Thanksgiving in California!

This year we spent Thanksgiving with Seana's side of the family.  Like the year before we flew in on Thanksgiving as the flights were cheaper and we thought it would be less busy... to our surprise the White Plains airport was PACKED Thanksgiving morning... and our flight wanted to leave early... ironically most of the passengers were in line with us for security so we like everyone else on our flight ended up being "chaperoned" to the front of the line in a very frustrating manner... but we all made our flight... I however was suffering from a cold so the flight became very uncomfortable for me due to the change in air pressure and my congestion... needless to say most of our Thanksgiving weekend I was feeling under the weather with a bad cough and head congestion so much so that I got the go ahead for antibiotics.

Despite being sick, Thanksgiving dinner was delicious and it was nice being surrounded by family.  On Friday Seana's sister and her family came and we all enjoyed each other's company.

Here Maggie is playing with blocks out on the patio with her cousin Mark!

Snack time with Muti and Grampa!

Something is happening outside... But what.. I have no idea???

Coloring and chatting with Nana (not shown) and Muti!

Photo Op with Maggie and her cousins Matt & Mark!

The best part about visiting Seana's family is a chance to relax.. there is no to do list to handle and there is always something to snack on.  Seana even got a chance to go see a movie with her Dad just the two of them!

It was a short visit, and to our surprise the Sacramento Airport was also slammed for our return flight... luckily we had plenty of time to spare to get to our gate!  A great trip aside from the whole cold!

Our 1st Nor'Easter!

A week after the hurricane and we have a Nor'Easter on our hands... Something I learned this week from my friends here in New England... There doesn't have to be snow for a storm to be called a Nor'Easter... it is the direction of the wind blowing that categorizes it as such.  The winds come in from the North East... who knew!

Well this Nor'Easter did bring snow!  And a fair amount (6+ inches)!  Here are some pics of Maggie exploring the snow... She was kind of "Meh" about it....

Searching for puddles to stomp in!

She found a leaf!

A photo op with Mommy!

Oops. I broke it.

Words you never want to hear come out of your child's mouth... Well it happened but Maggie didn't break it I DID!  DANG IT!  I dropped our portable DVD player when taking it out of the car... BAH!

So Seana and I decided to shop for another... Good News they have gotten cheaper since we bought our LG five years ago!!  I think we paid over $200.00 for our now broken LG Portable DVD player with its revolutionary 6 hrs of battery life and remote control.

Given that our last portable DVD player was in our lives for 5 years we decided to look for a Dual Screen DVD player with our little guy on the way he is gonna want to watch the show too... To our surprise we found that even dual screens aren't that pricey... We saw 2 models on line that we were interested in and decided to go to Best Buy to look them over and pick one.

The 1st was Dynex 9" Dual Screen DVD Player with Car Kit and Headsets for $119.99
The 2nd was Phillips 9" Dual Screen, Dual DVD Players with Car Kit for $209.00


The difference being the Dynex only has the option to watch the same DVD on both Screens the Phillips is actually 2 DVD players so you can watch 2 different DVDs or the same DVD on both screens... After much hemming and hawing we made the decision to go with the Phillips and found it cheaper on-line which Best-Buy price matched so all said and done we spent 188 and some change... We forewent the extended warranty as it didn't cover drops and spills just normal wear and tear.

We got home and I pulled it out only to find to my dismay... No Remotes!!  How am I going to control these from the front while possible driving???  I pulled out the instruction guide to find out the battery life... there is none?? It has to be plugged in at all times... So the unwrapping is ended and I rewrapped what I had looked over... This was not going to work.  Luckily the holiday return policy went into affect Nov. 4th and even if opened there is a no hassle return policy thru January 24th...

So I have spent this afternoon trying to search out a Dual DVD Players with remote and battery life.. and discovered you can get a single DVD player with all of the above or Dual DVD players with either a remote or battery life...

1st decision made we prefer a remote over battery life because we have learned from traveling with our previous the battery although handy makes it heavy and we stopped taking it on plane rides because 2 laptops, an iPad and a DVD player is overkill... Making the need for it obsolete unless we are again stuck in a power outage but we still have 2 laptops so really?? Settled. No battery life.

2nd decision for some reason which I haven't figured out the 9" screen options don't offer a remote only the 7" screen models do... So it is done decided... The kids will just have to live with a smaller screen.

Then I stumbled on a great deal...

Sylvania 7" Dual Screen, Dual DVD Player w/ remote and bag bundle at Walmart.com (blast it all) for $99.99... Umm YES PLEASE!  Normal price is $125ish for this model and it comes with headsets...
Another great thing Walmart offers is a 2 yr warrenty for DROPS, SPILLS and Cracked Screens... Seriously??!! YAY! And it is only $9.  Best Buys extended warranty was $39 for 1 yr and $69 for 2 yrs and that only covered normal wear and tear and NO Accidents like dropping. With taxes it was just under $116 with free shipping set to arrive Wednesday!!!  We are getting smaller screens but I have a remote! And $60 back in my pocket.

I have no interest in the bag so I may try to ebay it or craigslist it.  And Walmart I still do not like you on principal alone but damn you and your awesome deal... you should be ashamed and I am going to pretend I am not supporting you monetarily but taking advantage of your "loss leader" yep that is what this item is. There I feel better.

My fingers are crossed that this model will treats us well and will outlive my LG, at least we are covered for the next 2 years...And you can't beat getting 2 DVD players for less than the price of 1 you bought 5 years ago!

Maggie Colored within the lines...sort of!

Being that I love art and have a desire to share that passion with my daughter... I love when she requests to draw or color... Usually if it is within a coloring book she pays no attention to the picture waiting to be colored and just scribbles all over the page... But not today... Today she saw the picture with it's little stars and grabbed a blue crayon and colored the stars blue!! This is where the sort of come sin... she didn't stay within the lines of each star but she intentionally colored in a part of a picture!  So proud of my little artist!

Like any toddler she has a short attention span and considered her work complete with the stars colored in and one firework.  The orange scribble is from a previous coloring session...Here is her finished piece!

Hurricane Sandy and Halloween!

Our Pre-Halloween activities included buttoning down the hatches and stocking up for Hurricane Sandy... Thanks to a mom group I am a member of I got word of the possible hurricane early on and ordered us a generator, propane heater, fuel, and other supplies from Amazon and some other stores in time for it to show up before the storm and before the price increases!  I also was one of the first shoppers to hit the grocery stores for canned goods, water and food that didn't need refrigeration! 

We also pulled out Seana's survival kit.. yes she has a survival kit which has taken on many names... in Colorado it was a blizzard kit, in Indiana our tornado kit and now in Connecticut it will most likely be dubbed our hurricane kit.  It has pretty much everything you need to survive in an emergency... first aid kit, candles, glow sticks, water in pouches, freeze dried food, MREs, emergency blanket, heat packs, ice packs, camping stove with fuel and more!! 

I think saying we were prepared was an understatement... We filled our tubs with water, opted to sleep in our guest room where there wasn't risk of trees falling on us, charged our electronics, I cooked up a storm and then we waited... and the storm came.  It didn't seem like much at first just a windy rain storm... the hours passed and then in early evening it happened...wouldn't you know it we lost power...We had our emergency radio at the ready..and opted to not to fire up our generator right away.  

Then late that night it hit us... a category 1 hurricane, and the wind was intense!  It was one of the few times in my life I felt scared of the what I was hearing from the storm... and worse our emergency radio actually put out an emergency broadcast to evacuate or go for higher ground if you were in zone 1... to which I questioned "what zone are we???"  Well we are not zone 1 just next to it.. So we didn't need to evacuate, we just continued to hunker down...   The storm subsided and the winds died down... but our power didn't return for 4 days!!

All our supplies including the generator were put to use... luckily we found ways to entertain ourselves...  Halloween was rescheduled for Sunday the 4th, instead of Wednesday the 31st...

We decided to do our pumpkin carvings on Tuesday.. Here is Maggie working on her first pumpkin!

We opted to get her the peg kit instead of an actual carving kit!

Muti helped by putting the pegs in place and then Maggie took the liberties of redecorating it in several ways!

For Halloween Maggie was a garden gnome!! Such a cutie!

Since Halloween was rescheduled I opted to take Maggie to Seana's work mostly so I could put her in her costume! Plus we didn't have power at home and there is only so much to do!

Here she is an office gnome!

This is on the abbreviated day Halloween day before we went out trick or treating

Unfortunately trick or treating was not an enjoyable experience for her.. but she got some candy from 2 of the 3 houses we went to... And she started to see the benefit!

CANDY!!!

Belly Shot 20W4D!

I haven't gotten around to doing belly shots for this pregnancy partially because I self consciously was bigger to start... Which in reality I was around the same weight but pregnancy changes your body and my tummy hadn't bounced back like I had hoped (granted I also didn't put in the work to make it) after Maggie was born.  So I just wasn't comfortable showing my tummy to the world when I wasn't in a self confident place... But since about 14 weeks I have been warming up to the idea and wanting to start... had planned on doing 16 weeks but that came and went and I missed it...

So here we are 20 weeks essentially the halfway point of my pregnancy and when this pregnant woman is definitely sporting a baby bump!  I am excited at this point to start doing the belly shots (remember when that meant something completely different!)!!   I just perused the belly shots from when I carried Maggie and it will be fun to compare!  See if I am carrying our little guy differently or just seeing the differences period.

So here we go 20WD:

Drum Roll~Exciting News Enclosed!

I am going to give you 3 picture hints... I think these are pretty easy....

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In case you haven't figured it out.. here is one last hint!!!

That is right...We are having a boy!!

First off, I have to say I was quite impressed with my Doctor's office despite Hurricane Sandy they were open for business and my appointment was not rescheduled!!  He is looking perfect in every way!  And he is super active, we got to see him in action instead of just feel him! Our ultrasound technician was beyond fabulous and was explaining what she was looking at/for and why which Seana loved!!  She made sure to capture a little of the halloween spirit and gave us a front skull view of our boy!

 Here is the side view, which took some work to get as he was not in the mood to give a side profile...luckily he had no issue showing us his little man parts!  Any way I think he is absolutely adorable!

 Per our request the ultrasound tech gave us a foot shot as well! Such cute little footsies!

Pisces, who was dubbed last night as our "beastie boy" (due to his numerous punching and kicking workouts) is measuring 2 days bigger than the due date but there is always room for error in the measurements... so he is right on course for his March, 20th due date!