Catchin' Up - Part 1

While the saying "no news is good news" may be true, it sure is boring. And so I apologize to all my cyberspace friends for disappearing from the blog world for over a month! Catching up on all my latest adventures has been a little overwhelming for me to think about so I've done the only logical thing - procrastinate. But no more of that...let's get started!

When you last heard from me, I thought (oh so innocently) that I was as big as a house. Well, if that was the case, then I'm upgrading to mansion status at this point. And it only gets bigger from here! Oh boy. I was also in the process of wrapping up my summer class at ASU. The last week went fairly smoothly and my class grades were, overall, pretty decent. The final exam grades were rough, but, being the nice teacher I am, the students got a major curve. And then I posted the final grades and sent them along to their next accounting adventures. *sigh* and *tear* Saying goodbye is tough. Good thing I'm not called to be an elementary teacher. I'd be a crying mess at the end of the school year! Of course, I won't be dealing with pregnancy hormones at the end of each year like I was at the end of the summer course. Thank goodness!

Once school was out, I hit the road. Seriously...July was the "month of the traveler". J.Paul and I went to Las Vegas for a weekend to enjoy our last pre-baby anniversary trip together. We actually observed a lot of kiddos while we were walking around the Strip and have agreed that Vegas just isn't a place we want to take our children. Seems a little incongruous to see a massive carseat/travel system parked next to a craps table. I'm just sayin'. There were a lot of families at the pool while we were hanging out there. That is kind of fun - some of those hotels have amazing pool setups. We stayed at a small Harrah's property next to the Flamingo and, since our place didn't have a pool, we got admission to the Flamingo pool instead. That was a really fun day. The pool had these shelves off some of the sides so you could sit in the shallow water and just enjoy being a little wet in the warm weather. As we walked up to the pool to pick our chairs, I spotted another mama-to-be on one of the shelves and two empty lounge chairs next to her. Being the stalker I am (though I usually limit my habits to Facebook), I claimed the chairs and struck up a conversation. And so we met Kathy and Keith, a really neat couple from Dallas, who became our pool buddies for the rest of the day. Kathy's due with her second (a little girl) just a week after Tobin's "scheduled" to arrive and had lots of great advice and fun stories to share. Yay for new friends! We got some funny looks from others during the day - it's like we were a rare animal in the jungle (I guess you don't see many obviously pregnant women trotting around Vegas) and observers made the great discovery of finding TWO of us...together. *GASP* ^_^ A third actually came over to our general area of the pool later in the day, but didn't show any interest in joining our pack. She preferred to run solo, I suppose. The other really neat thing about Vegas was our room diagonal from the Bellagio. We could see the fountain shows from our window and, if there weren't some crazy nut banging on a makeshift drum or randomly (and badly) strumming a guitar for spare change beneath us, we could hear the music as well. That was really cool! The fountains "perform" every 30 minutes during the day and every 15 at night, so we saw a ton of shows. Those fountains are one of my favorite things about Vegas and it was a treat to be able to enjoy them in the privacy (and air conditioned-coolness!) of my hotel room rather than jostle for position outside in front of them. Altogether, we had a fabulous time and didn't really want to come home so soon. But I had to get back and get everything together for my next adventure. More to come on that in the next post!

Love in Christ ~ Valerie

PS. If you ever do go to Vegas, look for the "Buffet of Buffets" special. For $35 a person, you get unlimited 24-hour access to any of the 7 Harrah's buffets. We timed it so we got 4 meals out of the deal (about $9 a meal in Vegas - unheard of!) and ate some fabulous food. Definitely worth it...especially if you're pregnant and having weird cravings for roasted lamb in cream gravy, crab legs covered in peanut butter, or something equally off-the-wall. Not that I desired any of those things, I'm just passing along the information. My downfall was the dessert buffets. It's a miracle I didn't gain 5 pounds that day.