Reasons Why

I have the greatest husband ever. Here is the lastest evidence:

• At the ward Christmas party they had the primary program showing the first Christmas, complete with the angel chior. My husband and I were sitting in the back and I was worried I wouldn't be able to hear the songs really well. I shouldn't have worried. My husband sang right along with every song the angel chior sang.
• Monday night my husband did all the dishes for me and let me relax, take a bath, and read a book. There is nothing so good as a man with a dishtowel in his hand standing in a cleaned kitchen!
• Last weekend my husband finally decided on what he's getting me for Christmas. You may be wondering how I know exactly when he decided. I know because ever since Saturday he's been "mysterious" about going over to his brother's house to work on it and keeps saying, "I bet you wish you knew what you are getting for Christmas!"
• The other night he said (and I am completely quoting him here), "You probably didn't see it, but I just put my silly pants on." Right after he had said something completely out of character. It made me crack up!
• And the last, and best reason is what happened last night. For about a week now my back has hurt after laying down for a while. When I say hurt I mean it hurts so bad that it wakes me up from sleeping in the night and I spend hours trying to get back to sleep. I do my whale roll over and over in the bed trying to get my massive body into a comfortable position (impossible). I asked the doctor and he said that there's really nothing I can do about it. Now that my bellie is so big it's just going to hurt and I can't take anything that would be effective in treating the pain. I can do some exercises and put some heat on it, but that's it. I've complained to my husband about it, but I have tried my hardest not to wake him up since he has to get up so early anyway. Well last night my back started to ache before I even fell asleep so I was thinking it would be a not so good night for me. And I would have been right, except for the fact that when I woke up in the middle of the night with back pain I accidently woke him up with all my flopping around. Instead of complaining about waking him up he offered to give me a back massage. He massaged my back until I fell asleep again!

See I told you I have the best husband ever!

The Library

One fun thing about reading a book that you check out from the "Library of Mom" is that occasionally you get to find little treats. Like today when I found, between the pages of a book that I could swear had never been read before (only because she reads so fast she doesn't crease anything) some crumbs from a pink cookie she must have been eating while reading the book. Pink cookies! Mmmmm! I love Great Harvest. I love their bread, I love their cookies, I love their lunch menu! Next time I go home I'm getting a brown bag lunch from Great Harvest with the biggest pink cookie they offer!

A Very Merry Un-post

Well, I have lots of tidbits to share today, but nothing so big as to fill up an entire post so I thought this would be the un-post.

• Monday I drove 2.5 hours south to visit with my grandma and shamelessly use her sewing machine and her time. We spent 12 hours working on finishing my Christmas present crafts. They look so beautiful! I'm so happy with the outcome. Now I only have one present left! Hers!
• I realized that my grandma has a more active social life than I do. She had two Christmas parties to attend on Tuesday and hosted one last week. I have yet to go to any.
• I stopped by Cabela's on my way home to pick up my husband's Christmas present (which is awesome and I bet he'll love it!). When I walked in the doors I was floored by the display! They had an indoor waterfall!
• I'm beginning to hate my job! Seven hours of sitting around all day sounds good when you're in school and you need time to study, but when you've got to invent things to do it can become quite tedious. Dragging myself out of bed on the days I go to work is the hardest thing. I regularly get up 2 hours earlier on the days that I don't work than the days that I do. I'm sure its psychological, but oh well. I am proud to help support us at least a little while we're here.
• Recently my husband and I rented some movies at Hollywood video and they informed us that we had been randomly chosen to get a two for one rental for the next two weeks. (My husband being keen on the X for Y sales got pretty excited.) Last night he brought home Talladega Nights (don't waste your time) and to make me happy The Devil Wears Prada. Can you just imagine a man all alone going up to the checkout with that movie in his hands? He just loves me!
• Speaking of movies, recently I rented Marylin Hotchkiss Ballroom Dancing and Charm School. It was great! Even Dan liked it! I especially think that my in-laws would enjoy the movie.
• The baby is so strong now that when she moves my whole bellie moves around with her. I can just sit and watch it move. There is no explaining how amazing it is to feel something else living inside of you. It's awesome.
• Our trailer is so messy right now if someone stopped by I would be completely embarassed. I guess you know what I'll be doing tonight as my visiting teachers are coming over tomorrow.

Generosity

Last night I paid the bills. As I didn't really want to go out in the cold to deliver our rent check to the owners of our little trailor I had my husband take it over. When he came back he still had it in his hand. I was really confused when he said, "We have to re-do our rent check this month." I thought for sure I had done everything right (as it's not that hard to write a check). Then he told me that for the months of December, January, and February the owners had decided to lower our rent by $50 a month! They are so generous! That's a lot of extra money for us to use on other things that we need! I was blown away with their generosity.

Update:
Also at work today I got a Christmas bonus! Who gets Christmas bonuses for a part-time retail job? I am so lucky! I love my boss!

The Good with The Bad

Why is it that whenever I get good, exciting news about one person in my life I seem to simultaneously get bad, upsetting news? Without going into any details on either story becuase it's not my style to dish on other people here I just wanted to relate my joy and worry about both of my family members!

In a less cryptic matter I also wanted to share my complete joy at having my husband home! He got home last night after I went to bed and left for work this morning before I got up, but it was GREAT to have him at home. I could tell the moment he got home because he just snuggled right up to me! I can't wait to see him when he gets home from work tonight! Oh joy!

Other than that the only news is that now I have started pushing back on my bellie when Charlotte starts to push out. It's kind of fun sometimes when she'll respond by pushing right where I pushed. I also know she likes it when I laugh. Or maybe she doesn't like it and needs to find a new position, but each time I get a really good laugh in she rolls and tumbles about.

This morning I woke up with a completely numb left leg. I mean the entire leg was numb. At least it didn't hurt is all I can say. I'm not entirely sure what to do about it, but since it doesn't hurt I'll just save it to bring up at my next appointment.

Update

During his layover in DC my husband called me and told me that he thinks the interview went really well at VCU. The questions were about his experiences in education during High School and College. He said there were also questions about his mission. So today he's interviewing at Temple in Philidelphia. Cross your fingers that this one goes well too!

I miss him

My husband had his interview at VCU this morning! I hope he did well. I really missed him last night.

Left-overs soup and Laundry

Well, now you all know about the chicken fiasco I thought I'd give you an update on what has happened now. Yes, you all are going to get to read more about my food! (I think I'm starting to dream about eating more food lately.)

Early in our marriage my husband told me that he doesn't like soup because he thinks it does not fill you up. This I thought was odd since when I was growing up for the entire fall season starting about October and going through December we had soup for dinner regularly. Fall season=soup season. We had wheat chilli, bone soup (aka ten bean soup), turkey leftover soup, chicken leftover soup, beef leftover soup, and many varieties on those themes. My husband however, felt that when he eats soup all he is doing is drinking broth and not getting filled up. For this reason I tended not to make too many soups.

Yesterday I decided that we had eaten enough of the backwards bird and it was now time to make soup out of him. (Plus, my husband will be out of town for over half the week so I can eat it myself.) I made the stock and then I made noodles from scratch (which were huge because I didn't roll them out thinly enough) and it was so yummy! My only complaint was that I put in too many noodles, but when I said this my husband looked at me like I had just said something crazy (like, "maybe we shouldn't always live right next to cows.") To this he said, "I like the noodles, they give the soup some substance like the carrots and chicken." So apparently he does like soup, you just have to put really big, really recognizable chuncks in it so he can see he's actually eating real food.

Other funny things happened this weekend. I'll try to relay one. I don't know if I can catch the hilarity of my husband here, but I'm going to attempt it. This weekend my husband and I both had Saturday off of work and also my husband's brother's family was going out of town so we had some alone time. I decided Friday night that I would write down a list of things that we needed to get done on Saturday:

• Research the schools my husband is interviewing at this week (cross your fingers!)
• Clean the house (OK it's really a trailor, but I'm saying house anyway)
• Fold the laundry and put it away
• Do the dishes
• Put up the Christmas lights

There were more things, and we got them done, but I can't think of them all right now and it doesn't matter anyway. Saturday morning we got up and my sweet, sweet husband decided to make me breakfast since I had spent the entire night waking up every stinking hour! After that he decided he'd tackle the Christmas lights and leave me to do the dishes. Pretty good division of labor since I didn't want to get cold in the frosty weather and he didn't want to do dishes. There were a lot of dishes. Enough that I still had some when he was finished with the lights. Once he came in he decided to tackle the laundry (I know, you're thinking, "Where did she find this man?"). So he was in the back of the trailor finishing the laundry. Just as I was finishing scrubbing down the kitchen after the last of the dishes he walks out and marks off Christmas lights and laundry off our list. Then I say, "Now all we need to do is clean the house." To which he says, "It's clean isn't it?" I wish I had a photo for everyone, since it clearly wasn't clean. I just looked at him in silence trying to think of how to respond when he said, "Well you did do some cleaning so that task has been done." I decided that he could be right for that day since I wouldn't be embarassed if someone stopped by. So I told him that we could go into town I would just have to change my clothing. I went back into the back of the trailor and realized that he had applied the same logic from the "clean the house" task to the "do the laundry" task. Most of the stuff had been folded and put away, but there was still some stuff on our bed clearly waiting to be put away. I just started to laugh! He came up behind me and said, "Well, it was just too hard to figure out where that stuff went!" So the laundry could be counted as having been done since clearly some laundry had been done! He is so funny!

Is this really breast?

Last night I cooked a whole chicken. It was delicious! I did make a tiny mistake though that made me smile and laugh at myself so I thought I'd share it on the Internet for the merriment of the whole world (well not really since I'm convinced that very few people actually read this thing).

So the recipe said to thinly slice an orange and then insert some of the orange slices between the skin and the breast meat. Keep in mind that I have only cooked an entire bird once before and it was a big turkey. When I had inserted things between the skin and the meat the first time it was really easy. This time, however, it proved to be quite difficult to separate the skin from the meat. I concluded this must be because of the size difference between the two birds (last night's being only about 5 pounds). I did manage to get it in and dress the chicken nicely. I even remembered to tie the legs in so that the bird didn't fall apart. I even got to use my favorite Le Crusset dish because the bird fit perfectly! Then I baked it for a little under 2 hours, basting every 30 minutes or so to ensure juiciness. My husband didn't come home in time for dinner and I had made so much food I was nervous about having to eat all of it on my own so I called my sister-in-law and told her not to cook dinner that I'd be bringing it over. When I got there I realized that I would also have to carve the chicken, since neither my sister-in-law nor myself really wanted to do it. So I picked the bird up out of the dish and put it on a plate to carve. I pulled out all the oranges that I had shoved between the skin and the breast. I tried to start with the breast meat (since that's what everyone eating right then prefers). Each time I tried to get a good size cut of meat I kept running into bone! There was NO breast meat on this chicken! I was so confused because when I had looked at it before starting to dress it I thought I had seen a boat load of nice juicy breast meat. I was about to cry thinking I had failed in cooking a nice juicy chicken for dinner when I decided to flip the bird over! I immediately saw my mistake. I had placed the oranges, spices, and butter between the skin and the meat in the back of the bird! When I cut into the breast meat it was so nice and juicy! I can't believe that I had mistaken the back and front sides of the chicken! With a degree in food science you'd think I would know better!

It Came! It Came! It Came!

Yesterday after work I drove home to find a big UPS box sitting on my porch! I instantly knew that it was our mattress support! I had planned on folding the rest of the laundry, cleaning the bathroom, vacuuming the floors and changing the bed linens before cooking dinner, but all those plans went right out the window the minute I saw the box. Being the handy instruction reading, putter together-er of all things pre-manufactured I decided that I would start the evening's activities putting together the crib. It looks BEAUTIFUL! I finished it all by myself, which was sort of tricky to hold the one end while screwing in the other. I managed to do it though! Once that was done though I finally had room in that tiny baby's room to clean up and put things in order (well, sort of). I organized the closet, which is practically our only storage place so that there are now only baby things out in the room. Next I took out and admired every item of baby things that we now have and I displayed them inside the crib and cradle that I had put together. Lastly I decided to put together the little vibrating rocker for the baby. That room is so cute! It's not really ready for the baby yet as I have everything out on display in the crib and cradle, but it just makes me so happy.

Also today is the day that the upholstery place receives their shipment of foam cushion material and I ordered enough of it to replace the old foam mattress in the crib so that's almost ready too! Oh what joy! Some may say that my nesting instinct has kicked in a little early, but I say I've always been one to display things. Each year our Christmas presents are displayed like they belong in a catalog because I just like it that way. Now our baby's things are. If I could only just get rid of the faux wood paneling that covers all the walls of the baby's room, but you can't have everything. At least we have a space just for our little one!