We spent a good part of this weekend shopping for carseats at BRU. We ended up buying a glider for the nursery. The other part of the weekend was painting the nursery. Painting is lame. The only fun part of this process is the results and we’re not even there yet. I spent most of Saturday taping up the room and painting the lower half while Brian watched the UT game.

Then on Sunday we both tackled the room and we’re still not done. I would say we’re about 75% there. I think we need to put on an extra coating. Textured walls are so difficult to paint on. Unfortunately we’ can’t put the nursery together until we get the furniture in, which is sometime next month. But at least the hard part will be done with.

I think I finished our registry. Thank goodness.

Despite all the manual labor I put in this week, I’m feeling slightly better this morning. Even though I got in 7 hours of sleep, I woke up several times because either my shoulder was aching from laying on it, my knees where aching because it was bent weird, or my wrists were hurting from pregnancy carpel tunnel. I feel like an old lady. I hope this isn’t an omen of what’s to come when I age. It better go away

I finally just woke up at 5am and worked out. But after that I felt like laying down again. I guess I woke up too early.

Baby’s kicks are getting stronger. I get this feeling every now and then like she’s sneezing. It’s cute. Our next appt is this Friday and we start seeing the doctor every 2 weeks until the final month.

There’s still quite a bit to do, not just with the baby, but everything else. I have to clean out my parent’s place. All that’s left is clothes that I need to send off to Goodwill and some of the large furniture pieces along with scrubbing the place clean. Ack.

We also have our maternity/family photo shoot this Saturday. I hope it stays cool through the weekend. The last thing I want is to feel all sweaty. We’ll be shooting with our dogs at some park somewhere. It’s our first professional photo shoot since our wedding 5 years ago. Can’t wait to see how it turns out.

Flight to Rome. At the last minute the agent changed our flight for a better deal. So we got to fly Lufthansa for the first time. The plane ride was smooth. We tried to sleep the entire way there, but of course it was rather cramp and uncomfortable. The service on the plane was definitely great. They serve alcohol for FREE! I had a couple of cups of wine hoping that it would help me sleep, but of course that just gave me a headache. At least the movie selection was good. I fell asleep here and there, but it certainly wasn’t refreshing. 1/3 of the way there, I just sat there tracking the flight on the monitor…”only 4 hours to go”….

We finally landed in Frankfurt but had to board almost immediately. For some reason, being in Germany scared me. Maybe because everyone was 1 foot taller than I am?

Anyway, after 1.5 more hours on the second flight, we finally landed in Rome. We grabbed our baggage and found our driver. Unfortunately we had no change, so we couldn’t tip the driver :-(. The same thing happen with the Parking Spot driver. All we had with us were Euros on the way to the airport. :-(

Despite feeling like a jerk we finally arrived at the hotel. We stayed at the Visconti Palace Hotel which is somewhat modern compared to everything else in Rome. It was built in the 70s. The rooms were small, but I expected that. The one thing that mattered was that the bathroom was modern and clean, which it was. It even had a bidet, which grosses me out by the way.

We unpacked, changed, and decided to explore the neighborhood. First up was lunch. Since it was already quite late for lunch, we wanted something small. After walking up and down the streets we found a tiny pizzeria. You pretty much had to stand and eat. The pizza didn’t look very tempting, so Brian got a calzone stuffed with sausage and rice, and I got some weird fried thing. I rate it a 1 out 5. Actually it was rather gross. It was cold and flavorless. Ick. Here’s a picture of Brian trying to be nice. “Mmmmmm”. With the disappointing lunch, I was hoping we’d find something better for dinner.

With that said, I’ll have to finish day 1 later…

I should probably go read but it’s hard to concentrate with the game blaring on tv. I’m currently reading two books. The Host by Stephenie Meyer and The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. They’re both good books, but I’m struggling with The Host only because it’s a bit slow in the beginning. Other than that, nothing much going on this weekend.

Anyway, the reason for this post is pictures. I haven’t featured much pictures since I’m too lazy to sort through. There’s always the link to flickr on the right side of the screen.

Here’s some from last weekend, at Linda’s wedding.

…puppy!

This morning, Brian and I went to visit our new puppy Leah, or Lele. We walked in and saw 7 precious puppies all running around in their little pen. Baby Lele was one of the smallest and pretty shy out of the bunch. But we think she’ll be the perfect match for Miss Reesey.

While we were playing with the pups, I was a bit undecided between her and the other doggy. But the other pup was like a pistol and too rambunctious. Besides, our intention was to go see Lele. Anyway, we’ve fallen in love and can’t wait to bring her home in a month. I just hope Reesey treats her well.

How can you not love this face. This is Reesey snoozing on the couch with Brian as he’s watching the bball games.

What’s funny is that he’s wearing my apron that says Mrs. Behrend on it.

The day is slowly creeping up. Not that we do it huge on Vday, we usually just go out for a fancy dinner at some restaurant we haven’t been to and he would send me flowers or buy me a card and I’ll buy him small. Last year we went to the Melting Pot for some fondue. I highly recommend by the way.

But this year, I just feel a bit apathetic. Maybe it’s because we’re already married?? And since vday is on a Wednesday this year, it just makes it much more silly to celebrate.

So after having to work late on Monday, I stayed out late on Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday I had lunch with a friend from HS. We finally patched things up and I had a great time seeing her again. Wednesday the girls at work met up at someone’s house to play Texas Holdem. I’ve never played poker before, but I kicked ass which surprised everyone. I guess I have a good poker face, or maybe since we weren’t playing with money, I was much more brave.

Anyway, I got my Mypublisher album in the mail today. I rushed home from work during lunch to pick it up since I was so excited. The album is missing the first 4 pages. HRMPH. Also the quality is great, but the images themselves are a bit blurry. Maybe I shouldn’t have messed with the resolution despite what their help page was saying.

Oh well, hopefully they’ll reprint it and hopefully I can tweak the resolution. Overall, it looks good and everyone thinks it’s amazing and the design looks like a pro did it.

Anyway here’s some pictures to share. They’re the most recent I think, and of course are from Christmas. I was finally able to put her Santa hat on without her trying to take it off and run away with it. However, I had to give her a bone just so she can focus on it while I took pictures.

So we had our work parties this weekend. I think on Sunday morning I realized we only had 5 hours of sleep from Friday and Saturday night. I was pooped.

Anyway, we got our car back and it’s working! WOOOHOO.

Well it’s been snowing/sleeting for the last 2 hours. But the cars are finally accumulating the white fluff so you can actually tell. Our boss told us we can leave at 3 if we wanted to. Poor Reesey, she wouldn’t want to go walking I’m sure.

Edit: here are some pictures. It was friggin cold, but Reesey and went on our walk anyway. I was afraid her little paws were going to fall off trekking through the ice cold grass.