ten days, ten hours, and home again.

i am home.  finally.  i had a great time on my many adventures, but it was a long time and i am really happy to not be going anywhere else again for a little while.

i'll start with a vegas recap.  we got in thursday afternoon/evening and walked around a little after we got settled.  we had late dinner reservations at del frisco's, which was delicious.  it's a really nice steak house that jb and i wanted to take everyone to for mom's "birthday" dinner.  the waiter brought delicious cake at the end and we were all more than stuffed.
friday morning we got up early (me, early enough to lose $20 in a slot machine and promptly decide that gambling is not for me).  we hopped on a bus tour to the hoover dam, which was, in a word, awesome.  i didn't really know what to expect, and i wasn't honestly too excited about the hoover dam, but that thing is incredible.  we learned a lot about the engineering feats they accomplished to build it (and during the great depression, no less), as well as about the ecological challenges the entire area is facing (lake mead, which brings water to 1.3 million people, is projected to be dry in the next ten years - yikes).  anyway...even though it was about 120 degrees up there, jb and i walked across the dam from nevada into arizona and back.  it was a spectacle to see, and very hot, but i've done it.

jb's HDR shot of the generators

the four hesterlys battling the desert (i'm looking quite expectant....)

friday night was cirque de soleil love at our hotel.  incredible.  if you like the beatles at all, this is a must-see experience.  the set design, sound mixing, and production value were ridiculous.  jb and i have decided we want to see it again, since i'm quite sure i missed tons while trying to take everything in at once.  it was the kind of experience you don't want to blink for.  

saturday, we rode the bus up and down the strip and went into a few different casinos checking things out.  highlights included the botanical gardens at the bellagio and lunch for me, mom, and dad at mon ami gabi, a cafe inside paris (heirloom tomatoes and goat cheese = yes).  after that, mom, dad, and i ventured to see siegfried and roy's tigers and lions, as well as the dolphins kept in pools at the mirage.  i probably need a pet tiger.  saturday night, we headed out to fremont street.  that was awesome - clearly if i go back to vegas, that is where i will be staying.  it's old-timey, kitschy vegas and we had a blast there.  we found this little italian restaurant in the gold nugget and it was delicious.  

all in all, we managed to jam pack a week's worth of vacation into about 3 days, so that was quite fun but tiring.  

of course, there was no rest for the weary, since about 13 or so hours after getting home, i was back at the airport heading to boston.  boston is a great city, and i did get to spend some quality time out and about, even though i also worked at least 12 hours a day.  the hotel where my conference was was super close to everything, so i got to walk around a lot and explore some of the history and culture of the city.  i also have 2 close friends who just moved to boston a couple months ago, and they live about 6 blocks from the hotel i was in.  i ended up staying at their place wednesday, thursday, and friday night because of some issues with over-booking the hotel, so that was an unexpected treat as well.  

saturday was time to come home, but due to some mayhem with airlines (remind me to not fly united if given a choice) and the weather in chicago (my layover), i ended up not getting back until about 1 sunday morning (as opposed to 10:45 saturday night).  10 hours of travel time is not my friend.  i can't remember ever having been that tired, but considering there was a time a few hours earlier when i thought i wouldn't be able to get home before MONDAY (again, united airlines), i was just sooooo happy to be back.  jb and the pups picked me up, and now here i am.  home again home again jiggity jig.  

while i was away, niblet's room got painted and it looks great.  we are both super happy with the color - it's mellow and soothing and will work for a girl or boy nibs, i think.  haha.  also, jb got to feel nibs give a little kick yesterday for the first time.  or maybe a punch, i'm not sure.  in any case, s/he is moving lots these days and i am so happy that jb is starting to get to join in on the fun.  

oh, here are a couple of garden pics to break up all the writing i've done on this post....

pepper and yellow pear tomato harvest from an evening a few weeks ago.

our first heirloom.  why aren't these available all year round?  

alas, if you've made it this far then you are quite the patient one.  more soon, i'm sure.  

cutest parents ever.

will post more about our time in sunny las vegas (and i mean really sunny) when i have more time and pictures, but jb just sent me this one of mom and dad.  they are so cute.

garden update #2.

i have more pictures than this to post, but it's been a super long time since i wrote anything about the garden.  we had a serious setback with the housesitter situation after the trip to st. thomas, but thanks to diligent watering and a moderate summer (so far - fingers crossed that it continues), it's bounced back a bit. yay!

anyway - we've had some delicious peppers (sauteed on fajitas = tasty treat), several little yellow pear tomatoes (in salads and pastas), and even a couple of heirloom tomatoes (my absolute favorite food of all time).  our pumpkin is gone, as is the squash, and the cucumbers are alive but not really fruiting.  but the spectacle to end all is our watermelon patch.  here is a pic of one of the fruits from a few weeks ago and then one from last week.  we'll be harvesting soon and i'll post a pic of me holding it next to the belly, since i think we're about the same size now.....

in baby news, i woke up yesterday morning (at like 5:15) to get ready to hop on my plane to boston, and the baby had hiccups.  that was the first time i've felt that, and it was super awesome.

update: 24(ish) weeks.

sorry everyone - i really don't mean for this to turn in to pregnancy tales blog, but i do want to note certain things for my own posterity....

yesterday's appointment was great.  after getting weighed (jb stayed off the scale this time, although i almost wish he'd been messing with it a little bit....), the nurse brought me to check bp and all of that.  i could tell she was a little out of it, but then she asked "what day did you deliver?".  hahaha.  justin was like "what was it?  this is the quietest baby ever!" and i just kind of looked at my belly and said i think it's going to stay in there a while longer if that's ok.  hilarious.  she was really apologetic and said that i wasn't showing that much for 6 months (yeah, right) and that she had forgotten to close out the post-natal appointment she'd seen right before me.  anyway...after we determined that i am in fact still pregnant, we went in to the room to see lisa, my favorite midwife.  she found the heartbeat and felt around for where the back and head are (back was kind of mid-belly, to my right hip side; head a little lower, left side so s/he is still mostly transverse).  that was really cool - it makes it feel so much more real knowing that there are real body parts that someone can feel in there.  by external measurements, i am measuring at about 25 weeks, which i think makes sense considering i've felt like nibs was going through a growth spurt lately.

so, all good news.  still feeling great - no swelling or any of that.  still not really even feeling pregnant except randomly when i wake up in the night with ridiculous calf cramps.  and, oh yeah, the heartburn.

quilt complete.

after so many pin sticks and a crick in my back from hunching over while hand-stitching the binding, the baby quilt is done.  i'm actually really excited with how it turned out - i washed it last night so now it's all soft and crinkly and fluffy like it should be.  upon seeing it in its completed form, i think it turned out pretty unisex, and i am quite pleased with that.  makes me want to spend all day crafting.  and, of course, have a room devoted solely to crafts which remains a pipe dream for now.

sorry the photo quality isn't fabulous - iphone photo taken on my desk at work this morning....

in other happenings, we had a pretty good weekend.  i got all ambitious and rearranged furniture and whatnot in the living room (something about being pregnant makes me want to move furniture around.  not sure what that means).  cleared out some more of the clutter in the former office/future baby room.  it's a slow process, but i think we're making headway.  

thursday we head to vegas for my mom's 60th birthday celebration, so that's going to be a blast.  her real birthday is at the end of october, but since i'll likely be close to bursting by that point, we figured we should travel while it still seemed like fun to me.  we'll see cirque de soleil's love and probably take a trip to the hoover dam and have some nice dinners.  i am also hoping to spend some quality time pool-side, as my body temperature will probably appreciate the respite of a dip.  this marks the first trip we've taken with just my fam and jb - the first trip the four of us have been on since my college graduation 7 years ago.  crazy!  i am really looking forward to this time with them.  we get back on sunday and then i leave bright and early monday morning for boston for work.  wheee!  i'll be gone for 10 or 11 days total between the two trips, with only a brief hiatus at home to do a couple loads of laundry.  wish me luck!  

oh, also, we head (momentarily) to our 24-week appointment today.  technically, i won't be 24 weeks til friday, but i didn't want to wait until i was almost 26 weeks before my next appointment, so they squeezed us in today.  i love hearing that little heartbeat and the practice we go to is so great - should be a good little check in with the niblet before my travels.  

bigger than a cantaloupe.

even though jb and i have been taking pics of my belly every week since week 9, i have not posted or shared them with anyone because, well, i am not entirely sure how i feel about all that.  i love my belly, actually, but it is sort of weird to broadcast pictures of a part of my anatomy i'm not usually keen for people to see just because it happens to be housing a cute little niblet.  anyway...mainly i am just not entirely secure about where i stand on the whole belly spectrum (one end: weekly facebook broadcasts of bare belly; other end: not a single photo taken below the neck for 9 months).  

in an attempt to put a stake in the ground, here is a poor quality iphone pic jb took of me before work this morning.  horizontal stripes are awesome (not).  me and nibs have had quite the little growth spurt over the last week or so.  23 weeks tomorrow - whoa.  i'm carrying right in the middle, leading to lots of fun high/low debates about whether it's a boy or a girl.  i'm still super comfortable and have a decent amount of energy.  i sleep well even though i wake up a lot (to pee and also because i tend to roll onto my back and then get all flipped out about it).  24 week appointment is next week, so i'm hoping everything is still looking good!  
point of clarification: i realize it's much bigger than a cantaloupe now (hence the post title).  we didn't have a watermelon on hand (though probably just another couple weeks for the ones in our garden), and i just wanted a reference fruit of some sort.  haha.  

i couldn't resist this since it's been way too long since i posted a dog pic.  we got ollie and etta a few new toys this weekend because they really only have the most pitiful piles of scraps in their basket.  this one was a huge hit.  

movie reviews

we've been to/seen quite a few movies lately.  a couple that are not on this list because they aren't super-recent: robin hood (very mediocre); how to train your dragon (awesome); and iron man 2 (could have been so much better).  sorry this is quite long...

- eclipse: i'll spare the great detail and refer to my previous post for this one.  better than the others in the series does not a great movie make.  i want to like kristen stewart a lot, but mostly she just seems sulky and kind of annoying.  2 out of 5 stars.

- gasland: my friend w. had knee surgery last week, so we brought over food on friday night and watched this movie at their house.  wow.  so much information about a topic i had never really given much thought (natural gas fracking).  obviously, this was a documentary, so the views presented were biased to the filmmaker's opinions, but i thought it was really well done.  it was also terrifying and heart-wrenching to learn about what's happening to small pockets of people across the country (short summary: the fracking poisons ground water and people are getting very sick.  they are also able to light their water on fire as it comes out of the tap).  i don't think you can unilaterally say that extracting natural gas is a bad idea (we have energy needs, there is a huge supply, etc), but the lack of accountability for major companies is startling.  this is a classic david vs. goliath story (think erin brokovitch on steroids) and it seems inevitable that david is going to lose this battle in a very profound way.  anyway...incredible flick, highly informative and engrossing.  4 out of 5 stars.

- cyrus: i think this movie could have been way better than it was.  there were some great actors in it - catherine keener (who i love), marisa tomei, john c. reily.  but none of them really did anything spectacular with the roles, and my guess is that a sub-par plot progression is to blame.  the story is about john (reily's character) meeting molly (tomei) and the wrench in their little love story when he meets her 21 year-old son, cyrus (jonah hill).  anyway, cyrus and molly have a bizarre relationship, and wacky antics ensue.  except that they don't, really.  the premise of the movie leaves a lot of opportunity for hilarity and humanity and in the end, i didn't get my fill of either.  most movies are too long, this one was over in a hurry and i think they left out some valuable character development that would have helped the authenticity a little bit....3 out of 5 stars.

- get him to the greek: it's been a few weeks for this one, but i am still on the fence about it.  i think i just don't really like jonah hill that much.  anyway...in this one, he works for a record label that is trying to get a washed up rock star to perform a show at the greek theatre.  hill is the go-to guy that becomes responsible for getting him there.  there are some hilarious and excellent moments involving p. diddy throughout the movie, and russel brand does his russel brand thing quite well, but the whole thing takes a really serious turn that just doesn't flow with the irreverence and insanity of the majority of the film.  couple that with some less-believable (and less interesting) sub-plots and i was left feeling just sort of bleh about it all.  3 out of 5 stars.

- toy story 3: despite the fact that i cannot remember the first toy story, and i never saw the second one, and this one is in 3D which makes my eyes twitch in ways i'm not really comfortable with, this movie was phenomenal.  it's always so refreshing to me when a movie has everything - character development, cohesive plot, humor, the human experience, and a little dash of nostalgia.  it's clear why pixar is so successful - we went to see this with another couple, none of us has kids, and at least 2-3 of us shed a little tear and left the theatre feeling warmer and fuzzier than we were when we got there.  4.5 out of 5 stars.

- the a-team: i am aware that movies like the a-team aren't actually good, but i like to see a fun, mindless, crazy budget, blockbuster, especially during the summer.  the trailers for the a-team looked super entertaining and funny.  and the movie was enjoyable enough - at least, i was fine sitting in the theatre for the 110 minutes or so.  unfortunately, it left not much else on the table.  i love liam neeson and bradley cooper, but neither of them blew me away (haha, puns!) in this one.  the highlight was sharlto copley, the same guy who was the lead in district 9 (probably my favorite movie of last summer).  that guy is tremendous and i hope he is in lots more movies down the road.  2.5 out of 5 stars.

- shrek 4 (i think it's 4?): again, i saw the first one forever ago, and hadn't seen one of them since, but i thought shrek was very cute.  nothing earth-shattering, and not as well done as toy story, but entertaining nonetheless.  the animation was great and the story, while predictable, was engaging.  3 out of 5 stars.

edward cullen.

first of all, here's a picture of part of the front of the baby quilt i'm making.  the lighting is terrible in this picture (i took it with the isight camera on our imac and our bedroom is kinda dark), but i think you get the idea.  it's definitely not your typical pattern choices, but it's growing on me.  this could work for a boy or a girl, right?  i've been trying so hard to balance evenly between the slightly feminine and the slightly masculine, but it's so hard and makes me feel slightly schizoid sometimes - haha!

i actually have some other fabric i need to use and i'm contemplating trying to cut and piece another one over the weekend, just so i don't forget what i'm doing.  i love holiday weekends - yay for four days off!

last night, i made jb go see eclipse, the new twilight movie, with me.  in my defense, i read all the books so i feel like i have to go see the movies.  i had very much a love/hate relationship with the books.  i couldn't stop reading them or put them down, but i thought they were really vapid and ridiculous.  like candy for my brain - no nutritional value, but i just couldn't stop eating it.  anyway...i think the movies are pretty horrendous.  the casting is really good as far as physical characteristics and all of that, but i think the acting is abysmal.  there's also the lack of decent script writing (though i will say #3 is much better than the first two in this department), the unbelievably slow timing of every scene, and the hilarity of the CG werewolves.  but, we saw it and i have to say that jb is a great sport for being willing to be coerced into going to these movies.

one quick observation: all the vampires look constipated like 80% of the time.  i don't know why that is.  i don't know if their contacts make them feel weird or if the director is offering some bizarre suggestions, but it makes me laugh hysterically at inappropriate times of the movie.  also, all of their teeth are SO white i'm worried they might be radioactive.  just a thought.

quilting.

so i have been wanting to learn how to quilt for a while now.  two of my cousins quilt (as does their mom), and i really like the idea of multiple steps coming together to form a project (but each step feels like a mini-completion in itself).  anyway...their stuff is ridiculously good and inspiring.  and i realize that i will probably not achieve their level of mastery with the craft (i'm too a.d.d. with crafts to really perfect any one), but i think i should be able to make a couple here and there.

to that end, i am taking a class and making a baby quilt (how convenient).  baby quilts are nice because they are crib size and don't require a giant wall or table to piece together.  a normal sized table will do just fine.  last night was the first class where we cut and pieced all our blocks.  next week we will back and stuff and bind and all that.  the pattern is very very simple - it's just a series of rectangles, assembled kind of like bricks.

anyway...the point of my writing about this is to discuss how insanely difficult picking fabric for a quilt is. for this one, i needed 5 fabrics - 4 on the front, 1 for the back.  i am actually pretty decent in normal life at looking at things and understanding when/how they go together - particularly colors and shapes and whatnot.  apparently this skill does not translate to quilting for me.  i couldn't find pictures of all the fabrics i ended up with, but let's just say this baby is going to have quite the colorful blanket.  the front is a multi-colored stripe pattern, two different polka dot patterns (pictured), and this really cute pattern that has elephants and camels and pyramids on it.  the back is the couch pattern pictured below which is COMPLETELY random, but i love it.

so, the front is done.  i'll post a picture of it once i get home.  i can't decide if it's awful or if i'm totally in love with it, but either way it will be cozy and warm for our little winter baby.

edit: i remembered i had a scrap of the camel print in my car, so here it is too!

this one gives you the idea - the dots are actually the same size as the one below.  

fabric #2 - the dots pull out colors from the stripes and the other pattern (or at least, that was the goal)

the backing.  super random for a baby, but how awesome are these couches?