Quick trip

I'm currently snuggled into my Hyatt hotel bed in the middle of a crazy work trip to DC. My boss finagled an invite for me to a Lynch Syndrome (hereditary colon cancer) meeting. It's a 1-day meeting on Friday. So that means I had the 6am flight out today, arrived in DC at 4pm, and I need to be at NIH tomorrow morning at 8am - which is 5am Portland time. PAINFUL after getting up today at 3:45a for my flight. Then she and I fly out tomorrow at 5:30p. It's nuts!

I love DC, and I'm sad I don't have longer here. I would love to have B along with me too. I wandered near my hotel to find some dinner, and I came upon a charming little French bistro. B would have loved it, and although I enjoyed my book and the lovely hostess that gave me extra food when she found out I was pregnant "to nourish the mama and the baby," I missed my other half. It feels odd to try out new places with him. He's SUCH a foodie, and everyone that has ever met him knows that about him.

On the baby front, things are going well. Here's me, rockin' the maternity pants, at 15 weeks last Saturday:


I feel like I look a lot bigger, although I'm only up 4lbs so far. The nausea has subsided, and was brief in duration. I'm still tired, but it is nothing like it was several weeks ago. I attribute most of the tiredness now to the trouble sleeping, which everyone "helpfully" reminds me is only going to get worse. Other than that, I'm feeling very lucky that I'm doing well, and I'm feeling especially grateful to have a supportive husband that is very engaged and excited about our impending life change.

In preparation of the baby, we've been looking at smaller SUVs. While we like our Mazda3, it's small and wasn't a car that either of us loved. Since we share one car, we agreed it was time to start looking around. We drove the Subaru Forrester, Honda CRV, Kia Optima, and sat in the RAV4 (it was too ugly inside to even bother driving). Bryan dragged me kicking and screaming to try out the Chevy Equinox. It is currently the top rated SUV in its class, but I really dislike American cars. After driving it though, this now sits in our driveway :)

So far so good. We decided to lease this time. Our car payment isn't any more than the Mazda was, so we traded straight across. I can't wait to break in the 4WD with our final pre-baby ski trip on Saturday. B said he's even going to give it one more try!

Schmoopy

I was taking a walk today with a newly divorce co-worker of mine, and she asked if we had any plans for Valentines Day. I told her no, that we don't usually do silly holidays like that, and B isn't a super romantic guy anyway. It's just not his thing. She asked if that bothered me, and I said no way. Romance to most women means flowers, jewelry, mushy cards, etc. B is romantic in many other ways. He makes dinner sometimes, he does the laundry without me asking, he regularly does the dishes, mops the floors, and vacuums without me asking. I'll take that kind of romance any day!

That said, he walked in the door today with a card (funnily enough one that I had bought to give to him) and a cute little gift bag. Inside of it was this very cute onesie. So much for never being romantic :)

On an unrelated note, 2 weeks ago we went to our favorite B&B for the very last time. Sadly, they are losing their dream to the bank due to the poor economy. We headed down on Thursday after work. Friday we spent the day snowshoeing on Mt. Bachelor. You know what a beautiful day it is when you are snowshoeing in a t-shirt!

It was hard work after a winter spent being overcome with pregnancy fatigue (and the associated father-to-be sympathy fatigue), but we had a great time.

My co-worker/friend and her partner joined us at the B&B on Friday night. Saturday we went skiing and had the same gloriously sunny weather.

Despite not skiing for over a year, I thankfully wasn't the weak link. We had a blast on the easy runs, and only got scared once when the weather conditions further up the mountain were windy and VERY icy. We quickly came back to the green runs where we belonged! B chose to hang out in the lodge, drink beer, and play on his Kindle Fire, but I think he enjoyed the peace and quiet for a few hours. We had a fantastic time with our friends, and we sadly bid goodbye to one of our favorite weekend getaways.

I hit 13 weeks while we were at the B&B, but I forgot to take a photo, so you get this week's 14 week photo.

It's a far cry from where I started at 5 weeks!

I finally had to cave and buy some maternity jeans this week. Holy moly elastic waistbands are my new best friend! I'm not sure how I'll ever go back to zippers :)