Cold

I woke up this morning and opened the door of my apartment building to be greeted by weather that takes your breath away...and not because of its' beauty. It's COLD! My car said that it was 18 degrees, but with the wind added in, who knows what it was. All I know is that any piece of skin that I had exposed was freezing by the time I got to my car, and I couldn't wait until the heater kicked in. It looks like our wonderful winter season has begun!

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3 degrees! It was 3 degrees this morning with the windchill!!

All clear

I had a doctor's appointment today, which was supposed to be a "routine OB visit", and turned out more as being a follow-up from this past weekend. After I told my doctor the story of what had happened, we listened to the heartrate and she checked some stuff out and said that things look good and where/how they should be. Even the UTI was cleared up (although I'm still finishing the antibiotics) Of course the bleeding this past weekend was of concern, but that'll get checked out again in two weeks with another scheduled ultrasound to check the placenta, etc., and everything else looks good. The only thing she told me to do, is to call her immediately should bleeding occur again, but neither of us are expecting that. Thanks for praying, and please keep Melodie and me in your prayers. I'm excited to meet her, but I can definately wait until the end of April when she's supposed to come!

Thanksgiving scare

This weekend Ryan and I spent Thanksgiving with the Young family and then headed to Holland for the long weekend. It was nice to be able to have an extra day to spend with the LaBarge family for a change, and we were excited to get some relaxing in. However, Friday night gave us both a bit of a scare. I hadn't been feeling well over the past few days, headache, crampy and nauseous, etc. Friday night I started cramping more and bleeding, which freaked me out quite a bit. Ryan took me to the ER and I got checked out. They took blood tests and a urine test and then did an ultrasound. It was 1 in the morning when we had the ultrasound done, and much to my shock Melodie was quite alert and active. She was playing with her hands, flipping around and even sucked her thumb for a little bit. Thankfully everything checked out at the hospital, and I ended up having a urinary tract infection and was sent home with an antibiotic, and instructions of what to look for. Ryan and I were so relieved. Everything is still going okay, and I'm feeling much better which is good. I've got a follow-up with my OB-GYN on Wednesday, so it'll be nice to see how everything checks out then. Until then, we'd appreciate you praying for everything to go well with Melodie and me.

Bowling

Last Monday Ryan had quite a game of bowling. He opened up his second game of the series with 10 straight strikes, and barely missed getting a perfect 300 game, ending up with an impressive 288! Last night we went bowling together in our Wednesday night league and I opened up the game with two poor throws. Just as I was thinking that it was going to be a looooooooong night of bowling when I got a spare, the next frame was another spare, then came another spare, and another! I ended up the game with 8 spares in a row and a 157 game (and barely even beating out my incredible bowler-husband)!! It's by far my highest game ever and I ened up the night with a 141 and 126 giving me a 141 average over the three games! Hopefully next week will be more of the same, but for now I'm savouring the fun night last night.

Early in, beat the snow

I got into work early this whole week in hopes of getting out early every day. Unfortunately that hasn't happened because I need to cram 6 days worth of work into 3 this week. However, it's been nice to be extremely busy, and also to have something to look forward to this weekend. I got in early today as well, and after a couple funny stories from my co-workers finally sat down to "work", or blog. :) Hopefully my cases will be released early on today so that I can beat the snowfall home and out to the bowling alley tonight. We'll see. Safe travels and a happy thanksgiving all!

Headlights

It seems as though the Corolla is going through a rough patch these past couple of weeks. After blowing a tire, I also found out that one of the headlights had burned out as well. I decided to go to the auto parts store tonight and get a light to fix it. (Awhile back one of the headlights had burned out on the Grand Am, and my dad took me outside to help him fix it - mostly so that I'd know that I could do it in the future should the oppurtunity arise) After I brought the book into the store and told Jim, the guy behind the counter, what kind of light I needed I left the store with a new light. I got home and figured out how to take out the light and put in the new one without touching the glass. However, that's when the problem arose. Jim gave me the wrong light, and I was frustrated, and didn't want to go back and yadda yadda yadda. However, I went back to the store and told Jim my dilema, and five minutes later I was walking out of there with two new lights that were the right kind and way more expensive than the original purchase, although they gave it to me for the price of the original purchase. Now THAT'S customer service! I got home and changed the light, and now I can see! :) Wonderful, and after not having been able to change my own tire last week, it felt good to be adept at something relating to cars.

Presenting...

Baby Girl Young!

Everything looks good so far, and we should still be on for late April. Ryan and I are thrilled, although I am quite a bit shocked that she's a she and not a he!

It's a.........

Don't know yet, but we'll find out tomorrow morning. How exactly am I supposed to sleep tonight?

Things I learned today

1. If I leave 10 minutes later than usual in the morning, it equates to a 55 minute LONGER commute! Also, it will ALWAYS be the day that you're 10 minutes late that you look at your gas gauge and realize that there is NO way that you'll make it to work on the remainder of your tank!
2. My kitchenaid euro peeler works incredibly well for peeling potato skin, unfortunately, it works incredibly well for peeling my skin as well!
3. The days of pork chops in my frying pan/oven are over. My kickin' crock pot from my super cool aunt made some of the best pork chops I've ever had! Here's the quick recipe:
--brown the chops in butter with salt and pepper
--throw a family size can of cream of chicken soup in the crock pot along with about a cup of water
--cut three to four slots in the chops and then put them in the soup along with all the left over cooking product from browning them, and let cook on low while away at work.
--result: they come out as SUPER tender pork chops, with fantastic gravy to boot.
4. A nice walk with the hubby after a tasty meal is one of the best things to do at night, yes, even better than the $1 movie at the budget theater.
5. Days can start out rough, but they don't have to end that way.

Too tight

A week ago I put on my favorite jeans (thank you AGAIN Missy, I LOVE them), and buttoned them with no problem. I generally save them for when I want to look cute and go out, but today I put them on because they were my only clean pants that I could find didn't require a dressy shirt. I slipped into them, and tucked in my t-shirt since I was wearing a sweatshirt as well, and MUCH to my chargrin, they didn't want to button! I had to untuck the t-shirt and try, and was barely able to make it work. Then I remembered a trick from a friend at work who used rubber bands to expand the top of her pants until maternity pants were necessary. That would have worked fine, if the baby didn't want to take the zipper as well! :) I finally got the pants buttoned, but I think that this is the last time I'm going to be wearing these jeans for awhile.

The title

I had a hard time coming up with the right title for this post. Initially I thought, "sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug" would be appropriate. Then, I thought about "change is neccesary". Then, "the day started out well". "Listen to that little voice in your head". Then perhaps, "anyone got a wrench?" Then "how NOT to do costumer service", but none of them seemed to fit exactly. So here's what happened. I woke up this morning in an unusually good mood. It seemed as though it was going to be a great day. I got ready for work, got out the door early, and headed out to greet the day. I was hoping to get to work early, so that I could get some stuff done, that didn't get done last week. I pulled on the highway, and turned up the radio a bit for some Mercy Me and Casting Crown's. It was a great morning. After driving for about a half an hour I started thinking to myself, "Hmm, I wonder what I'd do if I ever got a flat on my way to work?" I thought about how my mom had changed a tire before at Grandma's, and that I new where the spare was in the car, and that I hoped that it wouldn't be a terrible blowout where you lose control of the car, and what shoulder I'd pull over to to be the safest, and then I thought about how glad I was that it had never happend, and that really, since the Camero died inches away from my house about a year and a half ago, I had never really had much car misfortune. (talk about a run-on sentence) Anyway, a couple of minutes passed when I noticed that the pavement sounded a bit different than usual, and I was wondering if it was just because there was a new surface on it, so I sped up a bit-which didn't change the sound. I pulled over to the right side lane to see if that helped when I heard a loud noise and a rumbling underneath my car! "Oh my gosh!" I thought, "I got a flat tire!". I was able to pull off the highway since there was an exit right there, and I was in the right lane. The side of the road had a wide enough gravel way on it that I pulled all the way off, and got out to take a look. Sure enough, my rear right tire was flat. Now, I had been having a particularly good morning, and I decided that a little thing like a flat tire was not going to get me down. So I started cracking up at how funny it was that not five minutes before it happened I had run down the senario in my head of what to do in such a cricumstance. However, I was lucky that it wasn't snowing, or a bad blowout. I cleaned out the trunk, to find baseball gloves, tennis balls, a bat, Ryan's golf clubs, some outdoor fold-up chairs, and branch cutters?! . After that I pulled out the spare, and the jack. I proudly figured out how to assemble and work the jack, and grabbed a rag to keep my hands from getting super rusty. I jacked up the car and then went to the trunk to find that there was no lug wrench in the car. Now, this had not been in my plans that I had made five minutes prior to blowout, what to do? I put on my hazards, and put the spare resting against the back of the car so that it was apparent that I had a flat tire, when all of the sudden a truck carrying 8 semi-truck tires passes me by on the road, and then pulls over. The guy comes back to see if I needed any help! What luck! Welllllllllllllll, perhaps not. He had no lug wrench either, nor did he know where to get one. He told me that he'd pick one up at the next stop and if I was here when he drove back in an hour that he'd help me out. He also said that the Sherrif patrolled through roughly once an hour, and that he'd be able to help me. Anyway, so I went back to my car and sat to wait. Finally a woman pulled over in a pick up, got out and was able to lend me a lug wrench. I went to work on the tire, but found that the nuts wouldn't budge and were rusted into place. She new a guy at a local farm and said that she'd be back shortly. (A local farm? It happend to be the place that Ryan and I went to pick out our pumpkins) Minutes later she returned with Ephraim, who kicked and pushed and pulled and tapped off the rust enough to get the tire off, and help me put on the spare. I ended up having to call into work, knowing that I couldn't drive there and home on a spare, and set out to get a new tire. Goodyear didn't have one, neither did the discount tires place across the street. I found that apparently you needed a special size for the Corolla. I had been giving Ryan updates, and he called the tire place that we'd purchased the tires at who got us in for an appointment at 2. I drove over there, and dropped off the car and went Christmas shopping for my nieces and nephews while I waited. I got Raleigh and Brendan done! And then it was time to head back to Tire's Plus. Now, I had been agonizing about taking the tires there, since the last THREE times we've taken the cars there we've had horrible customer service. Twice they scheduled appointments to get out car in to have parts fixed and on the first time they confused which Jeep was ours and worked on someone else's and then the second time they had told us that they had the part to fix the window and we dropped the car off to find out two days later that they never received it! Then, they never discounted our price or apologized for the inconvenience! I was livid, but decided that if Ryan could deal with them, then it was one less headache for me. Now, this time had been great. They had gotten my car in the same day, and had said that they'd fix it within an hour. I came back, looking forward to driving home with a new tire when the guy came out and told me that it wasn't a repair, but that I needed a new tire. Since that was what we had discussed when I dropped the car off, I was confused why he didn't just put on the new tire. "Oh no, we don't carry those tires in stock, we'll have to get it from somewhere else and won't have it until tomorrow". EXCUSE ME? YOU put on the tires two months ago, and you don't carry the tire in stock? Also, you knew it was going to be a new tire when I made the appointment and when I dropped off the car. Why couldn't you check that in your computer then, before I waited an hour and a half, and drove out there to find out that they couldn't fix it? Then, on top of that, the original quote was for $50, and now they were going to charge us over $100! I called Ryan, and told him what was going on, and we agreed that since this was the 9th tire (we'd gotten new Jeep and Corolla tires this past Aug/Sep) in three months, and the fact that they'd been terrible on the customer service end every time, that we were going to take the care elsewhere. As I was talking to the guy to let him know that they could put the spare back on and that I was going to go elsewhere I asked for the specs of the tire and also for the store ID number. He asked why, and I told him so that I could contact the better business bureau regarding the stores customer service record. 20 minutes later, I was given a deal for a new tire and warranties for the other three done tomorrow for $35. Now, why couldn't they have done that in the first place? I wasn't being unreasonable, nor was I being a pain, but honestly, someone has to say that they are going to contact the Better Busines Bureau in order to get customer service? That's crazy. Anyway, it all worked out. I came home, and e-mailed my manager the story of why I hadn't made it in (of course, a much shorter version) and offered to come in tomorrow which was originally supposed to be a day off. She responded with this, "I'm glad that you are OK. Take your vacation day tomorrow. Life happens and this happens. Enjoy your vacation day". Whew! At least the day ended on a great note. I am blessed by having a great husband who loves me and advocates for me, I'm blessed by my job, I've been blessed over and over again with safety in dangerous situations, I've been blessed by this little baby inside of me, and lot's of other things. It's good to know that bad days don't always have to be bad, and it's good to see the good in people when they pull over to help you on the side of the road, or get dragged out of bed to do the same. It's been a crazy, full and nuts day, but it's been fun. I hope that tomorrow is less expensive and less eventful, but I hope that I can laugh just as much.

The giggles

Ryan and I were headed out the door last night into the chilly Milwaukee November weather, when I caught him at the door and said, "wait, let me just grab my hat". So I went into the front closet pulled out my winter stocking cap and put it on. I turned around and found my husband doing something that he doesn't often do. He was giggling! I couldn't figure out why, since it seemed perfectly logical to me to grab a winter hat. He kept giggling until I insisted that he told me why. Finally he says, "It's just freaky, that's all". me - "WHAT'S freaky?!!" Ryan - "How much you look like your dad with that hat on! It's freaky." So, later on we were in the car and talking about a recent meeting at church when I started crying (I'm pregnant, and I'm emotional). After comforting me, he goes, "on a lighter note, now I never have to wonder what it would look like to see your dad cry", which made ME giggle.

Football blunder

My husband is a typical guy. He loves football, and amidst the cold weather, I think that the football season sometimes is the only thing that redeems the fall for him. (I, on the other-hand, LOVE fall weather and wish that it were between 40 and 65 degrees year round) Anyway, today Ryan went over to his parent's house to watch some football: Green Bay vs. KC, Pats vs Colts and Dallas vs. ?. Since his parent's have DVR they had recorded both the Packers and Patriots games to watch after church this morning. I stayed home to sleep and clean and chill out, but had planned on calling Ryan later on in the afternoon. After the Packers took their game, I flipped through some channels to see what else was on when I happened along the Patriots game. I waited until halftime, and then made an age old sports blunder.
B-"Hey Ryan"
R-"Hey Becky"
B-"Hey, well the Colts are winning..."
R-"Aghhh, we're still watching the Packers game!"

Whoooooooooooooooooops! Now, why was I even watching football? Well, it was the clearest channel we get on our non-cable tv. Do I normally watch football? Not much, but today was a nice day to just flip on the tv for a bit and veg. I had just decided that I was rooting for the Colts, when they took a first half lead, and I was excited. I also assumed that Ryan and family had caught up with the games, but was wrong. Truth be told, I just wasn't thinking and I did that thing that no one likes, I let the cat out of the bag. Fortunately for me, I have a forgiving husband. But I still felt badly.

Time for the weekend

I can't wait for the weekend. I have a few more minutes here at work, and then I'm heading home for a night of pizza, games and relaxing with my hubby and brother-in-laws. I'm looking forward to it, and also hoping that the weather turns out well this weekend. It'd be a good chance for a nice fall walk, and to get out and do something instead of sitting inside. Also, Ryan has a five hour written police officer examination on Saturday, so if you could be thinking of him/praying for him I'd appreciate it.