mothers day.

The reason I haven't posted in a while is because this website hasn't been working for me. All my photos have turned out half black! This is my mothers day/test post because Cory thinks if I post the photos they will turn out properly. We will see.

 

For breakfast on mothers day Cory baked me a coffee cake from a box. It was delicious and possibly the only thing Cory has ever baked in his life. We almost ate the whole thing throughout the day on Sunday!

At church the ward gave all the ladies eighteen and up a treat, like they oft times do. This year it was something called cheesecake truffles. They were tasty! The mother of one of my girls came up to me with two big boxes of these beautiful intricate cupcakes. She told me one box was chocolate and when I asked about the other one she shrugged and said 'Russian...milk?' obviously I chose the mystery one. I couldn't bring myself to eat it until Monday, but when I did it was delicious!

After church I talked to my family and got a delicious dinner of brisket sandwiches and potato chips and ranch dip! I've been craving those little suckers for months and finally got them and they were wonderful! After dinner we played doctor Seuss memory, listened to classic jazz and drew pictures. Later we ate more coffee cake and watched Willy wonka and the chocolate factory! All of my favorite things in one day!

 

my other favorite thing is receiving presents, the great mothers day gift Cory gave me was this cool backpack/future diaper bag! I was so excited that I wore it all morning while preparing dinner in church clothes and my apron. Sidenote: this terrible photo took me twelve tries! Also it looks like my photos are still half not photos. Boo.

finally florence.

Florence was stop two on our Italian excursion. I have to say it was different than I thought it would be. everyone I asked before we left said that Florence was their favorite, most restful city. maybe my hopes were too high, or maybe we just went at the wrong time because the narrow alleys were choked with "seas of field tripping students" as Rick Steves would say. It was still cool and historical and kinda relaxing, but it was not my favorite city we visited. The above photo is of the glorious Duomo. All of those colors on the façade are different kinds of stone, not paint. The weather was also very perfect.

 

For our first dinner we went to this great pizzeria. We got there at six thirty, but the place didn't open until seven! We waited and then came back and had the best pizza of our whole trip! Mine was salami and buffalo cheese and Cory's was sausage. Italian sausage in Italy is different than Italian sausage in the US. They are seasoned differently and the Italian one wins by a long shot! SOOOO GOOD!

 



The hilarious lady who managed our hotel told us that we should take a city bus that took the scenic route through Florence and deposited us at piazza Michelangelo, the highest, most scenic spot in the city. We took her advice and took the bus. The only problem was we didn't know what bus stop to get off the bus at. The bus started driving down the giant hill we had been climbing and I started to worry so we got off at a stop Cory thought looked familiar and we climbed some stairs. We did not end up at the piazza, but the oldest church in Florence. You can see in the above photo the windows weren't stained glass, but very thinly cut alabaster! 



The church had a great little graveyard with benches and a good view of Florence. We were sitting, eating lunch when organ music started drifting out of the church. We put our lunch on pause and went in to hear the beautifully creepy music. This church whose name i don't know was my favorite church I had been to in my whole life. It was dark, the only light came from outside, like it would have for the medieval people who worshiped here. It wasn't overly ostentatious and gilded like the churches in Rome and there was that great organ music! Also the above sarcophagus lid, or grave stone or whatever you would call it is what i want on my grave. Only of me in a nice suit leaning on books and my paints.
 

As you can see the day was gorgeous, as is Florence. Can you spy the Duomo?

On our walk back I had to use the restroom, which cost me one euro! But it was the nicest smelling, most private bathroom in all of Italy. it even had a toilet seat! Weird fact about Italy: their toilets are pretty normal, they are taller than ours, the water comes down from a box, high up on the wall and you make it come down by pushing a button (sometimes repeatedly) on the wall. None of this is that weird. The odd thing is that most public toilets you find don't have seats! They are just like someone forgot to put the seat down so many times they just decided to remove them. I have zero ideas as to why this is. The above photo is from our walk from the church back to Florence proper. Can you see my lizard? I'll give you a hint: hes on the wall.

This is the only photo with both of us in it, taken by someone other than me or Cory. We are at the piazza della signoria with the fake David in it. People always talk about the David and the fake David, but what i wasn't told was all of the other statues in this piazza are extremely violent. People stepping on each other, chopping off each other's heads, throwing each other. I would suggest going here. It's gory and free, what more do you need?

This is a photo of a pond with a statue in it in the Boboli Gardens. These gardens are massive and used to belong to a single family. There were lots of school groups here too, one of them was a group of preschoolers all wearing gingham shirts, being escorted by nuns. It was the cutest thing i have ever seen!

 

This is me standing on a bench, looking over a wall into a private section of the garden at a green house at the end of a tunnel made of trees. There were a lot of people in the gardens, but they were so big we felt very secluded the whole time.

 

There were also some museums in the gardens. One was called the silver museum. Weirdly it didn't have much silver in it. There were intricate carvings in ivory, pendants that when you put them over a light you can see a hidden picture etched in the stone, plates, vases and these awesome shell men. They are probably around the size of Barbie dolls. 

This is ponte vecchio. A really old bridge that now has a bunch of jewelry stores on it. As you can see it got sunny again. For dinner we went to this little sandwich shop. Cory and i asked for ham sandwiches. The man said "two kinds of ham sandwiches?" to which we said yes, because you should almost always say yes when you are in Italy and someone says someone says something about food you don't understand. Cory's turned out to be ham, tomato, fresh mozzarella and lettuce. Mine was ham and this bonkers cheese sauce. it tasted like the inside of cheese ravioli and it was warm and soooo delicious! It turned out we both loved our sandwiches and didn't really like the other's sandwich. That man was a wizard!

This is Piazza Santa Maria Novella, our piazza. Our hotel was like a block and a half away from here. its interesting, at some point someone seems to have put that green and white stone on all the important buildings in Florence to make them match. We had gelato every day. These are the flavors we had: chocolate, pistachio, lemon, strawberry, crème caramel, hazelnut, chocolate blood orange, chocolate mousse, coconut, "fruit of the forest" which is mixed berry, mascarpone, darkest chocolate, mandarin, lemon, almond, and "British soup" which is butterscotch. My favorites were hazelnut and mascarpone, cory's is lemon.

doctors appointment+rome.

We are back home! Our sleeping schedule isn't exactly right yet. The past two nights we have been going to sleep around nine and waking up around six, which isn't exactly the schedule I want, but I have been doing a lot of early morning baking. Yesterday I made blueberry oat scones for Elise, Amy, and Alexis (yay for seeing Alexis for even just an hour and a half.) and peanut butter chocolate chip breakfast cookies for Cory and I this morning.

 

Today I went to my sixteen week doctors appointment, and the midwife (so I guess it was a midwife appointment) said my weight and the height of my uterus and my blood pressure is all perfect, so that's nice. I got to hear the baby's heartbeat for the first time today, so that was exciting! As you can see my belly has just started to stick out a bit, which is also exciting. I have to say, since I have started feeling better I have more room to enjoy all this a bit more.

 

Okay, so our trip started a little poorly, Cory and I didn't get to sit by each other on our ten hour flight from Seattle to Frankfort! Also the gruff Albanian man sitting next to me stole my pillow and blanket! When we FINALLY got to Rome we were pleased to find our hotel was in an awesome area, right next to the train station.

 



 

The first thing we did was get dinner of cheese pizza and egg, ham, and parmesan pasta. It was really tasty, even though we were both pretty out of it. On the two block walk home we past that house below. I thought it was really pretty.

That night we went to sleep at six, which meant I woke up at two o clock in the morning bright eyed and bushy tailed! I watched a movie on cory's phone and luckily fell asleep before day break. The wife of the hotel's owner brought us breakfast at eight thirty!

 

 

We obviously didn't drink the coffee, so Cory wrote a little note telling them thank you, but we don't drink coffee. The next time we saw the hotel owner he was quite confused and asked what in the world we wanted instead of coffee. He offered tea or milk. We said milk sounded good. The next day we got the exact same breakfast: croissant, sugar packets and instead of hot coffee, hot milk! Cory thought to add sugar to his milk and it turned out quite tasty.

On our first full day in Rome we went to the catacombs of saint domatilla. They wouldn't let us take photos in them, but the above photo is from the walk from the bus to the catacombs. On that bus ride we drove past a big fancy building with a crowd gathering in front of it and a deck with a big red banner hanging from it. Cory asked a nice Italian couple next to us what that was all about and they told us the pope was going to speak there later! We saw the crowd that saw the pope!

 

Anyway, THE CATACOMBS WERE SO COOL! They were the one thing I was really excited to go to before we came to Italy. They were actually a lot scarier than I was expecting. I have some residual fear of dead bodies following a terrifying episode of Quantum Leap involving a mummy watched when I was a kid. These fears reared their ugly heads as we winded down dark, narrow, dirt tunnels peppered with burial holes, any of which could reveal the bones of an early Christian. We reached a room of sorts and our tour guide assured us that all of the bones that were down there were still safety entombed behind ancient brick walls. This information made the whole experience less scary and I was able to just enjoy the experience. Our guide was passionate and informed. I would one hundred percent tell everyone to go there! Its so interesting to see how the early Christians had so many things that we have now, but were lost over the centuries.

We didn't want to pay to go into the coliseum, but I definitely wanted to see it. My first glimpse of the coliseum was as we climbed the stairs up from the metro station and it was breathtaking! I almost stopped in my tracks, I can't imagine what the ancient Romans thought of this. It was way bigger than I thought it was going to be, and the day was absolutely gorgeous. I really enjoyed looking at it and talking about it with Cory. 

The next day we went to the Vatican. As we crossed the street the gates of Vatican city. The gates were probably fifty feet across and they were completely choked with people, and the lines were at least a quarter mile long! Thee was a sign for the Vatican museum with an arrow pointing away from the massive crowd of people, so obviously we followed the brass arrow.

 

 

The museum was really great. My favorite parts of the museum were this long hallway full of roman statues and busts, a hall of giant maps and a bunch of contemporary religious and just Italian paintings. Of course the Sistine chapel was impressive, but as an art major I have seen it so many times, these other more unusual pieces were more striking to me.

After my midday siesta we went out wandering. We started with the pantheon. This is another one of those things I have studied a lot, but it was the second thing I really wanted to see in Rome. It was so unbelievably gigantic. I can't even begin to figure out how the ancient Romans (more ancient than the ones that built the coliseum) built something this size! The pantheon is not only the oldest church to have been in consistent use in the world, but it is the final resting place for all of those people in the crypts that were opened in the catacombs. It was really great, and quiet for a space so big.

We had my favorite pasta of the whole trip at a little place next to the pantheon. Mine was red sauce with pancetta in it, and Cory had tortellini with cream sauce and ham and mushrooms. SO GOOD!

 

After inner we stopped by the trevi fountain. Needless to say this song was running through my head the entire time. The fountain was another monument that was bigger in real life than I was expecting. Those statues are massive! Like twice human size!

I was really curious to see what the building the fountain is connected to looks like, and was quite surprised to find its just a normal building! It seems to be a government office building for the arts or something, which seems like the right sort of organization to be in the trevi fountain building, but still! Just normal!

 

Next we wandered over to the Spanish Steps. Truthfully I wasn't excited, or even planning on going to see the trevi fountain and the Spanish Steps, but I really enjoyed them! I can see why these are such popular tourist spots. They just have nice relaxed vibes about them.

almost 13 weeks+a recap.

almost 13 weeks.

 

As most of you probably know I am a) pregnant and b) a horrible blogger. Part of the reason I haven't blogged since Halloween and not especially consistently for a while before that is this whole baby thing. I was feeling pretty low and didn't want to write about it. Since it has all turned out quite well thus far I suppose I will tell you a little about everything.

Cory and I decided to try for a baby August 2011 right on schedule, about a year after we got married. I have never had regular periods, and a few of my aunts have had problems conceiving so I had an inkling things mightn't go extremely smoothly, and they didn't. Cory graduated and in January 2012 we moved to Washington where we got some stellar (I mean really out of this world good) health insurance. The only minus was it would only be for a year thanks in some way I don't really understand to our dear president. It took me a little bit to muster the courage to go to the doctor. I went and was told to chart my cycle. After four or five months I went back with a chart filled with two cycles, neither boasting of any significant temperature fluxuations. This led my old German gynecologist to believe I wasn't ovulating at all. He prescribed clomid.

I started my first cycle a couple weeks before Christmas, which was a terrible idea for it caused me to be anxious and have more meltdowns than I would usually causing Cory and I to have the biggest argument of our marriage. The medication also caused me to ovulate. One thing it did not achieve, pregnancy. The doctor prescribed a second round. One round of clomid involves taking one pill every day for five days.  You start on day four, taking the pill at the same time every day. I, being a big dumdum forgot to take my first pill until midnight day four. This led to four more days of me taking the pill anywhere from eleven to twelve thirty. I was sure I had messed everything up and these helpful, kind of spendy pills wouldn't work and my old German gynecologist would be mad at me.

I had an appointment scheduled for the day before I thought my period was supposed to start, I figured I'd go anyway. While there my scary man gyno scolded me for my unconventional temperature charting because it made it harder to see patterns, then told me to go down and take a urine test because I was actually a few days late. I was quite startled and went downstairs to the lab. Unfortunately I was not warned this sort of test could be required of me so I had prepared adversely and when it came time for me to take my test I failed. I spent the next hour and a half wandering around, not finding places I had been to a few times before because I was so preoccupied, and drinking water. Finally I went to the doctor near my house, successfully took the test and got a very long paper that announced I was indeed pregnant.

Its really a weird feeling being pregnant after all those months of trying unsuccessfully and three quarters believing that it would never happen. It is also kind of a great cosmic joke that the thing I and probably lots of other women want more than anything else causes you to feel really poorly for a while, then a different kind of poorly, then a lot of pain, then more pain. Why the devil is that? I am starting to show a little bit, and feel a bit better. I have also announced the baby to the Facebook world, all of which have helped me actually start to feel excited instead of just scared. I am now seeing past the pregnancy again to the fact that in six months I will have a son or daughter. I will finally be a mother, which truthfully is the job I have been aspiring and looking forward to my whole life. I hope I do it well.

halloween 2012.

Halloween was actually quite fun this year. In the weeks leading up to last night I went through like five possible costume before deciding to be "An Astronaut's Wife" which sounds kind of lame and a copout, but I think it turned out well, no? I had two people ask if I was Jacky Kennedy too which is never a bad thing. I made my hat, coat and dress and Cory borrowed his suit from work. Where he is NOT an astronaut. 

We went to our church halloween party for half an hour because the youth (who I am in charge of  (at least the twelve and thirteen year old girls)) were in charge of running games for the little kids. We did a photo booth, I made the backdrop, it turned out pretty well too. I will show you that later. We then went for dinner at a teriyaki place we've heard was good and then went to get frozen yogurt and got discounts for being dressed up even though by that point Cory had unzipped his suit and was wearing it with the sleeves tied around his waist so he looked like an escaped felon, not an astronaut.  then we came home and watched Little Shop of Horrors! it was really a lovely night.

glasses.

Yesterday I went to the eye doctor.  Weirdly, one door over from my nazi gynecologist. What? you may ask. My Gynecologist is a middle aged german man (so probably not a nazi really, and for saying he is that I am sorry, but seriously wait for the rest of the information.) and at my appointment he gave me a pap smear and a pelvic exam. I am now a fervent believer in "if you dont have pap. you should never give a pap smear or a pelvic exam". Also his last name is Fure, which sounds a whole lot like "Fuhrer" and he chastised me a little bit. However I am sure he is a good doctor and I am not saying if you get assigned this particular doctor you should switch to someone else, I am just pointing out some fun little details from my last visit to this office which sprung to mind as I was waiting for my eye exam.

(supermassive close up of my supermassive pupils.)

In my exam I got a new prescription and got air blown in my eyes and got what felt like cayenne pepper water poured in them. This spicy liquid dilated my pupils so the doctor could see in the back of my eyeballs. Consequently my eyesight was fuzzy close up and actually far away too and my eyes didnt get back to their normal size until after Cory came home.Needless to say that was an interesting drive home. Aside: people never talk about the giant pupils and subsequent inability to focus ones eyes on anything in particular when arguing against driving under the influence. Also my eye doctor complemented my eyelashes. Think of all the eyelashes she sees every day!

Anyway I now have to pick new glasses. These were my favorites from the store there, but may or may not be the ones I actually buy.

Option one: interesting kind of stripey metaliclooking frames, cat eye.

option two: Kate Spade, metal frames, round, white in front, green on legs. 

(ps all sunglasses can be fitted with clear lenses.)

Option three: red cat eye.

(I think this is a funny photo. I am talking and that guy behind my shoulder is the glasses man giving me all sorts of terrible suggestions.)

Option four: tortise shell top half, olive green bottom half

(I like how you can see my monster pupils in the clear lenses.)

Option five:giant rounded cateye.

Option six: just get new lenses in my frames I have now.

option seven: find a store that sells either of the above two Ray Bans.

option eight: get these awesome bonlook glasses with magnetic mirrored shades.

So I am torn between all of them! I am kind of leaning towards getting option eight and new lenses in my old frames. But I do love those bottom Ray Bans. They are called "club master". I dont know.

a lot of information about last week.

Apparently I only post once a week now, but hey thats more then I have been posting. So we have had another exciting week.
In my nannying world Sasha is not quite two, but really really is acting it. JJ is being really cute and just wants to be part of everything, but she cant sit or crawl or anything so she just lays there and reaches up at Sasha.

Cory and I started a new halloween tradition this week. We sat on the floor, ate halloween cereal and watched Hocus Pocus. So great! (see my halloween flags? there is also a paper skeleton on one of our walls. his name is marcus, and jeff the moose is wearing a tie and top hat. Halloween.)

Young womens was fun this week. We had a going away party for one of my girls. She is moving and it is terribly sad, but we have done a lot of fun stuff to send her off. On thursday me and the twelve and thirteen year olds (also known as Beehives) went out for a desserty snack. We ended up going at like four, so we all ruined our appetites. The girls wanted to go get frozen yogurt so one of them directed me to the best one and we got a lot of frozen yogurt then went to a bird store to look at bird feeders and books and stuffed animal birds while eating our dessert. Oh to be a middle schooler again. (that is never ever something I want but these girls sure are doing it gracefully.)

On Friday we were invited over to our Indian neighbors house for a home cooked indian meal. We had talked a couple times before this, but we were still a bit nervous. We went over at seven and there was another indian family with two little boys. We ate on the floor and with our hands, until I accidentally ate a pepper and steam started pouring from my ears and I had to use the yogurt sauce, which had onions and cilantro in it and was quite tasty, and I started using a spoon after that. The family was quite cool, but had to leave because one of the kids was taking a class at Temple. Cory and I stayed for another hour or so talking. It was really really great!

I bought the fabric for a fur coat I am going to wear for my halloween costume as a "1920s starlett who got invited for a ruckus weekend at Hurst Castle". Isnt it great?

On saturday we went to that wonderful bagel place again. It was just as fantastic as last time. bread. Also they have super good hot chocolate! After that we went to this place called The Rootbeer Store. They have a hundred different kinds of rootbeer and at least fifty kinds of other sodas. We got Pineapple Orange, Sarsaparilla, Vanilla, Cherry Lime, Butter(scotch) Beer, and Apple. We then went to see Perks of Being a Wallflower. Cory really enjoyed it, I liked it, but wasnt expecting it to be so sad.

Yesterday I taught the lesson in church about nutrition and not doing drugs. I got a bit more like the gym teacher from mean girls. I brought up the twenty seven club and one of the girls said "Like Whitney Houston!" well, yes. But other than my slight rant about the stupidness of great girls (and boys, but my class is only girls.) doing drugs I thought the lesson went well. We took a lady who got in a car crash when she was in college and is all there mentally, but not physically home from church, which is always great. We finished Downton Abbey season two. Cory is obsessed! and a movie called The Red Balloon and really it is only half an hour long but I loved it so much!

Today I got an email from Niall. He got my birthday present to him in the mail, and seems to be having a good time.
Right now I am listening to The Smiths, and now you are caught up.