Cebu

As promised, here is my farewell ode to my brother who is now in the MTC preparing to serve in the Cebu, Phillipines Mission. We are five years apart in age, but we have always been close. I think we are the closest of all of my siblings and I will truly miss his sarcasm and quick wit. I think his leaving was harder on me than I expected because I was living at home and had grown accustomed to coming home from work to watch Psych and eat Chinese take out with the stud.

Well, now he is gone and by the time he returns I will have an 18 month old child and will be living 2,000 miles away from my family. Changes, changes, changes.

Here is Nik at, I think, the height of his coolness.

Here he is saying his last goodbyes. He was ready to go and get away from the emotional women in the family.

Cebu later, Elder Abbott!! We love you!

Where are we going?

That's right, folks, we now know where we will be living for the foreseeable future.

I bet you are just dying to know, aren't you?

Well, let me give you some hints:

Well, if the last two pictures were not dead giveaways--the next one is:

Long Island, New York!!

We are very excited and nervous. We won't be living in the city, but just minutes away most likely.

 (Come visit...hint, hint).

 Don't worry though, we won't be moving for a few months, so there is still plenty of time to shower me with love and attention.

Practice

This weekend we celebrated the birthdays of both of my brothers. For Nik, this represents his last birthday at home before entering the MTC tomorrow--tune back in tomorrow for an emotional post about him leaving me for two years.

As part of our celebration, we had almost the whole family in town for the weekend. This included (and really, featured) my brother, his wife, and their two adorable children. This is their newest addition which I had never previously met. He provided me with hours of entertainment and practice for my future life calling. This picture is literally worth a thousand words. I think it is safe to say he loved me...or more accurately,we loved each other.

He is so cute, it makes my uterus hurt.

Vegas

We took a very last minute trip to Vegas last weekend. I mean no toothbrush, washing my underwear out in the sink last minute. Chris had a layover on his way home from Georgia so he called me on Friday morning when I was already at work and asked if I would like to spend a romantic weekend away in Sin City. I obliged.

I only managed to take one picture while we were there, so ta da:  Chris sitting enjoying the fountains of Ceaser's Palace.

Although we have no photo documentation, we did a lot of the following things:

Hung out here and caught some rays:

Shopped our little hearts out here:

(I had no clothes because it was so spur of the moment that this worked perfectly to my advantage.)

Ate here:

(Chris refuses to get excited about pretty much any mainstream eating establishment since his life consists of finding the best local/fancy joint to try on the road...I, however, will never tire of a great piece of cheesecake.)

Inhaled way too much of this:

(Pray for the health of my baby.)

And walked and walked and walked the strip.

At the end of the weekend, I told Chris that I could safely say that if I never came back to Vegas again, I would be fine. No offense to anyone from there, I am mostly referring to the strip. It was fun, but I am very excited to relax at home this weekend.

In case you have a job like mine...

Where you have some down time, here is a link to the blog/journal I kept during the first trimester of my pregnancy. It is short and not too exciting, being as I felt pretty much normal the entire time.

Don't feel obligated to read it, but if you want to here it is:

Pregnancy Blog

You know you're fat when...

...you rub your eye in the middle of a meeting and find crusted peanut butter from breakfast...two hours earlier. A) How hungry was I that I was literally diving into my toast eyeball first? B) How hurriedly was I shoving he food down my throat that I didn't even notice that I had food smeared all over my face until several hours later?

In other news, in the past two or three days I have officially entered the "chubby" phase where I simply look like I have been stuffing myself with peanut butter laden delicacies all day...wait a second...

The Half

On Saturday I ran my first half-marathon. I still am not sure what I was thinking. I felt really good until about mile 10 and then I was pretty much over it. I had no real goals except survival so when I saw Chris at the end and crossed the finish line at 2:22:01 I almost cried tears of sheer joy.

Before the race.

Here is my "action shot" at the end.

After....notice the copious amounts of sweat. Chris hugged me at the end and immediately said "Oh, you're pretty nasty."

The whole gang. So happy to be done.

Oh, and did I mention that I'm 12 weeks pregnant?

Remember this girl?

The one who used to be ridiculously and gloriously tan in the summer? Some might even say too tan? Yeah, not going to lie, I kind of miss her. She now sits in an office all day pretending to work and rarely gets the sun exposure she really needs.

Someday I will use my children as an excuse to go to the pool everyday and return to this grandeur.

Redaction

After four days of pizza, Chris felt like this:

So, he is handing the pizza-eating title back over to my father and bowing out gracefully.

Eleven

This weekend, Chris was really craving pizza on Saturday night (nothing out of the ordinary). He knew that we were going to be having pizza on Sunday night for dinner. What is a boy to do? In the midst of this dilemma, my dad told him that in his heyday he had once eaten pizza for ten days straight.

Of course this inspired Chris and he is now committed to breaking this record by eating pizza for eleven days straight. Today is day three.

Luckily, he will be in California all week, so I will not have to partake for eleven days straight as well.