TEAM LIBBY: WEST MEETS EAST

December Highlights

2010-01-15T06:00:00.001-05:00

This was by far one of the best Christmas seasons I've ever had! I think it was because I decided beforehand to chill out and not stress about things, to get shopping done ahead of time, and to really enjoy the spirit of the season. Maybe it is being pregnant, realizing this is our last Christmas together as "just us." It is so strange to think that next year there are going to be two little girls with us!

We were both super bummed that we missed out on my family's Thanksgiving week trip to Hawaii. Grrr..... stupid doctor's orders. I was sad that we weren't going to spend the holidays with any of them, so I was very excited when Mom decided to come out here for Christmas!! We even rustled up some snow for her. We had a blast and I think she really enjoyed Maine.Kindof like Nebraska....but without the children of the corn.

Without further ado.....some pictoral highlights of the season:

sunny one day......

.....snowing the next!

Mary, me, Susan

best Christmas tree evah!

lazy dog

traumatized California cats

getting cold....but not cold enough....

now we're frozen!!

pizzelles, sugar cookies, monkey bread

Building snowmen (or women), LL Bean, Wii bowling, poker.......it's what you do in the winter.

John, Jason, & Mom on a boat!

We had such a great Christmas! I hope you all had wonderful holidays and that the New Year is already treating you well. There is so much in store for us this year, and we look forward to sharing it with all of you!

Beanie Update!

2010-01-14T07:16:00.000-05:00

So I said I would post a bunch of end-of-the-year stuff and then my two girls decided they had other ideas! I spent a couple of Sundays ago in L&D at the hospital because I was having contractions all morning. Turned out to be not a big deal. The OBs checked me out, gave me a ton of fluids, and everything stopped. So yay for beanies staying inside!

I'm about 30 1/2 weeks now and my latest ultrasound showed Twin A weighing 3lbs 9oz and Twin B weighing 3lb 3 oz! Holy cow, no wonder I feel huge and tired -- that's almost 7 lbs of baby in there!! So now I don't feel so bad about having zero energy and not being able to breathe all the time....apparently it's normal. Other than those two issues, I'm feeling good and still can't believe that we'll be meeting these little girls in less than 2 months!!

So for your enjoyment....here are some freaky pics I got from the US. I didn't know that my OB's office had the 3D feature on their US machines. The tech just flipped it on and showed us what the girls looked like in 3D. Personally, I think they look squished and weird, but it was pretty cute to see one of them sucking on her hand and the other one getting kicked in the head by her sister.

Another bright spot of the visit was that both of the girls were situated head down!! Please send prayers and good wishes that they will stay that way -- then I won't have to have a C-section, for which I would be eternally grateful.

Thanks for putting up with my posting delays......going to try and catch up now that my little ones are behaving!!

If for some reason you are incredibly bored.............

2010-01-01T12:45:00.002-05:00

.............you can read all my old posts over at badbadbadmonkey.blogspot.com. I can't figure out how to appropriately link the parts of these two blogs I want linked without screwing both of them up. *sigh*

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!

2010-01-01T12:35:00.004-05:00

Happy Happy 2010 to all our friends and family!! We hope this last year treated you well and we wish you many many blessings in this year that is now unfolding. We've only been in Maine for 2 months and it seems like so much has happened. For now, I will let you know that I am getting larger by the day and feeling good, albeit exhausted! Babies are doing great and we can't wait to meet them in a few short months.

We celebrated last night with family and friends at a Brazilian steakhouse in Portland. It was great company, great food, and great drinks (so I heard.......).

After dinner, I didn't think I would last till midnight, but the intense Wii obsession I have developed kept me awake to watch the ball drop. It was weird for this West Coast girl to be celebrating at the same time as the crowd in New York City!

This weekend we're having a big snow storm (YAY!!), so I'll be putting up some Christmas pics and new ultrasound pics.....so check back for more shenanigins (including my Mom playing Wii.........)!!

Hi There World!! Its us, Pancake and Flapjack!

2009-12-05T10:59:00.002-05:00

Bean Suppah!

2009-12-01T11:36:00.000-05:00

Bean suppers. Or as they say here, bean suppahs. They're a big deal here in Maine. Like many other Maine-related activities, I had heard tales of these suppers over the years. The choosing of your pie before you eat dinner, the old people who consume amazing quantities of food in record time, the red hot dogs. Luckily, we arrived in Maine at the tail end of Supper Season. Saturday night John, Jason, and I headed up to Gray to the VFW for $7 worth of beany goodness!!

First up, the pie table. Better hurry! The chocolate creams are going fast.....

We went for an assortment, usually the best tactic.

We grabbed a seat.....away from these people. They were already eating and we didn't want to get in the way of their action. That's a bad move at a bean supper.

We started off by drinking coffee while waiting for our food to come out. And yes, there was also the choice of Kool-Aid. Red Kool-Aid. French bread, coleslaw, and pickles took the edge off. Then came John's personal favorite, American Chop Suey. People, I don't make this stuff up.

Red hot dogs are a Maine favorite. Rarely seen outside the state. There may be a reason for that. They snap when they're cooked right. Explain the physics behind that please.

And finally the star of the show....the beans!! Tonight featured 2 kinds of baked beans, but this number can vary from supper to supper.

Does that look like a well-rounded meal or what?? Oh wait!! The brown bread in a can is coming out. I would have been quite sad if this hadn't shown up.

Mmmmmmm....that's better. We stuffed ourselves on the Maine goodness of it all. Someone in our party may or may not have made a second trip to the pie table -- total bean supper FAUX PAS!!

Said person may or may not have gotten dirty looks.....but turns out that old people eating beans are easily distractible. In any case, we were happy.

Although supper season is starting to wind down around these parts, you can still spot a few signs out on the weekend for bean suppers, turkey suppers, chicken pot pie suppers, even an occasional roast beef supper. Maine is supper-crazy. And this California girl's stomach appreciates that.

Our 1st Day.....in which Sarah learns about the wild & woolly ways of Maine.....

2009-11-24T14:06:00.003-05:00

Before I tell you about our first full day here in Maine, I need to introduce you to Creepy Uncle Lance (and yes, we call him that to his face). If you look in the dictionary under "Mainer" you will see a picture of him. Native of the state, French-Canadian by ancestry, all-around crazy. He is married to my mother-in-law's sister and lives across the street from us. Here is a visual:

Back to the story. For some insane reason we woke up at the crack of dawn our first day here. It happened to be the first day of deer hunting season, and most of the neighborhood men were already out in their tree stands. John (Jason's dad) was out hunting with Charlie (who deserves a post of his own), Mary (his mom) was still sleeping, and we were enjoying a cup of coffee. Actually we weren't enjoying it because it was crappy boiled coffee full of grounds....but that is a story for later. Suddenly Lance busts in the door (yelling "knock-knock" as he always does) and says he needs Mary. He says he just shot 2 deer (ummm.....isn't there a limit??) and needs Mary to come out in the woods and gut them for him. Mary is not an early riser. At all. Yet she excitedly popped out of bed, threw on some flannel PJ pants and a blaze orange jacket and sped off on the 4-wheeler.

Less than an hour later, she was back. Covered in blood and triumphant. Now, since these deer came to an untimely end in a rather questionable fashion.....Lance couldn't just take them to a butcher. So they got strung up in his basement......and I asked: Lance, do you know how to butcher a deer? To which he replied, not really. I asked, What are you going to do, Google how to do it? I should have known better.....as he pointed me to a multi-page computer printout. Yes, yes he did Google it. See him in action HERE.

And so the next evening, with a wonderful fall chill in the air, we feasted on fresh venison:

No Jason, we don't eat the hooves. We're civilized. We have our deer with salad and beer:

The aroma of danger made it all the more tasty. Apparently one of the deer had a very identifying scar on it's side.....someone confirmed that a little neighborhood girl had been feeding a deer all summer in her backyard....with that same scar on his side. So thank you little girl, you fattened him up nicely. It was a wonderful welcome to Maine.

Okay already, I'll do it....

2009-11-19T18:14:00.021-05:00

Hi there! So we've been settled in two weeks almost in Maine and I felt it was about time to let you know how its all going!

First, if you didn't know, we've made the move from Sacramento to Windham! After an AGONIZING three months working on selling our house, we finally got to pose with the SOLD sign!

We left immediately after the movers were finished. We locked up, handed the keys to our Realtor, took one last look at our little casa and set off due East! (After being assured that the cats were situated....)

We didn't leave until about 1:30 or so, despite the fact that our movers shucked and jived like mad men to get us out of there earlier. They were incredible, but we just had too much crap!

We boogied on down the road, thinking how weird it was that we weren't going BACK that way ever again! *sniff* We crested Donner Summit and continued on up to Reno (recent site of my bocci ball debacle) We managed to make it to the NV/UT border that night were me, Sarah, Orono and Willard settled into our first of a series of nice little hotels.

Utah was pretty flat. Pretty boring. It started snowing in Salt Lake, but nothing too bad. A nice change from the 80 degrees we left back in the Valley though. The salt flats were pretty cool. If we'd had the time and no cats, we could have taken the Subaru for a test drive. . We made good time the next day and as we climbed up through the Rockies we were running from a nasty storm that was brewing behind us and moving south and eastwards. The idea of staying in Nebraska was killing me, but we pushed out to North Platte, just in time to miss out on several feet of highway closing snow!! EEK! Sarah drove through a little bit of it, but THAT was way too scary for me, thank you very much....

After safely traversing the wintry Wyoming mountains and surviving our first night in NB without being eaten by the Children of the Corn, we started our journey through middle, or "REAL", America. We soon noticed this chain of family friendly, morally upright gas stations...

The remainder of the trip was really pretty uneventful.... oh, except for the part where our poor kitty whizzed all over himself in his crate. You don't know miserable until you've seen a freshly shampooed cat in a cold hotel room. He was made less miserable by the hot towels I made him. I wrapped him up like a little burrito and he passed right out... Poor gato.

We made good time through the rest of the country, enjoying the late fall color and the incredible rest stops. Do you know that other states have free Wi-fi at their rest stops??? Awesome.

Finally we made it HOME!! To Maine!! Wohoo!!!

Stay tuned for for Sarah's tale of the very first morning in Maine....

TESTING

2009-11-07T20:34:00.000-05:00

This is a test post. If it was a real post I might have something interesting to say. Then again, maybe not.