T minus 3 days...

until we get the keys to our new place. Inevitably, my head is exploding with all the things I've been thinking about for the last week. I'm overwhelmed and so nervous about moving but I'm also at the point where I can't wait to move. I'm in the process of making a list to sort out what needs to be done at each place and when. I'm sure I'll be adding to this post.

Old Place

Finish Packing and Organize Boxes - Despite trying our best to pack in an orderly fashion, there are boxes everywhere and it's driving me crazy. I need to try to get everything organized by room to help make the move a little easier. I also need to finish packing up the bathrooms and miscellaneous items in the bedrooms, living room and kitchen.

Good Will - Then there's the bags of things we are giving away. We seriously need to do a good will run. Maybe Monday after work.

Move - The logistics are killing me. We'll be moving some of the boxes on our own Wednesday through Sunday, in particular the fragile items, and then having the movers come on Monday (7/19) to move the bigger items, such as the bedroom set, couches, table etc.

Cleaning - I'll have to do cleaning after we finish the move next week. And then I'll probably hire someone to do the deep cleaning that is required to get our deposit back. I need to call the lady the property management suggested to get a quote and see when she can come by. We need to get the carpets professionally cleaned. I've been a little bit more proactive on this and have already made the appointment to get them cleaned for 7/26.

New Place

Painting - We will for sure be painting the living room, master bedroom and eventually the bathrooms and nursery. I say eventually for the bathrooms and nursery because I haven't figured out what color I really want to paint them and I think they can wait since they probably won't be as hard to paint since they will be lacking furniture. Torin and I picked up the paint and the supplies today. We're going for Behr's Gobi Desert (3rd down on right hand column ). We both love it! Some generous and loving friends have donated their time and energy to help me paint this Saturday on my Birthday! Hopefully we will be able to knock out both of the rooms in time for the furniture to be moved over.

(Click to make bigger)

Utilities and Mail - Torin and I split up the bills anyhow so we were responsible for contacting our respective utility company to change service to our new address and disconnect service at our current address. I called AT&T to change service to the new address and was informed that even though we are only moving 3 miles away I would have to get a new phone number. So unfortunately, I made the decision to just cancel the phone service and we will only have DSL service. So for anyone that actually calls on the house line, you've been forewarned. Torin had a simpler call to PG&E to change her service. We are set up to get service on the 14th at the new place. I've been procrastinating about forwarding our mail. I'm not sure why. I guess maybe because mail forwarding only takes you so far and it will be such a pain to tell everyone (friends, family, credit cards, etc.) about our new address.

Unpacking and Organizing - I'm sure this won't be as complicated as packing. I think I might enjoy finding places for our things. I'm also planning to throw out any stuff that I missed in our packing phase that we don't use. Hopefully, we will be able to organize it in a way that will still work 9 months down the line. I'm sure I won't want to be looking for something in the middle of the night with a crying baby.

Adventure Day Trip...

After packing for 2 whole days, I figured I needed to enjoy and relax for at least one day of my 3 day weekend. I told Torin we needed to go out and enjoy the day especially since it was nice outside. Also I am trying to get in as much "couple time" as we can before our baby arrives. It's harder to make time for each other as it is during baseball season so I think we definitely need to make a better effort of spending time with each other despite our busy schedules. I know it will be even harder when baby gets here and I don't want to be one of the couples that fall apart because they aren't getting their "couple time".

Anyhow, we decided to go for a drive around the area and visit one of the many local county parks. Supposedly, Charlie Chaplin and Bronco Billy both filmed their movies out here in California in a rural area not very far from where we live. Because Torin is a movie buff, he wanted to see if you could still see any of the movie sets. So, we took one of the local roads out to see if we could find one of these 90-100 year old movie sets. Well, we didn't run into anything on our drive but we did stop at a cute restaurant (with great sandwiches) in a town the size of a football field.

Instead of doing any more searching for movie sets we drove over to the wilderness park. I'll admit I'm not much of a outdoorsy person but I do enjoy seeing wildlife, learning about the area and getting some exercise. We were able to do all of the above. After stopping at the visitors center and learning about the trails, the guide convinced to complete the nature trail and Indian Joe Trail. Instead of using the paper guide we used the podcast of the nature trial tour that we downloaded prior to leaving for our little adventure. So we eagerly started out for a little outdoor adventure.

We followed the trail and stopped at certain points to listen to the woman tell us about the history of the area and plants and wildlife found there. We even ran into some wild turkeys or as Torin told me "There are large birds in the trees".

The nature trail was just under a mile which was nice however we thought we were supposed to go a different way to finish the Indian Joe trail.

But there was a closed gate in our way. Apparently we are both goody two shoed law abiding citizens because we turned away from the gate figuring we were going the wrong way. After finishing the nature trail we realized that something was wrong with the directions the guide gave us and decided to go the back way up the trail so we could see the barn and turtles. As we hiked up hill to go up the back way, we were again thwarted. Instead of running into gates we ran into cows.....several dozen cows. 

Torin spent the whole time going up the hill saying "I don't think we are supposed to be up here". So again, we turned around and went back down to the main trail. 

Since we had yet to complete a trail we decided to try looking at the map for another short trail to hike. We ended up choosing the Shady Glen trail which was a nice cool trail under the trees. 

It kind of reminded me of a perfect place to build a fort...really brought out the kid in me. 

After finishing up our hike we finished our drive pass the local reservoir. 

Interesting fact...In the 60s a plane crashed into the middle of the reservoir and wasn't found until the 90s. It is still harboring the small passenger plane to this day.

Our little loop...

 And just for kicks a few pics of us.

It's official!!

It's official!

We'll be getting the keys to our new place on 7/14/10.

I'm already overwhelmed thinking about packing and moving and unpacking.

So, to distract me and because I'm a nerd at heart. Here's the floorplan of the place I created using Floorplanner.com.

First Floor

Second Floor

The joys of looking for a home...

Many moons ago, Torin and I both made the decision that once I was pregnant we would need to find a bigger place. Don't get me wrong, a 2 bedroom condo is totally feasible for raising a kid, however, we knew that wasn't going to work for us.

Back in the day (aka March 2009), when we were fantasizing about moving we looked at the listings on craigslist for 3 bedroom 2 bath homes in our area and saw dozens of places that could potentially work for us. Homes with beautiful kitchens, walk in closets, ample square footage and cute little yards with fruit trees all in our price range.

(sigh) Those were the days.

Now the listings are nothing like that. Finding anything similar to what we found in March of '09 is few and far in between. Maybe I'm remembering wrong, maybe now that I'm pregnant I'm just a little too picky or maybe because the housing market sucks and people are raising their rent so the nice properties I remember are now out of our price range. I'm not sure what it is but we've been looking off an on since we found out I was pregnant in March. We've actually gone and looked at places since May and we have run from many horror stricken. OK so that's a little bit of an exaggeration. We only ran from one maybe two horror stricken by the state of the property, most we just casually said "No, Thank you" and left. I won't go into any details on these places since many of the stories are long and drawn out. I'll summarize the bad ones as small, old, dirty and expensive. The ones that could work and we just passed on were homes that we couldn't see ourselves committing to for any length of time let alone the leasing period.

Before and after our mid pregnancy class yesterday, we visited several places on our list from craigslist. They were scattered all around our area and posed quite an adventure to get to since we decided to use Torin's GPS on his phone. Anyhow, most of the places on our list were condos or townhomes since we hadn't seen a good listing for a house in a couple of weeks. Torin wasn't too keen on moving from our condo to another condo or to a townhouse but I convinced him these places looked pretty decent, had good square footage and he wouldn't have a yard he had to deal with (a positive and negative all in one). So out of all the places that we went to only 1 was a decent match.

The only match was a 3 bedroom 2.5 bathroom, two story townhouse with a 1 car detach garage. I was instantly smitten by the look and feel of the place. It was open, airy, and homey in the you could live in it sense. However, Torin though impressed with the layout was not a fan of the appliances. They were old as dirt. No exaggeration, I think the dishwasher and microwave/stove unit may have been from when the place was first built in the late 80's or early 90's. Despite the appliances, we really liked the place and the landlord.

So pending our background check, we will officially be moving from our 2 bedroom 2 bathroom condo to a 3 bedroom 2.5 bathroom, two story townhouse. And when that happens, I will officially start to panic because I hate moving and I hate packing.

Happy Easter and 1st Ultrasound!

So this is like 2 posts in 1.

We had our first appointment on 4/2/10. It was pretty uneventful. The major highlights are:

Torin going with me to appointment (YAY!),
Watching Torin's confused face as I stripped from the waist down,
Torin giving the dildocam the side eye and wondering where the hell that was supposed to go,
Doc coming in explaining the procedure and rolling the condom on the dildocam,
Watching Torin's face as doc rolled condom on,
Trying to figure out if we could truly see the heartbeat,
Me laughing (with the dildocam in) while doc tries to explain things over us talking,
Seeing the babe for the first time.

Not very much to see there but it was still very exciting to see the babe. We are currently measuring about 2 days behind (sigh...trying very hard not to freak out about this) at 6 weeks 6 days instead of 7 weeks 1 day. We have a follow up appointment for 4/12/10. They will check the progress to make sure everything is developing on track.

When Torin and I were discussing telling our parents, I told him I was very nervous about telling them. I didn't know what their reaction would be...upset, ecstatic, uneasy, sad....but I knew that the realization that we were married and having sex would sink in for my dad very quickly. Knowing him he would probably say something to that effect...Torin says I'm crazy and he (and my mom) will be thrilled to know about the baby. So our plan was to tell our parents over Easter since Torin would be coming home with me. Sigh, best laid plans....Torin ended up having to work so I made the 4 hour trek home to visit the parents and in laws by myself. I decided to make a Easter basket for my parents to help break the news since I'm not so good with stating the obvious a la "Mom, Dad, I'm pregnant!". So I created a basket with baby related goods...I love Grandma/Grandpa bibs and unisex (at least in my opinion) onesies...on the bottom and candy and a "Happy Easter Grandma and Grandpa" card on top.

Here is my mom modeling her first Easter basket from her baby (aka Me) in all my life. Usually it's her giving the Easter baskets, so this was a nice treat for her.


So after taking a picture with her and the now "special" Easter basket, I begged her to open the card even though it was Saturday and not technically Easter yet. (Since no one was there to witness the actual event besides me, my mom and my dad, I'll explain that in the card was a small magnet frame with our first ultrasound on top of the card.) So as I was saying, I begged her to open the card and she graciously obliged. She was promptly greeted with an ultrasound photo, where she then began to freak out. Luckily, I have video to document the occasion....but I'll spare you since it is a lot of screaming. As a OB nurse, she knows what the hell a ultrasound photo looks like even in this very early stage but she was quite confused. She proceeded to question me (while flipping over the photo several times) about why there was a US photo in her card, who's it was, and call my name at least 20 times in the span of 2 minutes. Meanwhile, my dad continues to make his fruit salad and cheerios, oblivious to the madness of my mom or my taping said madness. After completely freaking out about the photo, she proceeds to look at the card "Happy Easter Grandma and Grandpa, Love Baby Simpson (coming November 2010) and dies. Ha! No....not really...she says "Oh Lord, What have you done?". This is the point where I turn the video recording off and state that this was not exactly the reaction I was expecting. I know I was nervous about telling them and actually thought they may be a little upset (don't ask) but this wasn't really the reaction I was expecting.

After a minute of silence, my mom tells my dad, who is now starting to figure out something is going on, that our daughter is pregnant (or My baby is having a baby). So after the freaking out...cue the happy reaction from my mom and dad. It was quite an experience that I'm sure I (or they) will never forget. Not too long after the happy congratulations and we're so excited moment, my dad said to my mom...

Dad: Shelia, you know what this means right?
Mom: What?
Dad: It means that they've been having sex.
Me: ::mouth drops open:: ....... ::dies::
Mom: No, No, No....they could have used a turkey baster.
Me: ::drops head (hard) on the table:: ::dies again::
Dad: mmhmm whatever Shelia, I know how these things happen.

At this point he leaves with his cheerios and fruit salad to watch some sports game and I try to revive myself enough to text Torin and tell him "I told you so!". Where he texted me back with "Your family is crazy"and I replied "That's putting it lightly".

Telling his family was not filled with quite the drama or excitement. I told his mom's fiance first since I needed some kind of person to lean on and I knew that he would take it well. Then Torin called and told his mom over the phone, where she proceeded to cry immediately. Since it was dinner with the family, his brother and his fiance and her little girl also found out. I presented them with another copy of the ultrasound photo in a magnet frame, without an Easter basket....sigh I know, I feel kind of bad for this one. I'm just not sure how they would take receiving an Easter basket

Anyhow, everyone was shocked first....but excited and happy later. Actually, my mom is a little upset after all. As my mother (and one of my best friends) she expected that I would tell her immediately, not during the deed...sick people, but once I saw the pee stick turn positive. I've managed to bribe her into forgiving me with the promise that she can come back with me (which was planned) and stay until the appointment on 4/12 (which was not planned).

So this is what it's supposed to look like...

So I woke up decided to test. I'm not sure what I really expected but this is what I was greeted with (sorry in advance for the crappy pic)...



Umm...(squint)

Wait...(rub eyes)

Is that a positive? STFU!?!...I must be fucking delusional right now. I have somehow wished a positive pregnancy test into existence and now I don't know what reality is. Is it really positive? Let's go ask the hubs.

(Walking calmly to bed to wake up Torin)

Me: Take a look at this. (hands pregnancy test handle first)
Torin: Umm...I don't know what it's supposed to look like...
Me: (I point at side of test)
Torin: Wait I thought you were going to wait until your test date or you were late? It looks like a faint plus sign. What does this mean?
Me: (So I didn't imagine it...) Today is my test day and I'm taking another test.
Torin: What? You just took one.
Me: (Running off to bathroom for the EPT we bought to use up his medical reimbursement.)

So I dipped the test in the urine I so cleverly saved and picked it up and got in bed with Torin while the test developed. We looked over at two minutes and it looked a little something like this...



So this is what a positive pregnancy test is supposed to look like.

Well Torin is not convinced, he told me to call my doc to get an appointment ASAP. So being the good wife I called the advice line and talked to the nurse. It was pretty awkward to call them but they said to call them whenever I turn up pregnant. Pregnant. (sigh) Anyhow, they ordered a blood test stat and I plan to stop by the lab before work. I should have the results tomorrow.

I've come a long way...

...since this post.

I won't say when this decision was made but we have made the decision to start trying to have a baby.

Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking outside your body. - Elizabeth Stone