38.5 weeks

So i had my 38 week checkup this afternoon. i've spent all week doing all the stuff they say to do to go into labor, and i kept not going into labor. i was really afraid i'd go in and my dr. would say "You're 1 1/2 cm dilated, 50% effaced" like he had the last three weeks.

i'm 3 cm dilated and 90% effaced! Isn't that exciting? So i guess, even though i didn't go into labor, all the methods i was using were at least doing something. And i was thinking about it: sometimes it takes hours of hard labor to get to 3 cm, and i got there without feeling it really at all!

So anyway, i don't want to get my hopes up too high, but it's looking good for my going into labor, and soon. Cross your fingers!

Here's a picture of me taken last week. Have a great night everyone!

A laugh for you all

Hello. Our Miss Cadence is still gestating. Because of this, i'm not feeling very bloggy, nor is my brain working well enough to write posts of any value.

So here is a picture i took (on my phone, sorry bad quality) when i was flipping channels a few months ago. i came across this lady on Judge David Young, and she makes excellent choices when it comes to button placement. Isn't it fantastic? God bless 'er, this picture makes me laugh every time!

Ah, timing

So remember yesterday when i was telling you about Kris wants to get a job at this place called Allina which hasn't had openings for two years?

As i was typing that yesterday evening, he was working at Outback. He hadn't been scheduled, but his friend gave Kris his shift. So Kris was working, and saw a guy at a table wearing an Allina hat. So Kris asked that table's server what the man was drinking, and brought refills of diet Coke to the table.

Kris started canoodling a bit. He is nothing if not an excellent networker. So he goes over and says something like "I see you're wearing an Allina hat...I've been trying to get a job with you guys since I got my EMT 2 years ago!" The guy said something about how they keep meaning to hire people but stuff always keeps coming up, but they are actually hiring end of December-early January. (A little bit after the movie is over, perfect timing!)

Then Kris was talking to them about working for Rescue Resources, and who he knows in the medical field. Around here, the emergency medical field is a super small world, and everyone knows everyone. So they were chatting about everyone they knew in common, and things like that.

Kris had to go check on a table, and the Allina guy said "I'm the head of hiring. So how about you email me, give me your information, and I'll put you in my personal file, and when we hire again, your name will be bumped directly up to interiewing." The guy gave Kris his card, and so when the movie's over, Kris will most likely be getting the job where he wants, which will help pay for school and will be the exact position in the exact place he's dreamed of working since he decided to go into the field!!

Seriously. This week keeps getting better and better.

And i got to hold a very very sweet 7-week-old girl tonight, and am pretty much in heaven. Here she is with her beautiful mama two weeks ago at her baptism.

Guess what?

Kris is quitting his job at Canterbury. This may seem silly, because he just got it recently. However, there is a very good reason for quitting.

His dad owns a rescue company, who provides on-site medics for all sorts of private projects, as some public. For instance, they provided medics for the rebuilding of the 35W bridge.

The rescue company got hired to be medics for the new Coen brothers movie that will be filming in MN. It is in construction now, and will be filming probably through the middle of November. Kris, as an EMT,  is employed by Rescue Resources, and will be able to work full time with the movie, even some overtime.

The pay? 2.5x what he makes at Canterbury. !!!!!! He will be working the movie 4.5 days/nights a week, and at Outback 2.5 days, in order to keep enough hours for our health insurance. So, he went to Canterbury and said "Sorry guys". Canterbury is sad to lose him, but they understand. The thing about this movie is that the overtime he works has a small window of 1.5x pay, and then double pay after a certain amount of hours. So the overtime he will work can end up being 5x what he makes at Canterbury now!

This is a total answer to prayer. When he got this job at Canterbury, we knew we were in a bind financially, but with how long we've stayed stuck in it, we were much worse off than we thought. This whole movie thing will much more speedily get us back on track. We'll also hopefully be able to do things like get new tires for him and some glasses for me. Maybe we'll be able to answer our phone again! (And maybe the internet will not get turned off as much and maybe our cars will always have insurance from now on!) 

According to our calculations, Kris will need to work about 9 days of movie to make as much as our mortgage payment is. This is a huge step up from the 25 days of Canterbury it took to do the same thing. Plus, having him work that much, but be able to pay our mortgage quickly means we'll be able to pay our other bills so much faster, and we'll be able to pay way more than minimums on credit cards and all our other things.

The movie will also be a long enough time for him to find another job to do afterwards. Hopefully by then there will be an opening at Allina, an ambulance type company that he really wants to work at, but hasn't had openings in like 2 years. Once he gets that job, they will put money towards his continuing education, and will basically pay for him to go from EMT to paramedic.

This is really good, ya'll. Our financial situation has just gone from depressing yet sort of hopeful, to "wow, things are just about to get so much better".

God keeps doing things for us to remind us that He's there, and working in our lives, and wants us to succeed. But this is one of the biggest things He's done, and we're really grateful.

A sign God loves us and wants us to be happy

You may think that these pictures are ones Kris and i took yesterday at the Canterbury fireworks, celebrating the upcoming fourth of July. Well yes, technically, Canterbury had these fireworks yesterday, but they were not for the holiday. They were for the advent of this beauty in MN. *Insert sound of angels singing and babies laughing*

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, Sonic has come to MN. For you, this may not mean much. This can be for one of many reasons:

• You don't live here, so you don't know how much Minnesotans have had to suffer, with no Sonic restaurants in the state, yet oddly frequent commercials. It was rough. i craved Sonic, yet would have had to drive two states away in order to eat it. Shameful.


• You don't like fast food. In which case, you are still welcome here, but you are an anomaly to me, and i will probably pray for you. (More than i do now.)


• You don't like Sonic. Now that's just plain silly, and i am praying for you!

Kris called me from work yesterday and said "I'm taking you out for a surprise for lunch." So we drove to St. Paul. It was a long drive (1/2 hour) but so worth it! i was furiously looking around, trying to locate the place he had very suspensefully taken me to, and then i saw the beautiful Sonic logo. Kris and i have been talking for years about how we wish there was a Sonic in MN for us to at least try, since the commercials were so compelling, and people like my friend Daphne would blog about it. 

The Sonic sign gleamed golden and red in the sun. 

We had to drive to an abandoned charity (sad, huh?) down the street to get in line, so someone could put a Sonic sign on our window so we could enter the Sonic parking lot. This was a 40 minute wait. Evidently, even though the Sonic is a month old already, people are still flocking to it in record numbers at 2:30 in the afternoon.

We were worried that it would be a disappointment, after all the hype we had already attributed to it, but let me tell you: It was a thing of beauty. i had the chili cheese dog with fries and a cherry limeade. Kris had the spicy island burger with mozzarella sticks and a strawberry limeade. David had popcorn chicken. For dessert, we all shared the cheesecake bites and a chocolate malt. i will dream about that chili cheese dog. It was incredible! And there was real fruit in our limeades! And it was all reasonably priced!

Yes. It was the fattiest, biggest meal i've eaten in a long time. It was ridiculously far away to drive for fast food. But i will look back and remember it as a monument of our time. Kris and i had to go 23 years without eating at Sonic. i'm just glad my son has gotten to experience Sonic at the tender age of 16 months. Someday we'll be saying, "Back when we were kids, there was no Sonic here." His eyes will widen with terror. 

We will not be driving all that way again to go to Sonic. That was a one-time deal. But do you know why? They are opening a Sonic in Savage. 10 minutes away.   

We will soon be able to go try all the different flavour combinations of flavoured sodas. i'll have tried the chili cheese tots. i will no longer be wondering if the breakfast is as wonderful as i've heard. i will know.

i very much enjoyed my food.

David was chowing on his cheesecake bite.

Sleep in Sonic-induced coma heavenly peace, David.

The only drawback with Sonic? No indoor seating. i get that it's cute and 50's that it's drivethrough and drivein only, but i just wonder how that will fare for 1. the employees during the winter, and 2. the drivers during the winter with gas at $4/gallon. i have a feeling the drivein part of the restaurant will be a ghost town during the -20 windchills in January. 

Nonetheless: Sonic is here! i am replete with satisfaction.

Two kids? It'll maybe be ok.

Yesterday Kris was teaching CPR to a friend he used to work with, who is a nurse and needed to get recertified. She has a 2 1/2 year old daughter, Ava (or Eva, not sure how to spell), who i kind of watched while her mom and Kris were watching inane CPR videos for 5 hours.

You know what? It wasn't so bad! i have never watched two kids so close in age, but Ava was so sweet and played very nicely with David, and of course, he adored her. She has curly light brown hair that clings in baby ringlets to her head, and to top it off, has the most pronounced dimples and you melt when you see her.

But all three of us played in David's room for a while, then i decided to take out the double stroller and take the kids to Mc D's to return a redbox dvd. The double stroller is way convenient. It's very heavy and a bit awkward to turn, and will definitely be a work out for me to use it, but that's not a bad thing. It was so great not to have to stay in the house, or have to keep track of a kid wandering off while pushing a stroller. There's a good amount of leg room for both kids, too, though David did have a tendency to grab Ava's curls from behind her. i can't blame him:)

When we got back, David had to nap, so Ava and i pulled some toys out on the deck and she played while i read. She did get cranky a while later, but i can't blame her. There's not a ton for an older toddler to do at my house, especially with David's room being off limits while he napped. Plus she was there for hours without a nap.

But the thing was, they entertained each other. i think they're couple months closer in age than David and Cadence will be, but it encouraged me a lot that they were great together. Also, i'm looking forward a little bit to David talking now. Sure, it will be annoying sometimes with the constant "whys" and things of that nature, but she understood what i told her and was able to follow instruction and carry on a very simple conversation. That'll really help David and i, i think. He's starting to get pretty frustrated that he can't communicate what he's feeling.

i made a really yummy pizza for lunch yesterday. i'll make it again and post pictures and a recipe. What i'm the most proud of is that i used the bread maker and made a good pizza crust, instead of buying one.

Last night was very stormy. There were flash flood warnings and tornado watches up the wazoo down here in the South Metro. Probably the most dire of all the weather predictions we've had since we moved here. Kris had to work at Outback last night, and how cute was this? He left for work, with instructions for David and i to go down into the laundry room if we heard sirens. i was a little worried, because we didn't really have a radio or anything downstairs or a flashlight if that were to happen. Then about 20 min after he left for work, he came home with a pink umbrella for me, and a hand cranked and battery powered flashlight, with am/fm/weather band radio, and alarm function so people could find us if we were buried from our house busting in. It sounds silly, but it was super romantic. He spent all this time teaching it to me, then he made sure i could do it myself before he left. He wanted us to be safe, even if he'd be late to work. Isn't that sweet? i love him. :)

This weekend should be good. My friend's daughter is turning two, so David and i are going to her party tomorrow. Then on Sunday we have a friend's grad party. Those parties will mean two good things: free food and seeing people we don't get to see very often. Yay!

i hope you all have a nice weekend. If you get a chance, drink a margarita for me. i miss them so.

Monday good things

So i've been sitting here and being a bit negative today. (Read: tired from huge Mother's day party yesterday, no money, broken car, the list goes on.) i've got all this stuff on my mind, and you know what? i'm going to be one of those Pollyanna types today and list the things i am grateful for.

• A very successful Mother's Day party yesterday. People loved the food, there were little to no awkward moments between people, and the weather was gorgeous, contrary to the dire weather predictions.
• CSA is starting this week! i will have tons of vegetables and fruits and stuff to feed my family.
• i won a contest! My friend Daphne had this contest giving away a $5 Taco Bell gift card, and i won! This is very nice, since after paying bills today, i realized i have about $11 to last me till the end of the month. i was even thinking "Oh man, what will i do when i need a chili cheese burrito?" And then i won the contest. Thanks for fueling my "Grade D" addiction Daphne!
• i got a bloggy award from Daphne, too! i will nominate others later. It is my first blog award, and i'm very happy about it.
• 
• Kris got me this beautiful plant for Mother's Day. It's nice to have something green and alive (for now) in my house. i hope it lasts!
• 
• i'm like a toddler, but i'm excited for my birthday in a couple weeks. i've always been excited about my birthday. i will get taken out for two meals and will get to spend time with my fav family members!
• Kris and i are going to the Twins game on Wednesday. i'm excited. My mom got us great seats for very cheap. Plus, Wednesday nights are $1 dog nights.
  
• My mom bought a Wii. i'm addicted to Wii golf now, and my sore arms are a small price to pay for hours of enjoyment that doesn't include a. sitting and b. getting fatter. i LOVE the Wii. i knew i wanted one, but had no idea they were that cool. But you know what this means? My mom is now cooler than i am.
  
• My house is clean-ish.
  

So yay! i've got tons of good stuff going on right now. Are you having a bad day? Writing one of these blog posts helps. Who knew?