Babymoon

Sorry for the delay in getting these pictures uploaded.  I feel like it has been a whirlwind since we got back from vacation and I can't seem to catch my breath.  As a brief update, we did find a washer and dryer late last week and it was delivered on Saturday.  YAY......except for the fact that the existing plug was a 120 V and the new dryer requires 220 V (Lesson learned: double check these little details before you have someone come to install something).  So needless to say, we have a beautiful set sitting in our basement at the moment, but no clean clothes in our closets.  B thinks that he can tackle the electrical update (which I will definitely write about whether he is successful or not), but he won't be able to get to it until Saturday morning.  EEK!!  Thank goodness we both own an ungodly amount of underwear, otherwise I would have to run out and buy some to get us through the week.  And just in case anyone is confused.......yes, we could definitely wash our clothes, but I don't like the feeling of rack-dried clothes (and since it has been raining for the last 12 days and hanging them outside to dry isn't an option).  Maybe I'm being picky, but I feel like the clothes are really stiff if you dry them inside.  Not my favorite.....but if this goes on longer than Saturday, I'm going to have to bite the bullet and do a few loads. 

And in other house-related news, our upstairs bathroom (which I don't think I've ever shown here on the blog....brace yourself) is causing us some problems as well. 

Lovely, right?  It's actually an old picture.  We have since painted the white door black, replaced the toilet with a white one (shame to see old blue go though) and removed the curtains, but overall it still looks pretty awful.  Enough reminiscing though, onto the story of the day.  So......during a routine lather-fest, the soap dish broke off and left us with a gaping 8x10" hole that goes through to the studs.  It would have been easily fixable with some grout and caulking except for the fact that it smashed into 1000 pieces when it hit the tub floor and is far from usable at this point.  I did find a replacement one at HD (they didn't seem to carry the same blue tile from the 60's anymore, but I settled for a white one instead), but its a little bit bigger than the hole, so we are going to have to chisel off a 1/16 of an inch to make it fit.  More on that later though....

But I digress.  Let's get to the pictures.....

It was paradise.  As I said before, we would have been really happy anywhere in the world (as long as it wasn't at work or at home), but this was definitely an amazing destination.  I would highly recommend Grand Cayman to anyone (with one small caveat....the exchange rate is 1.25 to 1, so the food is pretty expensive, but as long as you know that going in and budget for it, it should be fine!!!). 

And here are some shots of the happy couple....

And finally, on to the highly requested belly shots........duh duh duh....

I was 27 weeks when these pictures were taken, so just shy of the third trimester mark.  I'm finally feeling good, but the whole scale tipping thing is still a little hard for me to swallow.  The doc says that we are "on track" as far as the weight gaining goes, but it's still hard to see the numbers go up every week....eek!  We had an appointment yesterday in fact, (we are 28.5 weeks at this point) and I've gained 22 lbs since we conceived.  Ultimately everything looks good though and he is doing really well, so that's all that really matters.  My original goal at the beginning of this pregnancy was to stay in the lower part of the 25-35 lb. recommended weight gain parameter, but it's looking like I'm going to be closer to 35 when all is said and done.  I hear that breastfeeding helps a little to get rid of the weight gain, so I'm just going to hope for that and see how it goes.  I definitely don't expect to be back in my pre-pregnancy clothes for the trip home from the hospital, but I would also like to avoid wearing maternity clothes for too long after little B arrives...here's hoping!  Any tips on how to shed the post-pregnancy weight are welcomed!

I'll be back soon with details on the washer and dryer decision...stay tuned!

Lions and Tigers and Bears....Oh my!

Ok....it's really more like lions and zebras and elephants...but you get the idea.  It sounded better the first way!

So, in lieu of announcing the deck reveal, or going into another long rant about cozying up my casa, I thought I would take a break from the regularly scheduled programming and share some photos with you today.  I was going through our Africa photos on my computer last night and came across these ones, which are some of my favorites. 

And since we have officially been back from Africa for a month now, I thought it would be the perfect time to share a few more snippets of our experience.  These were all taken with my small Canon PowerShot Digital ELPH camera.  Not too bad, little one. 

I still have yet to upload all of the photos from our new SLR camera (since our computer is currently claiming there's no room at the inn for memory capacity)....but I will have a lot more close-up shots (we're talking snots in the nose of a giraffe and fuzz on the head of a baby baboon) to share once we can figure out how to remedy the space issue.  Honestly, we are in the market for a new computer anyway, so this might just be the push we needed to take the plunge.  Not in the budget, though, my friends!  Maybe Santa will bring us something special under the tree this year! 

We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto!

As promised, here are a few pictures from our trip to Tanzania.  So far, I have only uploaded the photos from our small camera (Canon PowerShot SD960 ELPH), so this is just a sampling (we took about 1,000 with this one, 3,000 with our Canon Rebel 2Ti and another 350 with our Sony alpha wide angle.  In other words, WAAAY too many photos!!) 

There is A LOT more where this came from (including details on the accommodations, style, decor and other fun thoughts on Africa), but I wanted to give you a little taste for the time being....

 

And, to answer the question that I'm sure all of you are thinking....NO! I could not get the Toto song "Africa" out of my head the ENTIRE time I was there.  Especially the one morning when it rained.....I LITERALLY "felt the rains down in Africa"....haha!  Crazy!

Like a Rock

Ok.  This is REALLY REALLY my last west-coast-related post.  I think. 

So, on our last day in San Fran, we decided to do the tourist-y thing and take the ABA-sponsored tour of Alcatraz (a) because it was free, and (b) because it saved me the trouble of heading over early to try and snag same-day tickets on my own.  B had already done the tour years ago, but he deemed my enthusiasm worthy of a repeat trip.  The best part is that they were celebrating the 75th anniversary of the prison so they had some of the guards (now in their 80s) and some of the children of the guards (who grew up on the island) there to speak to us about their experience "on the rock!"  Can you imagine growing up there???  Crazy, right?  "Hey Johnny, go long.  Oh wait, not that long!!!"  Splash!  And if the freezing cold water wouldn't startle them enough, being in such close proximity to the most hardened criminals in the country definitely would!  Seriously!

I loved every minute of it though.  The history is unbelievable, escape attempts and all!  Even better than that, though, was the sky-high creepy factor.  For some reason it felt like ghosts were going to pop out at every corner.  Perhaps I conjured that whole idea/fear in my head, but it sure made the experience a lot more interesting! 

And as I mentioned before, I have this really great setting on my camera which lets you color-block the photo as you take it.  Basically, you can choose the color you want to enhance my metering on it (or focusing on it) and then taking the photo.  Or you can even pre-select a color that you want the camera to recognize and it will convert the rest of the photo to black and white!  So much fun!  In this case, there was a lot of yellow from the flourescent lights and chipping exterior paint, which totally enhanced the creepy factor. 

Can you imagine spending all of your time locked in a cell with nothing to do but think?  On the tour (which is self-guided with headphones), it explained that certain prisoners would take up hobbies like singing or playing an instrument....others would knit.  It is a little hard to imagine these high-risk prisoners sitting around and chatting in a circle while they knit themselves sweaters......hm......but they did it!  It's like the Friday Night Knitting Club but with weapons!  My only question is, why were they allowed to have sharp objects to play with?  That must be why there were so many escape attempts. 

Overall it was an AWESOME little excursion though.  If you are ever out in the San Fran area, you should definitely check it out!  Bring a jacket though, it gets cold out there.....like 35-40 degrees cold.  EEEK!  I am wearing a winter jacket in this photo.....in August....in CALIFORNIA!  Crazy I tell ya!  (The jacket, by the way, was purchased the day before because I packed SUNDRESSES on this trip.  Way to look at the weather before you leave, Heather!  Nice work!)

Side note: The only down-side to the whole color recognition technology for the camera is that it also picks up on the yellow in your TEETH!  Yikes.  This photo isn't too bad, but that is because it was carefully chosen.  The rest of them look like we just ate a carton of Lemon Drops!!!

And I know what you are thinking, how did you NOT take a photo of yourself behind bars??  Well, we did, but it came out really weird with the yellow enhancement, so I wasn't sure that it would be a good one to share.  So....I'll just show B instead.  Haha..

Oh, and its also little weird that he is smiling.  Not the typical reaction when you get locked up, I'm sure.  But, I suppose its hard to role play when you have 500 people milling around you trying to take the same photo!  You know what I mean, right.  Those exaggerated sighs from the lady who left her patience back in her hotel room that morning.  Or the guy that is standing so close that he is virtually in your shot.  He is the reason that photoshop was invented.  Humpphh!!  Chillax dude, if you don't calm down, you will be taking a REAL mugshot soon!!!  

Oooh.  A few hours in the slammer and I'm feeling all tough!  Life on the rock is hard, man.  It takes its toll...... 

My Life in Black & White...

I promise that this will be one of the last San Fran related posts on here (and I say one of the last since I hope to include a full Alcatraz post soon since the photos came out super creepy....love it!).  I just can't resist sharing some of these fun sights from our trip though....

Hope you enjoy the eye candy.

Castello Di Amorosa

An authentic Tuscan castle in the middle of Napa Valley.  Truly breathtaking.....Joe Sattui of V.Sattui Wineries began building this as a retirement home for himself.  11 years and $40 million dollars later....he ended up with this MASSIVE structure.  And what is more impressive is that it was built in true Tuscan style; real limestone, stones flown over from Italy, Italian masons and contractors as well.  He certainly spared no expense. 

Here are a few more images from this "estate"

We drove by this and just couldn't resist taking a peak.  So glad that we did!!

For the rest of our wine-tasting adventure, we tended towards the smaller, family-owned and operated shops; Bremer Family, Laird, Elyse and Bennessere.  We checked out Cakebread and Beringer as well, but those are all commercially distributed so it wasn't as exciting.  The thing that we loved most about the smaller places was that there was no pressure to buy or join their wine club.  It felt like we were sitting down with old friends to have a glass of wine (or 10).  It was a very personal experience.  In fact, we ended up taking home quite a few bottles of the non-distributed labels since they are harden to obtain from home (especially since we live in MA and have arcane prohibition laws that make it difficult to import wine from other states...BOOO).  If you haven't been out there, I highly recommend it for a little romantic weekend getaway (or longer, if you can take the time off).  We stayed at a little B&B called the Old World Inn in downtown Napa and it was so gorgeous!  Again, highly recommended......

Here are some photos of the room....

So cute.  I loved the decor and colors.  I probably would have done different light fixtures in the bathroom and added some sort of painting or large-scale photograph on the wall above the jacuzzi tub, but I can dig the less-is-more feel too!  My favorite (which you can't tell from the pictures) is the white penny tiles on the floor in the bathroom.  Perfect!!  Everything was so well-planned in there.  They even used the window (to the left of the photo above) as a mirror.  They replaced the bottom panes with mirrors and left the top panes (since they were really tall Victorian windows) open at the top to let light in.  That was they were able to utilize the space in that corner for the vanity.  BRILLIANT!!