The greatest day of the year.

Thanksgiving is my absolute favorite holiday of the year.  Does that make me a glutton?  If it does, I'm perfectly okay with it.  I love to cook, so preparing the meal is fun for me (although Steve and I have been nomads the last few years), it is a great time to have quality time with friends and family (which in our case lately has been our friends' families), you don't have to spend 100 hours decorating the house, and you don't have to go through the pressure of buying gifts for people that you aren't sure they will like and receiving gifts you may not like but have to be nice about.  Also, did I mention the food????  Turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, broccoli and cheese, rolls, pumpkin pie, and my favorite STUFFING!

This year, we went to St. Louis for the big day and stayed with one of my dear friends Amanda, her husband Ryan and their amazing, adorable, funny 11 month old daughter Collins.  Our original plan was to stay one night with these friends and then spend the rest of the time with some other friends at their parents' house so Steve could go deer hunting.  Well, the parents decided to go to Spain so that plan was a no-go.  Rude!  They could have at least invited us to join them in Spain...  Luckily, Amanda and Company were kind enough to take us in for the entire weekend and to take us home with them so we could feed our faces.

The first stop was Amanda's aunt's house to have lunch with all of her family.  This ended up being a girls only trip because Steve and Ryan needed to go set up their tree stands for hunting the next day.  Amanda and I went to town (one of us more than the other).  I had 2 heaping plate-fulls of food and didn't feel guilty about it one bit.  I just blamed it all on the baby.  These people don't know me....they don't know that I would have eaten the exact same way whether there was a baby involved or not, so they bought my excuse and didn't judge me.

At one point, I looked down to make sure my napkin was still in my lap during the feeding frenzy only to find that I couldn't even see my lap, much less my napkin.  I then relocated my napkin to the nice little shelf on the top of my belly to protect my clothes while I behaved like a little piggy.  It kept falling though, which has inspired me to invent a pregnancy napkin....patent pending.

As we sat on the couch rubbing our full bellies, Amanda said 4 of the most glorious words ever spoken, "Time for round 2."  We packed up and headed over to Ryan's mom's house to have dinner with his family.  Here I had another massive plate and some pumpkin pie.  Had I been given another hour for digestion, I bet I could have taken down 2 plates at this house too.  I take Thanksgiving very seriously.

After all of this eating, my back was killing me.  The poor little guy was probably so excited at first to have all of this delicious cuisine headed his way, and then quickly realized that his mom is a heifer, and he was out of room and was shoved up against my spine.  Also, my normally active little guy was in a food coma all weekend and hardly moved.  He's back to normal now though!

Oh, did I forget to mention that Steve's office had their annual Thanksgiving lunch on Wednesday?  Yeah, I overate there too.  Steve and I were in charge of the turkey and I decided to brine one this year...it was DELISH! 

I had a turkey sandwich today with some of the leftovers and the baby got extremely active.  I wonder if he got scared that the gorging of the weekend was about to happen all over again.....I wish!

Well, until next year...  Bring on Christmas!

PS.  I learned yesterday that Canadians celebrate their Harvest at the end of October with a day just like Thanksgiving.  I'm invisioning a new Callaway Tradition...Canada in October.

Post Halloween Wrap-up

Steve and I are not huge Halloween people.  By this I mean, we live in a neighborhood with only 3 children, so we turn off our porch light and hide in the living room so we don't have to hand out candy.  Also, what we decide to "be" depends entirely on what we have in the house and will require the least amount of effort and investment.  (Not sure what that says about us for this year's costume though.) 

With just one quick trip to Wal-Mart and pulling out some of Steve's hunting clothes, we were able to quickly and easily transform into white trash.

Steve already had the camouflage and I already had the wife-beater (I did cut it up though....it did not look like that before), the trucker hat, and the cut-off shorts.  Wal-mart provided the AC/DC shirt and the tattoos.  I gave myself a white trash perm (just add moose and hairspray to straight hair and pretend it looks pretty) and caked on the makeup.  We decided I DEFINITELY needed the rose tattoo on my boob (which a surprising amount of people thought was real...) and, although no one got to see it because of the cold weather, a tramp stamp.  Steve went patriotic with a huge eagle tattoo on his arm.  I also bought some fake cigarettes and was tempted to carry around a vodka bottle filled with water but instead opted for this prop:

If we had 7-11 (the king of all convenience stores) here, it would have been a Super Big Gulp, but this option allowed me to enjoy a tasty cherry lime-ade.  There were other props, such as Steve's pack of Red Man, that were not highlighted but definitely were not overlooked. 

We didn't stay too long because, well, I am pregnant, boring, and tired all the time.  I have found that certain things just aren't as much fun when you are the only sober person.  Things like: Happy Hour, Tailgating, Church (hehe...just wanted to make sure you were paying attention), and Parties. 

However, when weighing the options of weather to give my child fetal alcohol syndrome or to be the only sober person at a party, tailgate, or church, it is an easy choice, and I would rather just go to bed early. 

Now I am already thinking of costumes for the little guy next year.  He won't be walking yet, but who cares....one of the best parts of having kids is all of the Halloween candy....right?  That's what the brochure said. 

Here are a couple of ideas I have seen:

This might be better in a few years.

I ABSOLUTELY love this!

Just a little dry run...

I woke up Monday experiencing a lot of cramping in my lower abdomen.  After having lunch and still not feeling any better, I came home to relax and see if maybe the little guy was just in a bad spot and needed to move, but I still didn't feel any better.  While making dinner, I was doubled over in pain and decided to google my symptoms to see if this was anything to be worried about.  (note: all of the books say cramping OR spotting are not a problem but cramping AND spotting are something to worry about...I had no spotting so just kept ignoring it...but 8 hours is a long time to ignore something.)  After typing in "lower abdominal cramps third trimester", I discovered that menstrual type cramps are a sign of pre-term labor.  Ahhhh what???  I then called the on call doctor from my doctor's practice and she suggested that I come down to labor and delivery to be monitored and checked for pre-term labor. 

Steve and I were planning to do the hospital tour so we would know where to go on the big day and not have that stress hanging over our heads, but we hadn't done it yet so we were flying blind.  We got up to labor and delivery though, and they had a room waiting for me - talk about service!  I was hooked up to 2 monitors (one for him and one for me) and they immediately saw the cramps, which they refered to as small contractions, that were occuring every 2 minutes.  They ran a few tests and after 3 hours, they decided I was not in pre-term labor, but they think I may have kidney or bladder stones and my body was trying to fight that off and started contracting in an attempt to get all foreign things out of my body.  Did my body just call my baby foreign????  Rude!

They gave me a shot to stop the contractions and waited about 30 more minutes to see if it worked.  I was also told that I need to drink a lot more water (4-5 of the cups they gave me a day).  The cramps/contractions were really weak at the end of the 30 minutes, so they sent me home. 

I went to the hospital and all I got was this cup.

The baby did not enjoy this occasion very much.  He kicked the crap out of the monitors for all 3 1/2 hours...guess he wanted those things to go away.

Here is silver lining to this event:  We now don't have to do the tour and have made a list of things to remember to take for the big day.  My list includes, my glasses, computer, my own pillow, and maybe a blanket.  Steve's includes an air mattress (I don't think he liked the husband chair), but I will not allow "the Clampets visit the hospital" to take place. 

I had a doctor's appointment the following day and after double checking everything, she wasn't worried and said that if I start to show signs to kidney stones to give her a call.  Glad there was no real emergency....he just wanted a little attention. 

Pin Me

Are you addicted to Pintrest yet?  If not, sign up for an account and you will have wasted away hours of your day in what feels like 5 minutes.  Most of the baby's room has been inspired by Pintrest, the tree was purchased through Pintrest, and my latest craft is no exception.  I saw this the other day and had to make it.  Who knew I was so crafty?

It's just an old frame we were going to throw away, scrapbook paper cut into the birds I drew, and ribbon.  I think it came out pretty darn cute.  Here it is with the rest of the stuff on that wall of the room.

I added the green pillow just to add some color (although I'm not sure if I love it...I'd really prefer orange) and the banner (also inspired by Pintrest) was made by one of Steve's co-workers who hosted an office baby shower for us last Friday night.  Look what else we got that night...

Is that not the cutest diaper cake you have ever seen?!?!?!?  He's riding a 4-wheeler which is so perfect for us.  His office was also kind enough to get us a newborn photography session for after the little man arrives.  My plan is to hang a canvas family photo over the crib.  He is very excited for his modeling debut....I can tell.  Next I will have to start scouring Pintrest and Etsy (yeah, that's another good site) for newborn hats he can wear for his pictures.

I have made several recipes from Pintrest too, so Steve is really getting behind my new addiction.  He sits over my shoulder mocking me for spending so much time on the site and then sees something he likes and says, "Oh, what's that?  Wonder what that would taste like."  I take the hint, and it makes the menu for the following week. 

I'm pretty sure we are hosting the office Christmas party again this year, and I have already found some great decoration ideas that will allow me to re-use some of the decorations we had at the wedding.  I will get started on those right away though so I don't panic at the last minute like I did last year. 

I swear, where has Pintrest been all my life?  Did I mention there is an iPhone app too so I don't ever have to be disconnected...