Because I know you think I'm slacking,

This is not me falling off the blog-wagon again. I have had a really long week of work and training. I'll be back next week.

Dear John Q. Public,

It would be helpful for me if you could take note of a few minor things today:

--If your underage friend is 'hypothetically' drunk, but was just 'hypothetically' stabbed, yes, officers are going to come over. And paramedics. Even if you try to assure me this is only a 'hypothetical' situation and you just want to know if your friend would get an alcohol ticket.

--Reporting a street light that hasn't come one for 2 days in your neighborhood is not a 911 situation

--Neither is your missing dog

--Neither is wanting to know if your scumbag ex-boyfriend has warrants or not

--Come to think of it, if there is not blood, flames, weapons, or immediate danger to yours or someone else's life, it is NOT a 911 situation.

--Do you remember 10 seconds ago, when YOU called ME? Voluntarily? Ok. Good. Since nobody forced you to dial this number and you are likely calling to ask for help with something, maybe lets not start out the conversation by you screaming at me.

--If you steal a car, and later it gets impounded because an officer finds it in your parking lot and sees that it is stolen, probably it is not a good idea to call 911 to report the car that you stole, stolen.

--Please Please Please Please stop letting your baby play with your cell phone. Yes, it rings through to 911. No, it is not cute or funny that your baby did that, and it is not amusing to me when I call you back. (this part isn't just me whining. This really is huge problem, it frequently ties up 911 lines so people with real emergencies cannot get through. )

--If I ask you your address, ALL I need to know at this point is your address. I don't need to know what your sisters husbands mom did five years ago to piss you off which has resulted in years of family feuding and thats why you punched your father yesterday. Juuuust your address.

--I can make peace with some people not knowing their license plates. There is no excuse to not know the color and type of vehicle you are currently driving. When I ask you the color, I am looking for one of the following: red, blue, green, black, white, yellow, purple, orange, silver, etc. "Graphite charcoal" is gray. "Mystic amethyst" is purple. Tan is a perfectly good word if your car is a "silvery brownish almond color". If you tell me your car looks like "a silver car, sitting under a very green tree with the sun filtering the green down" I am going to call it light green and then make fun of you when I hang up the phone.

--You locked your keys in your car. You did not lock them out of your car. If you had, you wouldn't need our help today, would you?

Whew, I think thats all for now. Thanks for your time!


(It's 9 am. I have been at work for 3 hours. Anyone want to venture a guess on how its going this morning?)

Priorities

You know your priorities in life are changing when fresh produce for a screamin' deal makes your week.

Fellow Utah County-ers: have you been here?

Man. Every Wednesday they have their double-ad day, where the sale prices from the previous week and the upcoming week both apply.

I've gotten some amazingly delicious fresh fruit and veggies for way cheaper than any of my local grocery store prices. Strawberries, melons, apples, pears, asparagus, avocados, potatoes, onions...you name it. And they are delish. And they give rainchecks if they run out. And I love them. (Not the rainchecks, necessarily. The people, and the store.)

We have been trying to eat healthy(ier) around here lately, and this is really helping the effort. Now all I need is this bad boy and I'll be all set. Anne, tell your anniversary to hurry up!

.666666667%

There are a lot of weird questions people ask you when you are pregnant. Things you would (hopefully) never dream of asking a non-pregnant person.









So, do you have stretch marks yet?

Are you constipated?

Do your knees/hips/ankes/joints feel loose and wobbly? Mine felt like Jello!

So, are your insides just one big bruise?

Retaining water sucks. Are you super bloated?

Then there is the all-encompassing, "How are you feeling?" When I used to ask my pregnant friends/coworkers this (because I thought it was the polite thing to do), the really general, vague answers used to bother me a little. "I'm good." "I'm fine," always accompanied by a polite smile.

It wasn't until I got pregnant that I learned that you are asked this questions approximately 5-10 times daily, so there is a reason not much thought it put into the answer. (also? If I do give you more than "fine" and tell you about my achy hips, my acid reflux or my calf cramps, please do not give me The Look with The Eyebrows and The Knowing Smile and tell me to "just wait" or start listing all the horrible things that I have not yet experienced but will soon. not helpful. or nice.)

Anyway, I have gotten used to all the strange and prodding questions. Truth be told, I usually don't even mind them. Last week, though, Sam and I were shopping at a baby boutique and I got one of the weirdest questions I have been asked so far.

The sales girl was making small talk about my pregnancy, and asked how far along I was. I told her just over 30 weeks.

"So, you're about 2/3 of the way done, then?"

blink blink. erm.

(quick math, quick math)

"No, I'm 3/4 of the way done. I guess."

She smiled and went back to folding her stack of baby clothing. Hi, you work in a baby store. You should probably know that we do not measure pregnancy in fractions. Or decimals. And to ask a pregnant woman to convert how far along she is into anything other than weeks or months is not nice. Our brains are functioning at a lower capacity, and you should be glad mine worked out to be such an easy fraction or I would have just stood there staring at you, finally answering with "I don't know" and it would have been super awkward and I would have felt dumb and you probably never would have realized that YOU were the dumb one.

Anyway, if anyone is keeping score, I have about 60 days left, which is about .2143 percent of my pregnancy left. Anyone want to convert that to a fraction for me?

Perinatologist

We went to the perinatologist on Wednesday and got great news!! He said he is only seeing one echogenic foci now, and it is in the left side. He checked and measured everything and said everything looks right on schedule, Boston looks perfectly healthy and there is nothing to worry about. He also said for now he sees no reason for us to have any further ultrasounds to monitor the foci or for Boston to be evaluated by a specialist after birth. YAY!

Boston currently weighs just over 3 lbs and still has his legs stetched out and crossed at the ankles. You would think with the significantly less amount of space he has compared to then he would start to scrunch up a little, but apparently not. So far his stretched out feet haven't caused any pain or problems, but his little butt is permanantly shoved into my right rib. It is usually only mildly uncomfortable until he wiggles and catches my rib just right.

I decided 30 weeks is the morph from "completely enjoying pregnancy" to the beginings of physical discomfort. I can't bend over to pick anything up without an audible "oomph!", getting off the couch is harder and harder, I have to change my sitting position frequently to accomodate squirmy limbs and sore hips, and I am overall starting to feel very pregnant. Its crazy to think I only have 9 weeks left...it seems like a long time when I think about May but I know it is going to fly by.

I won't call this "What happens in Vegas" because thats chiche....

Warning: this post is going to have a lot of photos. a lot.

Sam, Anne and I spent the first weekend in February partying it up in Vegas. We found our flights a few weeks before for suuuper cheap, so we booked without really planning and set off for a weekend of shopping, food and fun!


Can you guess who has the short legs of the group??

We rented a super awesome puddle jumper chevy cobalt to cruise around town in. You may think we went with an economy car to save on cash, but due to the fact that none of us are 25 yet...it still ended up costing a small fortune. Stupid $25/day fee!


After an awesome brunch at In n Out (coming soon to an Orem, American Fork and Draper near you...holla!) we set out to find our hotel and plan the days activities.





We spent the rest of the day shopping...shopping, and more shopping. We hit up SO many stores, I'm pretty sure Boston is set for next winter. I got sweatshirts, pants, shirts, a super nice coat, and plenty of other stuff for next to nothing! (Now here's to hoping he somewhere in the vicinity of 12 month clothing next winter....)



Pop Quiz: You are walking from a parking garage to a mall. You park on the bottom level of the parking garage. Your options are

a. walk across the street from you car to the mall

b. take the parking garage elevator up one level, walk across the walkway bridge, take the elevator on the other side back down to the first level, walk into the mall.

Sad to admit, option A didn't even occur to us. We went with option B. sigh.


We had dinner at Cheesecake Factory....with no wait! Hello, awesomeness.


The next morning we went to the Village Buffet at Paris. It is so yummy, we ended up going two mornings in a row :) (I told you this trip was about shopping and food!)


They have so much to choose from, and lots of European foods that I haven't eaten in a long time! We took our time and savored everything.

I bet you can't guess what we did after eating. Yeah...more shopping. We hit the stores hard for a few hours and returned to our hotels looking like drowned homeless girls. (it was raining, and none of us had showered yet...)

We got ourselves cleaned up and hit up the Mac Pro store to get our makeup done for the night. Sadly, no photos of that part, but we did look smashing!

Next it was dinner at the Bellagio buffet and Cirque de Soileil's Zumanity. (Which, erm, I don't recommend unless you are in the mood for nakedness. Lots of nakedness. Nakedness not known to us beforehand...)




YUM....creme brulee, chocolate raspberry pie thing, key lime tart, The Best Cheesecake You Have Ever Eaten.

After the show, we headed back to our hotel room and took some old-style photos. When you get your makeup done by professionals, you need proof!


It ended up being quite the late night, we didn't go to bed till around 3 am. It made for an early morning, but we had a few hours to kill before our plane left. We made one last shopping stop (Sam and Anne got killer deals at the Banana Republic outlet...pregnant people need not try on their clothing) then got a quick treat from the amazing Jean-Philippe Patisserie before speeding to the airport in hopes of not missing our flight. (We didn't, but it took very fast walking and some super speedy bag rearranging--we bought a lot and our bags were over the weight limit!)



BYE, vegas!

Feliz Cumpleanos, Senor Jason!

(disclaimer: you kind of have to know us to "get" this post. Racial slurs are part of daily life in the Robison house, due to Jason's family having adopted children from every corner of the world. Black, Asian, Mexican, white, Mayan Indian...you name it, they make fun of each other So we really aren't racist, which is so not obvious by what I am about to write .)

Jason had his big 3-0 birthday last month, so I knew we needed to do something special to celebrate. Anne and I planned a surprise party for him, and decided the only appropriate theme could be Most Offensive Mexican Party Ever.

The party store did not disappoint! We decked out our clubhouse in all things red, white and green, put Mexican flags everywhere, had several pinatas, and even found this little gem:



Its not a great photo, but its a big center piece that looks like a red, white and green firework with mexican flags shooting out all over. It. Was. Awesome.

What Offensive Mexican Party would be complete without candles?!

We also played a rousing game of "Pin the Stereotypical Item On The Mexican" - among the items to be pinned were a sombrero, a mustache, tequila bottle and a taco.




We had an awesome dinner of carne asada tacos, homemade avocado salsa, corn and black bean pie and chips. We made Bakerella's Fire & Ice Cupcakes, which were a big fat flop. I don't know if I used the wrong kind of chili powder (I used what she listed...) but they were HOT! This coming from a girl who can handle her spices, too. It way overpowered the chocolate, nobody was too big of a fan.

Anne and I were masters of the grill and grilled the steak by ourselves! We may or may not have also broken the grill in the process. (When I say broken I really mean the wheel freaking fell off when we tried to move it 2 inches. not our fault)

We had a great time!

Mindi & Kevin Andy & Emily


Anne, Jason & Hazen