Be it ever so humble...There's no place like home

Well, we're back...and I see that Emma and Casey didn't manage to get out of the back yard. Of course it's probably due to Jimmy and Jere's regular feeding schedule. Now that we're back I actually feel sorry for the dogs. Makes me wonder how well we'll do taking care of a baby. Of course when I say we I really mean Carmen. After all, she's to blame for being in the family way.

We picked Max up from the spa...I mean, Betty and Judy's. He's in for a big shock too. He has to go back to being a dog.

We sure miss Brandon and Stephanie. Spending time with them was probably the best part of the whole trip. That week went way too fast.

On the baby front, Carmen still isn't showing; however, she's still losing weight. (As for me, I went hiking, swimming, climbing, and starving a couple of days on the way home and I lost a total of ONE WHOLE POUND from before we left on our trip. Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrggg!!!)

My before and after photo...sigh.

We tried Brandon and Stephanie's Doppler baby heart detector, but we never heard a sound--not even the placenta. Brandon on the other hand is a regular OBGYN with the thing. He found the twins in 5 seconds flat. It was really cool to hear those little babies in there puttering away. Poor Stephanie though. I'm convinced that she'll have her hands full when they come, seeing as they will appear right in the middle of the NFL playoffs.

Our baby's first onesie.

All of us are still waiting to know the sex. Brandon and Stephanie plan to paint their room according to the gender. That's so sweet. On the other hand, we plan to teach our child how to appreciate things the way they are...it's a good life lesson for the child and it saves money and back muscles in the long run.

We do plan to change the arrangement of the back two bedrooms, though. Seeing as Carmen hasn't approved of any of my ideas for letting the child sleep on the floor or in a clothes hamper, I guess we're going to have to buy some furniture for our bundle o' joy. This means that the "guest" bedroom will probably become the baby haven. If this happens, all future guests will have to sleep on air mattresses in the living room. Seeing as we have guests infrequently, this will not be too much of a problem. I just hope that she doesn't plan to get rid of the the TV in there. The baby and I will still need a place to play video games on the X-Box. (I still think we should always refer to the child's room as a "guest" bedroom. I don't want the kid(s) getting too comfortable around here, you know.)

But all of that can be decided later...but not too much later...I'm not moving all of that heavy stuff on my own and I don't want Carmen complaining about being too pregnant. After all, marriage is still a two-way street--with no HOV lane. And besides, I'm just too lazy.

Ahhh....home!

We made it to West Memphis about 10:30 pm Monday night. We drove all the way from Mitchell, SD. Currently, we are recuperating!

More later...

Well...we are all packed and ready to go. As usual, it is late because I am a procrastinator! Of course, I'll just sleep and make Jason do all the driving. It is the least he can do since it is his fault I'm in this "delicate" condition. And this will be my revenge for all the pukey times :)


Here's the run-down of where we are staying each night:

• Monday, July 9 - Oak Grove, MO KOA. This is outside of Kansas City.



• Tuesday, July 10 - Mitchell, SD KOA. Of course, we will have to stop by the Corn Palace to see the new sights.



• Wednesday, July 11 - Interior, SD KOA in the Badlands



• Thursday, July 12 - Interior, SD KOA in the Badlands



• Friday, July 13 - Billings, MT KOA. We will pick Brandon and Stephanie up at the airport late Friday night. They are staying at the C'mon Inn in Billings.



• Saturday, July 14 - Friday, July 20 - Emigrant, MT. The house we are staying in is somewhere around this area. Click here for the link to the house.



• Saturday, July 21 - Hardin, MT KOA. We will stay here after we drop Brandon and Stephanie off at the airport. We plan to see Little Big Horn.

The rest of this is just speculation. We decided not to book reservations for this part of the trip.

• Sunday, July 22 - Midland, SD KOA. This is near Belvidere, SD.



• Monday, July 23 - Rockport, MO KOA. We stayed here the first night of our previous trip to South Dakota.



• Tuesday, July 24 - Eureka, MO KOA. This is outside of St. Louis. We plan to see the Arch.



• Wednesday, July 25 - CAMP CARR in West Memphis, AR

Gettin' my blog on...

It's hard to believe that this is finally happening. I thought that the greatest day of my life so far was when Carmen and I got married...now it's the second greatest—Carmen has finally gotten around to putting a baby on me.

So far it hasn't been too bad living with a pregnant chick. Although she's been quite sick, I've been doing fine...I just have to turn the tv volume up a little when she gets to puking, but I guess I can live through a minor inconvenience like that. After all, one of us has to be strong so it might as well be me.








Other than that, we're just getting ready to go on our journey to the great white north. I can't wait to see Yellowstone and to spend time with my favorite brother and sister in law. I want to see a bear, a wolf, a caribou, and a geyser. Oh, and a mountain—a real, freakin' mountain. We watched a special on the Travel Channel about Yellowstone, so we're feelin' prepared. I just hope Carmen can re-accomodate herself to the pleasures of tent camping. For that matter, so do I. Having an RV really makes one forget how "fun" tent camping can be; however, with gas prices so high, only princes and Republicans working for Halliburton can afford to travel in such style.

5th u/s

The nurse that took my weight said, "Have you been sick because you've lost alot of weight?" I said, "Yeah, a little." And Jason piped up and said, "Uh...she has been sick alot!" Dr. DeRossitt wasn't in today; he is on a 3 week hike up some mountain. So, we got to see the APN. She tried to listen to the heartbeat with a fetal doppler machine, but we couldn't hear anything. I told her that I had been sick alot, and she said that she would prescribe some Phenergan for the nausea. Also, she gave me some different prenatal vitamins to try since the other ones made me even more sick.

She started out by doing an abdominal u/s. We could see the heartbeat and some movement. Here are two of the images from that u/s.

In this one, the baby is looking at you.
The dark spot is an eye.

Since the quality of the images from the abdominal u/s was not too great, she asked if we wanted to do a vaginal u/s. Uhh...duh...YES! Here are some images from that one. I don't think the quality is much better. Now you can just see a larger fuzzy spot.

The hands are clasped up next to the face,
and those 2 white blobs are the elbows.

She tried several more angles to see if she could determine the sex, but she said it was really too early. So maybe next time we'll find that out. Oh yeah...we asked again about traveling. She said it would be fine. She even said that we could go white water rafting. WooHoooo!!!

My next appointment is on August 2 which is the week before we return to our yearly torture...I mean work.