Tagged!

My friend, Carrie, tagged me about a week or so ago so I figured I should play along. So here we go with 7 weird/interesting things about myself. I'm not sure if they are interesting though, so I will say here are just 7 things about myself.

1) I am very picky when it comes to lettuce. I don't really care for iceburg lettuce at all, and when it comes to other types of lettuce I am picky about what goes with lettuce and what doesn't. I don't really understand it myself (I like lettuce on a hard taco, but not a soft taco; I can eat green leaf lettuce on a hamburger, but don't like it on a chicken sandwich) but it kind of has to do with the way flavors mingle.

2) When I was in junior high, there was an early release day and I went out to eat with about 10 of my friends. Everyone made me laugh so hard that I almost choked on my food and ended up throwing up all over the table. Needless to say, EVERYONE was talking about it and me the next few days at school.

3) I wanted to do a walk-on try-out for the BYU women's soccer team when I was a freshman. I showed up for the first day of try-outs and they sent all the walk-ons inside and individually sat us down and gave us a reason why we couldn't try-out. Apparently I had high blood pressure and wouldn't be able to handle playing in the Utah heat. Funny since my blood pressure was fine in Texas where it is quite a bit hotter (and more humid). They didn't allow anyone who showed up as a walk-on to actually try-out.

4) I don't like most condiments on things - ketchup, mustard, mayo, sour cream, pico de gallo, guacamole. I can eat a few things with ketchup, and I will cook things that have mayo or sour cream in them. But when it comes to my sandwiches and burgers, I eat them dry. When I worked full-time and went out to have Tex-Mex for lunch with people, they always wanted to sit by me because I gave them all the "good stuff".

5) Since becoming an adult, I have lived with 3 families that I am not really related to - my roommate's family in Fairbanks, Alaska for 3 months; the Fuller family in Houston, TX for 2 months and the Keifer's in Kansas City, Missouri for 2 weeks. I lived with my roommate's family because they offered to let me live there for the summer and I couldn't afford to live anywhere else. The Fuller's let me live with them when my lease was up and I had another 2 month's before leaving for grad school and the Keifer's saved me from a very unfortunate living situation that I was stuck in while doing an internship.

6) We lived in Tampa, FL the first 2 years we were married and although I had some pretty good friends there, I couldn't stand Tampa. I don't know what it was, but I was so ready to move away from there just about as soon as we moved there. When we found out Justin could transfer to Houston, I was overjoyed.

7) I have a hard time falling asleep if it is too quiet. I feel like I can hear every cricket outside and every car driving down the road. So I have 3 Enya CD's that play one after another for 2 hours on very quietly in the room so I can fall asleep.

I won't specifically tag anyone, but if you want to play along - go ahead.

The miraculous cleaner

It turns out that the Magic Eraser did not work so well on our graffiti. Neither did Spray & Wash or WD-40 (other things suggested to me). Someone suggested using "Goo-Gone" but when I looked up where to find it, it looked like it was made to clean up sticky messes.

However a little research online this past weekend suggested using baking soda toothpaste to clean up permanent marker. After forgetting to get some at the store yesterday, I remembered to pick some up today.

It took a bit of scrubbing, but we no longer have graffiti on our house!

Cleaning the toothpaste off the house afterward was pretty easy - we just sprayed it with water. It would probably not be the best for cleaning marker off inside walls, since you would later have to clean all the toothpaste up as well - but when all else fails, this method works!

And again

This morning I failed my 3-hour glucose test. Apparently, when you fail in the first 2 hours, they don't make you stay for the 3rd hour. Luckily I wasn't over by a lot - I was in range before drinking the sugar stuff, 13 points too high an hour later and 22 points too high an hour after that (50 - 60 points over is a lot).

I have to meet with a dietitian on Friday morning to learn what to do next, what to eat and what not to eat, and I'll have to start pricking my own finger multiple times a day. Didn't I deal with sticking enough needles in my body when going through IVF?

Loving Craig's List

Not sure if it is me and Justin or just me, but I have learned that I am super picky when we are making decisions for stuff for the baby's room. I decided what style of crib I liked and decided that I wanted to get a dresser/changing table combo unit. And it turns out that to get what I liked in good quality, it was going to be pretty pricey. Ouch!

So I have been browsing Craig's List for a little while. We actually got our crib months ago. Here's a pic of our crib:


While looking for the right combo unit, I found the cradle swing that I liked and they just happened to be selling it with the matching bouncer seat.



And then everything fell into place and we were able to get this beautiful dresser/changing table combo unit.


For all 4 items, we paid less than we would have just by buying the crib I liked brand new. Although I admit that it is a bit stressful to me to deal with Craig's List, I'm loving it right now!!!

We also registered at Target and Babies R Us. We may have gone a little crazy - we registered for both things that we know we would need as well as things we have seen other people have, so maybe things not needed but they looked pretty neat!

Only 15 weeks to go!!!

What we came home to find

We weren't gone for long - we left Saturday morning around 8:45 and got back to our house around 5pm on Sunday. When we turned into our subdivision, we both noticed graffiti on the sign for our neighborhood. I am always so annoyed when people do that kind of stuff. So imagined how annoyed I was to turn onto to our street and have our house come into view to see this:




Lucky for us it isn't spray paint, so we are hoping it can be removed with one of those magic erasers (add that to my list of things to do today). You can't help but feel completely violated when someone does something like this to your personal property.

This is the same graffiti as on the neighborhood sign, but we haven't seen any other houses so far that were targeted. Our next-door neighbor is pretty sure that when he walked down the street Sunday morning, our house was fine and feels certain that he would have noticed it especially on the garage door (it does stand out if you look up at the house at all). We think it is because our Sunday morning paper was sitting in the driveway so they assumed we weren't home, rang the door to see that we weren't and quickly went to work. We are pretty shocked that someone was so bold as to do this in daylight, especially since our garage door is very open to the street.

We filed a police report, even though the officer from the sheriff's department tried to make it sound like it could be a waste of time. If we decided it was a waste of time, the kid (I'm assuming it is a kid) would never be held accountable for what he/she did. At least by filing the report, if he/she is caught they will know that they damaged our house too since these idiots keep on doing the same initials, or symbol or whatever whenever they graffiti.

Our nephew

I don't think that I posted it here before, but my older sister had a baby boy on September 5th who they named Grant. Because of everything going on with us (Justin got out of the hospital on the 4th and the hurricane hit the night of the 12th), this past weekend was the first time that we went to Austin to meet our new nephew.

We were actually taking a lot of stuff with us to be there for 2 days and one night so, needless to say, we forgot something. About 45 minutes after leaving the house, I realized that we forgot our camera! For pics of my cute nephew, (who looks just like my older sister and my younger brother when they were babies) check out my sister and brother-in-law's blog.

I FAILED!!!

Today was my 24-week appointment as well as my 1 hour glucose screening for gestational diabetes. Everything looks pretty good - baby boy's heart rate was 146 bpm today.

The bad news is that I failed the glucose test and therefore have to go in for the 3 hour test next week. I was actually pretty sure that I was going to fail for a couple reasons. The biggest reason is one of the reasons we weren't able to get pregnant without help - I have PCOS which greatly increases the chances of gestational diabetes.

Even though I was pretty sure I was going to fail the test, I have been trying to limit my sugar intake so I would have a chance at passing. Maybe that is why I was so close! My level was 147 and anything over 135 is failing. I hope that being so close is good news for the 3 hour test for next week.

The other interesting thing lately is that I have developed a wicked case of carpal tunnel. My hands go completely numb as I sleep and it usually wakes me up around 5 am. At first I could move my fingers a little to make the numbness go away and go back to sleep, but then it got a bit worse and I actually have to get up for a couple minutes to get my hands to feel like normal. The last few mornings it has gotten even worse and along with the numbness I have pain in my wrists. My doctor told me that I could get braces for my wrists at a local drugstore, but considering the fact that propping my hands up doesn't help there is a good chance the braces won't help much either. Here's to 16 more weeks of numb hands and sore wrists when I should be sleeping!