Life in Color Photo – Page 93 – Celebrating crafts, kids and the everyday through photographs.

The easiest baby hat ever!

It worked!

This is seriously from a rectangle of knitting, NO DECREASES, NO DOUBLE POINTED NEEDLES. I may know people afraid of these things (and they shouldn't be), this resolves all their hat fears. You do have to seam up the back:

But I doubt many would notice it much. Especially because the sides are so great:

Here is the Ravelry link. I almost got the hat and sweater out of one skein of medium weight Socks That Rock. You could do it if you cast on a few less stitches for the hat (which would be fine because it seems a little big). Of course I couldn't resist doing this:

Hehehehe. My little stuffed dog is also wearing little cloth diapers, but you can't see them. I pretty much try all my knits on "alpster" The Ravelry links: Raglan Sweater and Pixie Hat. Next up: tackling the awesome yarn Kay sent me, mmmm I think I found the perfect pattern for it.

edited to add: if you need anything fabric/craft related check out Jo-Ann's, they pretty much have everything on sale. Seriously I had to use my 50% off coupon on a 3.99 item because it was the only thing regularly priced I needed. Just a heads up the sale goes through Saturday. And it was nut balls crazy in ours, so beware.

The big bad baby post

Typepad’s spell check is over working again (all words show up as spelled wrong) is this happening to anyone else?

So I’ve got this thing in my belly. Three pounds of baby that likes to
smash its self against my side and make me wonder where food is going
to fit in a month or so. During all the stress of the last month things
were pretty quite on the baby front. I had a little bit of scare last
week when I couldn’t feel the baby for like a day and half. It was
during the time we brought grandpa home for hospice. My mom and Bill
were kind enough to sit with grandpa for a while and I went to see my
midwife. She really wanted to see me and said she didn’t care if it was
late (I love her by the way!). She did a check up on me and the baby
was fine, a little bit of a higher heart rate. But it was turned around
breech. She said this was common with really stressed out mamas because
the baby wants to get closer to your heartbeat. I felt so terrible that
I was stressing my wee little baby out. She gave me things to do (like
relax) and things not to do (like bend over – squatting only from now
on).

Then grandpa passed and it was so sad, but I did finally have time to
lay down and rest, take baths. My mom even gave me her massage spot for
a few days later. It was so great, the whole massage baby was moving
around like a maniac! I had my regular appointment on Friday and the
baby had flipped around. I am so glad. I also feel little baby every
day now, still mostly light movements because the placenta is in the
front. But sometimes they are strong enough for Bj to feel them, which
he loves. And you should here him talk to the baby, it is the cutest
thing EVER. Now that grandpa has passed I have lots of time to think
about the baby (when I’m not calling plumbers or cringing at yet
another hole in the wall). But before now Sciarrino and I did have one
fun day of baby-crafting which had not been properly blogged. I’m going
to catch you all up now.

Two Saturdays ago Bj sat with Grandpa all day at the hospital so I
could have a day with Sciarrino and be all girly and crafty. We had
goals: swaddling blankets and wipes. Pretty simple ones really. We
started out shopping for more fabric. Though I did use a good chunk of
my stash, I had to get flannel and terry cloth. The wipes were easy
with Sciarrino’s serger.

I looked up differnt types and sizes and went with 7.5×7.5 inches. We’ve done up half of them flannel front and back and half flannel front/terry cloth back. I think I’m going to do the dry method with a little spray bottle, instead of keeping them wet in a warmer. But I made them a size so that if I change my mind they will fit in one. It just seems like a waste to keep the thing warmed up all the time. Plus I don’t really want one of those sitting out, we’ll see how picky my baby is (insert mom’s comment about how picky I was here).

As far as the different colors I got the yellow flannel at an estate sale this summer, so I decided to go with that for changes. We just picked up more, and then a very light yellow terry cloth. I’m doing white for towels/washcloths, and the other random colors are from left over pieces of flannel from backing the receiving blankets. We’ll use those for runny noses, spit up and stuff.

The blankets are really the fun thing. Going for easy and I-need-to-make-a-bunch I just did a yard of print backed with a yard of flannel. They turn out to be 35×35 after seaming (pillow case binding). I’m going to wash one to see if I need to do something around the edges or if it will be easy to get neat looking again.

They are not quilted or tied, so simple. I did hear from Sue that I might want bigger ones, and when Bj and I used our Baby-gami book we had a pretty funny time of trying to get our stuffed animal in any kind of tight swaddle. Bj still spent the evening cuddled with our little "baby" hehehe. Anyway they are super cute and will at least be good for car seat and stroller use.

Then I came home to this during one of our supply runs. Sue had gotten onto our registry and gave us some of our diapers. Bj and I were so thrilled (whose more addicted to cloth diapers, I think it might be Bj). It was the perfect baby-centered day. Since then I’ve been able to work on a few more things. I finally finished the handspun blanket.

It is soooo soft and snuggly. I think you can see the color change on the corner there, where I did this two rows of thin/two rows of thick handspun trick to not have to spin any more of it. I would say now that I won’t start a handspun project with out enough yarn already made, but we all know that won’t happen.

It’s hard to resist casting on something so squishy! And mindless and easy (one seam and only knitting, no purling or anything). I recommend it highly (ravelry link). Now I’m work on this:

It’s going to be a baby hat (ravelry link), don’t ask me how. It has no decreases and is not knit in the round. Hmmm. Lots more baby goodness is coming, as I have three showers lined up! I feel like such a lucky girl, and you should feel lucky too baby! One is a joint crew girl shower with my friend who is due the same day as me. Crew girls are obviously very tall (I’m not because I was a coxswain, and didn’t actually row), and Tracy told me at her last ultrasound the baby was stretched all the way across her belly with his legs out straight! To which I said to my baby, "okay fine, I see why you are cramming my sides, mama is not giving you much extra space." I doubt baby has been able to stretch out like that for months!

I just realized I never even blogged the sweater that the hat is going to match. If it looks familiar I’ve knit the pattern many times, it’s really easy. I used sock yarn on this so I can throw it in the wash. Here’s the ravelry link. I knit it two at a time like the socks, both sleeves at once and the front and back at once. So fast. More baby stuff to come I’m sure!!!

Thank you so much!

Spell check not working (actually over working, every word, EVERY ONE came up as mis-spelled), so read at your own risk. 🙂

First of all a huge thank you to everyone that has sent well wishes our way in the last week (and month really). We have loved reading them, and have felt overwhelmed by the love from everyone. Bj especially loved going through them, so thank you, thank you, thank you. We have been having less sadness and more happiness which is wonderful. Yesterday was spent going through all of grandpa’s fastidious paperwork (tax returns since the early 80s) and figuring out what to do with everything. Bj did most of that work while I did the important time honored tradition of baby knitting. I’ll give an update on the baby making business soon, but right now, let’s take a walk through my house, shall we?

First we’ll head upstairs through what was the bedroom and from now on will be known as the den. The den will be my craft area. Don’t worry! I am happy about this, Bj’s keeping the cork wall for his office (which was my craft room and is right now our bedroom, phew). So ya, upstairs. That was Sciarrino like a week ago. On her way to this:

You’ll notice that half the roof is still there. This gave the guys something to drape tarps over so that we didn’t get waterlogged downstairs. Now it looks like this:

Hmm, I should have put the wide angle on, but that is the same far wall that you see in the picture above this one. Get the idea? The new roof rafters are up, and side walls are being put in. This should be buttoned up by weeks end. Which is good, because lots of wet is in store. It’s also going to be wet down in the basement tomorrow. When they work on this:

Yes, I did freak out when we found out we had to do this (and thus UNdo all of our hard work from two summers ago). But with grandpa being so sick and then passing this suddenly seemed minor. What I don’y have stairs?

No problem. Side note: One of the workers said to Bj, "your wife doesn’t go down there, does she?" To which he said something like, I tell her to hold on to the rail and the beam! I don’t go down that often. Only in the evenings, which is when I work in here:

The clean zone.

The clean and cramped zone. This also happens to be where I stuck all my scrapbooking stuff for the construction stage. So ya, it’s a bit crazy. But I have been getting orders out on time, and in fact just restocked a bunch of stuff this evening. The other side is similarily draped:

As you can see doing laundry would be a bit of a challenge here (not to mention the fact that I would never make it up and down that stair/ladder combo with a basket). So tomorrow while everything is going on I’m going to make myself at home in my mom’s laundry room. Oh and what is going on tomorrow? Well they are filling that ditch with new concrete. See what happened was the city was all, "oh no, you can’t do that upstairs, what about latteral load?" And I’m all, "what?" And then they told me I had two options, cut this big hole and pour a new footing while also putting up a wall between the two sides of the basement, or cutting out bigger square holes and making mulitple footings while replacing the gigantic beam that runs the length of the house. The last one was basically imposible. So it had to be the wall. Well then I find out that it can’t just fill in the gaps that my old (new) walls left, but that I had to do a whole new wall. I am going to get one big six foot opening instead of a door, so the basement won’t be totally closed off, but it still won’t be as open as before. And I’m not going to get those big juicy beams in there again. Instead it will just be a reglular wall. I had to have some one explain how this is better going to hold up my house like 15 million times, because it makes no sense to me. Physics, blah. But anyways it’s happening, and all my hard "learned to sheetrock for this" work has been destroyed. Now I just get to wait for later in the week when my hard "I turned this little bathroom into greatness" is partially destroyed. And I clearly see now that I will in fact have to touch up basically all the paint in the whole house. But this is not me freaking out because little baby in my belly? I am doing this for you! You are going to have your own bedroom and bathroom, so you must love your mama and papa forever!!! Oh okay a little bit is for me and a walk in closet, but seriously it was mostly for baby.

1920-2008

William Henry Garrison III passed away early this morning. He was at peace and not in any pain, for which we are so grateful. He is survived by his grandson and namesake who he loved more than anything, and Bj’s wife and future great grandchild who he lovingly called "Matilda". Grandpa was a great record keeper and upon looking through his personal health records we now know he was in a lot of pain for the last few years, even before his son died and he was moved to Oregon from California. His comments on certain days include: "lousy legs, my aching butt, busy day – my ass hurts, and lower back pain ouch!" to name a few. It’s just like grandpa to talk about his aches in this short, to the point way. We could not be happier that his last 36 hours were in his home with him in very little pain and hanging out with his family.

The Garrison Family History (Volume 1) has much more on this unique guy than I could ever write out but I thought I’d give you some highlights.

-Grandpa weighed 15 lbs 12 ounces at birth. I didn’t believe him until he showed me this article:
"Mr. and Mrs. William Garrison, 718 Vermont St. believe they possess the largest baby of its age that has been born in Quincy. The child, born Tuesday afternoon weighted 15 pounds and is a healthy normal baby. Dr. H. E. Becker, the family physician says that in his experience he never knew a child that weighted 15 pounds at birth."

-He spent his childhood playing sports, especially loving tennis and baseball.

-He enlisted in the military October 1941 and became a meteorologist for the Air Force. This career took him to 36 countries and saw him doing everything from playing Tennis in Cuba with a Wimbleton Champion to launching weather balloons in Greenland.

When he retired in 1971 he was a Chief Warrant Officer (Grade 4).

-His greatest love was his wife of nearly 60 years June.

She loved traveling with grandpa whenever possible and being involved with other military wives. They loved to be with their friends and there are tons of awesome pictures of trips, parties, leagues they belonged to, and functions they attended.

Grandpa loved his son (the forth) and grandson (the fifth, my Bj) so much. We know how much he loved the little baby in my belly too. One of the last things he did was touch my belly and smile before he started to just sleep and rest at the end. We’re so sad he won’t be able to see his great grandchild, but because of this last year and a half with him we’ll be able to tell baby all about grandpa. It wasn’t the easiest thing being newlyweds and caring for grandpa but we wouldn’t change it for the world. It brought us closer together and let us know someone so special in such an amazing way. It wasn’t always easy and there are always what-ifs and if-onlys. If only we could have gotten him to the beach, what if he was around for just a few more months. But all in all we did the best we could. He brought us happiness just like I hope we brought it to him.

Hospice

Bj and I moved grandpa back to his home yesterday for hospice care. He only has a short time left to be with us and I know he likes being there better. It’s still very sad and we will be spending almost all our time there with him.

The other BIG thing

Oh ya, about that.

This is what our attic looked like about a week ago. We started demo with out our permit (not illegal or anything, just risky because you can’t actually build until you get the permit). Guess what? Our permit had hold ups, we had to get new drawings (which was terrible because the guy doing the drawings is the slowest on earth), and then it started raining. So they put up plywood and tarps and we haven’t had any problems with that (except the house is COLD). Well yesterday we got our permit! I am so thankful for this. Seriously I was going out of my mind with worry. Now the upstairs looks like this:

And they are putting in floor joists and all kinds of structural things. The upstairs will actually overhang two feet from the ground floor, so they have to do that. I hope that there will be a new roof and framing by next week (when the bad weather will come back and may not leave). They have to build stairs. Right now our (old) bedroom looks like this:

Ya, that hole goes up into the elements. So where are we living? Crammed into the front room, which was my craft room.

It looks messy there, I just got an old navy maternity order so that’s all over the bed. And we have lots of random pillows on there now as I need them to get comfy and sleep. But this is actually the ONE clean room. You read that correctly, the one really clean room. The main floor has guys trekking through it, oh and a beam had to be replaced. They’ll come back and remake the arch.

I took a lot of our pictures down, the furniture is covered, the dining room table smooched to one side so they can get out to this:

And the garage is stuffed full of lumber. There’s a porta-potty in the driveway, all that good stuff. The most annoying thing is the basement. We ended up having to rebuild a wall down there, pour a new footing (so we have to saw cut up the concrete that is there), and all this stuff. I’ll save that for another day, since it’s really insane down there. I think being around construction my whole life this doesn’t phase me too much. I understand everything they’re doing, and that it will all look right in the end. I have really trustworthy guys working the project, so that’s great. The most annoying thing to me right now is the dust – everywhere! I like to be clean, maybe not always 100% tidy, but clean. And I know things are just going to get messier. They still have to demo my shower and tub after all (to get new plumbing upstairs). So now you know, I’ll keep you updated. Things should move quickly now.

I have to go finish work now before I visit grandpa. I just had a fantastic lunch of stew. My mom cooked some up for me last night, so yummy. I also got to take a bath in her tub, ahhh relaxing. And best of all my mom came with me to visit grandpa again. The evening visits do seem the hardest so I love having company. And extra bonus? I pick Bj up at the airport tonight (much easier to drive an hour north at 7 than at 4 am!). I am so glad. The suns out, hope your day is going great!

Hospital Knitting

Thank you so much for all your kind words. Grandpa is doing okay. He doesn’t have a feeding tube, but something called TPN. The nurses described it to me as proteins, fats and vitamins in their most basic form. It goes right into a main vein and enters his blood stream. It skips his digestive system, which is good because that system seems to be working against him. The terrible thing is sitting with him and having him ask over and over for something to drink or eat. He made a list today: brick of cheese, white bread slices…. I asked if he wanted a sandwich, he nodded yes. I was able to have to the nurse print out a picture of a throat and how it works and why he can’t have anything (he aspirates it into his lungs). After that he didn’t ask me for anything. And his doctor actually wrote an order for him to have his mouth swabbed with Diet Coke. Swabbing is common to keep the mouth from feeling too dry, and I guess Diet Coke is good for breaking up phlegm. Grandpa doesn’t seem that impressed, he’d rather gulp it down. The good thing about grandpa being naughty and pulling out tubes and drinking things he shouldn’t is that he now is on 24 hour 1 on 1. So there is always someone with him in his room. Just sitting with him. He doesn’t sleep much. He does stuff like this:

To keep himself busy. He’s writing lots of notes as it is still hard for him to talk. My mom can attest to his cuteness with these notes. He wrote her a series of them when she visited with me this evening.
"Nice to see you again."
"You’re so cute."
"39" (when asked what he thought her age was)
"I could wrap you up and take you home." (we were laughing so hard at this, and so was grandpa).
He asked for a picture of my mom and I to have in his room, so I’ll bring him one tomorrow. Bj’s on a business trip so we set up the iChat and had grandpa and him "chat" He wrote out notes and then I’d read them.
"Dear grandson, I love you more than anything."
That got me, but I’ve been good at being upbeat in his room. I usually cry because I don’t want to go before hand, and then cry after. But sometimes I cry there, like when I gave him these socks.

He was so excited. They are the ones I had given to Bj due to my major mis-calculations. I stuck my feet up because he said, what about mine. So I said these are yours, and these are mine see:

He got a kick out of that. I finished these socks actually in the car, as grandpa is quite busy in the room and I don’t actually get that much knitting done.

That’s my bedroom floor if you want to know how the rest of my life is going. 🙂 Chaos. Seriously. My mom even bought me ice cream. My mom likes health food and doesn’t eat much bad stuff at all. Cooks all her meals (mmm mom make me some stew), so you can tell she feels for me when she says the Ben and Jerry’s is on her. Then I put two mini Butterfingers in there to make it extra terrible for me and baby. Bj and I have been going to our Bradley classes and I had to fill out my food plan for the week. "Yes," I told my teacher, "lunch that day really was four mini milkyways." (side note, mini candy bars never seem as bad as the big ones, right?). Not exactly hitting the million grams of protein that I’m supposed to aim for. I’m sorry baby, Mama still loves you lots. I still haven’t had a Diet Coke, do I get bonus points for that? I can’t eat or drink in grandpa’s room because that would be evil, so I tend to do the stuff my face thing later.

Speaking of the baby… It moves around enough that I feel it a few times a day. Not as much as it was on our trip, I don’t know if stress mellows it out or what. I’m beginning to feel a bit of a panic with not having anything really ready. Thank god I have boobs, otherwise I might really be freaking out. I went over to my moms for a second Sunday (to mooch food of course) and she had pulled out my old cradle. She’s going to fix it up for me, get a new mattress, make a bumper, all that so the baby will have some where to sleep. Of course where will we put that thing, I have no idea. I have a baby car seat (thank V!). I’m knitting a blanket, and I did manage to register at the cutest little baby place before chaos really hit. Sooo cute, check out the little site they made me. I figure we have the diapers picked out, so if it comes down to it we’ll just place a big order and rush it. I have a sling already from my step mom, so if we don’t get a stroller for a while we should manage (although I was going to use the bassinet on the one we picked out for next to the bed). And I just realized the diaper bag that we both decided would be cool enough to carry is out of stock everywhere in the color combo (Ogo) that I wanted. 🙁 If anyone sees this would they let me know? Note to self, maybe waiting on everything isn’t the best idea. Grandpa is being terribly cute about baby. He asked for pictures of it (ultrasound) for his room, so those are up now. He always says bye to baby. It’s not just my hormones, some of the nurses have teared up at that too. I don’t know what I’ll think when I look back to this time in my life. I think that’s why I have to write it all down. Because it’s a lot to take and fast and slow at the same time. I still remember getting grandpa his first track suit. Time is something I may never fully understand. Big love to all those in blogland sending their wishes. Happy things for you as well!!!

The update I’ve been putting off

While we were away on our trip I mentioned that Bj’s mom had come to stay at our place and hang out with grandpa at the hospital. This worked out great, grandpa got a little better and was in a regular room. He is still there, and the beginning of this week things were looking up (all of these picture are from the 30th, I started off the week thinking I would join Ali in her week in the life challenge, didn’t get to it, but so glad I took these at least). Grandpa was talking to us, and telling us over and over that he wanted a diet coke. But he was not so glad when we gave him this:

The thickener takes away all the carbonation and I think some of the taste. It turns it into diet coke sludge. No wonder it didn’t really quench his thirst. The reason he was on these thickened foods was because the pneumonia he had last week was caused by aspirating food or liquid into his lungs. So they did a swallow test on him, that showed he didn’t do well with pure liquid. He was not a fan of purees and the like, so Bj and I had to talk him into them, and basically distract him so he’d eat.

That’s Bj feeding him. Grandpa’s on an air bed, because he was getting a little bed sore. At this point we were still working on his main goal:

Mmm I want a diet coke too! Then on Wednesday night Bj went to back to visit him (I was doing daytime visits). He brought him a Boost. Loaded it up with thickener and then put some ice in it. Grandpa actually said, "this is some good ice cream." So we really thought we were on to something. The next day when we showed up things were spiraling downward. Somehow he had gotten a hold of a whole thing of what they thought was regular Boost, but it had been so thicken we couldn’t figure out how he got it thin. Finally when we were leaving we realized that he must have some how reached way over to grab the ice cup (which was now melted) and poured it into the thickened Boost. He then drank all of that down into his lungs. So he was put on no food or drink until he had another swallow test (where they give you barium (sp?) to swallow and then x-ray you to see where it went to). He failed it. So no more food. At the same time all of this was traumatic to his whole throat area and his ability to talk quickly fade to whispery grunts. We don’t want to prolong his life just because (and he does not want to be on tubes). But we did want to try to get him on a feeding tube through his nose to give him a little more energy because he was really hungry. We just got a call this morning that he had pulled it out.

Now we’re not going to force the issue, it’s what he wants. I’m an emotional wreck, seriously. Every time I go in there I can’t help but burst into tears. I want to be able to handle it and talk to him and be upbeat, but I loose it, every time. We gave grandpa a sharpie and notepad. He’s been writing while were gone, "gimme my diet coke" "I love you kids all 100%" "where’s Bj?" Knowing that someone is close to the end and there is nothing you can do? It’s terrible. I wish I could have a better outlook on it. He’s so sweet now, every time I come. He wants to touch my belly (and though I’m not a big fan of that, of course I let him). He spent last night checking out my new socks, which he got a huge kick out of. Then pointed to his feet, wanting to know when he was getting his. And I don’t know. If I start them he may never get to wear them, because we don’t know how long he can be like this. I hate to see him in pain. I don’t want to pray for him, he would probably dislike that more than anything, but I do wish good things, and pain free days and a happy ending, or as happy as it can be.

The OFFF re-cap

This was the third year I attended the awesome Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival. I went with my awesome neighbor Tracy and her friend Kathy the day after we got back from our trip. It’s my big stock up day for the year basically (although I did sign up for the Hello Yarn Fiber Club… could not resist). The festival is not even an hour away and it was a beautiful day to go. I had some side pain so I couldn’t go see the animals, but I did get the important shopping done first, thank goodness!

This is all of our stuff… NOT JUST MINE. 🙂 But a lot of it is mine. I felt better once I had a little fiber in my bag, the place was crowded. Of course as Tracy said I "could part the red sea with my belly" too true! I use my belly, I admit it. Here is some of my fibery goodness.

It’s all up individually by colorway on my flickr page. I did want to get more fiber in each color way instead of my usual crazy "oooh this looks pretty I"ll take a little of this little of that" shopping that I do there. I went right away to find the awesome one pound bumps that I got last year. I snagged one:

When I picked it up the woman at the booth said, "oh that must be one of the last ones my mom dyed." I asked her if her mom had stopped dying and she said she passed away in March. So now I’m thinking I must do justice to this fiber, I’m going to think of something epic for it. Her daughter will still carry on the business, but just had solid/semi solids dyed up this year. It’s weird I didn’t get much green this year, even Tracy commented on it. I was really drawn to warm colors.

And I can’t wait to see how they spin up. Though I haven’t forgotten that if I want a maternity sweater before I have the baby I need to finish spinning up the other big batch of fiber. I can’t believe I’m going into the last trimester, WHAT? But more on that later. I have been knitting some of my handspun. I gave the socks another go, messed with the numbers and tried to tap into some knitter intuition, which I’m not sure I have a lot of. Either way they are going to fit:

But tightly. I maybe should have listened to the master numbers a little bit more, but I think they’ll work.

I just have to do the cuffs (I think a simple rib) and then I’ll need a new project for the chair:

Grandpa just called to check on me since I haven’t been in today. I’m a bit under the weather and Bj has our car so I’m not going to visit him until this evening. He said okay, "he just wanted to make sure I was alright." And then left me with a "love ya darling." awe….

First I’ll recap learnfest

Yes, I’m alive! I made it back form Learnfest, which was awesome. Unfortunately when you come home, often you have to get back into real life and that’s exactly what happened, and that real life happened to be a my-side-hurts-grandpa-doing-bad-remodel-drama mess. I can’t possibly do all that in one post anyway, so I’ll start with the awesomeness. And that was my trip. It was exactly what Bj and I need, to get away. Super fantastic bonus? I learned lots and lots and lots. And I’m so excited to get my photography business really going. If I could just put everything else on hold I would, but this growing bump pushing my stomach through my throat is telling me that soon life will not be just up to me. And other stuff, but back to dreamland where I slept, ate, and breathed photography. The place was beautiful, and Bj got to relax and golf while I took classes. They were mostly business focused with some hands on shooting stuff which was fun:

these two are from my first shoot. There were 16 other photographers shadowing the awesome Tamara Lackey, so it was a bit crowded. But so fun to see how she works.

For the other hands on shoot we went out to the beach, it was super windy, but the light was perfect:

Beautiful. The little blond boy was oh so cute.

I couldn’t believe how well he handled all these women shooting him, he was great. And mom’s in for a treat because the awesome Audrey Woulard taught this class.

So Learnfest was great. I’m so glad I went. I have to admit that before I went I figured, at least I’d be getting away. I just did not feel prepared for it after spending a week and a half with grandpa at the hospital and trying to get the remodel started, my plate was feeling really full. But it was more than a getaway. And traveling for the most part was good. Actually the plane was not even bad because we used Bj’s frequent flier miles to go first class. I looooove first class, and so did baby who kicked and wiggled almost the whole flight, so hard that Bj felt it easily. I got up and moved a bunch (per midwife’s instructions), and drank a bunch of water so I think that helped. The hardest thing for me was still driving, as we actually stayed in four different places on this trip. It’s such a bummer because you know I love road trips, but I think I’m done until after the baby comes. I can’t get comfortable and the rib thing gets unbearable.

Our last day at Learnfest the weather took a turn, and by the time we got to Wrightsville beach this was outside our hotel:

Yes, the local news station was broadcasting weather at the beach outside the hotel. It was so windy. I’m sure it’s nothing as it was only 35 sustained, and gust up to 65, but to us it was crazy. I wanted to get more pictures but I could only stay out for two seconds before everything was drenched, the rain was coming every which way. We did have a bright spot on that day though, the best lunch ever!

I know what you’re thinking, "Amber you hate Italian food." Technically that is true, it’s my least favorite ethnic food group, but I do love sausage. And sweet things, and Sciarrino. Wait? Sciarrino? Yes, her super nice and funny uncle owns this deli and it is soooo yummy. I’m not just saying that because he stuffed us with lunch as well as a couple of insanely good Italian desserts. If you live near here at all (Wilmington, NC), you must check it out. The place was packed (and the weather was so nasty I couldn’t believe anyone was out), so I know I’m not alone here. It’s also laid out really cool inside with a big wall of imported Italian things. All the cans and packages have fabulous labels and if I lived near there I might have had to stock up to try making something Italian.

After our night there we drove to Raleigh to catch our first leg of our flight home. It wasn’t bad. Then we had a longish layover in Atlanta, but that wasn’t bad because we got to go into the Delta lounge, so it was fairly quite and relaxing. The last leg to Portland was too long for me and I sort of started to loose it. I didn’t want to walk around and I could not get comfortable. My side was just screaming at me. It was so nice to get home and sleep in our (displaced) bed. Bj’s mom had stayed at our house over the week, but spent her days at the hospital, so it was super clean and tidy. She laid down all the paper for the construction works and covered our couches. But we did realize right away we were into remodel chaos. There was a fine layer of dust over everything, and we had no electricity in half the house. But more on that later.