Angela's Birthday

Jeff here.
Luckily Angela's birthday falls during my summer vacation, so I could do some fun things for her.  Unfortunately, she's on bed rest, so the fun activities could not involve movement. This limited my options substantially.
A Special Breakfast
Everyone knows that once you've had a Krispy Kreme doughnut, all other doughnuts just can't compare.  They are light and fluffy and wonderful.  Angela and I were astonished to find that there are no Krispy Kreme doughnut shops in the Houston area!  And the "amazing" doughnuts here just aren't very good.  I mean they give us free Shipley's doughnuts before our medical school tests, and most of the time I don't even take one because they just aren't that great.  It's sad when a doughnut doesn't tempt you.

A few months ago, Angela's co-worker Jill, brought her a Starbuck's old fashion doughnut, and she loved it.  After months of doughnut famine, we found a suitable substitute.  So first thing in the morning I snuck out and bought Angela Starbuck's old fashion Doughnuts.  I bet I'm the only person that has gone into Starbucks to buy doughnuts and not a coffee.

I thought it was a pretty good surprise, but she thought it was a super-amazing-spectacular-surprise.  She raved about them for the rest of the day, so I guess I learned the easiest way to a pregnant woman's heart is through her stomach.  Luckily, I had also gotten her some strawberry ice cream she had been craving since her hospital visit.  These two relatively cheap presents overshadowed many of the more expensive presents I got her. Go figure.

I was barred from photographing breakfast because of the "bed head"

A Nice Dinner
When Angela and I first started dating we did a double date with Justin and Ali (my brother and his wife).  Before the double date started (The double date ended with me crashing a go cart) I decided to cook Angela a Peruvian meal I had learned to make on my mission. Angela was VERY worried that it would taste like feet, especially since I had told her the ingredients were rice, steak, and eggs...  But actually she ended up loving it, and she still requests that I make it on special occasions.  Again, go figure.
Anyway, we had a somewhat fancy Peruvian meal, and drank Juicy Juice, Sparkling Apple juice with it. (This is our new favorite substitute for Martinellis)

Friends and Surprises

While we were eating we got a surprise visit from our friends Teddy and Sarah.  It totally surprised us because you usually have to call to get into our apartment complex, but Teddy and Sarah surreptitiously followed someone through the gate.

Sarah made special rice crispy treats.  The picture really doesn't do them justice.  They were the most incredible rice crispy treats I have ever had.

Hamaker's Make Everything into Competitions

Most of the presents Angela got, she picked out herself.  So to make the evening more interesting, Angela had to figure out clues about each present.  She was far too clever, and I was only able to stump her on a few.

Here she is trying to figure out her clues.

I did get her a couple of surprises, including 2 seasons of Project Runway, Season 5 and Season 6.  Since she's stuck on bed rest, I think these were her favorite presents.

I didn't finish her birthday cake until the day after her birthday.  I made her favorite cake, angel food cake covered with chocolate cream cheese frosting.  Unfortunately the angel food cake pan had a bunch of issues and the bottom pieces fused together so I had major issue pulling the angel food cake out of the pan.  I still think it turned out pretty well

Happy Birthday to my wonderful wife, she is one year older and wiser too!

Ah! BYU

We just saw this commercial made by some BYU students that is a spoof on these Old Spice commercials. They are very funny, and if anyone spent as much time in the BYU library as me and Angela, the spoof will bring back many fond memories.

For those who didn't go to BYU the commercials are still really funny.

Here's the original Old Spice commercial:

Tropical Storms

It's hurricane season here in Texas. Luckily, Hurricane Alex swept by south of us bringing us only rain. Lots and lots of rain.

Last year we never had any large storms, so this was a first for me. When the rain started slowing down, I looked out our front window and saw several inches of water on the sidewalk. I became a little worried, If I opened the front door would water come inside?  

Of course I had to know, so I opened the door. I imagined a pool of water rushing into the living room, but I was wrong (thank goodness!). The sidewalk banks up in front of our door. Phew.

Once the rain stopped, the water drained fairly quickly so the flooding did not last long.

On a completely different note, bed-rest is going well. I doubled my subscriptions on googlereader and that has helped the boredom. I have been watching a lot of TV shows on Hulu and Netflix (Sarah- I am now caught up on the Bachelorette!). I hate the feeling at the end of the day as I look back on my productivity and see that I have accomplished nothing that day... well except grow a baby. That counts as something right?

Last Saturday I broke my bed-rest restrictions because Jeff and I had tickets to Wicked! There was no way I was going to miss that! To be honest, I was terrified I was making a big mistake. I took it really easy, riding all the elevators possible. The show was INCREDIBLE and totally worth it!

Fourth of July Festivities

Our Fourth of July weekend started off with big plans, we were going to paint a shelf for the baby's room, hang some curtains, clean the house, then head up to Kingwood on Sunday to enjoy fireworks. 

Here we are are in our paint clothes getting ready to paint

I wasn't feeling my best on Saturday because Jeff and I had done lots of shopping earlier that week (shopping seems to be a big trigger for contractions) so I tried to take it easy. About 6 pm that night my contractions were really painful and my medicine was not kicking in... then I started bleeding. So we called the doctor and he told us to go to the hospital immediately. I figured we would go in, they would check to make sure the baby was okay, tell me the severe pain was caused by kidney stones, that I need to drink more water, and suck it up then send me home. This should take 2 hours? 3 hours if they are really slow, right?

We drive to the hospital and they have a room ready for me. The nurse starts collecting blood and other samples to run tests on. Then they begin administering injections into my shoulders that make me vomit but stop the contractions. At this point it is decided that I'm not going into labor (I'm still in a lot of pain) and I am transfered to another room. At this point the nurses and doctor start saying things like we will give you another dose of this in 12 hours. Perhaps due to the pain I don't put two and two together and still expect to sleep in my own bed that night. Then an IV is stuck in my arm, and I'm offered sleeping meds. "Oh I guess I'm sleeping here tonight" passes through my mind. I am grateful that I now wear contacts that can be slept in, and don't worry that I don't have a toothbrush. Then I throw up the sleeping meds. That was probably the lowest point of the whole evening. I was in so much pain and the sweet relief of sleep starred back at me in the pink puke bucket held in my hands. I asked the nurse if I get more sleep meds and I am told no -because there is no way to know how much I absorbed. Those pills had been in my stomach less than 2 minutes and I could see both pills in my pink bucket still looking like pills. I seriously considered re-consuming the contents of my pink bucket -I was that desperate for sleep.

I sleep lightly for an hour here and there throughout the night in-between nurses giving me drugs and poking and prodding me. About 5 in the morning I start expecting to be discharged soon since the pain has finally lessened.  I have monitors attached all over my abdomen, one of which is showing that I'm still contracting. I'm given more meds to swallow and more shots in my arm. This time at least they gave me an anti-nausea pill with the injection. Then my doctor shows up saying things like I'm going to be given steroid injections (in my hip- OW!) to help the baby's lung development in case she is born soon, and I am given consent forms for delivery and emergency c-sections protocols. He also mentions I might be in the hospital until the baby is born. CRAP! It was this moment when it finally hit me that this was more serious than I thought.

With the suggestion that we might be in the hospital for weeks, Jeff drives home to change clothes and pick up items like toothbrushes, deodorant, and fuzzy slippers. We spend the day sleeping and asking the CNAs for ice packs. (Magnesium was being administered through my IV and burning pain is a common side effect, ice packs offered some relief). We also spoke to the Neonatologist about what to expect if our baby is born early. At that point, I am 31 weeks along and my baby is 3 1/2 lbs.  I am told our goal is to keep the baby in until 34 weeks at least.

That night my monitors show that things are finally starting to stabilize. I'm taking a lot of pills every few hours, and I'm measuring my urine output which is a popsicle orange color -a side effect from one of the many drugs I'm on. Yes, very fun. With my stabilizing condition, my doctor is more optimistic that the baby is going to be staying inside me for a while longer. He says I may be able to go home Monday. That night Jeff watched the fireworks intermittently from the window of our hospital room. He took a few pictures on his cell phone that he showed me, since I couldn't see them from my view on the bed.

Monday afternoon comes and things are still good. So I finally get discharged. I am sent home with loads of medicines. Some of which I have to take every four hours until the baby is born. I am on full bed rest. I am allowed to get up to use the bathroom and to shower, other than that I have to restrict my activities. For those who know me, this is going to be REALLY HARD.

After the hospital we went straight up to Kingwood so Jeff's parents could help take care of us. We were both so exhausted. Here is my delicious post-Fourth of July meal.

Jeff has been so wonderful throughout the entire time. He held back my hair as I threw up the contents of my stomach many times, he massaged my feet, he slept on a crappy couch each night, and now that we are home he is taking great care of me running around doing all the errands himself, cooking, cleaning, everything! He gets one month of summer vacation and this is how he gets to spend it, and he hasn't complained once. 

I received a lot of nice phone calls and text messages from friends and family while we were in the hospital. Thank you everyone for your thoughts and prayers.

I'm sure that after all this ordeal, the baby is not coming early, and in fact, will come a week late. Do I have any takers?

Learning Photoshop

After leaving my job, I decided I wanted to pick up some new hobbies to keep me busy. I thought it would be great to be able to take better pictures of our baby when she arrives. So I bought a new camera (more on that later) and I signed up for an online class to teach me how to use photoshop better. 2 years ago I tried to learn photoshop by buying a "Photoshop for Dummies" book, but what I didn't realize about Dummies books is that they are written BY dummies. Seriously, it's a terrible book and just made me frustrated. Anyways, this online class was great and I had a lot of fun learning the basics of photo editing.

Here are some before and after shots that I did for my class that I wanted to share.

Before

After

Before

After (look at Bryce Canyon and the sky, no changes to the people)

Before

After (I LOVE this one! I just wish my eyes were open more)

This is the before, all three below are the afters

Before

After. I love the juxtaposition of the satelite dish in this picture! I don't know what's wrong with the sky though. Doesn't it look odd? I'm still practicing manipulating the colors.