happy freakin' mother's day

i always thought i'd tell my mom the news right when i found out

i was going to have a baby.  i ended up waiting ten weeks.  it was tough

to keep the secret at times, but it allowed me to live in denial just a little

bit longer, so all in all it was worth it.  not to mention the way we told

her and the rest of my family was pretty awesome.

 

i made my mom a photo book for mother's day.  it pretty much listed all

of our favorite things about her and told her why we love her so much.  my

dad and sisters knew i was doing this because they helped me gather the pictures,

but they saw it for the first time when she did, and she read it aloud to everyone.

 

 

 

on the last page it said, "...and starting december 3, you'll be the best

grandma in the world."  the picture on that page was a copy of our ultrasound,

which at that point looked like a little kidney bean.  but she kind of read it

under her breath at first, and then said "are you serious?!" and everyone yelled

at her to read it out loud, and then they all started yelling and crying, and giving

me hugs, and patting richard on the back.  and we got the whole thing on video,

which is about the greatest thing in the world.

 

it felt good to have that secret off our chests, but we basically told them all

to keep their mouths shut or we'd never let them see or hold the baby because

we still had to tell richard's family.  which we waited to do until 17 weeks

when we found out that we're having a boy.

 

 

its not that we're not excited.  we're stoked.  but we're also scared slightly

out of our minds.  so it has been nice to take this all one day at a time.  i am

thinking ahead, though, and i realize that next year i'll be a mother on

mother's day...this baby had better not take after his father in the gift-giving

department, or else.

stupid is as stupid does

isn't that what forest gump's momma says?

forest gump is what comes to my mind when i think of all

the running richard has done this summer.

 

he started out by running the ogden half-marathon for me.

yes, originally i was going to do this, but a few digestive issues

 and embarassing squats in the park later, richard offered to fill in for me.

which is why his tag says my name on it and not his.

 

here he is at the buttcrack of dawn as i kick him to the curb

of the drop-off point to climb aboard the buses with all the

other runners that would take them to the starting point at the

far side of pineview dam.

 

 

 

and here he is after hearing my name called as he crossed the

finish line in just barely over 2 hours.  did i mention that his

longest "training run" was about 2 miles?  what a joke.  at least

his knee hurt a little bit from the downhill...

 

 

 

but not enough to keep him from doing the ragnar relay about a

month later.  i was supposed to do this one, too, but decided against

it when the i.b.s. problems shut down my half-marathon training...and

when i had a growing fetus to use as an excuse.  lame, i know,

but i volunteered and still got a sticker for the back of my car, so who gives?

 

here he is running across the finish line as a very festive member of

"los bandidos."

 

 

austin met me at the finish line to watch the magic.

 

 

it would have been fun for us to do this together, but tyson filled

my spot, and i'm sure that was a disappointment to no one.  he

runs cross-country and is training for the iron man.  enough said.

plus, i know they had a great brotherly bonding experience stinking

up the van and running (literally) on no sleep.

 

 

los bandidos.

 

 

i'm a proud wife, and i love my man, but he smelled like forest gump

looked at the end of his longest run in the movie.

 

 

 

when you pee on a stick...

and you see two lines instead of one...

your faces look like this because it means you're having a baby.

a baby boy, to be exact.  the test doesn't tell you that, but we just went

to our 17-week appointment today, and we saw a little something on the

ultrasound monitor that makes us think our little richard has a little richard,

if you know what i mean.

happy and scared to death.  that's how we've been feeling the past 4 months.

and will probably continue to feel some version of those emotions for the

rest of eternity, or so we've heard from many a parent.

holy crap.  we're having a baby.  december 3.

nose bleeds and broken hearts

those are the two things you get when you're a jazz fan.

well, in my experience anyway.

we were lucky enough to go to one of the last regular season jazz games,

when they played the pheonix suns and won their spot in the playoffs.  those

tickets were scored in a roundabout way from a kindly jerk (yes, they do exist)

who i've never actually met, but work with at weber state.

long story short:  a mutual friend of ours asked me if i'd like some jazz tickets,

i said, "uh, duh," and he said, ok well let's make this a group date and you get your

friend to go with my friend (who had the tickets).  i said ok because when i asked

her she was thrilled, but the jerk never contacted her and so he ended up ruining the

whole situation, but felt bad enough to still give me his tickets.  they were dateless,

but we had a great time.

starting with dinner.  we ate at the california pizza kitchen, where we

ordered some pizza that came with habanero pepper salsa that was

far too spicy for my liking.  richard, however, loved it.  so i dared him

to eat all of it.  he said no.  so i double dog dared him.  and just like that time

he fell in the pond at the mortuary, he rose to the challenge.  i bet him

anything in the world that he wanted, and he began.

that bowl of salsa was completely full, and i had maybe half a spoonful.

he ended up finishing it.  not without pain (for the next couple of days), i

might add.  the only restriction on the "anything in the world" prize was that

he had to decide what he wanted that night.  the salsa must have fried his

brain because he chose new socks.  anyway, it was fun to watch.

besides the fact that the guy sitting behind richard spit all over the back of

his head and neck (imagine homer simpson), we had a great time.

it was close enough to be exciting, and they won, of course.  we barely

made the train home, but it was worth it.

another season of nose bleeds and broken hearts is behind us.

but that's what we penny-pinching, die-hard jazz fans are used to.

i'm keeing my fingers crossed for next season...just like i have

my entire life.

a blast from the past

is what we experienced the night the porter girls went to see

titanic in 3d.  i don't usually like 3d, but i pretty much reverted

back to the twelve year-old girl who would do anything

for leonardo dicaprio, so i loved it this time around.

we reminisced about a four year-old chelsa, who knew exactly what numbers on

the vcr meant she had to push stop, fast forward, and then play to skip the

nudie-boobie scenes on our vhs copy of the film those 13 years ago.  wasn't titanic

every tyke's favorite movie, right along with the boz?

sarah and chelsa had a running commentary, so it was a good thing that i

wasn't right next to them.  i really did love it as much as i did the first seven

times i saw it in theaters with syrie bennington in sixth grade. 

so what, i was the only one who cried.  ok, sobbed.

i still think that the door was big enough for both of them, dammit.

it certainly was a girls night of titanic proportions.