29 Week Update... and Puzzling Meltdowns

Well, so much for my 28 week update!  The week caught up to me, and before I knew it, it was time for a 29 week update instead of a 28 week!  I was officially 29 weeks on Friday, and am still enjoying pregnancy despite some new not so fun symptoms.  This past week I have really started having swollen feet by the end of the day.  My leg just goes straight to foot with no real ankle in between!  I am contributing this to my return to work and sitting at my desk a lot in the last few days. 

Well, without further ado, here are my week 29 pictures...

If you can't tell, my shirt says "Growing and Growing," which my belly TOTALLY is doing!

So my back is totally killing me most of the time from carrying around my ever growing belly... imagine that!

So other than going back to work, Todd and I have been filling our time with doing puzzles this week.  We put together a large "North American Sports History" puzzle a few years ago which now is framed and hanging over our fireplace in our family room.  Well, last week we decided to go buy a new puzzle because we remembered how we had enjoyed putting that one together.  Todd found a very cool puzzle that was all crushed cans at Goodwill, which proved to be VERY difficult.  When we assembled the edge pieces, we realized some were missing, and it kinda took some of the fun of doing the puzzle away.  I mean, how fun can it be if you know you're missing pieces.  But we kept at it...

...until I found TWO AWESOME sports puzzles at a thrift store up in Winchester.  They are from the same company as our original sports history one, and one was all about baseball and the other was everything football.  We decided to start with the baseball one.  We had a good time working on it, but in the end it was missing 5 pieces.  We felt accomplished, and really loved it, but still... an incomplete puzzle is kinda sad.

Well yesterday we started on the football puzzle.  As we were sorting through the pieces looking for the edges, I dropped one on the floor.  Before we could stop her, Frosty snatched it up and ate it!  I was really upset because as I mentioned above, puzzles are not as fun when you know you're missing a piece.  And, of course, since I am pregnant, this let to a full blown crying meltdown!  Before I could stop myself, I was SOBBING and muttering incoherently about how it was all my fault that we were going to have an incomplete puzzle.  Poor Todd was just left there, patting my back, trying to calm me down, and trying to comfort me by telling me it was ok and no big deal (however, I was inconsolable, because when you're pregnant apparently ANYTHING can seem like a HUGE deal).  

Eventually I was able to pull myself together and we kept on working.  The whole time I kept saying things like "You realize that with this one we're only going to be missing ONE piece, right?" and as we got closer to finishing it became more and more likely that this was, in fact, the case. 

And, that is exactly what happened.  We finished the puzzle with 999 pieces, and only ONE missing.  One lonely piece that I dropped on the floor... luckily, this did not lead to another melt down... because...

...as some sort of comic relief, it turned out that the piece I had dropped and that had been gobbled up by Frosty turned out to be the piece that had the Terrible Towel right on it!  (If you don't know, the Terrible Towel is a symbol of Steelers love, and we in the Narcross house are NOT Steeler's fans).  In the end, we could only really laugh that her little snack was such an icon piece... and of course, we couldn't really be mad! :)

A close up of Frosty's Puzzling Snack... Half of Heinz Ward's face and most of the Terrible Towel will never make it into the puzzle.

But really, could you be mad at this face??

Roommate Reunion, Yard Crawl, and Delicious Food: Part 3, Saturday Afternoon and Night

Our Saturday afternoon plan had been to head up to a local orchard for their Peach Festival, but because of the rain that came, we were only able to go and pick a few peaches and raspberries and missed most of the festivities.  We came home with a bag of delicious peaches and a small container of raspberries that were HARD earned and wonderful (it took 5 of us what seemed like FOREVER to just pick one small container).

For those of you who know Todd, you know he is always eager to use his deep fryer.  So, on Saturday night he was in hog heaven when he got to deep fry chicken and french fries for dinner.  What you might not know about Todd is that when he has the deep fryer out, he also has a philosophy of "throw anything you want in."  So we also experimented with some deep fried peaches (alright, though they would have been better if we had battered them first) and deep fried broccoli (yuck).

Inspired by the peaches, I decided to make Paula Deen's peach cobbler.  Sadly, I forgot to take pictures... but I followed the recipe exactly as it said to, and it turned out AMAZING (though it took much longer to bake than it said). 

We all had a really fun evening of talking, laughing, reminiscing, and eating delicious (though in NO way healthy) food! 

Overall, the whole weekend was really, really, really, wonderful.  It was so nice to get to see old friends.  On Sunday morning Todd even made breakfast for us all (his specialty: pancakes on the griddle) and it was a major blessing to have my mom there because she did a lot of cleaning that would have made the weekend way less fun and way more exhausting for me!  In the end, I think everyone had a great time.... and I know Claire has already put it on her calendar to do again next year! :)

Emily, Michael, Claire, Todd, Me

I realize this was a super long set of posts... but since it was one of the best things I did this summer, it seemed worth it! :)

Week 28 pregnancy update coming early this week... :)  Unless, of course, I'm too exhausted to do ANYTHING since we go back to work tomorrow... Goodbye summer....

Roommate Reunion, Yard Crawl, and Delicious Food: Part 2, Saturday Morning

After a night of fun talking and eating Banana Split Trifle with Claire, we woke up early Saturday morning ready to conquer the Yard Crawl...

...Pregnancy side note: I woke up SUPER early that morning because as I told everyone at breakfast, "someone I sleep with decided to apparently do acrobatics starting at 5 in the morning."  Which prompted both my mom and Claire to quizzically look at Todd... No!  Not him... the little man who sleeps in my belly! :)

Anywho... so we took two cars because we knew my other roommate, Emily, and her husband Michael would be arriving at some point in the morning, so we'd need two cars in the end.  My parents drove themselves and then Claire, Todd, and I went together.  We drove down to Tom's Brook and worked our way up.  Here are some of the more unusual finds we discovered along the way... (thank you @clairecraft for the pictures). 

Seriously??  We believe this is an old school birthing table (note the foot holders)... the creepy dolls really are a nice touch, huh?  As a friend mentioned, if we had bought this we could have had a home birth.... AHHHH!

For only $600, Claire could have had her very own carousel horse.  The lady selling it did suggest she get on it... I REALLY wish she had! :)



When I saw this and started to read it, I expected it to be serious and possibly gag-inducing.  Instead, it made me BURST OUT LAUGHING (seriously, for a good minute or so) thus I, OF COURSE, had to buy it!

We also saw some live chickens (not sure if they were for sale or not), some Chihuahua puppies (they were for sale), an many other antiques that weren't quite as exciting as the birthing table.  In the end, I walked away with mostly baby clothes and other baby things. 

Emily and Michael arrived about 3 hours into our adventure, and we were only able to enjoy about another hour after they arrived (despite it being MUCH cooler than it had been recently, I still was BURNING HOT and EXHAUSTED after 4 hours).  My parents, however, didn't get home for about another 2 hours after us! 

Roommate Reunion, Yard Crawl, and Delicious Food: Part 1, Friday Night

I don't know how it has taken me SO long to blog about this, but last weekend I was able to have an absolutely fantastic time with friends, family, and good food!

For those who don't know about the Rt. 11 Yard Crawl, it is a 43 mile stretch of Rt. 11 that is basically turned into a GIANT yard sale!  It starts in our town of Stephens City (mile marker 307 on I81) and goes south to New Market (mile marker 264 on I81).  And it always takes place on the second Saturday in August.  Well, last year my parents came up for it, and now it has become a tradition.  So, they came up Thursday night in preparation for this wonderful event...

...but that's not all.  I also accidentally committed to that weekend to do a roommate reunion with the 3 wonderful ladies I lived with for my last two years of school.  It has been TOO long overdue, and this summer we finally got something together (it's tough since one of our lovely ladies is a missionary and lives on a completely different continent for most of the year)!  So on Friday night and Saturday morning two of the three arrived.  Unfortunately, a last minute emergency meant one of the girls couldn't make it... and we missed her dearly!

Claire was the first to arrive on Friday night, and while she had stopped for dinner on her way up from Chapel Hill, I had promised her a FABULOUS dessert.  So, inspired by this recipe, I made Banana Split Trifle.  Here is how I did it:

Ingredients:
1 yellow sheet cake, prepared from a mix and cut into small chunks
1 large box of pudding, prepared mixed with 8 ounces cream cheese
2-3 large bananas, cut in small slices
1 container cool whip
Chocolate Syrup
Strawberry topping for ice cream
Whole Maraschino cerries

In a trifle dish (or just a really big bowl if you're like me and don't own a trifle dish) start with a layer of cut up cake.  Then add a layer of pudding/cream cheese mix.  Next, layer on a sprinkling of bananas and a pretty drizzling of both chocolate syrup and strawberry topping.  Continue this until you run out of room in the bowl (which in my case was I believe 3 layers).  On the very top add a layer of cool whip, a pretty drizzling of chocolate syrup, and some cherries. 

Nice pretty drizzling, huh?

I got the bowl as a wedding gift and had NEVER used it!  Now I know it makes a perfect trifle bowl!

This dessert turned out REALLY yummy, but VERY sweet!  And you might want to have a lot of people to serve it to, or make a smaller portion, because it did get pretty mushy after the first night... but it was still yummy, just not as pretty!  Everyone really enjoyed it (thankfully no one hated bananas) and my dad even gave this endorsement (note: he doesn't really like bananas)... "This is really good.  I didn't even have to pick out the bananas!"  Thanks, dad! :)

26 Week Update at Myrtle Beach

On Friday I officially reached the 26-week mark!  Each week brings, at the same time, the relief of knowing Baby Boy Narcross is that much more developed and prepared for entering the world and an increased stress of knowing he's going to be arriving soon, and that time is going to fly! 

I've finally decided it's time for Todd and myself to get at least a little clue regarding the birth and early weeks of newborn raising, so I've been reading some books and the internet more than ever.  It's all just so darn conflicting though!  The concepts of "on-demand" feeding versus scheduled feeding leaves me feeling like I have NO IDEA what to do... I mean, it seems "on demand" is better, but isn't my baby going to kinda need a schedule once I go back to work?

And don't even get me started on all the "tips" for going back to work!  "Ask your boss if you can just come back half day," "Ask your boss if you can leave to feed your baby at daycare," "Ask your boss for a flexible work schedule so you can come in later or leave earlier,"... hmm... not really going to happen when you're a teacher!  That being said, I know I do have a good schedule but I'm already starting to stress about managing a baby, a classroom, a house, a husband, a dog... AHHHH!  And Baby Boy Narcross isn't even scheduled to arrive for another 3 months, plus an extra 6-10 weeks of maternity leave.  Our new family lines are, "Todd, it's not going to be nearly as easy or wonderful as you seem to think it is!"  and "Erica, it's not going to be nearly as hard or horrible as you seem to think it is!"  So we just agree to disagree! :)  Or really, we agree that it will probably be wonderful, horrible, very hard but not always, all rolled into one!

Enough ranting about all my stress... here are some pictures from Myrtle Beach last week.  Todd and I were blessed to get to go and spend a week in MB with my family.  Though it was stressful at times (having four kids under the age of four running around) and very HOT, we had a very nice and relaxing time!  Because of the heat, we didn't spend nearly as much time outside as we have in the past, but we still had a good time.  We spent many mornings at the pool with the kids, read, enjoyed some late afternoon/evenings on the beach, and had great meals.  Plus we had a special evening out and feasted on crab legs!


I REALLY love this picture!

The classic "prom pose."  And I think Todd's hands are trying to make a heart, but mine are covering it!



This was originally a full length shot, but let's be honest, even though I say that this is the only time in my life when I don't need to feel self conscious, do I really have the guts to put up a full length picture of me in a swim suit?? Guess not!



The whole gang:  My parents and my two sisters and families.