T - 2 months

Thursday was March 26, or T minus 2 months.  I am due May 26th, which is rapidly approaching, and I've got a belly to prove it.  I guess this is to be expected, as I'm 7 months pregnant, but it is still kind of disconcerting.  I sometimes forget to notice if my belly is changing and then one day, I'll turn sideways and I'll be amazed at how big I've suddenly become! Most people say that I'm not big at all. In fact, while I was in UT last week, I got my hair cut and told the girl cutting my hair I was in town for a baby shower.  Later on, she asked me again why I came into town, and I reminded her "for my baby shower" and she looked utterly confused.  She had no idea I was pregnant.  It was kind of nice, but I wondered if she just wasn't very observant or just assumed I usually had a strange looking beer belly. 

Anyway, I had a wonderful baby shower in UT last Saturday.  My mom has a lot of close friends which results in fabulously huge parties.  When we got married, we sent out 800 invitations and had about 500 people at our reception. She had invited 100 people to my baby shower!  It was extremely crowded but I was thrilled to get to see so many people that I grew up with and love.  My sister Kerri, came into town just for a day and a half to be at my shower as did my sister-in-laws, Wendi and Christine, and my Aunt Julie.  Seeing people was the highlight of the trip and people were so generous! I couldn't believe the gifts people gave me!

We drove through Vernal on the way home to visit Don's sister, Christine.  We got to see her classroom and meet her first graders who were all bent on beating Don up, stealing his wallet, and giving him a "Texas wedgie", though we never found out what that was.  Luckily, none of them attacked him, but he did get a little nervous.  There were an awful lot of them and it is possible they could have taken him down. It was pretty funny. We also went on a hike and saw some dinosaur tracks by Steinaker Reservoir and went out to dinner. It was a great time and I actually really liked the area surrounding Vernal.  We are excited to go visit her again and do some more exploring.  The geological formations are really cool and there a lot of good hikes to go on.

Before we went to bed at Christine's, we looked at the weather and saw that there was going to be a lot of snow on I-70 in CO and a storm later in the day on I-80 if we drove through WY, so we got up extra early to try to beat the storm.  Unfortunately, we still had to take a long detour because of a road closure and it took us about 9 hours (instead of 6) to get home.  Even though the long trip was annoying, we were lucky we made it home when we did.  That night, a huge blizzard began.

When I woke up Thursday, there was already six inches on the ground.  Don checked the weather and there was a blizzard advisory issued stating that no one should be driving.  I didn't want to drive my little Honda to work as I've had several close calls this winter with our bad tires, so I called a co-worker to see if he was going in.  He was already picking up another co-worker and offered to come get me, so we all drove together.  By noon, the storm had gotten even worse and all we could see out the windows at work was a white cloud of blowing snow. When I called Don to see if he made it to school, he told me proudly he had cross country skied in and was the only one there.  Skiing as a mode of transportation has been a life long dream for him, so he was pretty excited.

Everyone at my work left the office around 12 pm because they were closing a lot of roads in the area.  My co-workers and I made it home safely and happily, I didn't have to work at all on Friday because the storm continued.  It was fabulous!  I got nearly a full week off of work while only taking 3 days PTO and we got some great snow.  When it was over we had about 20 inches of snow! It has nearly all melted now, but these pictures show what it was like Thursday and Friday.

Don and I even went snowshoeing out our front door!  We walked along the Boulder Creek and had a great time.  I can feel my joints are getting a little too loose for snowshoeing now, though, as my hips felt like they were going to pop out of joint every time I lifted up legs. I guess I'll have to give the snowshoes a break 'til next year.