Last Night

Chris worked last night which gave me the opportunity to do a little homework. My online literature class requires a lot of reading... which I am struggling to keep up with. Hopefully that will be remedied soon. I assure you though, that I'm not going to bore you with a study log. There were two things that occurred last night that I thought worth mentioning.

If you've read our blog about The Chronicles of Our Apartment, consider this an amendment to it. Last night, as I sat reading William Wordsworth, I could hear the ticking of our clock... and something else. Water? Could it be? Yes, it could; and it was. I decided to check our bathroom and sure enough, I found a nice little waterfall coming from our vent almost above the toilet. If it were a few inches back the water would have landed nicely, and cleanly into the toilet, but of course, it was splashing all over our bathroom. I got a plastic container and put it in the bathroom and then went and knocked on our neighbor's door. It took a while to get someone to come down, there was a small flurry of footsteps before they came down. They were doing laundry in their sink (Hmmm...THAT's interesting) and either forgot about the laundry, or forgot about turning the sink off. When they heard the knock they figured something must be amiss--they found the sink running and apologized profusely. It was, of course, ok, and I told them so... when I came back inside our apartment I found another two little drips going in our bedroom doorway, got a container that would reach both, and returned to my reading. When Chris came home he thought I had made cookies or something, as he could smell something sweet. Personally, I thought it (the water) smelled like ginger. We may have to ask our neighbors what laundry detergent they are using...

BABY PEA: When I think of the baby I always call him/her Baby Pea, I suppose it's because I can't help but imagine that he/she is like a little pea. Chris seemed amused when I related this to him last night and said something about me being a pod... So I guess it is pretty appropriate. Well, as we were talking about Baby Pea, I could feel some definite movement. I was pretty sure I'd felt it during the day at work, and I think I first felt it about 2-3 weeks ago, but not really much at all since then. We were pretty excited about it. We've done some reading and we are at the stage when the baby starts to hear things going on outside me... It was pretty amusing to us that it was when we were talking about Baby Pea that he/she decided to make him/herself known to us. Almost like, "Hello! I can hear you out there and I know you are talking about me!!!" Chris got to feel Baby Pea too, which makes it soo much more fun! This baby must be strong! We couldn't believe how powerful some of the kicks/movements were!

Chris' "Hog"

Chris has a 1980 Peugeot moped which he drives around Williamsburg to get to school, work, and around town.

The guys at my work have lots of fun imagining and joking about Chris as if he were a hardened ex-con and the purchase of the moped became fuel for their "mocking" fire. They have dubbed the moped his "hog" and enjoy making up all sorts of stories of the trouble he gets into with it. They have especially enjoyed imagining what kind of tough, leather-wearing kid we'll have when June rolls around. I've even been threatened with some baby-size leather chaps.

So, as you view these pictures, please make sure you accompany them with the thought of Chris and junior wearing leather chaps while riding it. You are likely to have a more enjoyable experience viewing our cute little Peugeot.

Our Hero, John Jensen

Our oil has needed to be changed for a few (hundred--eiikkk!) miles. We haven't been able to make it down to Virginia Beach to utilize the arsenal of tools available between my dad and my brothers, and we don't have our own oil pan, ramps/jack stands or many tools. Paying to get it done feels like such a waste, especially since I had to learn to change the oil when I learned to drive and Chris got to learn the last time it was done (he and my brother Ben did it together, with Ben instructing). We somehow mentioned our woes to our friends the Jensens and were promptly invited to use their oil pan and ramp so we could get the work done.

We made the arrangements to drive over to the Jensens after I finished work on Thursday evening. Chris would use their equipment to get the job done, and we would be able to drive up to the temple on Saturday. Unfortunately, we didn't take into account that it would be raining. Chris is a little different from the "grease monkey" boys on my side of the family... he doesn't have coveralls and I don't know that he has any real "work" clothes (in terms of cars), so when he picked me up from work he was wearing his regular jeans and a shirt. I wasn't optimistic about how they would fare in the rain, but he wasn't able to stop by our apt and we certainly couldn't drive there before going to the Jensens.

We arrived at the Jensens and were pleased to see that John owns a pair of coveralls. But as soon as we said hello, John put the coveralls on! He insisted that since he had to sit under the jets outside all day, he was still soaked and should be the one to be soaked while changing the oil. The car was moved onto the ramps and John changed the oil, in the rain, lying in a puddle of water. I decided that John deserves at least a blog in his honor, and to be deemed our oil changing hero. If you don't already know him, I'm sure this makes you want to... he's seriously a cool guy, great friend, and his awesome wife makes the best buttery, salty, air-popped popcorn this pregnant girl could ever want! =)

Home Sweet Home

I think it was Rachelle that suggested (some time ago) that we get a blog. At the time we joked that because we didn't have kids there was really no point to it, though we could definitely write and post pics of our apartment and Chris' moped. So, the blog about and pictures of the moped will have to come later... and I don't have pictures of our apartment to show to you... but! I do have, hopefully for you enjoyment, as much as ours, the "Chronicles of Our Apartment".

I must preface though, by giving 3 bits of background...
1-Marne (Chris' sister) mentioned how they always look back at their first apartment (full of spiders) with fond memories... I think we know what she means... we'll definitely have a lot to laugh about for years to come. All I have to say is I pity our landlord! =D
2-Our apartment: Is fantastic! It's a little one bedroom, built in the 70s and comes furnished with the original furniture (we really need to get pictures up!). We have one of 6 apartments, and our apartment is one of 2 that are 1 bedroom. From the street, it looks like one big house. We have a VERY quite "complex". The landlord(s) are very picky about their tenants to keep it quiet, plus they charge a low rent and could easily get a lot of "riff-raff". We really do love our apartment, it has been a HUGE blessing, as it is considerably cheaper than anything else in our area, and quite cozy.
3-Our landlords: (aka "Mr. and Mrs. B") are a great couple! They are a bit older and their 40-something year old son lives with them as he had to have major back surgery a year ago. He has stuck around to help take care of the place because his parents' health is slowly failing.

The Chronicles of Our Apartment:
-end of September/beginning of October:
Mr. B dropped the fuel can when filling up the lawn mower, he cleaned much of the mess up, but A LOT was spilled. We came home and our apartment, which shares a wall with the garage, smelled like a gas tank. A tank, not a station.... wind airs those out...
I woke up and could practically taste gasoline, yum. Chris couldn't understand why I was so upset about it until we figured out I was pregnant... as my sense of smell was heightened, I could probably smell what he smelt x10 (or so)

-November:
Our water heater stopped working. Mr. Fix-it came and got it working again, but explained that since it was the original it may stop working any day... it would probably need to be replaced. We started to notice things were a little weird pretty soon after that. When I say weird, I should probably say moist, or perhaps, humid. We started noticing salt coming out of our kitchen cabinets, water below the sink, water on our windows. And then we had to do laundry. Most of which we hang dry in our apartment. I think it was still a little damp when, after 2 days of hang drying, we left for Thanksgiving in NY. The water heater was replaced while we were gone.

-December:
Technically the problem started in November. After complaining about the gas and the water heater, we were a little slow to complain about this, but when it gets cold... you can only last so long... Our heater worked. Sporadically. Initially we got heated air about 40% of the time we turned the heater on (or flipped the fuse box to get it working right). At some point in December it got pretty cold and our heater decided to work a lot less often. It blew air, but it was COLD air. The problem was fixed and it turned out that our thermostat and a gage on the heater had to be replaced, both were sending and receiving confused signals. Half the time both our AC and heater were running, the other half it was just our AC.

-January:
Our drain in the kitchen started slowing down. We don't have a garbage disposal, but decided to just be even more careful about food getting down there. Once again, we didn't want to complain. It got really bad. Chris had, at some point, accidentally dropped some macaroni noodles down the drain and thought that was the problem. Macaroni noodles dissolve though... Finally, I caught the sink doing something I thought it had done in the week or so previous. When previously empty, it suddenly started having water in it. Rising water. It didn't get very high, but I knew there was something going on that wasn't related to our macaroni noodles. I told Chris and when we walked into the kitchen we realized that at some point the water had started rising again, filled the sink, and spilled over the counter onto our floor. Mr. B's son came with someone the next morning and worked on the septic tank and our pipes. They asked if we sometimes put coffee grinds down the sink as that can often gunk up the pipes... He noted though that our upstairs neighbors (who also don't have a washer or dryer) have never brought out their laundry... and detergent often gunks up the pipes too.... =)

-Last night:
Chris was vacuuming our living room and working on the entry way to our bedroom when he noticed a dark spot on the floor. Then, he realized there was a drip causing the dark spot. Soon the drip became a stream and then there were two, and then there were two more in our bathroom. It was quite the adventure! Our upstairs neighbor, suffering from some serious jet-lag accidentally left a faucet on... and created a nice little waterfall in both our apartments. It was pretty minor in ours, but I can only imagine the water she had to clean up!

Chris' latest excitement!!!

As of Tuesday, Chris is officially braces-less! His teeth are perfect and he has (I think) gotten used to the ease of eating without them. We don't have any good pictures of him without the braces yet, but I should be able to supply some shortly! =D

Why we couldn't ask for more

I'm sure no one else remembers this, but our song at the wedding was "I Couldn't Ask for More" which I think is indicative of how happy we are to have each other, and so I like keeping it as our theme (for a little while at least).

For the last while Chris keeps reminding me that "it doesn't get any better than this." Although he's usually referring to our callings in Nursery and the fact that we get to have tons of fun with the cute kids and then pass them off to their parents when they need a diaper changed or something, he does make mention to our stage in life as well. Yet another reason why I like this theme for us...

I think he's right. While I'm sure we'll feel the same way about each stage of life, this one is definitely a fun one. Our days where it was just about the two of us were definitely short-lived. They were fun while they lasted (the two months before we found out we were pregnant) and we are thoroughly enjoying the phase of preparing for our little one to join the family (especially now that I'm no longer constantly nauseated).

Right now we are still enjoying the "two of us+" phase with some/many of our attentions being centered around what is happening to me (and my body) and what's going to be happening to our family. We love our calling at church, I enjoy my work at Spiegel, and Chris is making good use of his winter break by working two part-time jobs (J Crew and LL Bean). We still love spending all our free time together and we've started branching out... yesterday we went to the library. =)

Life is good. We had a lovely first Christmas together and we're looking forward to many more. Spending a little bit of time with our families and friends around this time of year just seems to reinforce how lucky and blessed we really are. As if having each other wasn't enough, we have so many people who love and support us. We're really grateful for that and them. While we may not have tons of material things, we really do have a lot, and we have enough. Our needs are met, we are healthy, happy and we haven't been left "wanting". We really couldn't ask for more.

Getting Started

We're getting ready to send out our New Years Newsletter and I decided that I should probably set up our blog beforehand so I can include the address. We'll see how fast (or slow) I am at getting this together. I mostly want to get it started as it may become a main resource of information on our family if some of our potential plans for the future come to pass... We shall see! =)