Turkey Update

Baby Larson (Turkey) continues to be growing- or a least the clothes are not fitting nearly as well. We had our 16 week appointment and the heartbeat was strong and things looked good! The Doctor said Kara’s energy would come back sometime between now and week 28- it is a little better, but we are still waiting until Kara can stay up until 10pm for multiple nights in a row!

The baby room is slowly coming around (or at least the process is started). We are once again going through the house and compiling bins for Goodwill. It is so nice to not have to study, and be able to organize things again! The goal is to have the nursery put together by the end of summer if possible. We will see how the dogs enjoy their new living quarter’s downstairs- although we are putting that off until later August.

That is about it on the baby front. Just taking it one day at a time and enjoying being able to feel decent for the majority of the day!

Dam to Dam

Congratulations to Nick and Megan for participating- and finishing- the Dam to Dam 20K race this past Saturday! When it gets too cold outside to bike what do you do? Nick runs, and so the Dam to Dam training begun. With the help of his running partner Megan he made it to May with his training (although biking took over running for Nick during the end of April and May). Although they split from each other around mile 4.5 or so, Megan and Nick ended up finishing a second apart (without knowing the other one was cross the line at the same time).

Megan’s time: 2 hours, 2 minutes and 17 seconds
Nick’s time: 2 hours, 2 minutes and 16 seconds

WAY TO GO NICK AND MEGAN! And congrats to all of our other friends participating in the race!

Megan giving the thumbs up between mile 3 and 4. She must be having fun. You can see Nick's head above the other runners- his height was nice when trying to locate them amoung the thousands of people!

Nick around the half way point. By this time Megan and him had split from each other.








Megan and Mike after the race! Good job Megan and way to be a great spectator Mike.

Less that 2 weeks left!

Until freedom begins, and we can start to focus on the little one more. Yup, the official (and one with a light at the end of the tunnel) countdown has begun. June 6th (exam day) cannot get here fast enough! I am hoping that there will be more frequent updates after that point (when I am not spending hours and hours studying). Until then...

Kara

Where to start... where to start...

I am very behind on this blogging thing- I think I was doing pretty good in the beginning, but looking back on my lack of posts I realizes that is over. So here is a recap- and a BIG ONE if I do say so myself.

(In event order- not necessarily importance order)

I ventured out of the country to Canada last week for a study seminar at the University of Windsor (just north of Detroit). It was a lot of information in a short amount of time, but was very informative and I hope will help come test time next month.

On Sunday Nick and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary! It is hard to believe that this time last year we were lying on the beach in Antigua enjoying our fruity Honeymoon drinks. We both wish we could go back... maybe someday. Back to present day. Saturday we had an early dinner celebration and went out to dinner at Lucca in the East Village. We had never been there, and were pretty impressed. Sunday, the actual anniversary day was low key. Nick made dinner and we celebrated by having some of our ‘wedding cake’. The neat thing is the place where we got our cake makes you a replica of your top tier to eat on you anniversary- so it was fresh and tasted great! We also celebrated Mother’s Day… by ourselves!

Yup, the BIG PART (or small if you think about it size wise)… Baby Larson is due to arrive around November 24th! We had our 12 week check-up and ultrasound on Monday and everything looks great. The Turkey (my name for the kid since he/she is due to arrive 2 days before Thanksgiving) was sitting up during the ultrasound so of course Nick thinks Turkey was in his/her bike riding position- and I must admit that Turkey’s position did look like that. We are very excited to be adding to the family, and finally able to tell everyone our fun news. More baby info to come in the future…

From brewers to wine-makers!

After many, many kits of home-brews we have decided to expand our operations to wine-making. Truthfully, Nick got me the equipment to start our wine-making for my birthday back in September. We were just a little behind in using it.

First up on the wine-making list: a California Cabernet. Nick's choice if you couldn't have guessed.

Like with the beer, we are using kits at this point. We ordered our kit from Midwest Brewing (great store for those of you interested in this fun hobby) and started the actual process a month or so ago.s ago. We hope we like it, as we have 30 bottles of it either way.

Next up on the wine-making list: a California Chardonnay (can you tell we have a preference to where our wine's come from?) We have yet to order the kit, but will do it one of these days. Estimated consumption date: November/December. I cannot wait!

Here are some pictures of the process thus far.

The transfer process

Bottling the wine

All 30 bottles, and still room for more in the rack!

Happy Birthday Nick!

Happy 30th Birthday! Hope you have a great day Nick!

I love weekends like this!

I love days like yesterday. I woke up wide awake at 7:40AM and was ready to get the day started. Yes I like to sleep in, but then I feel like half the day has been wasted away. Anyway… I got the day started with some quality CFA study time and got the house cleaned (a semi-deep clean at that!) After that it was off to study with Ashley from Big Brothers/Big Sisters. Thanks for studying with me Ash, I had a great time! Since I was being productive, I decided Nick should join me. We hit up Costco for our every-six weeks Costco run (with coupons of course), then grabbed a new microwave from Lowes (the lady said Nick and I work great together because we agree right away), then to Petco for food for the kids. The car was completely full by that point, so we made a quick stop home to drop everything off, and then made our Saturday trip to Fareway. Let me tell you, Fareway in Norwalk is not busy on a Saturday night at 7PM, we may be doing that more often. I think we were out of there with our food for the week in about 15 minutes! Since it was getting late, we decided it was a good night to go out for dinner- sushi it is! And no, I don’t eat raw fish, I don’t eat any type of fish. But the Waterfront makes an amazing veggie roll and even better mango/cream cheese roll (upon request). Then a little ice cream and we were on our way back home. On the way home I asked Nick, what are we going to do tomorrow? He replied- relax. He also mentioned something about a bike ride- which I hope he means just him (it’s a little cold for me to be biking already). The relaxing part sounds good to me!

I LOVE getting everything done on Saturdays, so Sundays are a relaxing day of reflection and time together. And this Sunday will include some live music from Toby Keith- cannot wait. And likely some more studying, it is always nice to get ahead. Overall a very fun weekend! Too bad it is over half over, or just under half left if you look at it from the positive side.