The wise man learns from other people’s mistakes

Blair here about to get political....

Found this video and thought it had some common sense information that everyone could learn from. Feel free to leave a comment regardless of whether or not you're for the public option in healthcare.



Thanks,
Blair

Getting Settled!!!

Life's finally getting a bit more settled for Blair and I!!! We've been in our new apartment for about three weeks now and are liking it more and more. We really enjoyed our weeks at my parents house, but have really been excited to be back in our own place and getting a little bit of the regular rhythm of life back.

Blair's been subbing every day at all kinds of schools around the tri-cities area. He's staying busy, getting more experience in the classroom, and meeting a lot of principals and teachers along the way!! Hopefully these things will all give him a step up on getting a full time teaching position in the future. But for now, subbing is working out great!!

As for the belly profile, I finally caved at the request of a few friends. I'm growing more and more every day! I absolutely love the company of this little guy! He's always making his presence known by kicking and squirming, and I LOVE IT! It's crazy how time flies...he'll be here before we know it! Halloween tomorrow, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then....BABY!

I thought it would be fun for Blair and I to paint pumpkins! I have never been a huge lover of carving pumpkins, but give me a paint brush and I get really excited! Bet you can't tell what's on my mind these days!

And Blair's pumpkin! Any guesses...? That's right, it's a Volcano! His right brain took him in a much different direction than did mine. It was fun to watch his creativity brewing :)

And just a few random pictures of our new apartment! This one in particular is from the living room into the dining area. It's nice to have a bit more room around our table! We don't have to rearrange our couches to seat more than two people around the table!!!

A quick shot of the living room. It's starting to feel more and more like home!

A little creative usage of storage space. I have a lot of canned food from this summer (thanks again mom for your coaching and help), and decided above my cupboards in the kitchen would be a fun place to store it...well at least some of it.

And the drumroll please....well I guess you already saw the picture. A WASHER AND DRYER of our very own. I searched forever on craigslist and found a nice and cheap set! That's been a luxury I have missed!

And finally, this is a little peek at the quilt I just finished for baby Eyre's crib. I decided on a "lil buckaroo" theme for the nursery (slash office) and when I found this fabric I fell in love! I'm still working on some more projects, but this is the fabric I'm theming them all around!

So there's a random taste of what Blair and I have been up to!

We're still Alive!

Wow....I've definitely been a blog-slacker!! Life has been all over the place lately...and that's my excuse :) But I have so much to update/share...so I apologize if this is a completely random post, but this is my attempt at catching up on a nearly two month blogging drought!!

First and foremost....

OUR BABY:
I am currently growing more and more every day, which I hope means that the little guy is doing the same! And yes, that's right...I said little GUY! We found out quite a while ago, but I've never officially announced it on our blog. So if you already knew...there you have it again! If you didn't know, well now you do!! The ultrasound was amazing/surreal and Blair and I loved every minute of it. Even more exciting than knowing the gender (which was SUPER exciting) was just knowing that we have a healthy baby whose parts and organs all seem to be functioning properly! The whole thing is so miraculous!! (Sorry for all the exclamation marks, I've noticed I use them a lot....guess that's just my way of showing my excitement!!!!!!!!)

I am having a ton of fun dreaming up ideas for our little guys nursery! Hopefully someday soonish, I can have some pictures to post of my successful nursery crafts....for now it's mostly dreaming up the ideas.

Speaking of pictures to post...I'll work on getting a belly profile shot someday! For now, you can just use your imagination :)

OUR LIFE OTHER THAN THE BABY:
We are currently living with my parents in Washington while we figure out our working/living circumstances. They've been extremely generous and hospitable, and we've appreciated the chance to have a place to stay while we get things figured out.

Blair is signed up/signing up to substitute teach with about 6 different school districts in and around the Tri-Cities in Washington. September has been pretty slow because teachers don't seem to miss as much school early on, but we're hoping they start needing days off soon. Everyone we've talked to who is involved in the school districts in that area, however, say once things get rolling he should have as much work subbing as he wants. We're mostly hopeful that the substituting will help Blair get his foot in the door for a full-time teaching job somewhere, someday soonish!! However, for now, while the subbing is slow...there has been plenty of work on my dad's farm to keep Blair busy and employed (for which we're extremely grateful)!!

I have been staying super busy myself trying to get all the details of life in transition figured out. I feel like I've wasted my life away on the phone with insurance companies, apartment complexes, doctors offices...yadda yadda yadda! I think we're getting closer on figuring everything out and are going to be moving into a cute little apartment in Pasco in the next couple of weeks, and I have my first doctor's appt set up. It'll be nice once all of the transitional stuff gets sorted out...moving mid-pregnancy is definitely less than ideal!!!!

It's been a time of harvest around the farm here in Washington, so I've been lucky enough (with the assistance of my mom) to do a little bit of canning. We put up 77 quarts of peaches....which Blair eats like candy, therefore I know they will get used and be much appreciated! We've also done some raspberry jam and bottled some green beans from some of the fruits of my grandma's beautiful garden! I plan to do a bunch of applesauce and/or apple pie filling soon because we are basically surrounded by apples in my dad's orchards right now. Some of his granny's may not even get picked because of hail damage, so I'll have to take advantage of those soon!

RANDOM, JUST FOR FUN:
If you're actually still reading (sorry for a super long, picture-less, post) here's an entertaining guy to get sucked into youtube watching!! My parents called Blair and I in to watch a video they thought was super funny by a comedian/parody singer Tim Hawkins the other day. We laughed so hard, and then proceeded to watch any and all of his other videos...laughing all along the way. From everything we saw, he was always clean and appropriate and hilarious (so our apologies if you find something on the contrary).

Here's a good one to watch...and feel free to look up his others if you have some time to kill (or even if you don't)



This one is pretty genious, and the song "Delilah" goes way back with Blair and I....



And if you're still here wanting more....this one didn't necessarily crack us up as much, but it hit the nail on the head and made us all like this guy a lot more!



Anyway, life's great for Blair and I, and hopefully this post will catch you up a bit on our life and maybe give you a little laugh as well!!!

"Through these crazy times...It's You"

With so much unpredictability in Blair and I's lives right now (moving?, jobs?, etc.), the one thing I am SO grateful to KNOW is that Blair will be by my side no matter where life takes us! (hence the Michael Buble song on my playlist...the chorus resonated with me a lot)

Meet Baby Eyre

So, for those of you who may not have noticed the introduction to Baby Eyre in the upper right hand corner of our blog before now.......now you can be officially introduced!! WE'RE PREGNANT and we're SOO excited. I'm due January 16th and we couldn't be happier!

Blair really wanted to put a baby countdown on the blog before an official announcement post; he wanted to see who would happen to notice it there and find out that way. I, however, was dying to make an official blogging announcement!! So... he got a couple days of his sneaky-ness, and now I am yelling it out to everyone.

We've actually waited quite a while to share our exciting news out of precaution. For those of you who may not have known....we miscarried back in January, and that was a very difficult thing. Therefore, this time we wanted to wait until things seemed to be progressing well and we were a bit more out of the danger zone. I am now approaching 14 weeks and things seem to be GREAT!! We've now heard the beautiful sound of the heartbeat twice; once at about 9 weeks and again at about 13 weeks, and nothing has ever sounded sweeter to our ears.

As for my pregnancy thus far, I consider myself very lucky. I have had a general nauseous feeling a lot of the time, but it has generally been quite mild. My appetite's been a bit crazy, and I've definitely been more tired than normal....but all that said, it hasn't been bad at all. I've been lucky enough to be able to continue working (where, however, I have officially given my 2 weeks notice!!!!!!!!!!!) and haven't even had to take any sick leave.

We're so excited, and you can probably expect to hear more updates as they come!!!

Camping, Camping, and more Camping

Our last three weekends have been camping filled. We have loved every minute of it, but also LOVE getting back to our bed and comfortable apartment each time. There's nothing like enjoying the great outdoors (really we do love it), but then enjoying the wonderful indoors once you get home.

About three weekends ago we had a ward campout that we were semi in charge of. It was a lot of fun and we enjoyed a chance to get to know some ward members a bit better. Unfortunately... no pics from that weekend.

The next weekend we went to City of Rocks with Riley and Chelsea (Blair grew up with Riley) to do some rock climbing. That was a lot of fun, and City of Rocks is an amazing place. It is just what it sounds like...a city of rocks. They jut out of the ground and are towering over you all around. It's pretty neat. I think Blair, Riley, and Chelsea all really enjoyed their time climbing; I did get on the rock once, but spent most of my time as a spectator (which was perfectly okay with me). It's always exciting to see new places, and we were definitely glad for this little weekend trip!!

Yes...that is Blair way up there (safely bolted in to the rock however)!

And yes...this is a bum shot...sorry! But I think it's cool to see all the gear they load up with before heading up the rock.

Riley and Chelsea and an amazing view!

Then, just last weekend we made the drive up to north of Couer d Alene to farragut state park to spend the 4th of july weekend with my family (well about half of them). It is a beautiful area and we lucked out by getting an absolutely ginormous group camp site where we had all the room and privacy we could've hoped for. We biked, rafted, swam, relaxed, ate, really enjoyed ourselves! It was a great weekend filled with lots of good food and good company, which according to Blair's equation ALWAYS equals good times!! Blair and I consider ourselves extremely blessed to have SO MUCH amazing family surrounding us (Gilbert's and Eyre's) and love the times when we get to spend time with them.

Family Hikes....LOVE THEM!!

This is the view into the beautiful bay where we went to watch fireworks on the fourth. It was an amazing show in amazing surroundings!

Well, there you have it....camping, camping, and more camping!

Cool, huh?

So I think I've made myself believe that I have to have some major life event as a topic for a post on my blog.  However, I know that I enjoy reading others post about things that are often quite random and seemingly un-earth-shattering.  Therefore, today I post a random post...just because it's something I thought was cool (and work is slow and boring right now).  I came across a website with these pictures and it blew my mind.  I'm a very visual person, so stuff like this stretches my creativity.  This is in a parking garage in Melbourne, and if you're standing in exactly the right place, the word looks completely normal.  However, from any other angle, it looks like a skewed mess.....cool, huh?

So maybe I'm weird and find things cool that others might take no interest in.  But I thought I'd share nonetheless!