28

turns out i took april off. surprise!

Posted by & filed under Blogging, Pregnancy.

Even though I’ve been silent here for an entire month due to sheer lack of mental capacity, life has been rolling ever forward. I didn’t really intend to disappear into the ether of the interwebs, it just kind of happened. Thank you for the sweet emails, tweets, and facebook messages. They made me feel so loved as I took the undefined breathing room I needed. Here are some snippets from lately:

I heard the baby’s heartbeat yesterday afternoon. I also heard the blips on the doppler as she/he wiggled and kicked. So precious.

The trusses and building materials for adding the second story to our flip house are arriving today. It’s game on this weekend.

DanO and I slipped away to Birmingham, Alabama for the weekend last week. We doled the boys out to family for three days and stole away into the night. It was an amazing, warm trip full of rest, friends, and great conversations. We also broke the bed in our friends’ guest house. O, yes we did. ::wink::

Pregnancy emotionally drains me. Or maybe it was the 5th and 6th months of winter that did me in? I all but gave up on life in mid April when that umpteenth snowfall came and there was no hope of spring on the horizon. It was a perfect storm of hormones and lack of vitamin D and cabin-fevered toddlers. (The last-minute trip to the south is making more sense now, isn’t it?)

OBrother turns two in a week and a half. This would be shocking, but I’m starting to realize that these birthday things just keep happening.

I am 16 something weeks along and coffee is bearable to me again, Praise God. I also don’t fall asleep at the drop of a hat or throw up in the church parking lot anymore. All hail the second trimester!

I never really wrote about the half marathon I ran at the end of March. It was an incredible experience and I hope I take the time and brain power to tell the whole story soon. Mostly I want to say that it was my second half marathon but the first one I had ever run the whole time. I still blush a little when I think about how proud I feel.

I’ve been making this chocolate chip cookie recipe on the regular. Chewiest, best cookies ever.

DanO just keeps chugging along. He is passionate about his 9-5 (6:30-3:30) job and then for a break he works on the investment property, which our boys call “the green house”. In his leisure time, he finishes up odd jobs around our house like replacing the front door or installing more child locks on things (see: almost two-year-old).

This post is reflective of my mind lately. Sporadic and filled-to-the-brim and also simultaneously being eaten by the baby in my belly. No joke, this has been the worst ‘baby brain’ of all of them. I can hardly finish a.

See what I did there?

It’s good to be back. I missed you guys.

 

13

Blissdom 2013

Posted by & filed under BlissDom12, Blogging, Travel.

My second-ever visit to the state of Texas was a whirlwind.

The main purpose of my time in Dallas was the Blissdom Social Media Conference which was held at the gorgeous Gaylord Texan resort. And I mean gorgeous as in restuarants under enormous glass atriums with water fountains.

My 4 (FOUR!) days and nights there were filled with ridiculous amounts of uninterrupted sleep and a dubious amount of calories. O and also holding random babies. Literal sat-down-at-the-table-next-to-us-and-we-stole-her-baby random babies.

Elbow chub!!

The adorable Dear Abby Leigh and the even adorabler daughter of Lindsey of Two Bobbins Later

The exception in the sleep department came Friday morning when I got up at 4:30am to hear Jon Acuff speak about what he has learned from his experience in social media. It was an interesting and engaging talk, although it was not exactly what I was expecting. When I signed up for it, I understood the description as being a vision-casting kind of gathering that would be a mix of Jon addressing the group and time for us to work and write in an encouraging environment. It wasn’t that – Jon spoke the whole time – but it was fun and enjoyable. Dude’s hilarious.

I have mixed feelings about the sessions I attended at Blissdom. I liked all of them. The speakers were all very professional, polished and engaging. I left each one encouraged and motivated but I was also hoping for more tangible nuggets and action items for the bettering of my blog and social media presence. I did hear from several attendees that in this session or that one there were some great take-aways, so I will definitely be going back and watching the videos of a few of those. My favorites were Sheila Marcelo’s session Redefining Success and Jon Acuff’s closing keynote.

And then I got down with my bad self at the Girls’ Night Out Blissdom event. I haven’t danced like that since… my wedding, maybe? It felt so good to be out on the floor with girlfriends just having a hilariously awesome and care-free time. Only downside is that I’ve had LMFAO Sexy and I Know It stuck in my head for almost a week.

I work out!

After the after party I got to watch the premier of an episode of Animal Planet’s Tanked featuring my friend Laura of Hollywood Housewife. I don’t know which was more fun, watching the episode or watching her watch the episode. Yea no, I know. It was the latter.

At the party viewing I had fried pickles for the first time in my life. You guys. Why did you not tell me about fried pickles before? They were so life changing that I took a picture. You’re welcome.

The food and sleep were epic, but to me BlissDom has always been about the face-to-face time with my friends from around the country. It dawned on me while I was dancing under a disco ball with girls that I love with my whole heart and with whom I am humbled to share my life through friendship online and off that I am absolutely blessed beyond reason to be part of this online community.

This crazy, eccentric, hilarious community.

8595836536_6a7400705a_c{photo credit: BlissDom}

 [[from left: Sharone of Zizzavivizz, Me, JJ the BlahBlahBlahger, Chris Mann from The Voice, (a very confused) Amber Riley from Glee, Abby of Dear Abby Leigh, and Ruthanne of Eclectic Whatnot]]

13

remembering spring

Posted by & filed under Life in Minnesota.

I heard a bird yesterday.

I realize this may not be alarming to many of you, but as I sat in an airport shuttle van with the sliding door open to the warm Dallas air, the chirp smacked me square in the forehead – as sounds do when you hear them for the first time in five months.

Five months. Five solid months of snowfall. Five months of lifeless outdoor landscapes. Five months of keeping two small, male children mostly indoors and going positively stir-crazy.

That’s not to say that beautiful, crisp winter mornings don’t have their place. They certainly do. On Christmas.

So birds. They have those here in Texas right now, apparently. Which shouldn’t have surprised me as much as it did considering that the first 18 years of my life I lived in a climate so moderate and constantly alive that moss growing on people’s roof shingles is a legitimate problem. There’s moss on everything in Oregon, as if the whole state were that part of the woods that’s far enough in so no one goes and disturbs it and moss and such feels safe enough to grow. At least that’s how I remember it.

In Minnesota, everything dies. I guess this comes in handy in the area of moss and bugs and other things it’s nice to kill out once a year, but it is positively devastating for the humans that live through it. It seems like every year I make it through January in Minnesota and think that I’ve made it. I’ve survived negative temperature highs; the dead of winter is behind me. But then I get to March and I’ll be darned if it’s not 38 times longer than January ever was. March holds the promise (and even the delivery) of spring for so much of the country. Birds chirp from California to DC. Moms instagram pictures of their kids in shorts, outside digging in the sandbox.

Meanwhile, I have 10 inches of snow in my yard. March makes me dig way, way down deep to this treasure trove of memories. I remember that last summer it was gorgeous and hot and sunny and my kids were the ones playing in the kiddie pool in the back yard. I think through the fog about the days out on a boat on the St. Croix river. I will myself to recall the afternoons we spent in the strawberry fields as a family.

And sometimes, I fly to Dallas and hear a bird chirp just to get me through.

I will make it. Spring will come. It will.