pickles and ice cream

these 5 adorable ladies on the bed are my mom (in the front) and her 4 sisters lil, marge, flo and dolores. they all took a cruise from vancouver to san diego for my aunt lil's 60th birthday and i got to meet them at the cruise ship terminal and spend the day with them in anaheim last week. the day flew by as we went swimming, shopped and ate delicious food. my aunties also brought all kinds of presents for tristan and i got to see pictures of my cousins and was entertained with stories from the cruise. we ended the evening at downtown disney (a shopping district outside of disneyland) where we had an italian dinner and then looked in all of the interesting shops. it saddened me just before i left that my mom hadn't felt the baby kick all day. no sooner had that thought entered my mind, than tristan decided to wake up and squirm around! so both my mom and my aunt marge were able to give him little love pats. it was so hard saying goodbye to my mom again, but it will only be 3 months until i see her again. so weird to think that the next time i'll hug her, tristan will have arrived!

as for my dear husband, thankfully he went back to work on wednesday, though with many restrictions placed on his activities. according to the x-rays, he is having back spasms from the accident, so needs to take it easy. the day of the accident i became highly aware of how much i depend on him and love him..i've allowed myself to go down the path of "what if" now and then and it gets really frightning thinking that way! i mean, he was planning on taking his small pickup to work, but at the last moment decided to drive his boss' larger one instead because it was parked behind his. who knows what would have happened had he been in his own truck. as it is, the truck he was driving was declared totalled and the unsuspecting tree that he ran into had to be removed! when i picked him up from the towing place and hugged him, i inspected him for a telltale feather, but the angels must have been quite careful in leaving such an obvious sign. 2 days ago was also the 10 year anniversary of the day he drove his car over a 400 foot cliff and walked away from it before it exploded. we are so overwhelmingly thankful to God for His protection. a cute little story about our 2 year old nephew, john: after he heard the news that uncle stew was in an accident, he asked his mommy if he could pray for him. so, using his limited vocabulary as best he could, he closed his eyes and earnestly said, "dear jesus. stew, stew, stew. amen."

my little football is now about 14 inches long, which is actually larger than a football and now even larger than his daddy's foot! he is very active, and sometimes painfully so when he bounces against my ribs. the only thing really bothering me right now is my siatica that flares up at random times. the other day i was at the grocery store and a lady from church leaned over to peer in my produce and whole-grain laden cart and said, "what? no pickles and ice cream?" i laughed, and then kind of wondered why that is such a common thing to associate with pregnant women. i've craved pickles and i've craved ice cream, but never the two together. well, i now know what all the fuss is about as last night i decided to indulge in some dill pickle potato chips from canada along with the last scoop of butterfinger ice cream. i was nearly halfway done before i realized that i was pretty much eating pickles and ice cream! my doctor's appointments are now 3 weeks apart instead of 4 and we go to our first child-birthing class at the hospital on tuesday. time is just flying on by.

work has been getting more and more difficult as i'm finding it harder to stand for long periods of time. it's also been a bit stressful due to the fact that we just received over 50 boxes of christmas giftware that needs to be put out as well as a returns package that needs to be gathered up and sent away. don't even get me started on the logic behind returns in october. add that to the problem of being short staffed, and me in charge of scheduling and...i'm surprised that i haven't had any cold sores pop up lately. i've been getting up at 5am to be at work by 7 so that i have 3 hours before the store opens to get a head start on things. i do indulge in listening to christmas music when no one else is there! it is beginning to feel like fall now that the temperature has dropped a bit. yesterday morning josh turned on the heater for the first time, although this morning it's not so chilly so we have the windows wide open. i've been dreaming about thanksgiving dinner lately. kind of wish i had celebrated the canadian one on monday just so that i wouldn't have to wait so long!

well, this blog has been a long mish mash of all kinds of things. sorry that it took me so long. i really hope that such a long absence won't happen again!