baby shulba?

just joking - this one isn't ours.

but doesn't tim look great with a baby?

a shout out to ryan and heidi and little baby braedan who must be so much bigger now since this picture was taken in april. it's fun to have friends go before you in the whole child-bearing process and then be able to question them intensely afterwards to try and prepare. :)

the last childless weekend?

the nicest rest stop i've ever seen.

picnic time...

the mighty fraser river

alexandra bridge

a bridge built in 1936 for vehicles -
the original bridge was for wagons on the goldrush.

i heart SYTYCD

"i'm a dancer. it's what i do."
- david "sex" soller

oh the judging makes the show. i'm realizing that's why SYTYCD canada didn't work for me. i love these judges too much. great auditions. yay for two hour episodes. can't wait for vegas. and weekly thursday night blogging.

are you watching?

ramblings of a monday morning

this morning i woke up earlier than normal to drive tim to work as he is currently working on the truck in our garage. i thought ahead and brought a book along so that on my way home, i could stop at starbucks and sit in the sun and read while drinking a coffee and eating a scone.

because tim and i have decided that there is no more eating out/coffees/feeding our boredom with food, we have been reduced to using only giftcards that we might have previously aquired. i was given a $25 giftcard to starbucks at the shower my students' moms threw for me on my last day and i have been savoring every latte i buy with it. but as i quickly run out of money on it, i decided today to try my first ever starbucks coffee - nothing special...just coffee. and? it was good. (jonny is thinking "umm, of course it was.") i used...ahem...two packets of sugar but overall, a positive experience for a non-strong coffee drinker.

people at starbucks in the morning are mostly having "meetings" (maybe that's rude to put that in quotations...my dad is one of these people i'm sure...) okay...people having meetings or girlfriends with strollers getting together and some retired folk. the retired people often want to chat and as i'm boasting this very large stomach, there's always something to chat with me about. i've had more conversations with strangers in the last month than maybe my whole life. this morning alone, three. and because my dad taught me not to answer questions with one-word answers, they're quite extended little convos. a few elderly gentlemen wanted to tell me about their grandkids today. one told me that he wishes for me a baby that, at 4 months, sleeps from 8pm to 9:30am every night - like his grandson. wouldn't you know, this is also what i wish for. :)

after coffee and scone, i headed to the library. i know i've posted about this before, but i love our public library. it's large with lots of natural light. the magazine rack is extensive and there are always computers free to use the internet. now that i'm home during the day, tim takes his work computer to work with him and i have no computer. i know people used to live like this and i'm not complaining (yet) but i do appreciate the internet use in the comfy chairs at the library. you know...to post ramblings on a monday morning.

a magazine that i almost always have to read the library because there are never any old copies to take out (i'm assuming because it's a popular magazine) is wondertime. i've been reading it for years pre-pregnancy even though it's a parenting mag. articles are all about creativity with your children; intentional ways of helping them learn. every photo throughout it is beautiful and the cover has a matte finish. (i love a matte finish) if you live in the US, you could have a subscription for only $13. In Canada, add $12 more in US funds. oh it's worth it, in my opinion, but i'm waiting until my babe is at least a year before beginning to invest. if you have toddlers though, go check out this magazine at your library because i'm sure you'll appreciate it.

the sun is shining and even though it's only 10:30am, it's already warm outside. a good breeze is stirring up the branches outside the windows of the library and i know that soon, i will feel a little guilty about being inside so the ramblings (though there are more floating around) have come to an end so that i can go read a few articles about jon and kate, and the latest on baby sleep routines before i head home.

quote of the week

while watching my stomach move and shake and bulge with baby shulba, tim says, "it's so alien-like it's gross." hahaha. but it really is. you should see this action. the baby is way too big to be in there anymore...

free sounds good...

did you get your free iced latte at tim horton's today?

i stopped on my way to the school (to get my mat-leave-type papers) to get one and was pleasantly surprised at how good it tasted. but of course, since it was a small, it was gone in a few sips.

then, i guess mcdonalds thought they should have a little iced latte battle. there was a sign saying "free iced coffee" and my car just pulled itself into the drive through. i got a vanilla one and it was wickedly sweet. i guess i should have had regular.

then on my way home from langley, i thought, maybe i'll hit one more tim hortons. it wasn't as good as the first one but nice that it was free.

yep, i make the most of these things. haha.

FAQ

1. when are you due again?
my official due date is june 4th. the longest i'm allowed to go over that is 10 days so the latest date possible? the 14th.

2. do you have the baby room all ready?
we have a carseat...so we can get the baby home. we have a crib...so somewhere for the baby to sleep. what else do we need?

3. how are you feeling?
pretty good actually. besides getting up 6 times a night to go to the washroom, i'm sleeping pretty well. i'm happy to be done work so that i can nap during the day as well. haha.

4. do you know if it's a boy or a girl?
yep, it's a boy. well, it's 98% accurate, right? so if it ends up being a girl, she'll just be wearing a lot of blue for the first three months. :)

5. do you have a name picked out for the baby?
we agree on two or three names, one above the others, but we haven't been sharing...you know...just in case we want to change last minute. :)

6. why are you having the baby in langley instead of abbotsford?
i found a doctor in langley because it was closer to work and easier to get to appointments. we're only 25 minutes away from the langley hospital - i'm sure we'll get there in time. :) plus, all i've heard are good things about the langley maternity ward so that's encouraging.

sunglasses r.i.p.

in the early summer of 2005, i begged tim to buy me a pair of sunglasses at MEC one day. he bought them and they have been my summer staple ever since. sure, they've gone missing for months at a time, but they always showed up again. and maybe you've seen pics of me in other sunglasses over the last 4 years, but these ones always were nearby when those other ones broke or got lost. i bought them as big sunglasses were going more mainstream and they seemed quite big at the time but got smaller every year that went by.

today, i opened my purse and found that the arm had broken off - not just missing a screw or something - broken. sigh. goodbye favourite sunglasses. thank you for the goodtimes.edmonton

hawaii

manning park camping

sunshine coast

kayking on maine island

Blog Pirates!

Hey Bec,
You stayed signed on my computer when you left my house.
I couldn't resist a little shout out to your blog readers!

Hey everyone! It's Ang! When you are reading this does it sound like Bec's voice?
Just knowing that this is showing up in Sharelle's blogroll is enough to make me laugh.
Silly blog pirate I am.
Happy Victoria Day!
-Ang

books sitting on my bedside table

waiting for me to get some time off and read them...

this one was from tim for my birthday.

i just finished reading this one this morning. it was just sitting on a display shelf at the library and i picked it up. i love autobiographical books and i guess this author has written some best-selling books but i haven't read them. they'll go next on my list. would i recommend this book? i enjoyed it. very candid look at her personal journey into motherhood as a single mom. she's prone to depression so there are many entries of the journal that are somewhat sad but interesting to read. and as a soon-to-be mom, i appreciated hearing about the bad days as well as the good with her son. she professes christianity and has many intriguing thoughts about God all the way through. it's an easy read in a journal format. but if you're going to pick it up to read, i will warn that there's some profanity. :) you know, fyi.

here are a few of my favourite quotes:

"All these people keep waxing sentimental about how fabulously I'm doing as a mother, how competent I am, but I feel inside like when you're first learning to put nail polish on your right hand with your left. You can do it, but it doesn't look all that great around the cuticles."

"She says that we're all so nuts amid so much beauty that it's like we're at the circus. In one ring is an amazing array of clowns and bears doing all his great stuff, and in the middle ring is a woman who does breathtaking tricks on horseback, and in the far ring are elephants or seals and maybe more clowns, and above us are trapeze artists, doing these death-defying precision feats, and we're sitting in our seats looking around crabbily, going, 'Where's that darn peanut vendor? I want my friggin peanuts!' - even when we're not particularly hungry."

"Hey, I may not be much, but I'm all I think about."

and...

it just occurred to me late last night that the fact that it's my last day means that i won't be working for a YEAR. i think all along, i've been counting down the last weeks and days to my last day because then i'm off to have a baby. but i hadn't been thinking about after the baby is born. my thoughts of the future stopped at the baby's birth. so this epiphany that that was my last day for a YEAR threw me off a little. that's a long time! and i'm even more excited. :)

and that's it.

the last day.

i'm speechless.

canuck day

last friday, it was suggested at our town meeting that we should have a canuck day. a unanimous YES vote made it so. we planned it for this past tuesday. umm...unfourtunately, the canucks lost on monday night.

but canuck day must go on!

i made cupcakes.

it says on the board, "we still love you Canucks!"

it IS still school day...we need to do some work.

we ate lunch wherever we wanted in the classroom (i like how decked out these boys are in canuck gear.) we were allowed to wear hats all day.

and for the big finale, i tipped over all the desks and made "boards" for our mini-stick game. when i would yell switch, kids would jump over the boards and keep going.

(i left only the last 10 minutes of the day for hockey...for reasons i'm sure you can guess. but tipping over the desks for boards was my idea - the kids were yelling, "what are you doing?" when they got it, it didn't matter that we didn't play for long. they had a great time.)

random days like this will be missed.

just a thought...

if a public washroom could only afford to automate one option between the soap dispenser, faucet, or paper towel dispenser?  it should be the faucet.  because when you have germs on your hands, you turn ON the tap...then you leave your germs on the soap dispenser.  you rinse the germs off your hands then turn OFF the tap...picking up the germs you left there.  if the tap had been automated, everyone's hands would be clean, leaving no germs on the paper towel dispenser.  so those bathrooms with an auto soap and paper towel?  useless.  

how can you tell i've spent a lot of time in public washrooms in my last 2 weeks of my pregnancy?  

sophisticated tastes...

1985

(you may recognize this outfit from my halloween post...)

1988

and in 2009, we've moved onto caramel cheesecake with brownie crust.

a week of lasts

today was my last monday!

       > last morning supervision

       

       > last art class

       

       > last grade level meeting

4 more days left...

tim's kind of weekend...

no - these weren't all the same day.  and it wasn't today or else it would be a lot sunnier in these pics.  but most weekends, tim is looking for things to do outside.  today was no exception.  i used to be annoyed that tim didn't just want to spend time with ME on the weekends.  now, i'm just glad that he has stopped asking me to help.  haha.  today after a little early-mother's day breakfast for tim's mom, we went and voted early.  then we got an ice cream cone.  when we got home, i partook in my favourite weekend pasttimes - reading and napping.  tim seems to think it's funny that i want to read in bed on the weekends but is pleased that i'm not bothering him so he is very encouraging.  "now, you go read your book while i go outside."  haha.  tim weeded, tuned up the lawnmower, and mowed the front and back lawns.  when he was ready for a break, we sat out on the deck together reading and i made him a "frappe" in the magic bullet.  we went for a slow walk around the block and now that he's gone off to putter around the yard some more, i have plans to wander around town.  you know, hit up the grocery store, michaels, maternity clothing store, and maybe get a real frappe at the bucks.  we have learned to peacefully co-exist on saturdays, each doing what we like, then hanging out for short times here and there.   and we have a nice looking yard and house, thanks only to my husband.   as mcdonald's would say, "i'm lovin it." 

my monday musings on tuesday...

i lay awake last night thinking...thanks to a book called, "A Pea in a Pod: Your Complete Guide to Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Beyond".

a thought that occurred to me in regards to labour pain is perhaps the intensity of your labour is based on how much pain you've had previously in your life. you know, have you been previously hospitalized before? broken bones? had surgeries? maybe if you've experienced pain, it gives you a gauge for how bad labour is.

the real question here is...what if you've never experienced ANY pain before? i've never been to the hospital. never broken any bones. never even had stitches. i think i'm in for maybe more pain than expected. and i'm expecting a lot. :)

poor tim. he was trying to read his own novel while i read, "A Pea in a Pod" and i kept reading exerpts aloud to him. i figure he should be informed too, right? finally, he put down his book and took my book from me, flipping through it himself. at a diagram of how the baby is most likely positioned inside me right now, he looked over at my stomach and said, "wow. that's pretty crazy, isn't it?" yes, it is.

but even after reading through the horrible labour info, i thought to myself, "oh yeah, i can do that."

the official pet peeve...

you know when you fill out surveys...ahem...mabe this is just me. remember when email surveys used to be so popular? haha. ahh yes. anyways...often there's a question, "what's your biggest pet peeve?" i can never think of one on the spot. i thought of my biggest pet peeve today. i thought i'd share...

when you say that you're either you have a cold or that you're getting a cold and the person you're telling says, "oh! stay away from me!" (or something to that extent) i hate that.

how about you? pet peeves?