Wanna know my secret...?

Ok, so I can't keep a secret. Many of you already know my secret because... well, I can't keep a secret. I'll give you a hint. I told Caleb my secret thinking he wouldn't tell anyone and we get home from the gym one day and he says to me "Don't worry I didn't tell anyone our secret. I just told them I had a secret and I can't tell until it gets bigger."

Yep! We got a puppy! Just kidding. I'm pregnant! I'm only 10 weeks now, so it is a little earlier than most people start telling but, as I said before, I can't keep a secret. I am due September 29th. I am feeling great right now. I had a couple weeks of semi sickness. Just feeling yucky and gross. Nothing too bad though. I am blowing up like a balloon though! I've only gained 3 pounds but I feel like the biggest whale. I'm so stinkin bloated and puffy. With my last two, I didn't notice any body changes until the second trimester so this is yucky and new to me. When I was pregnant with Caleb I remember walking around Motherhood at 24 weeks thinking "When will ever be able to wear maternity clothes?!" And I didn't wear them much. Just at the end. Brynley's was a normal pregnancy. Maybe this will be a fat pregnancy. And if we ever do this again, maybe the next will be an obese pregnancy. Who knows. But i'm not liking this trend.

Anyway, enough complaining. Here are some things I wrote in a journal when I found out since I wasn't posting on here about it yet:

4 weeks: Found out I am pregnant today! Two days ago, Saturday, I took a pregnancy test (3 days before expected period). I gave it a couple of minutes and it was negative so I threw it away. That night I pulled it out of the trash and it was positive. The trick is, though, that the line has to have appeared within 10 minutes for it to be accurate and I don’t know when it appeared. So I took another one Sunday and Monday mornings and got very faint positives. I know that any line is considered a positive but it still made me nervous. So I went to the dr today, Tuesday, and they verified! They said the lines have been faint just b/c I’ve been testing early. We’re really excited! I am actually kind of surprised b/c I don’t feel anything at all. Last month, the first month we started trying, I could at least imagine symptoms but this month I couldn’t find any symptoms at all! But, we’re excited to be having our third!

7 weeks: I am feeling really yucky lately. I feel weird all the time. Not throw up sick, just uncomfortable. Maybe a little car sick all the time. Nothing sounds good to eat. And the things that do sound good aren’t really that healthy so when I eat them I feel even yuckier. I’ve only gained a pound so far but I feel enormous. My jeans are just a bit too snug for comfort but I refuse to rubber band them this early, so I’m chillin in sweats most of the time. I do have a couple pair of “fat” jeans that I have been wearing when I leave the house. I went to wear my black shade dress to church today and it was not cute. I looked sorta skinny through my waist but then I had a big old poochy belly. Seriously. I’m not even exaggerating. I just can’t believe I can already see it this early! Sorry, to go on and on… I’m kind of having a hard time with this. I think if I were farther along it wouldn’t bother me so much. But I really want to document my feelings because IF and that’s a big IF we decide to do this again, I want to remember how I felt. Anyway, I have been tired but nothing unmanageable. I am not napping during the day b/c then I have a hard time falling asleep at night. If I don’t nap I can fall asleep immediately and that’s such a nice feeling. Workouts are still going. Still lifting as normal. My cardio’s suffering a little. I’ve cut the intensity back of course, but I can’t jog very fast or do quick movements in spin b/c it makes me feel like I’m going to barf. Anyway, that’s about it. I’ll check back in soon.

10 Weeks: My yuckiness is gone and I'm back to eating my yummy healthy foods. I'm feeling so much better. Still feeling fat but I suppose that's to be expected. My workouts are great. I had to cut my cardio time down to about 20 min a session b/c too much more makes me feel lightheaded. But I'm running again without feeling sick. I've probobly only got another month or two left before I can't do that anymore. Still lifting as normal and feeling great. And it's warm here. So life is much better than a few weeks ago!

Not much going on...

Well, we don't have much going on around here lately. That's why you haven't heard from me much. Brynley did use the potty for the very first time. She said she wanted to watch Dora and I said no Dora until she pees in the potty. So, we sat. And we sat and sat and sat for 45 minutes until she went. She hasn't since and still has no desire. I think it scared her more than anything. When she started actually going she got this freaked out look on her face but then after she realized Caleb and I were cheering for her she got excited. But she still has NO desire to get back on that sucker.

I've got a funny Wal Mart story for you. We were in line at Wal Mart and this total cowboy in a wheelchair gets into line behind us. I'm talking full on tight jeans, boots, cowboy hat, big belt buckle, the works. Caleb says, a little too loudly, "Mom, there's a farmer behind us!" To top it all off Brynley starts chanting in a sing-song like way, "Farmer, Farmer, Farmer." Ugh, talk about embarassing!

See, we really are boring if that's all I have to post in the last week. Sorry. Here are a couple of pictures of the kids in the snow and me with my newly lightened hair.

Outrigger Races

My flight tonight doesn't leave until about 8pm but I had to check out of my room at 10am. The front desk kindly let me get a late checkout at 10:30. Lovely...

I didn't know what I was going to do to waste time. I didn't feel like going to the beach to swim or lay out or do much because I don't want to get all stinky and sweaty before a 13 hr flight. So I walked down by the beach to sit and read and there were people everywhere. Turns out there was an outrigger race scheduled this morning and it was scheduled to start in about 45 min.

It was really cool, there were about 30 teams in the race and there was a helicopter either doing video coverage or as race officials.
There was a group playing Polynesian drums and playing Māori songs. It was a good way to end a trip to New Zealand.
Let the race begin!
Now that its about 12:45, I only have about 7 more hours to kill...

Plastic Money

In New Zealand, they recycle their plastic bags and make money out of the recycled plastic. Ok, so I'm pretty sure that's not true, but I do know that their money (at least the notes) really is made out of plastic and I guess it was in Australia too. It feels kind of weird but I guess there are quite a few countries doing this now and Australia was the first to go all plastic about 10 years ago. Australia developed the technology and plastic is much harder to counterfeit than paper. I was tempted to try and stretch it to see if it stretches like regular soft plastic, but I was worried I'd ruin a bill.

Here's a picture. Notice the see through plastic windows with a hologram in them

Kia ora from Aotearoa - Greetings from Middle Earth

So it turns out that New Zealand is a wonderful place, just as I had suspected it would be. It would be even more wonderful if Lindsey was here to spend time with. I'm tired of having only myself to talk to although I've surprised myself a few times with my own responses...

Here are a few pictures of the hotel.

I got here Sunday evening at around 7:30pm and I couldn't believe how green and almost tropical it was. As soon as I got checked in I walked down to the beach as it was getting dark to see what it was like.

Here's a picture of the beach from up by the hotel.
I didn't have to work Monday so I basically just spent the day at the beach relaxing. It was about 75-80 and really humid so it was pretty good beach weather. The water temperature is probably about 70 degrees so it's not super warm but just warm enough to get in for a while to cool off.

All day long Monday there were lots of people at the beach swimming, boating, picnicking, etc.
The sand near the water was really compacted but soft but there was some softer drier sand near the retaining wall where you could actually lay out.

It turns out that jogging on the beach into the wind is really really difficult. It was like running uphill.

My hotel room is pretty nice. It doesn't have a/c which is ok, but I wish it at least had celiling fans. It does cool off enough at night that you don't need either and you really don't need either that much during the day anyway because it's so shaded.
Here are a few pictures.
Outside patio sitting area
Garden and pool are right outside the window
I think I could live in New Zealand if I could learn how to drive on the left side of the road. Even walking across roads is weird because I forget that here, you should look right for traffic first and then left. I've almost gotten myself run over from looking the wrong direction and not realizing a car is coming right at me in the opposite direction. Dumb American.

I come from a land down unda

For anyone that doesn't know, I've been in Australiar, in Melbourne to be specific, for the past week (yes I know I spelled Australia with an 'r' at the end, you're supposed to read it that way). I left Australia today and flew to Auckland, New Zealand and let me just say that I fell in love with New Zealand after being here for about 1/2 hr.

But back to Australia and getting to Australia. I was there for work, so this isn't some exotic dream vacation I'm on even though it sounds like it is. I'm going to give you a lengthy travelogue now, so buckle up. Or hit Alt+F4 on your keyboard now...

My first flight left SLC at about 9:15am Friday the 1st. It was 45 min late because we had to be de-iced. From SLC I flew to Dallas (about a 3hr flight). Then I waited about 4 hours and flew to LAX (another 3hr flight). Then I waited about 6 hours and flew to Melbourne (supposed to be 15hrs but was closer to 16 due to weather). I got into Melbourne at around 10:30am Sunday the 3rd. Now that's a long day right there. My body subsequently hated me the rest of Sunday until I let it get some quality Tylenol PM aided sleep.

The first thing I noticed when I was on my way to my hotel about Australia, is all the Australian looking trees. They were the stereotypical trees that you see on TV when you see Australia and they were all over. I think they're Eucalyptus trees but I could be wrong.

I got to my hotel Sunday which was right in the heart of downtown Melbourne and the room was on the 9th floor with a balcony looking right across at an office building and an alleyway down below. I'm sure some office workers got an eye full when I'd forget to pull the shades down and change.

Here are a few pictures of my room. It was a really modern studio apt. The only weird thing about it really is that there were these weird airy, vailish looking drapes that were pulled around the bed when I got there.

Here's without the drapes. The frosted door is the bathroom.














And here's with the lovely drapes pulled.

A couple other pics.

The hotel had a pretty decent gym actually that I used a few times. I wanted to make Lindsey proud.

I had to sit there with my phone before starting an exercise and convert kg to lbs because multiplying numbers by 2.2 is hard when all you want to do is just move heavy weights around.






On Sunday I just went out and walked around the city. Sunday afternoon is a dead time in Melbourne so there wasn't much to see, but here's a few pictures I took.

I just thought this Welsh church was a cool little church.

This is the state library.

Bell tower top of a building in the main town center area of Melbourne.

This drawing of a beautiful young lady is a sample of some of the cool graffiti art in some of the alleyways near the towncenter.

I worked with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology - Publishing Group while I was in Melbourne and the people there were all really nice to me. I'm always worried if I go to another country that they'll hate me simply because I'm American, but they seemed to like me despite that. The lady that I worked with the most, Judith, is actually Scottish. She hadn't ever seen So I Married an Axe Murderer, so I challenged her to watch it. I don't care if the Scottish parts of the movie are completely culturally inaccurate, it's some funny stuff.

Judith was nice enough to take an evening and go out to eat with me and one of her co-workers. We walked up to this street called Lygon St which is basically the Little Italy of Melbourne. The street is a row of mostly Italian shops and probably at least 25 restaurants. They all have seating inside but most people chose to eat outside on the sidewalk when the weather's good. It's a really cool atmosphere. We ate at this place called Dimattinas and I had Fettuccine Pollo with avocado. It was very tasty.

Here's some pictures I stole of Lygon St. and Dimattinas.

On Friday night, Judith invited me over to her house for a proper Aussie barbecue. Her husband Niel is Australian and male obviously, so naturally, he did the grilling and no, we didn't eat kangaroo. The steak was really good, and perfectly done. We even had a good Aussie thundershower roll through after our dinner.

On Saturday, I did my tourist stuff and went around the city on the free tourist trams and buses.
I got to go up to the 88th floor observation deck of the Eureka Tower and see the view. The 88th floor is 285m or 935ft. The elevator to get to the 88th floor is a high speed elevator and gets you up there in less than a minute. I think it came out to roughly 20mph which in an elevator, is blazing fast. I had to swallow hard every 10 seconds to keep my ears from exploding.

They have this little glass cube that's about 9ft by 6ft or so that they call the Edge. You can pay to get into the cube and it starts out inside the building with frosted glass. It shakes a little and makes creaky noises and moves out of the building and then suddenly the frosted glass turns clear and you're in a glass box 900ft up. its pretty weird to be able to look down and see nothing for 900 ft. The effect is even better if you lie face down on your stomach.


They wouldn't let you take pictures inside it because they didn't want people to drop cameras and scratch the glass. Oh, and that also allows them to take your picture and charge you a gazillion dollars for it.
Then I made a long 5k (3.2mile) walk down toward the beach. It was overcast by the time I set out and by the time I got to the beach, there was a misty rain and it was really windy out on the pier I went out on.

Here's a picture I took of people playing what I think was bocce ball, but who knows. Don't they look all official and uppity?

Me taking a picture of myself with my phone in the rain and wind.

I hate asking people to take pictures of just me so some of these I just set the camera on a wooden post and used the timer.

This is the restaurant building at the end of the pier. The original actually burned down in 2002 so they rebuild it exactly to spec.

Kind of a cool picture of the beach and a lighthouse.

I was walking to get a taxi after the beach and I thought this was weird how they stacked the boats so I took a picture.

On Saturday evening I went out again to walk around and get some souvenirs for the kids. I got a boomerang and a kangaroo and koala hand puppet. I also stopped and got myself some tasty gelato. Traveling can be cool but its not nearly as fun when you're alone. I just got to Auckland this evening and it looks like a really cool place. I walked down on the beach in my bare feet right after sunset and there were people in the water still, and out and about. It was cool. I don't work until Tuesday so I'll take tomorrow to spend some time taking pictures and enjoying the area.

Here's one last picture from Melbourne. This is Flinders St Station.

I Passed!

I passed my test! I'm officially an NSCA certified Personal Trainer! I'm so excited and I want to go celebrate... but Brandon's gone until Feb. 18. Sad. I'll have to just be excited by myself. Anyway, my prices have gone up and are as follows:

Month to month: $50/month (no contract)
3 month contract: $45/month (Prepaid contract - $135)
6 month contract: $40/month (prepaid contract - $240)

Please pass along the word to anyone you think may be interested! To see what I offer check my training blog up in the corner. I will be updating that blog weekly so check often!