The Milk and Honey Maternity Frock GROSGRAIN GIVEAWAY!!!!

The Milk and Honey Maternity Frock GROSGRAIN GIVEAWAY!!!!

Rather Uncomfortable...

Do you think I could remove my bottom ribs? I'm starting to get incredibly uncomfortable. I'm just now almost 6 months pregnant and getting really claustrophobic thinking about the next 3 1/2 months and how much worse they are probably going to feel. I'll be sitting at my desk at work and will just start feeling like all my insides are being pushed into my lower ribs. I don't really want my ribs to expand (they haven't yet, but I hear they do)... but it is really suffocating to feel like there isn't enough room in there for both the baby and my vital organs. And I'm sure that this isn't really that bad yet-- ultimately the thing that freaks me out the most. If anyone wants to comment that the last three months actually get better/easier/more comfortable,etc- that's fine. I need to hear the lies.

Also started having the Braxton Hicks contractions (well, was just recently told that that's what was happening anyway)-- I think it freaked Caleb out a little bit when I told him over Ichat about it. But I assured him that they don't hurt and are just a clenching-ish type feeling and then my stomach feels super hard and are totally normal, etc etc... Poor guy, he's already worried about not being here with me, but now I tell him something that automatically makes him think - uh oh!

The number of people who have felt her kicks (besides CB and I of course) is now up to 5. I'm sure the number would be higher- if it wasn't a little weird to me still to have people press their hand to my stomach for up to 15 seconds at a time without moving it haha- because she really kicks so much. She's back to being the hulk baby.

And for the good news- One week from right now, Caleb will be back in the good ol' US and we'll be together. Hooray! This has been a LONG one. Today is 3 weeks since I've seen him. Add in the intense time zone differences, the spotty internet service, and the $1 a minute phone rates, and this has been the least we've communicated in the past 11 1/2 years... I'm doing pretty good though, considering everything. I haven't had a major cryfest breakdown, which I usually have at least one during his tours. I did have a few tears fall yesterday, but they weren't too bad. And considering the pregnancy hormones that make me cry during the Biggest Loser (ok, I admit- I cry during that anyway), I'm pretty proud of how good I've been :) I check weather.com everyday to make sure that St Louis and Chicago will have good enough weather and no flight delays to keep us apart. My Mom and Aunt Marcia are in town to visit me until Tuesday afternoon, so we have a busy weekend planned and they're going to help me get ready to fly home in less than a week. I am sure the time will fly by.

PS- He's in Scotland right now. That's so rad.

Holiday decorating

I think the saying goes...

When life gives you dead oranges, make a Christmas Tree!

Or at least that's what it should be when dead orange tree is too heavy for you to lift out of the window and your mom is coming to visit...

Free shirt and kitty poo

Who likes free stuff?

If you want to try for a free shirt I'm giving away on the hiphandmaids blog,

click here and leave a comment.

Thought it'd be funny to post a pic of me in the protective gear my mom sent me to protect the babe while cleaning the litter box. I feel like I'm on Dexter working a crime scene haha!

Here are some pics of the band and CB at their Thanksgiving show in the Netherlands. I got the pics off the internet, so I'm not sure who to credit the photos to.

Custom band shirts... I finished them the night before he left. :)

Random Musings...

I've had lots of little thoughts lately, that aren't enough to post about, but just might make a enough of a post strung together. Here they are:

Caleb's in Germany today. I'm wishing I was there. I was an exchange student in Germany 10 years ago and haven't been back since. Next time I have to go.

Time Zones. Wow, it is really harder with such different time zones. Usually the biggest difference is east coast- west coast and he'll be finishing a show and going to bed right when I am, and it's perfect. But 9 HOURS different is crazy. He's going to bed and it's like 4 or 5pm here.

Sewing shirts. I've been sewing shirts like mad, preparing for the markets I'm selling in next week. I pulled out all my fabric the other night and was inspired and started cutting out sleeves from this fabric I had in my bin and I get about 3 shirts worth cut and realize... I cut into the fabric for our BEDROOM CURTAINS. oops. I dropped the scissors, ran into the bedroom with the tape measure and after measuring 3 times, realized phew, there is still plenty of fabric left for the curtains.

Housework. I'm totally not into it. I got really spoiled while Caleb was home for two months straight and with me being pregnant- Not having to clean the catbox or take out the trash. None of the dirty work. Luckily I have a face mask and gloves to protect me from the litter, but I will be way glad to hand those jobs back to him when he gets home.

Netflix watch it now. It's awesome. I've had the same movies sitting on top of my tv waiting to be mailed back for the last 3 weeks (something about taking them to a mailbox makes it so much harder to get done) but now that we can watch instantly online, I at least feel like I'm getting some of our money's worth.

TV seasons. What I am watching now is tv seasons. This is good, cause you can give them half attention- say like while sewing- and still be able to follow the story line. Also if you have a lot of alone time as I currently do, you can watch a marathon of them. I've almost finished watching Dexter Season 1.

Working Overtime. How much is our free time worth? I think about that often. Like ok, during my regular job, I make X amount of dollars per hour. And in an hour of work I think, ok, I just paid for a dinner out or I just made enough to buy a shirt or whatever. But then free time, hmmm... It makes sense that you should be paid time and a half (or more!) for cutting into your free time. It does seem more valuable. But why? Maybe because you've allotted yourself the 40 hours/week or the 8 hours/day to be at the office. I've been on call this weekend, and I had to work 7 hours yesterday and was really frustrated that I didn't get a lot of other stuff done because of it. But then afterward, I thought about what 7 hours of overtime would equal to and it didn't seem as big of a deal... Either way, I'll be glad when this weekend is over and I'm not on call anymore- Crazy to say that, I've never wanted a weekend to be over before. :)

TGIW !?!

Yay for a 4 day weekend!

I am so excited to not go into the office tomorrow or Friday (Technically I'm on call and will have to work on Saturday and Sunday for a few hours, but at least it's not all day long). I have sooo much sewing and housework to do, it'll be nice to have a couple days at home to get stuff done! I may even brave the stores this weekend to try to get some names crossed off my list (anyone want to join me?)

In the past, I've posted a few times about my crazy travel stories... well Caleb and the band have officially topped most all of them in the last two days. This is what he told me last night: They were supposed to fly from the Chicago airport yesterday around noon to Atlanta where they would transfer to the flight to Amsterdam. They get to the airport with plenty of time and found that their flight was delayed about 30 minutes. Worried about the delay causing them to miss their connection, the airport lady switched them onto a direct flight on another airline. Nice, right? Well, no. Her supervisor came over and wouldn't allow it, because their luggage could no longer be removed from the original flight. So they were switched back to their original flight. Which has now started to board. They discover 2 things- 1. The delay was caused by a funny gas smell in the cabin which after being investigated, was found to be nothing problematic, except really smelly. and 2. They had been bumped to the end of the boarding line and by the time they got on, there was no overhead bin space available and so the 3rd guy, jon's saxophone had to be taken to the back of the plane. So at this point, they were delayed 30 minutes and would have roughly 40 minutes to board their next flight. But no.... at that moment Atlanta airport was blocking all departures and arrivals due to a computer glitch. So now, they are sitting on a plane in Chicago that smells like gas for an hour and a half, knowing that they will absolutely for sure miss their connection.

So they finally land, Ashton rushes off immediately to get in line to get a new flight for them, while CB and Jon wait for the plane to empty so they can get the saxophone from the back. Ashton gets them a flight through Copenhagen, he heads over there (a shuttle to a different terminal) and arrives right at the end of boarding. He lets them know that two more are on their way but they close the door anyway about 1 minute before CB and Jon arrive. Is that strike 3 then? So they get in the REALLY long line (if you can imagine that there is only 1 desk with 2 people serving everyone involved) and wait to get to the front. They are told (probably at least 1-2 hours after landing) that there is a possibility of flying standby through London in a couple hours. So they wait at the airport and when the flight time nears they go back to the desk. At some point in the last couple hours, the 10 spots that had been available have now been shrunken down to 2. The lady at the desk actually tried to make two of them fly the standby to London and leave the 3rd to wait until the next afternoon. How horrible is that? They explained that they are a band and can not travel separately (who would seriously ask someone to stay behind an entire day with a 9 hour flight involved?!) and right in front of them she called the next people and said- you lost your chance. Strike 4 then? And that was the last cross Atlantic possibility for the night, so they are given Delta airline t-shirts and toiletry kits (to make up for no luggage), some food, beverage, headphone, hotel and internet vouchers and sent away. How exhausting. Here's hoping the rest of the tour goes WAY better. It can only go up from there, right? Today's travels went off without a hitch and he should be landing in Amsterdam in about 2 hours.

Time for a Recap...

So, I'm sitting at my desk at work, waiting for a call from the wardrobe dept of that movie I just started and figured it's time for a recap of what's been happening with us.

This last week was a lot of preparing for Caleb's trip. He left yesterday afternoon to head to Illinois. He's met up with Ashton to run the set a couple times, then will drive to Chicago tomorrow and fly out Tuesday to the Netherlands. I don't know all the places that this tour will take them, but I do know that they'll go to the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland (bet they'll wish I was there to speak German for them!), then Paris, London, Scotland. I think they might even be going to the Czech Republic and Slovenia. Wherever they end up going, it's an amazing opportunity and I'm really excited for them. Cross your fingers that they figure it all out, because they are renting a van and DRIVING themselves! Yep, once they get to the UK, they'll have to switch over to the other side of the road. Thank goodness for GPS, at least they won't have to rely on translating maps on their own.

So that means- I'm a single wife again. For 4 weeks. We'll meet back up in Illinois when I go home for Christmas and he flies in. I wonder if I'll be as big as a house next time I see him. I think I'll be about 6 months pregnant then. I'm very lucky that my mom will be flying in with my Aunt Marcia to visit me the final week of my lonely time. That will probably save me, because I know she'll help me get the apartment ready, pack and finish up Christmas presents and she's even going to take one of the suitcases home with her, so I will only have to lug one to the airport when I leave two days later. Not to mention just having a fun visit to look forward to helps a lot.

I sewed a new set of band shirts for the guys to take with them. CB left the last set at a club they played at in October in the back room and the original green set has been missing for awhile. I probably shouldn't keep making them shirts if they keep losing them... Well, either way, their saxophone guy is coming with, so they needed to have 3 matching anyway. This time I used some fabric I found on the $5/yard table at Michael Levine's. It was a pink and green striped fabric that has different width stripes all throughout it. Which turned out kind of neat when sewn up with the different pieces. I didn't get a picture before he left, so hopefully he'll take one eventually. For some reason, they turned out kind of smaller than the last ones (even with the same pattern...) so I hope they'll fit the other two guys. Otherwise, CB might just have 3 of the same.

I went and saw New Moon last night with a couple of friends. It was (in my opinion) much better than the 1st one. The first one I thought of as a long inside joke, but this one was actually more like a real legitimate movie. Not an Oscar winner for sure. But not nearly as comedic. Also just want to say- Thank goodness they cut Jacob's hair. Ick. That wig was nasty.

Thursday was the finale for Project Runway... AND GUESS WHAT?!?! The girl I voted for WON! YAY!!! She wasn't always the nicest, but she did produce some great clothes. So much better after last year- when I was the 2nd person out in our contest. 3 of us voted for her, so that means that we will split the prize three ways. This means that I will win a lot of fabric. I haven't seen the prize fabric yet, but I bet there are some great stuff in there. Maybe I'll even be able to make a quilt for baby girl with some of it.

On that note... We still do NOT have a name for her. We do have a couple of front runners, maybe I'll reveal them at some point, but we've kind of tabled the "naming process" until Caleb gets back from Europe. He's a one thing at a time to worry about kind of guy, so unless I wanted to name her Paris or London, he was not going to be very helpful this last few weeks.

I am very into my annual Christmas movie watching. I pretty much watch movies all weekend long (especially while I'm sewing- which I'm doing a lot of prepping for these holiday markets and making Christmas presents). I've already watched Home Alone 3 times and the Family Stone 2 times. I have some others in my personal collection, but was thinking of filling up my netflix queue with just holiday movies. Anyone have any suggestions for good ones?