My friend Caroline said that my old blog was crashing whenever you viewed an image or left comments and then went back to my blog. I could also recreate this problem and I had NO clue what caused it.

SOOO - guess what - another major blog upheaval. This one is actually a blogger template, but I customized it to the max. I added a banner where there wasn't one, changed all the background images and widened the borders. How do you like it? Let me know!

Oh and Caroline - is this blog crashing for you now?

Funny thing happened today. Joey, Joe and I usually go to the 'Ice Cream Place' (what Joey calls it) a few times a week. The owners know Joey by name and Joey knows their names. We get up to the order window and Joey orders a blue cone - which means a baby vanilla cone dipped in blue coating. Peggy (one of the owners) asked him if he wanted purple, because normally he says he wants purple coating in the car and changes it to blue when we get to the window. He yells, 'NO, I want BLUE'. Ok then kiddo! So Peggy normally holds the cone for Joey to take his first bite. Today she held it out for Joey, and Joey yanked it from her hand and took his own bite himself. What a stinker. We had to laugh about it. I think it took Peggy by surprise! LOL.

Not much going on today. We went to town to take some household stuff in for hazardous waste day - some car oil and a car battery. We were in and out of the place which was nice - no huge lines.

Then off to the post office. I mailed Grandma my blog (she loves to read it but doesn't have a pc) and Joe had something else to mail off.

Then off to Meijer to go grocery shopping. We were in there a little longer than I wanted to be. I got a few watch batteries replaced. They were only $3.00 each - a lot cheaper than a whole new watch ($10 +)!

Then, Oh crap - I was late to Lori's wedding shower. So when I get home I turbo change and jump into my car. I got behind every slow ass driver on the earth, got stuck in construction twice, and made it to her shower 1/2 hour late! Augh! I felt pretty bad, especially since she specifically asked me to take photos of her shower. Her shower went well and she got a lot of really nice gifts. The food was great too. Here's my favorite photo of Lori from the afternoon. Doesn't she look great?! She's my buddy whom we call each other every day on the way into work and chat and chat! She works with me too but we don't have a lot of time to talk at work since we are so busy, so we catch up on the way in!

Tonight we ate burgers and fries for dinner. Then we took Joey to the playground and then to the ice cream place. That's about all.

Oh and I'm still glad to be home (after that airport snafu!). There really is no place like home!!

Ok - first of all. I've been going a little blog crazy so there are probably like 4 or 5 entries below you haven't seen. So make sure to look below.

So what is the weird twist at the end of our trip? Remember how I told you we missed our airplane at the Phoenix airport on the way to Seattle? WE MISSED THE AIRPLANE ON THE WAY BACK HOME TOO!!!

Well, another stranded airport trip under our belt! This time it was NOT our fault. They blamed it on Mother Nature. We don’t think it was 100% nature’s fault.

They had thunderstorms/sandstorms in Phoenixand we kept circling around the airport. Joe was starting to get sick from the circling. He told me he was ready to grab for the barf bag. Then they announced the good news was we were going to stop our holding pattern of circling in the air waiting to land, but the bad news was we needed to go to Las Vegas to refuel. Originally we were going to stay there and connect from there, then they said, no, we would just refuel and then go BACK to Phoenix.

Down on the ground in Las VegasI called Caroline who said our connection flight was delayed too, but there was no way we would make it back in time. We were supposed to land in Phoenix at 5:10. It was almost 6. Our connection to Detroit was supposed to leave at 6:10 but Caroline told me it was delayed until 6:30.

Back in the air to Phoenixwe go. I think it was 6:30 at this time. I was thinking the worst but hoping for the best. I was seriously going to be angry if we got stranded AGAIN at the same damn airport.

I felt bad for all the mothers on the flight with very young children. We were on the flight a long time and with the landing and taking back off, I can only imagine their ears hurt a lot. There was a woman one seat back and across the isle from us with what looked to be a toddler who was a year and a half and a newborn who she said was 1 ½ months old. They did extremely well considering the long flight and all the taking off and landing we did. I'm glad I wasn't her but she said they actually travel a lot.

When we got back to Phoenix Joe looked at the departures and Detroit had already left and there were no more flights going to Detroit. Yep – we missed another departure AGAIN – and IN PHOENIX! Man, why couldn’t they have just left us at the Las Vegas airport? We could have at least went gambling!

So we stopped at the desk and they told us, sorry, there are no more flights going out of Detroit tonight so you will have to call and reserve a hotel and they weren’t going to pay for it, since they said it was weather related. Weather related? If we didn't run out of fuel we would have been able to hold in the air long enough for me to make my flight!!! I was pissed off. The next flight was going out of Phoenix to Detroit was at 9am and wouldn’t get into Detroit until 4pm Eastern. Oh fricking great! So we are wasting another day.

The thing that made us the most angry was that we really wanted to see Joey, we were homesick by now, and now we knew we wouldn’t be seeing him until late at night on Wednesday, where we were originally going to get into Detroit at midnight that night and Joe's mom and Grandma were going to drop him off in the morning.

We called Joe’s mom and told her that we missed our flight due to thunderstorms and we wouldn’t be getting into Detroit until at least 4pm the next day. She was bringing Joey down to our house so she had to change her plans since she planned to come in the morning, now she’d be coming in the evening to drop him off. I was crying by then, mostly because I just missed Joey and wanted to see him and we knew that it wouldn’t be until late the next day now.

We asked the people at the desk to NOT send our luggage anywhere. We wanted to pick it up so we could at least live out of it that night. Last time we got stuck in Phoenix we had NO luggage and that sucked!

Down to baggage we went. We never saw our luggage. We went to the US Airways counter to ask about it and they said there was a minimum of an hour before we would get it because they would have to find it and then load it into baggage. Finally – an hour went past and our baggage finally came through. FINALLY. Oh and by the way - this is American West airlines in case you were wondering.

I called this number to get a distressed passenger rate on a local hotel. It was the Crown Plazaand sounded nice. We finally got our baggage and called the hotel to get a shuttle. They didn’t answer. By then I’m pissed off. So I called again and again. Come on - pick up the phone! I need a SHUTTLE to come pick my butt up from the airport! Finally I called the reservation number. They asked if I talked to someone in Phoenix. I told them I tried to call the hotel but no one answered. He said they would try and they got a hold of someone and told us to go wait out front for the shuttle after he got a hold of someone. There was another family there with two younger girls and she was going to the same place as we were and had missed their flight as well so we rode the shuttle together.

I told them I was starving and hadn’t eaten since lunch. It was 8pm by then. I told them I was pregnant and the girls thought it was cool that I had a baby in my tummy. They offered me a salami sandwich and I accepted. It was good to eat something. We played around in the hotel for awhile while we were getting our rooms. The girl was jumping around on the colored tiles and said the white one were alligators and we couldn’t step on them. She was so cute.

Finally we got our room – on the executive floor for the rate of $59. The lady at the hotel counter said it was an awesome rate because their going rate for the night was $239! The floor we were on needed our room key inserted into the elevator to light up the floor number. The room wasn’t totally out of this world, but it had a fridge and microwave, which was nice and a few little extras like a linen spray and special soaps.

We ordered in pizza and it was expensive. A medium pizza, three toppings and a 1 liter of pop was $22.00. We ate that and then went to bed.

In the morning it was a frenzy of packing the rest of our stuff up, and getting ready to leave so we could catch the 7am shuttle back to the airport. Back on the airplane and it's a long flight - about 4 hours. Never are we doing another connection like that! Awful I tell you! Who connect from Detroit to Phoenix to go to Seattle? Dumb I tell you!

Hours later we get into Detroit. It seemed like forever before we got the bags and to our car. I was almost ready to KISS our van when we saw it.

When we got home I was almost ready to kiss the house (can you imagine driving by seeing someone kissing the bricks of their house? I was ready to!). Instead I bolted into the house to hug and kiss Joey. He looked a little startled and surprised to see us. It was a happy reunion and I almost cried seeing him, I was so happy. So that is our little trip gone wrong! At least we had a great time with Caroline and Jason, but we were really happy to be HOME!

Monday Caroline and Jason needed to work (they own their own business). Joe and I had to occupy ourselves so we decided to go to Mt. Rainier National Park. It’s a mountain you can see from Seattle, but it’s actually 80 miles away.

The ride out there took about an hour and a half and the scenery was beautiful. It was a unusually hot day for Seattle – in the 80’s, which was near their record-highs. As we climbed the mountain we were watching to see if the thermometer in the car got cooler - we were climbing a mountain after all! About ½ way up into the mountain we started to see snow. It was pretty wild. It was in the 70’s and yet there was still a little bit of snow on the ground. Every now and then there were scenic lookouts to stop and get out of the car and take photos. In one spot there was a waterfall which was really pretty but it was hard to see from the way the lookout was setup.

Once we got a little further up into the mountain we started to see a LOT of snow. I still couldn’t believe it was 70 + degrees and not gone yet. In Michigan we have massive piles of snow in parking lots from the snow plows plowing it all into one spot, but when it gets to be about 50/60 degrees, it all melts. A lot of it was melting and running off the cliffs and under the road or into ditches and then tunneling down the mountain. There was still a LOT of snow.

As we climbed higher we got more excited. It was so high in the air, that sometimes going around corners was pretty scary. The cliffs going down were going straight down hundreds of feet below. I got nervous when Joe was looking over the edge because he was driving. It was so high up it almost scared me! I didn’t want to look down because I felt if I did, we could go down the mountain. I knew that wasn’t true since Joe was driving but still, it was a scary sensation.

Finally we got to the top of the mountain. I was expecting this awesome lookout and there wasn’t one. The only thing at the top was a TON of snow – I’m talking 20+ feet of
snow (see photos below). People were tubing and skiing down the mountain in their shorts because it was still 69 degrees at the top. It was really wild. I’ve never experienced anything like that before.

We needed to get back to Seattle once we got back to the top of the mountain. We were meeting Caroline and Jason for dinner that night at a Steak House – their favorite spot to go. So down the mountain we went. Going up was much more fun –all the anticipation of going to the top and wondering what you will see (though it was disappointing, I was really hoping for a spectacular view) that going down we were like, been there done that and just wanted to go home. We went through a town called Puyallup on our way to the Mountain and it seemed to be really nice.

Back to Seattle we drove – another hour and a half drive back. We waited around awhile at Caroline and Jason's house and then went to their favorite dining spot called Jack’s. It’s a high end steak house.

They brought their own bottle of wine to eat with their steaks they were going to order. I didn’t really want steak so instead I ordered a pork with chutney and mango salsa which was really good. It came with a large salad, huge pieces of broccoli (Yum), a huge baked potato and the main course. We had a great time. Afterwards we got some dessert as well. Don’t even ask how much the bill was when we left. It wasn’t cheap. Most every night when we went out this entire vacation we spent at least $50.00/night on dinner and drinks. I can say I ate pretty well this trip!

I’m 24 weeks now. This week involved a lot of walking and the walking involved a lot of pelvic pain. I’m not sure why the pain is so bad there right now, but it’s hard to turn over in bed in the evening and hard to walk sometimes – which makes me waddle. It's hard to pick up my legs to put on pants, I'm just SORE.

Everytime I sit back in a chair or in bed sitting up, the baby kicks. Just Monday I was laying down in bed in the evening and Caroline felt baby Justin just kicking away. He kept kicking and kicking too. He’s quite active when he wants to be. I’m surprised he’s kicking so hard so early.

I’m to the point right now where I’m uncomfortable about the weight I’m gaining. I’m starting to feel like I’m gaining a lot and I’m hungry a lot.

One of my favorite ways to sit is with my legs crossed over and I can’t do that anymore. Not sure if it’s because my legs are larger or my stomach is larger but either way, I can’t do that anymore.

I got my first leg cramp on Friday during the night which made me jump out of bed and walk on it. It was pretty sore on Saturday as we were walking around in Victoria all day. I had them really bad with Joey. I learned NOT to stretch my legs out in the evening or early in the morning while in bed.

I can’t believe I have about 12 weeks left. It seems like so long and because of the pain I’ve had and the weight I’ve gained, I’m getting nervous about how big and how much pain I’ll be in when I get closer to my due date. Wish me luck! I feel HUGE already!

Week 24: Your baby is about 8½- 9 inches in length (crown-to-rump) and weighs about 1¼ pounds. Your baby’s lungs are gaining blood vessels now, preparing them for taking over the task of getting oxygen into the blood stream. They have also begun to develop surfactant, a substance that will help your baby's lungs to expand following birth. In the coming weeks of pregnancy, your baby will continue to grow in length and weight at a steady pace and his or her movements will get stronger and more forceful inside your womb. Most of your baby’s weight gain is in the bones and muscles, as they become harder. Your baby’s eyelids may have separated, allowing your baby to open his or her eyes.

The top of your uterus is well above your belly button now and you are really looking pregnant to others at this point in your pregnancy. You may be experiencing more and more tightening and relaxing in your lower abdomen, which are Braxton Hicks. They will become more frequent and increasingly noticeable as your pregnancy advances. Drinking fluids and resting may help quiet your uterus. On a good note, these ‘practice’ contractions begin the process of ripening your cervix (softening and effacement), which just might mean an easier and quicker labor when the time comes.

I was tagged by NancyRoo!


4 Jobs you have had in your life.
1. Grocery bagger
2. Stocker - then night stocker for the same grocery store
3. College computer co-ops for Northwood University, Dow Chemical and Monitor Sugar Company
4. Systems analyst where I currently am

4 Movies you would watch over and over.
1. I don't really watch movies...
2. I do like the Shawshank Redemption
3. Will Farrell movies. My husband and I think he's a stitch.
4.

4 Places you have lived
1. Garden City, Michigan
2. Howell, Michigan
3. Midland, Michigan
4. Royal Oak, Michigan (the last place I lived) (I've never lived outside of Michigan)

4 TV shows you love to watch
1. The OC
2. American Idol
3. Clean House
4. (don't have a 4th!) (I used to watch ER until recently!)

4 Places you have been on Vacation
1. Mexico
2. Seattle, WA
3. Oceanside, Oregon
4. North Carolina

4 Websites I visit daily
1. Gmail to get my emails from yahoogroups
2. Freecycle.org - or at least get emails through yahoogroups from freecycle.org. Freecycle rocks!!!!!
3. Bloglines.com - To see who updated their blog recently.
4. Blogger.com.com - for my blog and to visit my friend's blogs (let me know if YOU have one!)! Blogging rules!

4 of my favorite foods
1. Pierogies
2. Kaluski (fried noodles and cottage cheese - it's polish and so are the pierogies!)
3. Hot home made meal. I cook a LOT. I love to cook.
4. I'm craving eggs EVERY morning!

4 Places I would rather be right now.
1. Carribean
2. In Seattle visiting my friend Caroline
3. Somewhere warmer!
4. On a cruise!!!!!

Four names of your children you may or may not have?
1. Joseph (DS)
2. Justin Scott (Future DS)
3. Caroline jennifer (if we had a girl)
4. I like Carter for a boy too.

Now I tag: Enid, Mehgan, Melissa, Kristi S.
If you already did it, then just relax! :)

Perhaps in my own hometown. The FBI is actually digging up a Milford farm to search for clues. Can you believe it? Check this out. It's like 4 miles away from my house! It's breaking news on CNN.com!
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/17/hoffa.search/index.html

I'll be updating with more from my vacation tomorrow. Stay tuned. You won't believe the weird twist this trip took at the end!

On Sunday we setup a tour for the Butchart Gardens. We boarded the buses in front of this very spectacular old hotel called the Fortress (see photos of us below). It was a 45 minute drive to the gardens.

The gardens were GORGEOUS. The flowers were all in bloom - especially the tulips. I loved the Japenese gardens. There was streams and ponds flowing through all of the Japenese gardens. It was so soothing to walk through it. These happened to be my favorite photos from the trip. The trip would have made my mother totally jealous because she happens to love flowers. The landscaping was amazing. It was worth the trip - even if you don't care much for flowers.

The story behind the gardens is this man found this limestone quarry and invested all his money to dig it out and found his fortune in this quarry. In the meantime, his wife decided to landscape the bleak pit into a magnificient garden. They showed before and after pictures of the quarry and it was amazing how they did the transformation!

Caroline and I in front of the Fortress Hotel.

Joe in front of the Fortress Hotel.

What it looks like as you enter the Gardens.

Me in front of some pretty flowers.

Me in front of a beautiful water fountain.

Joe in front of the water fountain.

Shot of the water fountain again. I did these shots with an aperature of 20 so the background and foreground are both in focus. I love this depth of field technique!

Japanese Gardens. So pretty!!

A breathtaking view from the quarry waters.

This woman was sketching here and I LOVED how this photo turned out.

Joe and I at the end of our tour. It was a LOT of walking!

That evening it was time to return to the boat. We had dinner before we left and off to Seattle we went to finish our great weekend!

Really quick - On Friday we got into the airport around 10:30am and then found out luggage. Joe and I mused that it was the quickest we have ever gotten our luggage because it was in the luggage office waiting for us to pick it up, since it went with our plane the day before. We got our luggage before they were even loading it into the luggage carousels!

That night we had an awesome dinner with Caroline's friends and Jason's sister and future BIL. They made this awesome blue cheese salad made out of a chunk of lettuce that I have to try again when we get home. They had gorgonzala covered garlic bread, king crab, shrimp, and steak for dinner with potatoes. Then we had strawberry shortcakes. We ate this over a course of 3 hours so it didn't seem like a lot of food. I never really had crab legs before and found that the red part from the leg is good but the part up by the joint is really fishy. I couldn't even eat it - ick! We had a great night.

Saturday we boarded the clipper about 7am in the morning and it was a 3 hour boat ride to Victoria, Canada. When we got to our hotel, we decided to go on a tour first thing since our room wasn't ready yet.

So our tour was a city tour/castle tour. The Craigdarroch was beautiful. The rooms inside it had stories as you went through the self guided tour. It's amazing. This family was totally loaded with money but pretty much corrupt and most of the time the generation or the one after blew through all of the money. I couldn't even imagine living in a house/castle that large back in the 1900's. Totally amazing. The man who helped build this for his wife actually died before it was finished. They had around 6 children that were older at the time this was finished. There was I believe 5 floors you had to climb and tour through. I thought I was going to die because I'm so out of breathe being 24 weeks along but it wasn't too bad.

One of my favorite parts of this trip was there was a lookout tower at the top of the castle that you could go look at and the view was gorgeous. This is Victoria Canada from the top of this tower. Isn't it amazing how high up in the sky you are and the wonderful view? It was such a beautiful day as well!

So after we toured the castle we headed back for the bus and ended up getting there just as the bus came to the station. If we wouldn't have gotten that bus we would have had to wait an hour for the next so great timing on our part.

The rest of the tour was a city tour. I got a pretty good shot along the coast of Victoria of a ship and another boat moving next to it. It was interesting, but I was kinda upset by the photo. The water goes up on angle, that was the best I could do being that we were on a moving bus! We got on double decker busses which I have never even SEEN before. They were 14 feet tall and every time we went by a low lying tree or stop light, it brushed against the top of the bus. It was funny because we went under a light and it was scraping the top of the bus. It was really weird!

I loved the views of the mountains. Being that we live in Michigan, we don't ever see mountains, especially like above. They were gorgeous! This was the Olympic Mountain range. So pretty.

When we got back to the hotel we got our room we got our room assignments. Caroline and Jason were on the 6th floor, we were on the 9th floor. It was completely awesome having a high rise hotel! This was the view from our hotel window. It was so amazing.

That night we went out for dinner - twice. Jason wasn't feeling good so we went out to this Italian place called Pagliaccis. It had a 30 minute wait out the door and the tables were wedged in there but it was quoted as the best italian place to eat. We enjoyed their bread and salad. I got fettucini and it was ok. It was a thin alfredo sauce and I usually like thicker alfredo sauces. Caroline and Joe split a bottle of wine (Jason and Caroline are huge wine drinkers) and it was a good dinner overall. Next time I think I would try one of the specialty dinners instead of my old favorite.

When we were done we checked on Jason who was feeling better after sleeping and we went out to dinner again meaning we drank (well Jason and Caroline did - I just had non-alcholic) at this bar. It was bad service but it was completely full and the waitresses were super busy. There was a cool bad going on across the street on the street that I was enjoying. They played unique music, something that sounded like bongo drums and the keyboard that sounded like something that would be in a kids movie. I loved the music - it was quite uplifting.

By the time we got back to our rooms that night it was after 10pm, and I was very very sore from a day of walking. I just HAD to take this photo before I went to bed and was very happy with how clear and non-blurry the lights turned out. I made sure to hold really still when I took it with a long shutter speed. Afterwards, I was glad to go to bed.