But have you seen his movies?

I love to lurk on other people's blogs and most recently, baby boards. Some of the posts are serious and I learn a little and other posts are just purely for fun. Today I came across a post that was basically a "Your husband has been run over by a very large truck and you are no longer pregnant and you HAVE to choose a celebrity to help 'get you through this difficult time', who would you choose, when obviously all you are thinking about is your poor husband who isn't dead (thank God) but just in the hospital." OK, that isn't word for word what the post said, the gist was basically asking what celebrity do you secretly lust for.


Far and away, the most popular answer:

Turns out many people are also pining for Dwayne Johnson, Edward Cullen (please already), Vin Diesel, and John Travolta.

OK, I undestand that you may not all agree with Adrien Brody, I can understand that. I myself am torn with whether the big nose is really all that lustworthy. I just really love his work. The thing is I thought about it for a few mintues. Not that I was going to post an answer, I was just curious about who I would, should this happen to me, be looking for. Turns out, I don't really find actors all that hot. It's characters I fall for. Take John Krasinski for instance. He isn't hot or steamy but I just love Jim Halpert, the character. For like 15 years I have been harboring the smallest crush on Lloyd Dobbler, not John Cusack. Other than character's with certain character traits, I just lust for my husband:

What? That isn't Todd? Oh, I swear it looks like him, at least when Todd had long hair. Well, I guess if he should happen to be walking by the hospital, he could come on in.

But now I'm curious, what characters or celebrities do you like?

*This blog is written entirely in jest. I love my husband very much and besides have you seen recent pictures of Gavin Rossdale, Todd has aged way better than he has.

All These Pictures of You

I am doing the most tedious job possible. I am looking through, deleting, copying, and saving over 4000 pictures onto my Maxtor One Touch External Hard Drive. I am already in for over three hours and not done. Problem is I haven't gone through my pictures and saved them to the drive in over a year. That's a lot of pictures accumulated. Also, I haven't developed a picture since Thanksgiving when I was working on albums for Christmas presents so I am also going through and picking a few to develop (you know 300 or so) because I can't survive with a digital album alone. There's just something about me and pictures. I don't like to be in them but I love to take them, save them, print them, look at them over and over. But Digital Cameras have turned out to be a great invention for someone like me that takes way too many pictures. At the rate I was going I would have to rent storage space just for my photos.

And it isn't just my own photos. I love to look at everyone's photos. Seriously. If I ever come over and you have nothing else to entertain me with, just shove an album in my lap and I will seriously be enthralled for at least a half hour. I love to see how people used to look, see their smiles, the honest ones and the cheesy for the photographer ones. I like to see the places other people have gone, what they took pictures of, what they wished to remember. I think it's sad that so many people are developing less pictures and just greedily keeping all their pictures to themselves on their personal hard drives.

I know that I can go over the top so I have put a new limit to my picture developing, which to be honest got really out of hand last winter when the twins were born and I developed 600 pictures of newborn babies not doing anything. I am aiming for two albums a year, unless of course we go somewhere like Disneyland and then that deserves an album all to itself, right?

OK, I know my obsession with pictures is something I have to work through, but not while my kids are so small and cute.

What a lucky birthday girl.

When I was a little girl I always wanted to build a dollhouse. You know one of those sets from Michael's complete with window kits and door trim. My mother worked at Michael's and during closing, when my dad and my other siblings came to pick her up, I would wander the aisles of Michael's always stopping and looking up in wonder at the dollhouses on display.

One year for Christmas my mother was able to buy me one from salvage at Michael's. Meaning she got it very cheap because the sets were very expensive, very. Only problem was I was ten and had no one to help me put it together. I begged both of my parents to help me but they were always too busy, too tired, working, and other normal stuff for parents. I eventually tried to do it on my own, oh how beautiful the pieces were to me. However, it turned out the set was in salvage because it was missing quite a few pieces. My dollhouse never saw it's own windows and doors installed and eventually winded up in a landfill while I turned to music and boys.

When we got back from Arizona a month ago my brother and his girlfriend showed us a small house made from a Dr. Pepper box and tape as well as these plans,

They were going to build a dollhouse for Tyler (my brother)'s girlfriend (Jordan)'s sister's 3rd birthday which was coming up in less than a month. The following weekend, with only three weeks to go, they began construction. Over the past three weeks we have had Tyler and Jordan working diligently day and night in our garage working on their masterpiece, with occassionally a little help from Todd.

Yesterday was the deadline and they still seemed to have a lot of work to get done. The house was still without a roof, there were no stairs, and no shingles to name just a few things that needed yet to be done. We helped were we could, Todd did a lot and I even cut shingles for them (That is the only thing I did, can you see how I am sticking it in here to get credit?). I finally went up for my nightly bath at 11 leaving them to complete the dollhouse and honestly not really thinking they would. However, this morning when I woke up and took a peek in the garage they were completely done. I crept around it in wonder feeling like that 10 year old girl who wanted oh so long ago her very own dollhouse.

Below are some pictures both from construction and the final product, I hope you enjoy them half as much as I do.

Yep, that's real tile. Only the best for their dollhouse.

Nice shot of the swivel stairs from the second floor balcony.

The brick and shingles. The brick was drawn freehand by Jordan. The shingles? Spray-painted 60 grit sandpaper cut into small pieces and stapled on diligently by the most handsome father I know.
Awesome, isn't it? I hope Jordan's sister knows how lucky she is. I think 480 hours of peoplepower went into this house.

The Results Are In

Yesterday morning I had an appointment with my doctor. As usual I waited for almost an hour to be seen for almost five minutes, but I believe that is just the way doctor's office visits go. Maybe they fear that if they were more efficient patients may fuss over the costs of a ten minute visit even more. Maybe the one hour plus visit is used to trick us?

Sorry, just thinking about my wasted time and the skyrocketing price of health care. But back to my point, the first thing my doctor told me was that all four of my levels (the fasting and three hour levels) were all within completely normal levels. I do not have gestational diabetes. She said that she didn't know why my levels were so high at the one hour, it must have just been a fluke she said but we had to test and see. I know it was no fluke but rather the equivalence to being smote for lying about my breakfast that morning. Whatever the case may be I am pleased to have that behind me and to know that all looks normal.

I am now on two week visits. With the twins I would have loved to have two week visits because I was constantly worried. Now I only worry about whom I am going to get every two weeks to watch the twins. But with two week visits it definitely feels as if this pregnancy is winding down.

Please tell me this happens to everyone with toddlers.

Last month we traveled to Arizona and California for our big summer trip. The biggest past of that trip was a multi-family excursion to Disneyland. Todd and I had decided that we would put together a photo album of our trip since the twins are young and may not remember anything ever from the trip. We took pictures of every square inch of the park, every parade that ran through the park, fireworks, and individual rides. With a few hundred pictures deleted we still had upon our return over 600 photos of which we needed to narrow down to 200 photos for our album that we picked up at World Of Disney. One important thing for me for this album was to include one picture of our family. Just one. I didn't think I was asking too much when I asked various attendants at the park to take our families photo. Apparently, I had no idea what a huge task it would be to get one decent photo of our family. Below is the best of what we got.

Sad huh?



Before we came home from the desert we had a photographer take our families photo. Needless to say, even he couldn't get a decent photo of the four of us.

Let's just say, I can't wait until Christmas photo time.

This and a cherry coke would just about do it for me.

Someone around here has decided to revive the ole Cinemaphiles website and it wasn't me. Not that I enjoy films any less these days, and somehow we still manage to find time to watch movies, it's just that I don't know that I am cut out to be a film critic. I felt like I didn't have anything new to say and I was never pleased with my short little blurbs about movies. I have decided that when I have something to say about a movie, either good or bad I will submit a review, otherwise I am just going to go about my film viewing as I have been for the past six months.

One thing I always enjoyed with the site was checking out new movies and posting trailers to films we were looking forward to. The other day as I was editing this feature on the site I somehow found my way to You Tube where I spent the next ninety minutes searching through trailers. There aren't that many new movies that I am looking forward to this summer but there were a couple that caught my attention.

This one for instance, has me wishing I had a babysitter despite our lack of a decent theatre here in town.

And this one, well I can't decide but any trailer that opens with The Smiths, well it may just get a spot on my Netflix Queue later this year.



If nothing else both films seem to have impressive soundtracks.

Because I will never be able to make time, I am taking time.

I have had every intention of blogging with no moment to actually pursue it. Take this for example, a post I began Friday morning:

"Let me begin by saying that I really should not be here. We have company coming in a few hours for the weekend, lunch plans and pool plans this afternoon and my house could really do a once over, OK maybe more but it's probably only getting the surface cleaning this morning, if it's lucky.

Every night I find myself in bed struggling to fall asleep when I come up with the best blog post ideas, OK maybe more like acceptable posting ideas at best. But I don't want to get up and out of bed for fear that I will never fall asleep. The next morning I can't remember anything, that seems to last all day and pertains to everything.

I feel like I have been on the phone constantly all week. "

That was all I got out before my phone conversations began anew for the day and eight hours later I was even further behind on just about ever task at hand. Not that I spent eight hours on the phone, but it certainly felt that way. There are things going on around me that I am not at liberty to talk about. Believe me, I want nothing more than to come to my blog and vent about numerous things currently occupying all of my time, but when I think about four months ago and all the trouble venting could get me into, I realize I have no other choice really but to carry on and hope that all ends well and soon.

I know that sounds terribly cryptic, but I just can't take my chances. I will say that it seems like we jump from one overwhelming burdening situation to the next around here. We hadn't even closed on that nightmare of an investment when our lives were all but consumed into a new drama.

I realized that one of my last posts actually put me further along than I really am. I beleive I said I have nine weeks left to go when I indeed had 11 weeks to go. Now I have a little over 9 weeks left to go and I am completely torn by my feelings towards those next two months. I love feeling the baby move and squirm, I love my tight rounded belly, I love the idea of carrying this child with me every step of my day. On the flip side, I have grown three inches round in the past week, easily. I have begun to cramp up in my arms and feet in addition to the calf cramps. I am beginning to lose sleep because of my uncomfortable size. However, on the grand scale I have decided that I love being pregnant.

Unfortunately, I really must see to my house. I really don't want to and can't afford someone to come in and help me but it is getting to the point where I am quickly losing ground. The once over I promised my house on Friday never really happened and now it needs more of a once over. I wish I could clean rooms up and then just shut them off for the next few months.

I wonder if that would work? I wonder if the kitchen could be one of those rooms?

Bummer

We have been back for a week now but with getting readjusted to time zones, unpacking, Uncle Billie's Day and a book deadline for book group I haven't really had the chance to write. In truth, I did begin a massive trip recount but I was boring myself eight paragraphs in and shelved that post. It's summer here and seemingly hotter than ever, may be my girth may be the humidity, whatever is causing it I am not looking forward to nine more weeks of it. We have already been to the pool twice since getting back (I know and I haven't blogged) but I am not quite confident in going it alone, the kids just somehow seem smaller at the pool and I am a huge worrier in case you hadn't realized.

Yesterday, however, was a real bummer of a day. I had my sugar and iron tested. I thought I was prepared, I wasn't. I was supposed to eat breakfast so on my way out I grabbed a Fiber One bar. However, I wasn't supposed to eat fruit and I had taken one bite of my bar when I realized it had strawberries in it. I decided not to eat the rest of it. When I got to the office I was taken in immediately and asked what I'd had for breakfast and you know what I did? I lied. This I believe is where all my troubles began. Not wanting to appear as if I couldn't understand directions I told my nurse I had a piece of toast. It's hard to find a babysitter around here and I couldn't risk having to go back another day, I know I should have been just been honest, maybe it wouldn't have even made any difference.

So I was given the yummy drink that amounts to sno cone syrup without the ice and drank it up. I then visited my doctor, or rather I suppose she took three minutes to visit me. I shared with her my intentions of a VBAC and she told me that her collegues would support my decision as long as the baby wan't too big and as long as I went into labor on my own. She told me they would rather do a c-section that try and induce a labor that isn't prgressing. I am hoping labor happens on its own because I think being induced caused a few problems last time. Unfortunately, it sounds like a c-section is still possibly in my future. I have to wait until 36 weeks or possibly later to know for sure. At times I wonder if I should just take the easy route and have it scheduled. But then I wonder if that's really the 'easy' route when I consider recovery.

So I waited an hour for my blood to be tested and was able to finish my book. They called me at exactly an hour and tested my glucose levels. They were 167. The lady, apparently thinking my sugar shouldn't be that high switched machines and tested my levels again. 166. Anything over 140 requires a 3 hour test at the hospital to determine whether or not you have Gestational Diabetes. With Bailey and Cooper my doctor told me I could be at risk for GD, my sugar was 120. However, I ate breakfast like I was supposed to. Now I don't know if not eating breakfast effected the outcome or not but I think perhaps my lying did. So instead of telling the truth and perhaps rescheduling the one hour I lied and got what I deserved, a nice four hour or so visit to the hospital.

But there is also this possibility, I have gestational diabetes. I was a little concerned with this potential prognosis until I came home and read about it on the internet. What it could mean for baby has me a lot more frightened. To name just a few: Large birth weight (thus garanteeing a c-section that comes with it's own risks for baby), hypoglycemia, respiratory problems, jaundice, and the most frightening, stillbirth. With these things in mind I have already made changes in my diet, starting immediately. No more Strawberry Shortcakes for dessert, less syrup on pancakes, more milk and water.

I know there is a good chance that I don't actually have Gestational Diabetes or that anything will happen to Sean but it is my nature to worry. I know several women who had to take the three hour test and passed and a few more who had GD and had healthy babies but I have been in a funk for the past 24 hours. I have the three hour test next Tuesday but I won't hear back immediately on that one so I will have this hanging over my head for at least another week or more.

On the bright side, I will be eating healthier from fear of GD and that can't be a bad thing, right?

I also failed the iron test. Mine was 10.3, they want to see 10.5. Fortunately, all that means is a Slow Iron Fe every morning. The worst part of that deal is the O.J. that has to accompany it.