Lobster, A Wedding & Baby Clothes

I lied in my other post that we were having Lobster on Thursday. We actually had it on Friday night. Alex went to Mr. Bill's Seafood market and bought two 2lb live lobsters and brought them home. We steamed them in the dutch oven, which was kind of sad, but surprisingly easy. They were accompanied by mashed potatoes and brussel sprouts. They were very yummy to eat! We spent the rest of the evening watching The Wire.


Saturday morning we woke up bright and early to attend breakfast at our neighbors before the East Petersburg parade (which starts on our street). After we ate, we watched the parade (it seemed shorter this year) and then went inside. I decided to go to the mall for a dress for the wedding we were going to attend later on and I didn't have anything to wear. First I went to the BonTon because they were offering coupons for donations. Their maternity section is tinier then tiny. After I tried on a regular dress, and found Alex's name tag from the morning stuck to my bum (thanks babe), I gave up on the BonTon. I walked a little ways up into the mall to the Limited and tried on a couple of the dresses that were on sale. I ended up getting one for $10 and a flowy top for $12, score! And some earrings for $10! I was so happy with the deals and that they were normal clothes that will allow for stretching!

When I got home, we got ready for the wedding and headed into Lititz for the ceremony. It was beautiful! I love weddings! Gretchen looked like wedding barbie. Her dress was amazing! We had a great time at the cocktail hour and then the reception. We sat with Derek and Courtney, so of course I was quizzing Court with tons of pregnancy questions since she's going to have her baby boy on Friday!! Woo!! Our drink of choice was Shirley Temples (yum)! We ate dinner, we danced to the music and had a great time! The DJs were great, which was to be expected since Eric is a DJ himself. The speeches by Jen and Mike were awesome! They did such a great job. Probably two of the best speeches i've ever heard! We had a really great time catching up with everyone. When we got home we hung out on the couch for like 15 minutes so Alex could have a snack and then we went to bed. It was a long day!

Sunday morning, I slept in until about 9:30am. It was lovely. The temp has been perfect for sleeping lately, even though we've had crickets in our basement that have been chirping nonstop and I knocked our fan a couple nights ago so it also clicks (i'm going to have to look at it today bc I can't stand another night with the clicking, also, Alex slayed the crickets this morning for me, what a gentleman, so no more chirping!) Anyway, I slept in. When I got up, I cleaned up the kitchen and headed to Home Depot to get Alex more spray paint for the crib. I got the wrong kind, turned around and got the wrong kind again! Ugh! So he is going today to get the right kind (hopefully) so we can get this part finished and put together in the room. This coming Saturday we're going to look at fabric with Charmayne and hopefully will be successful. We discussed again just going with one color instead of multi-color so I'm going to create some inspiration boards and such at lunch to work further on that theme so we can at least know something that we want by Saturday. I spent the whole day up at my parents house, going through Mak's baby clothes. I got two bins full. One full bin of just 0-3 and then another bin filled with half 3-6 and 6-9 and a little bit of 9-12. She thinks there's another bin, which there probably is, filled with 9-12 and beyond. That was a treat. Then I chatted with my parents for a couple of hours, which was really nice and we ended up going to dinner all together before I headed home.

It was a nice busy weekend. I love those kind!

PINS

Here are a couple pins from my Random Love board. They might come in handy to those of you silly peeps who have yet to catch on to Pinterest!

Hang a picture. I plan to use this in the nursery. {pin}

Perfect for kids, am i right? {pin}

Put it in a bowl so that the sound will amplify. Genius. {pin}

Who doesn't hate when liquid spills down the side of the pan. Oh, that's right, no one. {pin}

Do you have a stripped screw? Put a rubber band over it and screw away! {pin}

Check out all my pins HERE and if they still require an invitation, you can wait for one, or leave a comment and I can send one your way for instant access!

Happy Friday!

Thursday Randoms

* My shoes don't really fit but I haven't purchased new shoes to go with my new black maternity pants so i'm sucking it up while walking and while sitting in my desk chair I am barefoot. You'd think i'd attribute this to pregnancy.. but no, it's always been like this. Apparently I don't know how to purchase the correct size flats on more than one occasion.

* OJ gives me throat burn (which is essentially, heartburn). But i looove OJ :(  I did bring tums with me to work today though!

* I might have a nursery breakdown. That's a bit dramatic but i am having trouble picking fabrics for the quilt that will serve as part of the bedding which will determine what fabric i use for the crib sheets i want to sew, which will have to go with the rest of the room in an aesthetically pleasing way. Longest sentence ever?

* Today marks Alex and I's fifth anniversary of the day we met. We're going to celebrate tonight with a fresh Lobster dinner. Homemade. Suck it Red Lobster.

* The past couple nights I've been having vanilla ice cream with the chocolate magic shell stuff and those little sprinkle balls. It's been awesome. I'm sad to report that last night I ate the rest of the ice cream, so I won't be having it again until I get more. Tragedy.

* The baby is currently rolling around inside my tummy. I think she likes OJ too.

* I'm way more freckly this year than last.. I wonder if this is going to continue to increase.

* I'm really glad tomorrow is Friday. I don't think anyone would disagree with that statement. And with that, I will end this post. Baii!

FIVE

Alex and I have been today for 5 years today. I think I posted on an old blog the story of how we met and I don't really feel like typing it out all over again but I will say a couple quick details to paint a picture.

Natural Icee
Dancing
Pizza
Walk Home

Here's a story of one of our first phone calls.

After him finally calling after about a week and having his phone number, I called him one evening to see what his plans were for the night. It must've been a thursday or a friday. (Words may not be exact but this is close enough).

(Ring, Ring)
Alex: "Hello"
Michelle: "Hey, what's up?"
Alex: "Who is this?"
Michelle: "What?! You have my number, it's Michelle"
Alex: "Michelle who??"
Michelle: "Michelle Elscheid, what the heck??!!"
Alex: "I don't know any Michelle Elscheid"
Michelle: "........(silence probably)"
Alex: "Just kidding, I know it's you"
Michelle: "Oh my god, I thought you were serious"

..Laughing, etc. even though I was completely caught off guard. The conversation was normal after that and I think he did a couple more things like that in the beginning of the relationship, just for a laugh. I laughed too so it wasn't like I was mad or anything. He's a jokester and I was just getting to know him.

I can't believe it's already been five years. I'm the luckiest girl in the whole universe. He's my best friend forever, literally and I couldn't think of a better person that I would want to bring a baby into the world with. He's going to be such a great Dad. And finally, his college nickname will actually be legit.

I love you babe!

Martin Drive Drafthouse: The Kegerator

Alex's personal brew pub (since we can make food in this joint) is called the

Martin Drive Drafthouse

And there he is, the Kegerator, i mean. With his new shelf from Ikea to hold the glasses (and clear up some space in the kitchen cabinet). And the sweet sign that Nick and Laurel made Alex for his birthday to show what beers he has on tap. I will get a close up of that tonight. He currently only has an APA on but I think he just kegged an ESB last night so that'll probably go on soon as well. He's such a craftsman. He has more hobbies than any other person I know, and I'm very proud of him for that. :)

21 weeks

I really hate the background of these images. I should cut myself out and plant myself on a beach somewhere or something.. but that would look silly since i'm always fully clothed.

Anyway, I hit 21 weeks on Monday. I never know what to say when i'm in the next week, so I always just tell people "I was __ weeks on monday, or I'm going to be __ weeks this monday" makes it easier. It really gets me when people ask how many months that is because apparently my brain has trouble dividing by 4. Anyway, it's 5 months or so I guess.. In the 2nd trimester. Babycenter says the baby is about 10 1/2 inches long and they relate that to a carrot (must be a big carrot). Eating healthier has been going pretty well. I try to bring my lunch everyday as opposed to buying it.

Everything is still going smoothly, still some minor backpain from the sciatica which I'm positive can be helped by a chiropractor if only I wouldn't be so lazy and go visit one. I did really well walking around Ikea on Saturday though.

I feel like a bus but I'm sure that's normal. Yesterday my bump looked huge and today it looks down a little bit. I should line up the first 5 months of pictures and check out the progression. Maybe i'll do that at the full 6 months! Something to look forward to.

No new milestones to report other than I feel her moving more. Sometimes she taps me a couple times in a row which is cute. I don't think she likes that I sit at a desk all day and don't move around all that much. I'm trying to pay closer attention to the patterns though to see when she's awake and when she may be sleeping. It's pretty early for her to set any patterns that won't change by birth but it's interesting to try to decipher.

Delaware +. Ikea + Bachlorette + Baby Shower = Busy

Busy weekend!

Friday after work, we headed down to DE to spend time with Nick and Laurel. They made a delicious dinner, we at Gelato on Main Street and played Mad Gab, which was hilarious to say the least. I almost touched their cat Dilla, which is pretty much a success because he's the shyest kitty on the planet (but also possibly the cutest).

Saturday morning, after breakfast we headed to Ikea in Baltimore. It was awesome. I hadn't been to Ikea in about 6 years so it was nice to go back and see the whole showroom setup. We ended up getting a bunch of stuff for the nursery. We got a 4 cube shelf, some picture frames, some little globe-y lamp things that I want to use as 'night lights' as well as the image to the right.. I pinned it a while back but didn't actually look to see where it was from. Pleasant surprise to find it at Ikea, at obviously an awesome price. Now i don't have to try to recreate it myself! We also got some new bathmats for the bathroom up there as well as a new shower curtain. I'm going to try to add pops of color in there as well. Why not! The last thing we got was a shelf for the dining room to go over the kegerator to hold beer glasses. Alex put it together and we put it up yesterday, so i'll snap a picture of it and include it in the post about our new mailbox that Alex also installed. He's so handy! Anyway, back to Saturday. After Ikea, we hit up PF Changs (and weren't overly impressed due to the amount of hype we heard prior) but it was still good. I love fried green beans and they give a huge plate as an appetizer.

After this late lunch we parted ways. I had a bachelorette party to go to in the evening which started at Jen's house with silly cookies and sangria that looked amazing (but I couldn't drink, obviously). We headed to dinner at Cultura's and it turned out I had an awesome coupon for 50% off food. Cultura's is a tapas restaurant so we probably ordered 30 plates of food to share between 10 people. It was delicious as always. I thoroughly enjoyed my two raspberry (virgin) margaritas as well as some red raspberry ice cream from the Strasburg Creamery. After dinner we headed to the bride's sisters home to hang out, play games and watch a movie. We played Mad Gab, which was hilarious again and then watched Bridesmaids which I was so excited to see. The movie was funny but had some slow parts. That whole night, I probably did more laughing then I have in a long time. That group of girls are hilarious! I ended up getting home around 3am. Crazy! Time had just flown by and I didn't realize it. I knew I would have to do some hardcore sleeping in the next morning.

And that's exactly what I did. I finally got up around 10:30am. I putz-ed around and then vacuumed the house. We put the shelf up above the kegerator like I mentioned above. Then we headed to our friends Courtney & Derek's couples baby shower. We'd never been to a couples shower before but it was so fun. They had some cute games like guess the baby food flavor (which baby food is pretty gross, even more reason why i'm probably going to make my own food, although the fruit was much better then the meals) and bobbing for nipples, which Nick won! We got to meet Dedra and Justin's brand new baby boy, Jack, who was super cute wrapped up in Dedra's (what i'm assuming is a) Moby Wrap. He was so tiny at 2 weeks old, which is completely normal obviously, and when Alex was holding him he looked like a complete natural. Cue the awes. After the shower, Nick and Alex watched the Eagles game we recorded and Laurel and I watched Bridesmaids.. long movie, the funny kind of dies off in the end and is brought back with the Wilson Phillips. There was a small break at half time for them to move furniture though which was a huge help. I'm so glad that's completed and now I can actually take picture of the nursery and get moving on all my other things related to it. After Nick and Laurel headed back to DE, Alex went over to the Herr's to watch the night game and I really needed to go to the grocery store, so I did that, plus I hadn't eaten anything since lunch so I made some spaghetti/meatballs and spent the rest of the evening facetiming with Julia and then my parents. Gosh facetime is amazing.. it's going to come in SO handy when we have this little bundle.

That sums up our super busy weekend. I can't believe it's already the 2nd week of September. This month is flying by already! Tomorrow I will take a picture of my 21 week bump to share with you! It's definitely getting bigger!