It's Official, I CAN have Children!

Most of you already know this, but I am pregnant with our first child. I am extremely excited about this prospect!!! It has been a long haul to get to this point, but I am 22 weeks into this 40 week (give or take) journey.

I have had a bunch of ultrasounds 6 weeks, 8 weeks, 10 weeks, 19 weeks, 21 weeks. Everything looks fine, we saw 5 fingers on a hand and 5 toes on a foot - both good signs! It is amazing what technology has given the worrisome mother-to-be.

I have been very excited at the prospect of becoming a mom. It's the next step in an otherwise happy life. I haven't felt the least bit scared, that is until Teri and I went to register for baby 'stuff.' Who the hell knew there is sooooo much baby periphanalia - a lot of which I have no idea what it is for or why a baby needs it. I keep thinking my mother didn't have x, y or z and I think I turned out alright. So I haven't registered for everything that is recommended because I just don't have the room in the house to store it all. Also, I know myself, I will not use a bottle sanitizer (for instance)...soap and water do a fine job all on their own.

Here is a picture of the baby from our 20 week ultrasound. We don't know the sex of the baby - s/he didn't cooperate...which could be a sign of things to come.



This is a profile of him/her. S/he is looking up - you can make out the nose and lips as well as an ear and the skull. We don't have names picked out yet - we have been throwing a few around and are still working out if we like them or not.

Oh - the title of this post "It's Official, I CAN have children" is a reference to Debbie Downer on Saturday Night Live. Check it out...if you don't laugh at least a little bit you need a funny bone replacement!!!

No...It's Iowa

Field of Dreams is one of my favorite movies. I have seen it many times this summer - it's been on HBO 'nough said. It reminds me of my father - he took me to see it way back when. The movie also has a father/son storyline. Even though I am female it still is a feel good story. The end of the movie gives one reason to believe that there are ways to experience relationships that we wish would have ended differently.

A few weeks ago, Teri and I were discussing the order in which we would rate the following baseball movies:

Field of Dreams
The Natural
Eight Men Out

I rank them in exactly that order. How would you rank them? Are there any other baseball films that should be brought to the mix? We didn't include Major League as it is a comedy - which would be mixing apples and oranges.

Let me know!

Zebra Nose

We have two dogs. Max and Kendal (hence the url of my blog). In looking back at the archives of this blog, I realize that I haven't posted many pictures of them - in fact only one of Max. So here you go...

Kendal in our living room. She is also known as 'pretty girl' and 'damaged dog' because she limps from Lyme Disease and tends not to use one of her back paws. Right now she is losing what seems to be ALL of her hair. I vaccuum one night and the next morning there are clumps of her hair all over the place - and that is after a good brushing!

Max as a scruffy boy. Max has a lot of nicknames, jerky boy, Sparky, Sparky the wonderdog, Pig, Piggy. But the newest one is Scruff McGruff. We won't be able to call him that for much longer as he is getting a haircut this weekend. This picture is Max when his scruffiness was under control. I will take a before and after shot of him on Saturday as he goes 'under the knife.'

The reason for and name of this post is because of Kendal. On Memorial Day, Kendal was playing with the dogs next door through our fence. They have a way of communicating (barking) that they enjoy, but us humans get annoyed of very quickly. Well, Kendal put her snout though a broken slat in the back fence gate and scraped the hell out of her nose. She has scratched here nose before but never this badly. It was bleeding - which never happened before. A trip to the Boston Road ER and $170.00 later we are told it was just a scratch but to give her the antibiotics anyway. Here is a picture of her healing nose. It heals white and will turn back to black (hopefully).

ZEBRA NOSE - you can see it if you look closely

Cinco de Mayo

We went out to the local watering hole on viernes, el cinco de Mayo (Friday, May 5) and had a really good time with friends that we met there. See the pictures below.

Steve with his sombrero and maracas












A friend we met at Bob and Anne's house - Lucy and her boyfriend Woody. We had a lot of laughs with them!




This picture wasn't taken on Friday, but Helder was there too. We laughed a lot with him too!





I hope your cinco de Mayo was as enjoyable as ours was! Ole!

"My Life"

So Teri and I went to the Billy Joel concert last Saturday night at the Hartford Civic Center. After all of the stupid red lights on the way to finding the perfect parking spot. (Teri wouldn't let me pull into the lot just off the highway cuz it might have been pouring rain when the concert ended...I guess he is made of sugar.)

We had great seats. Not everyone around us thought so, but we did. We were 2 or 3 rows from the top of the arena about 1/3 of the way from the stage (section 215 if you want to know). We had a really nice view of the stage as well as what seemed to be our own TV screen to watch the close-ups.

Before the show started, we were talking about the songs we thought Mr. Joel might play. I asked if Teri thought he would play Angry Young Man...one of the lesser known popular songs. Teri said 'yes'. I asked about 'My Life', Teri said yes. Both of these songs I didn't think were on the play list - they are some of the more popular songs, but they weren't new enough so I thought they would be omitted.

Billy Joel comes on stage to roaring applause doesn't say one word and begins the frantic hammering that immediately identifies itself as "Angry Young Man." To which we were lucky enough to have a 'personal jumbo-tron' in the form of maybe a 32" TV screen with the camera on the side of the keyboard. It was really neat to see just how frantic his hands are while playing the intro to that song.

I bet you can guess what the second song was...yep - My Life. The Bosom Buddies theme song. (Did you know that the main characters "Kip" and "Henry" were named after bars in Berkeley, CA?)

Over all it was a great concert. Probably the best of the 3 times I have seen him (alright - it is really only 2 times, the third was with Elton John). This is one performer that I will go to see as many times as I can. It is always a good time!

I Was Semi-Tagged...

I got this email from my friend Aimee. I haven't posted in a long time and I really don't have anything profound to say these days so this is what you get!

How well do you know me? For instance, did you know...

Four jobs I've had in my life:
1. Event planner for various constituients
2. Liquor store cashier
3. Building Manager
4. Deli clerk
There are MANY more, but those are the ones I wanted to share.

Four movies I'd watch over and over:
1. Princess Bride
2. A League of Their Own
3. Rudy
4. A Few Good Men

Four places I lived:
1. Manchester, CT
2. Springfield, MA - Western New England College
3. Wilbraham, MA
4. Springfield, MA - in the house we live in now

Four TV shows I love to watch:
1. CSI (Vegas or Miami)
2. Las Vegas
3. Gilmore Girls (guilty pleasure #1)
4. Wildfire (guilty pleasure #2)

Four places I've been on vacation:
1. Cayman Islands
2. Orlando, FL
3. Martha's Vineyard
4. San Diego (on business, but I love it there so the Business was fun)

Four web sites I visit daily:
1. UMass.edu
2. Greg's blog (www.weretakingbetsthat.blogspot.com)
3. Teri's blog (www.beerforme.blogspot.com)
4. ?

Four of my favorite foods:
1. ice cream
2. strawberries
3. pineapple
4. pasta

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Home
2. San Diego
3. Orlando
4. Any place warm and sunny

You can do with this what you want. Copy it and blog it on your blog. Answer in comments, do nothing. What ever you want!

Have a nice day.

Now That There Is Funny Right There.

I was just 'next blogging' through my lunch hour and found this one. Check out the funny pictures - they made me laugh.