Patch 4.5

We have some of the most exciting news yet - we are expecting a baby girl in December! Which means our family of 4 (two humans, two cats) has upgraded to 4.5. :) The 20 week ultra sound was amazing and allowed us to actually see little Gloria grabbing her feet. Noah's favorite part was seeing and listening to the heartbeat. Seeing her move around and discovering that she's a girl easily brought me to tears, although I would have been just as moved if it were a boy. Now we get to do the fun part of decorating the nursery and registering for baby stuff. And buying hundreds of diapers....

Noah is taking the summer off from school, mostly because we bought a car in Spring and ended up not having tuition money. He has pretty much been miserable, although he's been great at keeping the house clean and meals ready. Not having a solid routine and schedule to occupy his time is a big struggle and makes him a bit depressed. We were both sad to learn that Fall Quarter doesn't start until September 19th. The fact that this has to continue on for more than a month is a bit daunting.

For me, work has been intense as we're currently still waiting to hire a new Registrar, so our department consists of 2 people. I'm getting better at leaving work thoughts at work though, and relaxing more when I get home. It helps that I'm trying to really limit my stress because of the pregnancy, because I feel like I can give myself permission to not worry so much. The pregnancy is going well this trimester, with only limited sickness, which is much better than my first trimester which was terrible. I also am more than halfway through my first MBA course for Keller Graduate School. To clarify, because of my job, I essentially can go to school for free, which is why I am able to take a class, even though Noah is not.

This was my first week of my new temporary schedule of working Monday thru Friday, so I am excited to have Saturday/Sunday off. We made it to Ethnic Fest last weekend and plan on going to the Proctor Arts Show/Walk tomorrow. We love finding and participating in the local events, especially if they're free!

It's been over a year... again

So clearly we're not the exactly the best at updating our blog regularly, but we're going to give it another shot and see if we can't do a little better this year.

At the moment, our apartment is made even smaller as we have boxes piled up in anticipation of our big move next weekend. While the studio apartment worked out great for us, in December they raised our rent. And, honestly, $695 is too much for what we're getting. Thankfully, around this same time, we found out that the apartment we'd had our eye on for several years has opened up. It's in a 4-plex and is a two-bedroom apartment with a washer/dryer, pantry, dishwasher, and a deck! Even though it'll start out pretty sparse since we don't have a lot of furniture, we're super excited to move and get settled in a bigger place. And, one of Noah's oldest friends, Patrick, lives in the apartment above, so we're looking forward to spending more time with him and Telena.

Noah's had some up's and down's this year in school, but we're proud to say that it's more up's than down's. He started taking ADD medications in the Fall and they've made a drastic difference for him. For instance, last week, he got a 98.5% on his psychology exam! We just found out that he can get his AA sooner than expected, so it sounds like he'll have his degree by Winter quarter. From there, the plan is to transfer to Brandman College so he can get his Bachelor's in Psychology. His goal is to be able to tutor and, maybe eventually teach, students with ADD and help them in school. He switched from his medical-oriented path because he found after doing his clinicals that his joy of fixing and finding out how things work, didn't transfer very well when helping people who are injured, since he wasn't going to be a doctor. Fixing the problems that people put themselves in has always been Noah's fixation, but not his carreer choice. Being someone who struggled with school, Noah has learned a lot of things about, if not how he learned, how to teach other people to learn.

For us, this past year has been great with our relationship. Not that it was in any way bad to begin with, but we've definitely grown. One of the best things we recognized was that we fell in love with each other and married because we compliment each other so well. While Meg may not be observant (and may have just noticed an old sign that has been there for 10 years), there's not much that gets past Noah. And vice-versa. We've found a nice balance that allows us both to alternatively help or be helped by the other person. This has fostered a sense of peace and allowed us to really enjoy each other. Although we may not be perfect, we are perfect for each other.

Fast Forward a Year

We're back! After almost a year in our studio apartment, we're still loving it. Our camera broke, so we've been unable to take pictures of the inside to post, but the basic floorplan is a dumbell with the main room on one side, the kitchen on the other, and the bathroom in the middle. We just bought some curtains to hang in the main room, but we estimated on the size of the curtain rod and it's a tad too short. In the meantime, here's a picture of the front of the building that shows the courtyard we look out to. It's kind of difficult to tell, but there's a little fountain there. The cats love sitting in the windows and watching people as they come and go.

For some personal updates, Noah's updated his career plan to be a nurse. After speaking with people who had worked in the Biochemical Engineering field, he realized that it was not going to be the right fit for him. We're super excited because he's going to participate in the CNA program this summer, so he'll get his foot in the door. He gets to buy his first pair of scrubs!! He wants them in brown so they can hide all of the... well, you know. He's going to be a CNA. I told him blue would go better with his eyes. ;) I am now working full-time at DeVry and just received an award, which was really cool. My first work-related award ever!

The past year hasn't been all fun, though. Noah worked for 6 months at a card shop, which he enjoyed, and was recently let go. That combined with his struggles in school has led to some depressed days. Especially this last quarter he put forth so much time and effort into school that it was a huge disappointment that his grades didn't reflect that better. We've made him an appointment to hopefully see about getting him on some ADD meds and we're hoping that will help. For me, my depressed moments have been feeling like everyone else is moving on with their lives and making progress and specifically having babies while we keep pushing our timeline to have babies back. I know we're doing it all for all the right reasons, but when almost all of our married friends and family members are having kids around us, it's hard to be rational.

I almost forgot one of the biggest changes this last year - we have gone carless. Although we only recently sold the Geo, which was our only car, it's been out of commission since the Fall. As a result, we are now virtuosos of the Pierce Transit Bus System. It's allowed us to save and pay off thousands of dollars in debt. Unfortunately, they will be removing the route that takes me to work with the nearest stop being over a mile and a half away, so it does look like a car will be in our future again this autumn.

If only a 1955 Chevy Bel-air were more practical!

Our first place

Yesterday Noah and I signed for our first apartment together! It's this cute little studio with a nice big kitchen, which is perfect for us. Now our only problem is that the main room is... well, smaller than we had remembered, so we're trying to figure out how to fit a couch and a bed in there. I think we'll eventually buy or make some sort of loft but in the meantime, we'll have to be creative. It's over by Stadium HS in Tacoma and we're excited to get all moved in and have a small housewarming party. :)

Once we get more settled, I'll post some pics. Happy 4th!

Holy Brick of Fries, Batman!

First the good news - Noah passed his Chemistry class and is able to move onto the next one! We're both very excited about it. He started summer quarter on Monday. Besides the Chemistry course, he's taking Math with our friend, Travis, so that's pretty cool.

Speaking of Travis, we spent a great afternoon with him and his wife, Eva, and their adorable new son, Aleksander at the Taste of Tacoma. Noah and I managed to eat (almost) an entire brick of fries! While they were delicious, I don't think we'll need to eat for the remainder of the weekend. We forgot to take a picture of it, but this one is pretty darn close.

Needless to say, eating all that was quite an accomplishment. Achievement!

We have a few other noteworthy things going on in our lives right now. My younger sister, Brynn, is engaged to a terrific guy. We're excited to be welcoming Dango to the family. The wedding is at the end of August, so we're going at the planning fast & furiously. I'm excited because on my first search on Craigslist, I hooked up with this gal who was selling rolls of unused tulle all for $15! I don't have any engagement pictures of them yet but here's a cute one of them from last year that I stole off her myspace. :)

Our other exciting news is that we are apartment hunting. We've been out twice so far. The first time we found out what we do NOT want, but today's trip was much more successful. We're turning in our first application tomorrow morning.

Final May Thoughts

Studying has paid off for Noah. He's just received 17/20 on his Biology exam and an 84% on his last Chemistry exam. His last math test he received a 95%. This coming week is finals, so you can guess what he'll be doing. Noah says, "I still think I'm going to fail Chemistry, but it's getting better." It has too. His test scores since he changed the way he studies have been a lot higher.

Today we're trying to get motivated to do much of anything, but we're having trouble. The weather's too hot so we don't want to do anything outdoors, such as ride our bikes or work in the yard. Money is tight, so we don't want to waste gas going anywhere or paying to do something. Instead, we watched a couple episodes of Heros Season 2 and one episode of Sea Quest. We did do a load of dishes and some laundry and a bit of cleaning, but not much. We're hoping to get the motivation to go work on the yard for a few hours this evening when it's cooler.

Yesterday I had went to my friend Monique's baby shower. It was fairy-themed, which meant that she and most of her family were in fairy costumes, complete with wings and fairy dust. I didn't have any wings or sparkles, but Noah did my eye makeup to be more fairy-esque. It was surprisingly fun. Not your usual run-of-the-mill shower at all. We played some entertaining games her aunt invented and her mom cooked up some delicious food. My favorite game was the clothes-line game. Each "fairy" had a basket of clothes she had to hang on the clothesline (with at least one clothes pin per item). While hanging the clothes, she also had to be holding the baby and carrying on a conversation on her cellphone. The fairy with the fasted time won. I went second and had a time of 2 minutes 23 seconds. The fastest gal's time was just over 1 minute. At least I didn't drop my baby! It was fun to see a couple of the ladies I used to work with at Insight, but it also reminded me of how happy I am not to be working in such a crazy, unstable environment.

I was looking at Craigslist at all the cute puppies and kittens and ran across a post with all the numbers of animals euthinized at the Tacoma Humane Society. The kitten rates were through the roof with 1,551 healthy kittens euthanized in 2008. That, of course, had me in tears. I turned to Noah who read it and asked, "What do they even do with the 1,551 bodies after they euthanize them?" Needless to say, that did not help stop my tears.

First day of a long vacation

We are celebrating because Noah received his best score so far on a chemistry test! Way to go, Love! He stayed up until 2 am studying for it, so it's nice to see his hard work rewarded. He got 12/22.

Noah's excited to go see Wolverine tonight with the guys. I'm still debating whether or not to go. It depends on how I'm feeling. We're trying to decide if it'll be cheesy or awesome. Hopefully the second since we thought the other X-Men movies were great.

Last night my parents dropped off some boxes filled with assignments and projects from my childhood. I'm looking forward to going through them and remembering.