Incredible and Exhausting

Things have been both incredible and exhausting since the arrival of our little one on Feb. 20!  Rose was born at 41 weeks gestation and was 6 lb 6 oz and 18 inches long!  Labor was as painful as they saying it is and caring for a newborn is as exhausting as they say it is.  However, it has been an incredible experience!

I am going to try to start updating this blog at least once a month (hopefully more)! 

The Holidays and Such

We went back to New Mexico for Christmas and New Year's.  We spent time in three different cities.

City #1
We spent our first day visiting friends, although most were out of town. 

We had our first Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve with Carlos' paternal grandparents and others of that side of the family.

L to R: my sister-in-law, father-in-law, grandpa-in-law, me, Carlos, and grandma-in-law.

Christmas day was spent at my mother-in-law's house.  We started off with the most delicious strawberry waffles, followed by a gift exchange.  We went on a nice walk and that evening had a delicious brisket dinner!  My sister-in-law was awesome enough to take some maternity photos for us!

The day after Christmas we did some shopping and then my parents picked us up to head to City #2.

City #2
We had our, sort of, 3rd Christmas celebration with Lasagna and gift exchange.

My Parents and Me

After two nights there we headed to City #3.

City #3
We spent the first two nights with my brother, and it is in this time frame that we had my baby shower.  There were quite a few people there.  The ladies (my mom, sister, sister-in-law) did a wonderful job planning, executing, and decorating for the shower.  It was awesome!

We then spent two more nights in town, but at Carlos' aunt's house.  We got to see  a good friend who we haven't seen in a while and spent a lot of time with more of Carlos' family.

Friends, Carlos, and his brother.

Once again (2nd year in a row), we didn't do anything to celebrate the new year.  We just went to bed early, so no story there.  :)

It Was Great Until It Wasn't

We had friends come into town last week to celebrate my birthday.  It was great!.... until it wasn't.  I'll first cover the great parts!  :)

We had two friends arrive on Tuesday.  Which was when I made my birthday cake (yes I made my own cake... I like to make cake).  It was a raspberry lemon cake, though mostly just tasted like biting into a lemon!  I think next time I'll go with a less "lemony" cake.

Wednesday was my birthday and it was 12-12-12!  Our friend who lives in Abu Dhabi flew in that day and we had some local friends come over as well.  We had a lot of food and drinks, such as hot dogs, mac & cheese, chips, punch, soda, etc...

Thursday and Friday were spent checking out various sites in Seattle.  We did Pike Place and a lot of the food around there, the Fremont Troll, Fremont Brewery (for those who could have beer), Seattle Art Museum, and the Seattle Underworld Tour.

Our friend from Abu Dhabi left on Friday.  The rest of us headed to Vancouver, Canada for a day trip on Saturday.  We had a tasty lunch at a cafe there and then headed to Tellus Science World. 

Science World was pretty neat, though very much more for kids.  We had a lot of fun doing puzzles and brain teasers though!  We ran out of time there and had to leave before seeing all of the exhibits.

Upon leaving Science World was when things got... not so great...  We discovered that we had been robbed.  Both purses that were in the trunk were taken, my friend's laptop, a cell phone, and a couple other items were stolen.  Unfortunately, 3 of the 4 of us also had our passports in the purses...  It was a horrible evening, but we eventually gave up hunting for dumped items and figured out how to get back into the USA.  There are a lot worse things that could have happened... but it still sucked!  The next day our friends left to go back to NM.  Like I said, it was great... until it wasn't.  :)

November 2012

This month has been rather uneventful. 

We finally bought something for the baby!

We are waiting to buy other items until after our baby shower next month.

We spent Thanksgiving with a friend's family yesterday.  It was really neat to experience Thanksgiving with a family that wasn't our own.  It was a very traditional meal, and we had a really nice time.

I'd like to update more about what we've been up to since my last post, but there hasn't really been much.  We went to a friend's baby's first birthday party; that was cute.  We went to the movie theater and watched Skyfall (the latest James Bond flick; it was ok).  I probably haven't mentioned that I joined a book club that meets once a month.  This month's book was The Hobbit.  This month's host did a great job leading discussion and provided a "tea party" for us hobbits and dwarves!  Next month we will attend the movie together (which apparently is the first of three movies...).

Next month will be a lot more eventful with a date night, birthday parties, friends coming to visit, a baby shower, the holidays, and a trip back home!  It will be an awesome month!

Visitors and Halloween

My sister and her boyfriend came up to Washington to visit us!!  They arrived last Friday and are now spending time with Gabe's brother.  We had a lot of fun!  We went on a Halloween pub crawl, explored Pike Place, visited the Museum of Flight, the zoo, and Seattle Underground.  Here are some photos:

Lois and Brian from Family Guy

At Pike Place!

Enjoying Sushi!

For Halloween Carlos and I just had a Halloween themed dinner of Jack-o-Lantern Quesadillas and Bloody Mary Soup.

Feeling the Season

This past week I've really been feeling the season of fall!  The weather was much cooler, the trees are beautifully colored, and the rains arrived.  I made pumpkin parfaits, pumpkin smoothies, spaghetti squash and fresh baked bread!

The spaghetti squash I baked and then combined with onions, garlic, olives, feta cheese and tomatoes sauteed in olive oil.  It was a success!  The bread however, not so much.  We haven't turned the heater on in our house yet, so it's understandably quite cool in here.  Too cool, I think, for the bread to rise properly.  After about 4 hours of waiting for it to rise, I finally set it on the preheated oven, at which point it finally started to rise.  I only let it rise for about an hour and then just decided to bake it as is.  It's a bit dense, but it's still delicious!

Speaking of the house being cold, Carlos was pouring some hot water in some mugs for hot tea earlier this week, and one of the glasses just popped apart!  It's not that cold in our house, so we're not sure how this ended up happening...  Here is a picture:

Saturday, my husband and I were running errands all day, and I enjoyed some hot apple cider while we were out.  Sunday, we went to one of the local corn mazes.  It was a little less challenging that I'd expected, but it was still fun.  Next time we'll have to go to one of the larger mazes.

Eventful Weekend

We had a busy and fun weekend!  Friday we had a bunch of people over to celebrate our new house!  We made red and green enchiladas, beans, and rice.  Saturday we went to a LEGO's expo (called BrickCon).  It was definitely interesting, especially thinking about the time and money spent making all of the exhibits.  We had some fun walking around and eating at Seattle Center while we were over there.  That night we were going to go to the Everett Sausage Festival, but we ended up going Sunday instead.  I was just too tired.

Here are some pictures from Saturday:

Sunday was pretty fun.  Carlos and I did a lot of looking for Halloween costume stuff, and then hung out for quite a while at the sausage festival.  We heard one local band that we really liked, but mostly we enjoyed a lot of edible treats!