4th Anniversary Dinner at the Brown Palace

Thursday, July 2nd, we celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary. Brad was in charge of picking the place for dinner and when he got home from work, we were off. As is Brad's style, I didn't know where we were going, but as he headed for downtown, I began to wonder. . .

As it turned out, Brad made reservations at the Brown Palace Hotel for dinner! The Brown Palace is a really fancy place (as well as historic) in downtown Denver. Neither of us had ever been there before for dinner so we were in for quite a treat!

This is the room we had dinner in. The food was AMAZING! It's always hard to eat at fancy restaurants like this because you are reminded that you are not a very good cook and that really good food really is hard to come by.

The funny thing was that we ordered the Chef's taster menu so we just got samples of an appetizer, soup, main course and desert. When the waiter brought out each course, I was disappointed at how little food was on the plate - even though it was beautiful. I got 1 crab cake (Brad got a sample of an artistic beef wellington), we both got about 1/2 cup of cauliflower soup, Brad got a Caesar salad (actually a full portion!), then I got 2 scallops (Brad got a 3in x 4in Bison steak), and for dessert, I got a 'sundae' that was the craziest looking dessert I've ever had and Brad got banana's foster. Even though the portions were so small, by the end of my first scallop, I wasn't sure I'd be able to finish! I guess because the food was so rich or something, but it was more than enough food! Weird! It was the best food I've tasted in a long time. The 2am heartburn that showed up is another story! Grr . . . pregnancy!

We had plans to spend Friday at the recreation pool down the street to finish off our anniversary celebration but Friday morning, everything changed!

30 Weeks!

Ok, at 30 weeks, this is me in the same shirt as before so you can see the difference. I'm really feeling pretty good and the baby is moving around my belly like a champ! The movements are really strong and quite frequent. Some of them are really causing pointy spots or hard bumps that you can see from the outside.




We've been busy nesting lately and trying to get ready for the baby. My mom came into town and we did some work on the nursery. We got a crib, painted the closet and got all the furniture arranged. We even did a baby registry at Babies"R"Us and REI. Here's mom paining. :)



Brody is not very happy about her room being taken over and converted into the baby's room. By the way, Brody is still on her steroids. We tried to take her off of them last week by reducing the dosage and we found that she was really struggling to walk and use her back legs again. We don't really know what to do at this point except keep her on the full dosage. They aren't good for her system though, so we're not sure how long this can last. :(





Brad and I have also been taking some classes at the hospital to prepare for the birth. We realized through the classes that we really do want to have a natural childbirth, free of as many medical interventions as possible. In order to prepare for that we're going to take another set of birthing classes that teach the Bradley Method of birthing. The purpose of that method is to train the dad to coach the mom through the pain and stages of labor. We'll see how that goes.

Now that I'm into my third trimester, I'm taking pretty long naps each day. It's really strange to be able to sleep so much during the day and to have no trouble sleeping at night too. It's kind of frustrating though because it's easy to over-do it and then I end us sleeping for 3 hours during the day! I'm not nearly as productive as I want to be. I guess the Lord is preparing me for motherhood. :)

We did go for a 'hike' on Saturday morning in Waterton Canyon. It was more like a walk and after about 1 1/2 hours I was pooped! This is on our way down. I don't have any maternity tank tops so this one is my regular work out one. It just barely covers my belly!

We are really enjoying the summer and I'm so grateful that God timed the birth of this baby to be several months after school let out. I'm really spoiled to have the time to get everything ready and to relax before our life changes forever!

We're also about to celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary (July 2nd). Yeah! What an amazing 4 years we've had.

Happy Fourth of July!

Hail Storm

We had a great hail storm this afternoon. This will probably be called a Cat storm by several companies. A tornado touched down within in a couple of miles of our house. Kim took some good video of how fast it was coming down. I've always seen the effects of a hail storm on the back-end so I was really interested to see it live. I have had customers save baseball sized hail for me. I now have a better appreciatioon of the sound they must have heard during a storm of that size. You can see the size of our hail in Kim's hand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIEldr3Zc9w This is the hail video.

Lots of activity!

I'm almost 26 weeks along and Baby Slease has been quite active lately. At 20 weeks I first felt the baby move, at 23 weeks Brad felt the baby move and last Friday (25 weeks) we started being able to see the baby move. All this has been so fun! The baby gets really active as soon as I lay down to rest so bedtime has been a very entertaining time for us. Brad talks to the baby and is ready at any moment to feel the baby move. Whenever I wake up in the night it seems the baby is at it again.

I've also started being able to tell the difference between small parts and big parts pushed up against my belly and sometimes it feels like the baby is stretching out in there. It feels like there is a bowling ball in my gut. It's a strong little one for sure!

Here's my big belly!

House projects are finished!

A week ago, this is what our house looked like. Our neighbor's realtor called our house 'gray' last week. Technically it WAS royal blue but the sun faded it to an ash color.

Now, this is what our house looks like! We changed the color to a light sage green to hopefully keep the house from fading so badly in the intense Colorado sun. We really like the color but now we think we need flowers in the front to add some color to contrast all the green!

Brad finished the yard this weekend! In the front he planted 5 bushes in front of the the white fence, tore out all the old weed barrier (and had to dig up all the rocks in the process) and put down new bark. In the back he put in new edging around the grass and put new bark down. It looks great! Pretty soon everything will start to flower and we'll post another picture.

Brody Bonds

Watching Brody's improvement these last couple of weeks has given me a whole new appreciation for the baseball steroid scandal. Here was a dog that was completely unable to stand on her own and now can run up and down the stairs in the house, run after a ball, and go for walks (the ball was thrown by a neighbor kid, which we put a stop to). So, she is doing well for the time being. She will be on the steroid for the next couple of weeks and then we'll see how she does off it. It is not a long term solution because it has negative side-effects. The mailman said the other day that his lab bit his hand when his dog was on steroids. We have not seen any Brody roid-rage yet but are keeping an eye out.
Speaking of steroids, did any general manager in baseball history more underestimate the power of steroids than Tom Grieve did in 1989? He had the all steroid team that may have gotten the Rangers to the World Series if he had left them alone; Sammy Sosa, Pete Incaviglia, Ruben Sierra, Rafeal Palmiero, Long-Juan Gonzales, Dean Palmer, Pudge Rodriguez. Seriously, that's a lot of juiced power. By 1995, this is a lineup that could have gone deep in the playoffs every year even with zero pitching, which is a staple of Ranger's teams. Here's a guy who traded Sosa for Harold Baines and Palmiero for Will Clark! That's 100 juiced HR's a year for 4-5 years.

BIG weekend!

I'm 22 weeks now and I don't want to hear another person tell me I'm not big! This is not a normal look for me. I'm feeling Baby Slease poke around in me and I'm starting to feel uncomfortable. With 4 1/2 months to go and about 40 degrees increase in temperature, that is worrisome.

It's been one week since we took Brody to the emergency vet and they told us we could put her to sleep if we wanted. She has been on a pharmacy of drugs this week and they seem to be helping. The steroid she is on has allowed her to regain use of her back legs (however stiff) and the pain meds are keeping her from shaking. She's getting her sassy attitude back and is able to go to the bathroom standing up. :) While we don't know how long these meds will remain effective, they are helping her to feel better and function more normally. Praise God!

This weekend Brad and our neighbor, Pat, tore down and rebuilt our mini retaining wall behind our house. Our yard was erroding away under the existing wall (with only 2 layers of railroad ties) so they decided they could fix it. They tore out the old ties, dug through the crazy, wet clay (it rained Friday while Brad was tearing down the old wall), and put together a fabulous, strong, massive wall. It is 5 layers of ties (one completely buried) and has a drainage system and fabric to prevent errosion.

Here is the start of the project after Brad and Pat did the digging.

Here's Brad and Pat (with Pat's dog, Marley, keeping watch) discussing the finishing touches on the wall.
Here is the finished product of the wall from the backside. We still have some finishing touches to put on the yard to put it all back together, but it looks great!