Saturday, October 23, 2010

Corn Maze and pumpkins

We took our yearly treck to the Sauvie Island Corn Maize this year. We always go do the maze and then go to the pumpkin patch to get our pumpkins. The trip out was a bit frustrating. From the turn off of Hwy 30 to the Pumpkin Patch is only 2 miles. It took us an HOUR to go just that far. Seems over the years this has become a popular place. I don't remember so many people trying to get there. We've been stuck in a line of traffic before to get there but it only took like 15 mins to get through. I think in the past we may have gone earlier in the month and earlier in the day. This time was later for both. It was crazy! The funny thing was once we got into the maze we didn't really run into that many groups of people. That was surprising. I was totally fine with that though. I'm not much of a crowds person. We completed the maze in decent time and had fun doing it. My friend Lori came with us and we always have a good time together during these types of things.



After getting lost for a bit and finding our way back, we decided we all needed nourishment before heading down to the patch. They have hay rides going to get you out there and back. But while in the maze the line had grown so long we weren't sure it was worth waiting for, until we saw the food lines. Wow! They were just as bad. So Lori kindly held our place in the hay ride line while the rest of us split up into 3 different lines to get the various food items we all wanted. Timed it perfectly :)
We had just enough time to find Lori and eat our food before it was our turn to get on the truck.
Lori spotted her perfect pumpkin from the truck so she just jumped down and ran over to it and was done.



The rest of us started our wandering trying to find the perfect pumpkin. The rule is "you want it you have to be able to carry it out". Sometimes it works and sometimes we give in to the pleading and help them carry the ginormous pumpkin one would usually pick out. Fortunately the three oldest are big enough now to really carry their own. Jonathan found a huge one and managed to lug it back to the truck and from there a few more feet to the carts. I was drawn to one that had some really pretty coloring, an interesting combination of orange and green I hadn't seen before. Seth, of course, wouldn't settle for a Seth-sized pumpkin so, yes, we had to help him carry it. But since Rob and I get just one between the two of us there were still enough arms to carry it.

The hay ride back was an adventure itself. There were some serious ruts in the path they were using and some of those bumps sent us flying off our seats. Which would be ok except that there are no sides to these trucks, just flat beds. We had to hold onto each other and our pumpkins to keep either from flying over the edge! I was facing backwards and it was fun to watch the wave as it hit the trailers behind us. We'd go flying then the people behind us would go flying and then the people behind them! Got us all laughing pretty hard.
After we paid, Rob ran the pumpkins out to the car while Lori and I went into the market. Always have to go in there to get the corn, usually some pretty good corn in there. I always get some jam or syrup too, it's always so good. I just bought jam this time to put on the toast I have to eat in the morning since toast is one of the few things I can choke down first thing in the morning.
After that we decided we needed more food. I had to have another sausage, I eat such bland stuff during the day but by evening I can usually eat whatever so stuff like sausages are heaven :) I just had to have another! Then we headed home and slept well that night!















Today is the day we carved pumpkins. This time we had Elizabeth's best buddy, Jill, with us. We let her take one of the white pumpkins we grew this year to carve for herself. I usually let Rob carve the one we get for us and then I help with the kids'. Seth needed help so I went over and started scraping his out. Didn't take long before I was gagging from the smell of pumpkin guts. Being pregnant I'm having serious issues with smells. Pumpkin guts has got to be the worst one I've come across so far. Breathing through my mouth didn't help and soon I had to leave. I managed to get a few pictures in before I left the kitchen. Before I left though, Rob pulled the ultimate. He pretended to lick the pumpkin slime that was dripping off his fingers. That was too much. Combined with the smell and that image I had to run out of the room gagging. GROSS!!! We had a good laugh over it a bit later but he did feel bad for doing that to me. So he says anyway, hahaha. The smell was so bad even with doors open, I had to retreat to my bedroom. Rob was kind enough to clean everything up and rinse all the tools and bowls off so that none of the pumpkin smell would remain. I'm really hoping the memory of the smell fades before next Halloween. I shouldn't be as sensitive to it next year but I'm afraid it'll be like when you eat something and get really sick afterwards it's years before you eat that food again. To this day I can't eat fry sauce cause I got the stomach flu after eating some when I was 17!! So, I hope smells don't work the same way cause pumpkin carving is one the best parts of Halloween!!
Anyway, here are some pics of the kids' pumpkin artwork. They had fun doing it, wish I could have been involved a bit more.

Jill and Elizabeth with their jack o lanterns


The biggest of the white pumpkins we grew this year. Thought they make a good pumpkin snowman :)
 


Seth really did not like this part of it.

Jonathan gave his a scar across the eye



This poor pumpkin got shot in the head and
now his brains are falling out





Jonathan never has a problem cleaning out his
own pumpkin :)
 



Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Future changes

Our life is about to change again come Spring time. I went into the doctor yesterday to have a 10 week ultrasound done. So far so good, a healthy little baby is growing :) We will be adding to our family around May 12th.
The past two months have been hard. I have felt so blah. I've retreated into my home, venturing out only when I absolutely had to. Even then trying so hard to hide how horrible I felt. My pregnancy with Seth was a breeze, I managed to hide that one until 4 1/2 months! Not this one. Almost from the start I've been so very tired, I've been napping every afternoon for weeks now. The nausea has been manageble but somedays I'd wake up and just not want to manage. I wanted to go back to sleep and stay that way until May. Wake me up when it's time to have the baby! So those closest to me found out pretty quick. Hard to hide it from friends you exercise with or family you hang out with all the time. I get nervous telling people too soon because our very first pregnancy ended in miscarriage. We were so excited when we found out we told everyone as soon as we knew. Really sucked 2 months later to have to turn around and tell everyone we had lost it. So I've been very cautious with every pregnancy after that. I'm still a bit nervous even now but the ultrasound showed things are good for now. Fingers crossed they stay that way.
I talked with my doctor about the nausea and she prescribed an anti-nausea medication. I waited until last night to take it as it's supposed to make you drowsy. I was really hoping it would help me sleep cause I haven't been getting much of that either. Thank goodness for make-up cause my eyes were starting to get that ugly purple thing going on under them. Takes a lot of missed sleep for my eyes to finally show it. Anyway, took the magic pill last night, slept wonderfully, and woke up feeling.....almost normal!! It has been the weirdest feeling as I go about my day. I don't feel sick! YAY!! Why she didn't give this stuff to me when I had Elizabeth I don't know, maybe it wasn't available. I was sick with that girl for almost the entire 9 mos. This stuff is wonderful! I hope it continues to work well. I may actually be able to get things done around the house now. It has been slowly falling apart before my eyes. My family does what they can but let's face it, husbands and children just do not care as much as we do about the clutter. So today it is my hope to tackle the laundry and kitchen. We'll see how it goes, I'm still tired. Tired I can deal with, sick I can't. I am the biggest whimp when it comes to being sick. I was telling a friend the other day I'd rather get myself bruised up in karate, break an arm, whatever, anything is better than being sick.
So the hope is that it's a girl. Elizabeth has been begging for years now for a sister :)
There still is, of course, the underlying fear of having another child with CF but we'll deal with that if and when we have to. Surprisingly I haven't been as worked up about it this time as I was when I was pregnant with Seth. I just hope all is well and that this one has escaped the disease. We won't know until he/she is born.
For now I'm just going to enjoy being able to get up and move around without feeling like I'm going to hurl any minute. I haven't yet, I absolutley refuse to throw up. I've come close to giving in but with my first two pregnancies, the one we lost and Nate, I did enough throwing up to last several lifetimes. So I will use every mental effort and trick I know to keep from doing it!!
And with feeling better I think now I can finally start feeling excited about this new little life I'm carrying around :)