Time Flys

Wow where does the time go? Another week has passed. I'm (Tiff) counting the days till Mini arrives. I'm starting to get a little bit more uncomfortable as each day passes. I've even been having some Braxton-Hicks contractions. For those of you who don't know what they are...basically it's a contraction that just gets me somewhat prepped for the real deal. I think that's the best way to explain it. Mini hasn't been moving around as much lately so I know things are progressing as they should be. She's growing and there isn't a whole lot of room left for her to swim around in. Plus it seems like my body likes to swell up more often. Not only is it my ankles but now my hands & wrists too. Oh well, I know it comes with the turf. I'm just ready to have Mini come and greet us.

Thursday night, Trav & I went to an advanced screening of the Green Hornet. I was just scoping out things to do on the Internet & came across a website that was giving away free tickets. It was pretty fun. We had a great time watching the movie. We arrived at the theater about an hour early. There were already about 20-25 people in line waiting. We chatted with some of the people around us to make the time go by. The most interesting part of the whole thing was that we had to bring our phones out to the car because there couldn't be any electronic devices.  It's only fair because the movie doesn't come out for another month. The theater was packed...all but 1 or 2 seats were full. To make matters a little worse, they had the heat cranked. It would have been nice to have some AC instead. Overall, we both liked the movie. It had some good action scenes. The movie was left wide open at the end for additional movies to be made.

Today is Saturday. I normally don't work but I am. I'm actually working all weekend. We're going through a system upgrade this weekend. We're the last site going live for the new prescription dispensing system. I'm working at the in-patient pharmacy filling discharge & ER scripts since the retail pharmacy is closed. Now some of you may be asking why doesn't the in-patient staff just do it...the answer is that this system is new to them too and there's a little bit of a push back on doing retail scripts at an in-patient pharmacy. Plus I'm being paid overtime & I don't have to use my PTO (paid time off) for the upcoming Christmas holiday. =) That makes me happy. The drawback to working all weekend is that my days of working straight jumped from 5 to 11. So I'm on day 6 right now. Only 5 more days to go till I'm off for Christmas.

Tonight Travis & I are going to the Holidazzle Parade in downtown Minneapolis. I'm pretty excited about it. We're going with a large group of friends. The Holidazzle parade is a parade of lights. All of the floats and people in the parade are decked out in lights. It's a great holiday tradition. Sorry the picture is so big, but it gives you all a small taste of what the parade is like. I'll post some more pictures after tonight.

Until next time,
Love Tiff & Trav
 

Winter Blizzard

We've survived the winter blizzard. It was actually a little bit fun. I (Trav) wanted some Pepsi and decided to head down to the  gas station to get some. Every one on the news said if you don't need to be out and about, just stay home. Well you know if they say that, I'm heading out. I wanted to practice making some donuts. There's an empty parking lot across the road from us that I had to stop at before I came home. It was prefect conditions for whipping around.

 I (Tiff) decided to pick up a 3.5 hour shift at a pharmacy 8 miles away on Saturday morning. I didn't think anything of it, what's a little snow. It started snowing Friday night and didn't stop till late Saturday night. In the mean time, I made it to work just fine. I only had 8 miles to go. During my whole shift only 3 people came out to pick up prescriptions. One lady even got stuck in the parking lot because it wasn't plowed. Work was done and I had to make it home. That was the beginning of my adventure. I was able to get through the unplowed parking lot just fine. There were lots of snow drifts about 1.5-3 feet high. It was crazy driving. So many people should not have been on the roads. I just kept a slow and steady pace. None of the roads were really plowed. I just made my own path and stayed away from the high snow banks. I called Trav to let him know that I was on my way home. He suggested that I go on the highway because it should be better than the side streets. Well that wasn't the smartest place to be either. It wasn't plowed and to make matters worse it was near white out conditions. I strained to see about a car-length ahead of me. I was driving about 20-25 miles an hour with a few other cars. Every once in a while some idiot would go flying past us and soon enough we would see that car in the ditch. I just had to laugh because people were being dumb. I seriously saw about 20-25 cars either in the ditch, snow banks or just stopped on the road. I tried to get off the highway at the Normandale exit...no good. A van was in the snow bank with a trooper blocking the exit waiting for a tow. Next up was France Ave exit...there was a jack-knifed semi on the off ramp. I was beginning to get worried that I'd never get off the highway. I saw the sign saying that 35W ramp was closed because of an accident so that was out. I was finally able to get off on Penn Ave only to have the car right in front of me crash into the snow bank and get stuck. The lady driving only had front wheel drive and was stuck good. We finally got the cars behind me to back up after sitting there for about 10-15 minutes not doing anything. I was home free after getting off the highway. It only took me about an hour to get home.

We weren't done driving around for the day either. My girlfriend Lisa was having a birthday party for her son Max. He turned one on Saturday. We braved the un-plowed streets and picked up Mary along the way to get to the party. We had a great time getting there. Once we arrived at their house, Travis & Jacob went back out to pick up another couple we know so they could come to the party too. It was awesome. We brought half of the people to the party. Others tried to come but they weren't able to navigate the roads. While we were at the party, we watched several people get stuck in the road. Some of us were even nice enough to help dig a lady out. One of the guys had a plow on his truck so he went out and tried to clean up some of the road. It worked for a little bit till the city plows came by again and re-stacked up the snow on the side street. We successfully got everyone home and then just relaxed for the rest of the evening.

Grand total for snow fall - 17.5 inches at the airport, but we had around 19 inches by us. A majority of cars in our parking lot are still buried with snow. Pretty wild! I must say this is the most amount of snow we've both seen before Christmas in a long time.

Sunday morning we made it to church. I would be willing to bet there were only 100 people or so. The roads still weren't plowed on the side streets. The biggest thing that happened was that the metrodome collapsed around 5am this morning. There are videos on the internet of the collapse on Fox Sports and You tube. Needless to say we had to drive up to see the dome or shall we say bowl now. It's just so weird not to see the billowing white tarp above the dome.

Overall our weekend was pretty eventful. Word to the wise, if you don't have 4 wheel drive...don't go out in the snow and you won't get stuck and have to be towed.

Until next time, Trav & Tiff

Already into December

Well it's been an interesting start to December. This past weekend, Travis & I completed all of our birth & parenting classes. Let me tell you, sitting in a room full of pregnant women with their significant others is not my ideal way of spending the weekend. We opted for the express class which condenses a 7 week long class into 1 Sat (7.5 hours) & 1 Sun (4.5 hours). I must say it was grueling at times to simply remain seated and not walk out. The couples ranged in age anywhere from early 20's to early 40's. I think during every question time, one of the younger women had tons of questions...although she must not have listened or liked the answers she was getting because she would reword the same question or ask it in a different way. It just got a little old and frustrating that the instructor wouldn't take control of the situation and tell them to talk to them during a break. I think that only thing that I gleaned from the class was how horrifying it looks to give birth without any meds and I'm surprised on how much stuff I already knew. I was hoping that the class would give me more information but alas it didn't and I consider the whole weekend as a loss.

Monday night we took a breastfeeding class. That was a little more interesting and informative. We watched videos of proper ways to feed and latch. I take it all in with a grain of salt. I'll never be prepared for what's going to happen because everyones experience is a little different. I just hope that Mini isn't colicky. I don't think I can handle that much crying.

Tuesday I had another baby check up. Looks like everything is progressing just fine & dandy. Mini had a good strong heart beat. My next visit is in 2 weeks, right before Christmas. Basically my OB said that after me next visit, they'll let me have the baby whenever. I just need to hit 34 weeks. Granted Mini may spend some time in the NICU if she can that early but my doctor said he wouldn't try and stop the birth if that's when she wants out. Pretty crazy. Both Trav & I had dreams that Mini came on Christmas Day because she wanted to share a birthday with Grandpa Raimo and Evi (cousin) and meet everyone since my whole family will be together this year at Christmas. We'd have a doctor in the house but I think it's too early for her to come.

As for me, it seems like the closer I get to her due date the more things start to go wrong. I've been snoring pretty bad lately (around 6 weeks). I just chalked it up to the baby and squishing my diaphragm plus the extra fluid in my body causing some congestion. Things had progressively worse over the past few weeks. Well yesterday my hearing was starting to be affected. I couldn't hear out of my left ear and a little in my right. Basically it felt like being on an airplane and you need to pop your ears, but you can't. So I broke down and went to my primary physicians office. Turns out I had a massive sinus infection. The doctor took one look in my ears and said "yep, you've got a lot of fluid behind your ear drums." He gave me some antibiotics, so hopefully that takes care of the infection.

The next piece of falling apart is that I can't get a good nights sleep anymore. Between the snoring (which hopefully will go away now), waking up to go to the bathroom and now restless legs. Ugh I won't get a good night sleep for months now. According to Trav, last night he wouldn't even sleep in bed with me because I was constantly moving my legs and tossing all night. He's given up and sleeps on the couch. I find this all terribly amusing. For as good as my pregnancy has been in the beginning, it's slowly deteriorating on the back end. All I can do is laugh.

Until next time, Tiff & Trav