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.

Brian and I have been trying to get healthier. I know we talk about it all the time, but this time we’re pretty serious. He and I bought lost 12 lbs each. I’m doing the biggest loser competition at work and so far I’ve managed to get 3rd place. My coworker friend and I have been working out like crazy over the past 4 weeks. I can definitely tell my endurance is getting better since my heart rate isn’t as high when I’m doing plain cardio. I need to start mixing in more weights so that I can increase my metobolism. We’re also trying to eat cleaner and have the appropriate serving. The only challenge with eating is finding the time to cook the proper food since I don’t get home from the gym until after 7 and sometimes 8. I think once our weekends slow down, I can probably try to plan it better. I have been consuming lots of fruit since it’s in abundance. I told Brian that if I reach my ideal goal, I should get a new car. :-)

Speaking of car, my check engine light is on again. Grrr. Hopefully whatever they find tomorrow isn’t a big deal.

Leah and Reesey are doing well. Reesey spent 2 weeks with her grandparents. We went and picked her up over the weekend after visiting with Brian’s new nephew. Baby A is tiny by the way. Congrats to the new parents.
Speaking of kids, we still haven’t made plans yet, but we keep going back and forth with baby names. It seems our first choice has gotten too popular. My mom keeps pressuring me to start but we both still feel so young. Everyone should check back in a couple years to see where we are with that thought.

Work is still the same. Nothing new for either of us. I’m still very grateful that we’re both in a good position both financially and with our jobs.

In other news, we finally booked our big trip to Europe. 11 days in Rome and Paris in Sept. This is our anniversary gift to each other I suppose even though it’s a few weeks after. I’m super excited, but I guess it hasn’t sunk in yet since it’s still far out. Of course this is the first of many trips.

My next goal is either Japan or China. But I think we may have to make a trip to Cambodia and Thailand since that’s where I’m from and all.

I’ll be sure to blog our excursion while we in Europe.

Other than that, that’s all I’ve got. I’ll try to post more, and hopefully I’ll have interesting things to talk about.

I leave you with pictures of us at a Central Market cooking class enjoying a souffle we help make. I totally recommend their courses. Very entertaining and the hands on aspect is well worth it.

…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.

At least her spirit is the same, for the most part that is. I want her to be 100% healthy, but it’s so hard to keep her that way when she likes playing rough. She hurt herself by hitting the corner of the wall as she turned around to catch her squeaky.

Anyway, this weekend was very uneventful since Brian is sick. I’m not sure where it came from, but he was sick with something similar about a month ago. I hope I don’t catch it again because it took me about 2 weeks to recover from it.

Anyway, we spent the day today cleaning and reorganizing. It’s been almost a year since we’ve moved in and the place is a clutter. I cleared the kitchen counters so it looks less cluttered. I even moved some of the canned goods and spices into the cabinet next to the fridge to make room in the pantry.

Brian spent the morning hanging some floating shelves that we got for Christmas and then spent the afternoon clearing out the tubs in the back bedroom. It looks less like a storage room. Even the office downstairs is clean.

We even went and looked at some new model homes to get ideas for decoration, but I was more inspired by all the modern touches of the houses than I was with the decor. Too bad we didn’t take any pictures. I would love to someday have dark wood floors downstairs. Although it might clash with our cabinets.

I am so glad the studying is over. It’s so nice not having to spend all your free time studying or thinking about studying. I can now enjoy reading the book for my work bookclub and watching tv. Next week, we’re having a rock band party and I’m going to spend Sunday planting flowers in our yard.

Oh and since I’m rambling, Reesey had an animal’s head in her mouth yesterday. I could tell she had something in her mouth as soon as she ran inside. I was too afraid to try to take it from her, so I threw a snausage across the room. She dropped whatever she was trying to eat to grab the snausage and I shrieked the entire time I was trying to pick up the nastiness that she brought into the house. Brian was still in bed as it was only 7am, but he came running down to see what was going on. I had him look in the trash and I think we both agreed it was a head of some sort. I could totally see guts sticking out from the head. Yuck. What a gross doggy!! No kissies for her!

Anyway, I haven’t started meditating yet, but I will start this week. I need to find articles or books to see how I can do this effectively. So if anyone has any recommendations, let me know. I know a girl at work that is interested in doing it with me if I happen to find a class. But I think I’ll try mastering it by myself first.

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

Reesey and I went out for our bedtime walk tonight and there’s snow everywhere! There must be several inches on the ground and the sidewalks and street are covered in slush. The house is covered pretty heavily too, hopefully it’s bright enough tomorrow morning I can take pictures of it. According to weather.com it looks like it is supposed to keep this up for several more hours and then stay cold enough that it’ll stay on the ground at least through lunch tomorrow.

It’s odd having a holiday smack in the middle of the week. But I guess I’ll take whatever we can get. I have no urge to go back to work tomorrow though. At least it’s Thursday! The past week has been rather uneventful. We did spend time with the Neidig side of the family at the Hyatt Regency Resort in Bastrop two weekends ago. That was fun and a much needed break. We spent 4 days lounging around, sleeping, at the pool, doing absolutely nothing.

The house is a slow work-in-progress. It’ll be awhile before we can fill it entirely, and probably be a year or so before we’ll get real furniture for the formals. However, we did finally buy chairs for the kitchen table. It doesn’t exactly match, but oh well.

My herbs are sprouting and I can actually see cilantro leaves. My next goal is to plant some real plants, maybe not this summer, but since it’s been a mild summer I just may. I want to plant a pepper plant and some lemongrass. Those are the two easiest. Although I may not be using as much lemongrass as much, it’ll at least be aesthetically pleasing in the garden. We’ll see if Brian would let me. Speaking of gardening, the previous owners left a bird bath on the side of the house. I want to put that in the front lawn, lay some of the leftover bricks around it, and plant some flowers inside the bricks. We’ll see.

Reesey seems to be intrigued by the new house. I’m thinking she likes all the space, although this whole process has left her scared since she probably thought we were leaving her. Poor doggy.

Anyway, will post more and pictures later.

In other news, I had today off since it’s a company holiday. It’s nice just spending the day at home alone. I did meet up Brian for lunch and washed all of Reesey’s sheets, ran, got a massage, did some website work. Now I’m ready for a nap.

Alright I’m off to watch Heroes and 24.

I’m trying to drink more hot tea. I guess for its health benefits, plus it’s better than coffee. I went and bought of box of passion tea from Starbucks. Man that thing is strong. It tastes like really tart fruit juice, but it’s so darn good. I think I like it better as an iced tea versus hot.

Anyway, so I have to work late on Mondays from now on, which is fine, that means I get to come in later which means I don’t have to wake up early on Mondays. I think it’s not so bad. Although when 5 o’clock rolls around it’s a bit misleading, bc that’s when I should be going home.

This past weekend we went to go see Henry Cho at the Improv. It was pretty good, although I think I liked Paul Varghese (opening act) better. He told the same joke as the last time we saw him, but he was still funny the second time around. The show was sold out, and when we got there, they gave us the wrong table. The guy was being a bit snotty since we didn’t want to move because the table was in a good spot, but since our party was bigger than what it was when we originally bought the tickets, they wanted to move us to a corner table. Anyway, we finally moved tables, but I was still ticked off at the way he was acting, I guess you kinda have to be that way. Drinks there suck by the way. Since there was a two drink minimum, I just ordered a diet coke for my second one. We then stopped by Brian’s coworkers apt and had some more drink and watched more comedy central. This was the first time Brian has ever gotten drunk in public, and I didn’t like it so much. He gets really repetitive and loud, at least to me. All was fun though. I think Brian woke up the next morning with a hangover, silly boy.

Anyway, I think Reesey was sick this weekend. She threw up some nasty orange stuff (pepperoni stick maybe) and barely ate all weekend. She pretty slept all day Saturday though. It’s almost time for her vet appt too. Poor puppy hates the vet. She shakes and shivers before we even pull into the parking lot and as soon as we put her on the ground she runs straight towards the door.

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.