Picture links!

Ok here are the links as promised. They’ll take you to a picasa web album otherwise it would take me years to upload and post all of these

House Pictures

Last ultrasound Pictures

Babies and Demolition

I’ll start out by saying there will eventually be pictures….or at least links to pictures. I’m sitting in what’s left of the house we bought, typing this out on my cell phone. It’s been pretty much torn down to the studs and is in the process of having new wiring run, and insalation put and dry wall put up. All of this being done by Don’s famliy who I’m pretty sure were Enegizer bunnies in past lives. They are amazing!!!! The pictures will really show what I mean once I get them uploaded. I tell you what though, seeing my hubby covered in drywall dust is kinda hot! I had a lot of reservations about this house but I think once all the work is done its gonna be amazing. Unfortunately for me I haven’t been able to do as much as I would like. Its hard to do much with all the dust and being the size of a Volkswagon.

Speaking of that, the babies are progressing well. I’m about 27-28 weeks. We had to see a perinatalogist a month or so ago and will follow up with him in a few weeks. The baby on my right side has a two vessel cord instesd of three, and the baby on my left has a kidney that is dialated and may be obstructed. Right now there isn’t anything we can do about either condition but watch then. At our last ultrasound in the beginning of June the girls were 1lb 14oz each and in the 60th percentile for growth. We have another appointment on Tuesday the 23 and that will be my glucose intolerance testing and I think another ultrasound so I’ll have more baby news then.

coming soon

I know its been a while, but I hope to have a full post up this weekend to update you guys on whats happening down here, its been crazy! The babies are growing, another doctor visit on Tuesday. We have a house which we and Don’s family are in the process of demo’ing. Lots of stuff.

No news is good news, right?

Which is pretty much why I haven’t updated this blog lately. That and I’ve been sick and or tired… I’m definetly not one of those people who just loves being pregnant.

So to update you on a few things, Don and I are still in the process of buying a house. The underwriting company is taking forever….apparently they are really backed up….yea. So we sit here and wait hoping we are able to close and move before our lease is up on our apartment. The last we heard they were thinking we may be able to close by the end of April. We were supposed to have closed the end of March so we’ll have to wait and see I guess. Now that it’s getting nice out I’m really wishing we had the nice big deck to go out and sit on which is on the back of the house, a little bit  more private than the little patio on the front of our apartment right on the street!

Knitting wise I’ll admit I haven’t been knitting for the babies. I started another lace shawl from the newest edition of Knitty.  After that I’m going to start the baby knitting. I’ve been looking at patterns sure, but I haven’t bought the yarn or cast on for anything yet. One reason is I didn’t want to start anything until I knew what we were having, which we found out on Tuesday.

Start feeling bad for Don now, we having two Girls! Yup poor pappa is gonna be in estrogen hell! I know he really wanted a boy so I do feel kinda bad for him, but I know they’ll both have him wrapped around those little fingers pretty quickly. He told the ultrasound tech “Boys are easier, you only have to worry about one little thing. With girls you have to worry about everyone elses little thing!”  I told him he better go buy his shot gun soon. I can already see him on the front door step, in a chair, with the gun on his lap waiting……

This part will be kind of picture heavy, each picture has a label on it with an arrow so I won’t really write anything with each picture. I’m going to do this as a kind of gallery this time since there are eight pictures. So you’ll have to click on each one to see it.  They start with Girl A which is the little bit bigger of the two and then Girl B.

Suprise!!!

Today Don and I had our first ob appointment and ultrasound. I have felt like crap for over a week so I was looking forward to finally seeing someone. Most of the appointment went as planned until we got to the ultrasound.

don’t know if you can tell in this picture but there are two…….TWO! I just looked at Don and he was just standing there smiling!! LoL. I looked at my doc and said ” Holy Sh*t!” and he and the assistant just laughed at me. They are due September 14! They look like little sea horses!!! I’m still kind of in shock and denial!

In other news…..I finished Mom’s mittens so hopefully I’ll get them in the mail tomorrow. I’ll have to inform her the deal is she has to take a picture wearing them once they get there!

As promised

I said a few days ago I would have pictures of the recently finished product and here they are.

I began knitting the Febuary Lady Sweater before Don and I got married. I finished the yoke and had two or three inches of the lace pattern done when I realized that I had done the shoulder increases wrong. I hooked it up to my ball winder, looked away and started unwinding the sweater. I started it again in October and finished it just after Christmas.

As I said in the last post, while I was in Minnesota visiting my mom she mentioned she wanted a hat, something to keep the snow out of her glasses. I hopped onto Ravelry and began browsing the hat patterns and found the Better Bucket Hat pattern.  I got yarn when I returned to North Carolina in colors to match her coat and knit this up in a matter of a couple days.

Next came Mom’s mittens. She wanted a pair of the convertable type mittens. I’ve never made mittens, or gloves, much less convertable mittens. After navigating a couple confusing area’s of the pattern I have one completed mitten and the next one is cast on. This is the Frankenmitts pattern, with out the color work. Mom just wanted plain black, which was fine with me!

In the mix has also been a bit of spinning, I’m still working on the blue hand dyed BFL that I have been making headway on it. That and I have some new fiber which I’ll get to in a moment. Here is the BFL fiber and the bobbin, which is the second bobbin.  I’m debating trying some Andean plying with this but we’ll see. I’ll have to do some You-tube research.

A gal on Plurk was looking for a skiens of Noro yarn with which to make a blanket. I happened to have to skeins of that particular yarn and we worked out a trade and she let me pick out a batt of fiber from her etsy site!!! A few days later I recieved the most beautiful fiber!!! It’s called Ice Princes and it’s wonderful. Along in the package with the wool was a little sachet of lavender which smells absolutley wonderful! Her etsy site is called Uniquely Yours Design and  can be found at http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5545256. I really suggest you take a look. I can’t wait to get my hands in this stuff, but being a monogomous spinner I have finish the BFL I have started first!!!

My Mom is doing better, there are some big road blocks at the moment, but I don’t want to go into to much detail because she reads this and I’m not sure how much she wants me telling the world! Her surgeon is planning on going back in soon than previously thought which would be good because it would remove the biggest road block but is a bit scary seeing as what happened with the last operation. So thank you all for all the thoughts and prayers, and please keep them coming she still needs them, and I must admit so do I.  This is the situation I was very afraid of when Don and I moved to North Carolina. It is the worst feeling knowing a family member needs you and you are basically powerless to do anything. I’ve been home a few times but it really doesn’t seem like enough. Unfortunatly my wallet demands I work so the option of just staying up there for a longer period of time just isn’t there. She’s by no means alone don’t get me wrong, it’s just daughter’s guilt maybe.

Finished objects, on the needles, and a new addition

Yes I have actually finished a few things, and yes I have started a few more. First off, the Febuary Lady Sweater is finished!!!!!I’ve worn it out in public and yes it fits. I’ll post a picture soon since i’m at work. 

My Mom had asked me if I could make her a hat and a pair of mittens just before I was about to come home after Christmas. So as soon as the sweater was finished I cast on for the Better Bucket hat pattern. Mom wanted a hat that could keep the snow out of her glasses. That took only a few days and I then cast on for the Frankenmitts, a pair of convertable mittens with individual finger holes. This is my first set of mitten/gloves. I’m on to the flap part of the mitten so the first one should be done soon and the second one should knit up pretty quick now that I kind of know what I’m doing.

Our second piece of news is that Don and I are having a baby! I debated posting the news on here, but since I’ve already posted it on Facebook, I figured what the heck. I’m not sure of the due date yet, my  first OB appointment and ultrasound are scheduled for the 28 of January, so I should know more after that.  So I’ll keep you all posted.

I’ll get project pictures posted soon, Promise!

long time yada yada yada

Ok so I’ve neglected the blog I admit it. Things around here have been on and of crazy. After my family headed back home things just kind of leveled out. We started getting adjusted to married life and then all the crazy started. So in a nut shell here is what has happened since my last blog post.  My husband was in a wreck and totalled his truck, my birthday, My mom ended in the hospital and had to go into surgery, Thanksgiving,  Mom continually got worse, had to be transfered to another hospital, go back into emergency surgery and was in the ICU, I flew back home to Minnesota to be there with Mom,  I flew back home after about a week so I could work a bit before christmas, then flew back to Minnesota to spend Christmas with my family while my husband had to stay behind because of work, mom was discharged from the hospital christmas eve day, flew home, and spent New Years at work.

So thats the events of the past couple of months short and sweet. I’ll go into detail as to a few of those later one, but thought I’d give you my form of an excuse for not updating the page. Knitting wise!? hahahaha Still working on the Febuary Lady Sweater, though it’s almost done. I keep tinking wtih it to get it to fit just right.

Our Night in Rodanthe

Many of you have no doubt seen the movie trailers for or the film “Nights in Rodanthe”.  Our story was a little different and there was no Richard Gere or it may have totally been worth it.

Grandma and Grandpa brought my mom and my uncle to the southern North Carolina coast when they were very young, so we thought it would be cool to go to the Outer Banks while they were here. According to the Garmin it was about a five and a half hour drive from my apartment to Cape Hatteras. We figured, eh thats close enough to go down and back in one day. You know, it might have been accept we decieded to go the day there is a tropical type storm off the coast. Now lets be clear, it was a tropical depression and it wasn’t really a tropical storm, but close.

We left Southern Pines at about 9am and drove through on and off down pours, it was wierd. We’d be driving and nothing, then suddenly it’s a deluge and I can’t see the road. This was the whole trip there on and off.  Many of you have not been to, or know much about the Outer Banks.  Here is a map.

You can see all the Outer Banks really is, is a series of thin islands that protect the NC mainland so to speak. We drove through Plymouth, across a bridge that seemed much to long and much to close to the water to get to Manteo where we stopped for lunch at Hurricane Moe’s so Mom could have scallops! (that was goal number two for the day, if we we’re going to the coast Mom wanted scallops).

Here is the first bridge we encountered. This bridge goes from the mainland to Roanoke Island.

Yes the picture is crappy, but this is what we were driving in going over the bridge….I don’t like bridges… at all so this part of the trip was a lot of fun, and let me tell you there are quite a few bridges and some of them are really really long…… like you get on the bridge and you can’t even see land.

This is one such bridge, we are already on it……and had been for a bit… and it just keeps going…..

We made though and the weather cleared up rather nicely. Once we got onto the Outer Banks there is one road. It goes north and south. If you go north you go up to Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills, if you go south you go towards Hatteras. Past Hatteras there is a free ferry which will take you to Ocracoke Island where there is another light house. Past that is another ferry that takes you to main land NC or SC. WE went south and about three miles after getting on Hwy 12 you come to Bodie Island Lighthouse.

You want a sign? This one was in the Bodie Island Museum/gift shop. This should have been a clue that maybe we picked the wrong day to come out here.

About twenty minutes further down the road is the Cape Hatteras light house. Not a big deal right? Well this little storm was cause eight foot swells we find out later. Want another sign?

This is what I drove my mom’s Honda Odessy through at Mirlo Beach. Ok Minnesota folk, how often have you been told never to drive though water that is covering the road way. Yea me too. I was seriously about to pee myself driving though this. Mom is loving it. She had said a couple of days/weeks before about how cool it would be to see storm damage….she got her wish.

See all the sand on the side of the road? That was from the morning tide. Us being Land dwellers kind of forgot about the whole tide thing, and didn’t really think again about the water thing. We drove through this at about 2pm. Tide went out at about 10am and we find out later that night that the road had been closed from about 6am until noon that day whilst the equipment seen in the above picture could clear the sand off the road……. you can see where this may be going.

Anyway, we blissfully carry on down the road toward the Hatteras lighthouse. Blissfully in part because the sun was finally out, woo hooo. Following are a bunch of pictures of the light house and the beach. Now at this point knowing he couldn’t climb the light house Tom took off to get pictures of the ocean for us while Mom and I strolled the light house grounds, so prepare for picture-palooza.

So after we got a good look at the light house and the grounds we figured we had better try to get back home. The local radio station had been talking about how the road had been closed in the morning and how the chanced of the road closing again when the tide comes back in was pretty high. In one of the pamphlets we had picked up was a tide calender. Afternoon high tide was at about 530, we left the lighthouse at about 345 thinking we had plenty of time.

We reached Mirlo Beach in Rodanthe and 420 to cop cars blocking off what would normally be the road….. which at that time was a small lake. I pulled up and asked the officer how long he thought the road would be closed. 6 hours, if it re-opened……Great. So here we are a bunch of tourist who have no where to stay and no meds with us….cause we weren’t planning on staying overnight we never thought to bring my grandparents medications with us.

We finally decided we would pull over somewhere and nap for a while then grab food and one of the places that had a bar so it wouldn’t look wierd if we were there for a few hours. So we drove back and forth between Rodanthe and Buxton trying to decide where to stop and where to eat and if we should just plan on staying the night. I wanted to go home…I started to panic. I’m kind of claustriphobic and the thought of being stuck on the island was kind of driving me a little batty.  Seriously. So we pulled into the parking lot of the Froggy Dog and kicked back for a bit. Well apparently somone noticed and the owner of the joint came out to see if we were ok, and I explained what was going on and that we were just nappin for a bit and we would be in a little later for grub and hopefully be able to go home, she was very nice and said that was fine and if we needed anything to pop in.  We did eventually go in and get some food, which would have been really good if I hadn’t been so nauseated. My nerves were a wreck….couldn’t place why then, still haven’t figured it out. So we hung out, ate, took in the atmosphere. They usually have kareoke on Thurseday nights….. but the people that run it couldn’t get on the island…figures.  I went out the parking lot and decorated it with what little iI did eat and we headed out. While we were down that way we check with the local Comfort Inn to see if they would have rooms should we be stuck and then headed back up the road. We got back up to Rodanthe about 930 and saw:

OK so my nerves go completely haywire, I was damn sure I was going to pass out right there. I shakingly walked up to the officers and asked what our chances of getting of the island were, and he told us it should be about midnight when the crews had to road open again. They had big dumpers and scrapers trying to scrape the four feet of sand off of the road.  I asked him how often this kind of thing happens and he goes “oh all the time”….you would think in a world of modern engineering someone could fix that…a bridge, a wall, something! Ok…calm myself….Walk back to the car, pull to the side of the road and prepare to hang for a while. We weren’t the only ones, there was a small line like preparing for a parade along that road. People slowly trickle up the officers and check on the status and about 1030 one person stops by the van and tells us that they aren’t going to be able to open the road. Apparently the equipment couldn’t handle the sand and kept breaking down and the they weren’t getting more equipment in but it wouldn’t be there until five in the morning….crap……more roadside decorating and Tom takes the drivers seat and we head back to the hotel get a couple of rooms and wait until morning. When we got to the hotel there was a Dare County Sheriffs deputy there and he gave me the number for the non-emergency dispatch and told me to call in the morning to get an update on the road status.

We settled in as best we could for the night and woke up about 7 the next morning, called the emergency dispatch who told us the road was open. As we are checking out one of the desk gals was looking at the Rodanthe webcam, and said that it looked like the road was closed again because she coudln’tsee any traffic moving. Using the desk phone I called the non-emergency number again and was told they were just running another scrapping and it should be re-opened in about fiftenn minutes. We loaded up the van and got the He** out of there while we still could. I still wasn’t feeling real great some Tom got the privilage of the sunny and uneventful drive home. The road looked so much different than the night before. The sun was shining and the wind had calmed down so it was actually a nice drive. The big difference was the huge sand piles along the road in Rodanthe.

I had completely sworn off the outer banks after that night but now I might like to go back as long as the weather is going to cooperate and we plan on staying the night somewhere!

A wedding and a flooded road

I know you all have been patiently awaiting this blog post but it took a bit for things to settle down enough for me to form a coherent thought (which is usually fairly difficult for me anyway, yea yea yea I know).  Don and I got married on September 21 on a lovely day in West Virginia. I’d love to say things went off with out a hitch and for many people who were there you would almost think it had. Let’s start at the begining.

Don and I drove up to his parents in Webster Springs WV, on Friday after I had worked a 12 hour night shift. I figured no problem I’ll just sleep in the car on the way up. Yea, that didn’t happen. I was super, super car sick the entire 6 hour drive. Good news was, the Goody’s in Summersville did indeed have his tux. Why am I supprised by this? Well there seemed to be some confusion in the lines of communication. Don went to the Goody’s here in Southern Pines, got measure and had a rush put on his tux so it would be there in time. They told him it would be at the Goody’s in WV by Saturday. Great! Then at some point in the week someone was told it wasn’t for sure it would get there, or something, I heard that part all second hand. So that tux got cancelled and Don was going to try to get one down here. Because of his work schedule he wasn’t able to get in to get fitted at all….Great, I’ll standing in front of my family with some guy in his undapants. I called the Goody’s in Summersville to try to figure out what in god’s name was going and to my suprise they already had his tux, there in the store. I asked what happened and they told me they had overnight shipped it to make sure it would get there in time, but that someone had called and cancelled it the same day it had been ordered…..I’m still not sure what happened but I’m just got we got it. The rest of the trip for us was uneventful. Mom and the rest of the gang had made it to thier hotel in Indiana with out event. Oh yea, but no one had a cell phone signal in the hills….no one…….

By Satureday you could kind of start to tell everyone was starting to feel the stress of things. Late nights getting this done, trying to organize family coming from all over the place. My family made it into Webster without much trouble and from the hotel we went out to the park to help with the set up. Now I don’t know how many of you have been to West Virginia but those roads aren’t flat and they aren’t straight, so just because something looks close on the map, it may still take you an hour to get there. From Webster Springs to the park was about a 45 minute drive for us not used to driving in those mountains. Don’s mom had rented one of the cabins at the park for Satureday and Sunday night and then had rented us one of the smaller cabins for Sunday night. So we go to the park to help with setting up and we get the pavillion all set up and what not and go up to the cabin to see what needed to be done up there. As we are coming up to the cabin, Don’s sister comes out and tells her husband that she needs him in there like now. A couple minutes later Kevin comes out with a small snake in a dust pan….Yea a baby snake…..According to folks in there it fell out the damn ceiling!!!! Guess what….I hate snakes……The worst news of the week came shortly there after. Don’s uncle had been in an accident and killed in Florida that afternoon. Here is a link to the story.  Needless to say we kind of wondered if we should postpone the wedding but everyone agreed to keep on with it. Many of Don’s family were unable to come due to Michael’s death but the number that did come was suprising and really ment a lot to us.

Sunday dawned a beautiful day in Webster Springs, the weather channel had said it was supposed to be 75 and Sunny! We didn’t have a rehersal the night before with everything that happened so we were just kind of shootin from the cuff, which didn’t go real well with my type A personality as many of you can guess. I spent some of the morning trying to get a hold of the gal that was supposed to be doing my hair to find out for sure what time she was going to be at the park. Don’s mom had talked to her and the gal said she would be at the park but Glada couldn’t remember what time she had said. I left a message at her house and shop and still couldn’t get a hold of her. It was starting to get kind of late so we headed out to the park. We got out there and it was a flurry of activity the pavilion looked amazing and the cabin Don’s mom had rented was packing wtih people decorating the cake and getting things finished up to take down to the pavillion. I decieded I would get dressed in the cabin Don’s mom had rented for us to use that night. The cleaning gals were right across the road cleaning one of the other cabins so I asked them how I could get a key. They told me to hang out by the office and the ranger would be back soon. So I drive down to the office and waited….and waited…and waited. I waited long enough the Don and Tom showed up at the pavillion which was right across the dang street! I went back up and asked if one of the cleaning gals would let me in and I would worry about getting the key later. One of them was nice enough to walk me up to the cabin but on the way there informs me that it kinda smells like a dead rat in the cabin and that we may want to think about switching cabins…..great…… I deciede to sniff for myself. She let me in and it really just smelled like musty wood, probably from the fire wood that was in the cabin. I didn’t really have time to take a look a round so we popped open a couple windows and left. I went back to Glada’s cabin to get stuff together and after about half hour or so one of the other gals walked up to our cabin to use the shower and informed me that it was locked again….wonderful. Ok I’ll just get dressed where I am then. The girl who was supposed to do my hair never showed….. The cabin finally cleared out a bit I quick threw my hair back, pinned in some bobby pins and the decerative ones I had, and called it good. Got dressed and Tom, and Haley (Don’s niece) and I hopped in the van and head down to the pavilion. From here things went smooth as glass. I didn’t trip on the rocks or nothing! After the ceremony we did all the pictures and let people eat. There really wasn’t a reception people ate, mingled and we cut the cake and that was about it. No one was really in the mood for dancing and since we had it on a Sunday afternoon people had to get back home to get to work Monday morning. The whole thing had wrapped up by about six or so. I’m thinking awesome we can get cleaned up and still be able to watch the football game (Packers vs. Cowboys). Don and I go back to our cabin so I can get changed out of my dress. Whilst I’m changing Don goes in the bathroom and guess what he finds. A DEAD MOUSE. EW EW EW EW EW EW EW. Ok after the baby snake and the dead mouse this city, yankee girl is offically freaked out!! I pile my bag all up on top of one another so I don’t have any little visitors in them and go out to the car while Don disposes of our little gift from nature. We stop down at his mom’s cabin, tell her about the mouse and head back in to Webster to watch the game. Packers lost…..figures. After the game we go next door to Don’s cousins house and chill there for a bit, and leave to head back to the park at about one in the morning. We get back to the cabin and its almost two. You would expect all the other cabins to be dark that time of night, but I was dead sure we left the outside light at our cabin on. We get to the door and Don’s mom and Aunt Judy had put a poster on our outside door. We didn’t really see it but we knew it was there because they had covered up the door handle. We go in side and the lights won’t turn on….yea no power. I’m at the stage you call freaking out. It’s pitch black, there was a dead mouse in here and I hear scurring! I turned to Don and said I’m not staying here. I’ll write a note so hopefully your mom gets her money back but I refused to stay here. So two in the morning we are loading the car up to head back into town. Just as we were pulling away from the cabin the lights all come back on and Don asked if I’d rather just stay since the power was back and I was like ummm no….drive. I wrote a little note to the park ranger informing them that we didn’t stay in the cabin, and let him no about our little guest and the fact that there as no power and that they should refund the money spent for it (those cabins were like $125 a night….) We got back to his parents about 3am and both just crashed. How’s that for a wedding night! It turns out that the park refunded the money for both cabins thank goodness. In hindsight though we had a beautiful day spent with family and friends with a little extra adventure thrown in!

The day after the wedding we just hung out at Don’s parents house so our families could get to know one another. We sat on the porch, ate, drank a little, shared stories, that kind of stuff. It was nice and the weather was wonderful. Mom, Tom, Grandma, and Grandpa left to head to North Carolina about noon on Tuesday and Don and I left Webster Springs a little after 6 that night. I wasn’t car sick at all  on the way home thank god.

This has gotten wordy enough for one entry I’ll save the flooded road story and the rest of my week with my  family for another post. But here’s the link to some of the pictures from the wedding. I only have a small amount of them. Don’s mom is going to get a hold of everyones camera’s or disks and compile them all and send them to me so once I get those I’ll have many more pictures to share! Click here to take a look!