like ailment, and the stomach flu. Some may wonder how I could tell the difference between the stomach flu and morning sickness... well, trust me, there's a big difference, and it's not pleasant. So, the bottom line is that I'm absolutely sick of being sick! I miss being productive and staying busy with the cleaning and taking Emma on outings, and doing grocery shopping and even making mundane post office and bank trips. I miss my routines and just all around feeling well. It's definitely worth it, being sick for my little fetus (a.k.a "Lumpy), but it's not easy and I hope it passes soon. I have 3 friends who are pregnant right now with their second child, just like me, and they all feel like this second pregnancy is much harder than the first. It makes me worried that not only am I sicker than the last time, but that it will linger throughout the entire pregnancy. Oh, good grief!

Well, other than being ill, the only other thing I can think to discuss is the Season 3 Premeire of Lost that aired last night. Man, that show is wild. I'm just so intrigued by the story. Ben and I always have a question/answer/theory session after watching an episode, in which we try to decipher what everything means, and things we desperately want answers to. I'm going to throw out some thoughts on last night's episode:

1. I was shocked to discover that The Others are living in a make-shift suburbia in the middle of the island. This was actually a satisfying discovery for me. I mean, they had hinted in the past that the brown ratty clothes they've been wearing around were merely "costumes". I'm not sure why they want to disguise themselves as crazy native island dwellers, but this is only one of hundreds of other questions I have been asking... best not to get ahead of myself.
2. Why do the Others live on this island? It seems they are actually trying to live normal, modern lives, but how did they get here? I presume that they were all brought here having something to do with the Dharma Initiative, but why are they still hanging around when the project seems to have gone to the wayside? Or has it?
3. I learned from watching the Official Lost Podcast (to view, click on the link and then click on the "Season 3 Video Podcast 1" in the list of Lost videos clips) that there are indeed several factions of "Others". Maybe that Carl guy that was in the cage next to Sawyer is part of some other group, outside of the one we know.
4. Who is Rouseau, really? What are her intentions/loyalties on this island? I have been wondering recently about Henry's capture. He seems to be quite a leader figure with the Others; he doesn't seem like he really would have allowed himself to be captured, unless it was on purpose. Was Rouseau in on his capture to help him get in with the Lost survivors? I definitely think that Henry being captured, and brought back to the hatch, was all intentional, in order for him to get entrenched with the plane crash survivors and to learn about them, and maybe even with the plan to get Michael to do his dirty work with the promise of returning Walt.
5. Speaking of Walt, what is going to happen with him and Michael? There is no way they are really just heading home. They must have been set up for another trap or something. The Lost Podcast says that we will find out about them, but not for a little while. Apparently, we need to learn some other things before returning to their story.
6. What happened to Desmond, Locke, and Ecko? Are they dead? I have a hard time believing that, but I believe they were all still in the hatch when Desmond turned the key and that bright light occured. So, I'm not sure what happened with the hatch and the magnet and all that.

Okay, this is getting way too long. The bottom line is that I have way too many questions, and who knows when they will be answered. I'm with Dadoo: I'm so "lost".