Catch-up, or Ketchup

I'm ALIVE!!! After a few months feeling generally horrendous, I believe I've finally turned the corner and this pregnancy will be glorious from now on. Since the terrible life-sucking nauseousness has prevented me from blogging much, I thought I'd take this morning to catch you up on all the shenanigans this fall has offered up.

• We got home from our family vacation in Tahoe and I sprawled out on the couch for a good week... ahem, month... Ruby stood by the couch and patted my arm, (or my head, face, eyeball) offering her condolences. I pretty much felt like the worst mom on the planet, but she did good reading books and playing with her toys on the floor while I was concentrating on not puking and being horizontal.

• We met up with Chris and Amanda downtown to check out the ArtPrize competition. Here are Ryan and Ruby in awe of the winning piece. A pencil drawing of the Cavalry in the 1921. It really was incredible!
• We've spent A LOT of time outside with Ruby. She has thoroughly explored the front yard. She knows where the hole is that the chippies come from, she knows where the ants live, and she can find every dangerous animal/poisonous berry/poke-your-eye out item within a mile. Recently we were outside, I turned around for one second and she was elbow deep in the muffler of my car in the driveway. That's right, she stuck her little arm all the way into the muffler. Not clean folks, not clean!
• I'm the publicity person for our MOPS group this year, so I got to go on the retreat with the other leaders. We had an awesome "kid-free" weekend together. We did a craft... I'm terrible at crafts.
• I got Ruby some really cute cowboy boots at a consignment store up here. She loves them! She carries them around and says "boots boots!" whenever she sees them, but when I put them on her feet, she won't walk. She immediately gets on her knees and drags them around behind her. It's really strange. I can't figure out what the deal is.
• Ryan went to New Orleans with a bunch of Gastroenterologists for a conference, so Ruby and I (not knowing much about Gastroenterology) spent a few days in Granger with my mom and dad to celebrate my mom's birthday. Dad took Ruby hiking and taught her all about leaves, pine cones, meadows, fallen trees, acorns, and deer. She always says "Naaay" when she sees a deer. When you get down to the nitty gritty, deer are kinda like small horses.
• We got a free trial for Netflix and have pretty much watched way too many movies over the last month. We watched movies we never even wanted to see... that's just terrible, isn't it?!? One of the movies we watched was "Gran Torino" and Ryan has been singing in a grovelly Clint Eastwood voice since then. He really cracks himself up. If you want a good laugh just listen to this video and imagine Ryan singing it.
• Ruby LOVES wearing gloves. If she sees them, she says "feeners, feeners" and puts her hand up for me to put them on her.
• I test-drove some double strollers the other day. Would you believe that a double stroller won't fit in the trunk of my Mazda 3? That's going to be a bit of an issue. I told Ryan he might need to get a vansectomy soon. (According to our friends Chad and Kathi, a VANSECTOMY is Chad's term for his loss of manhood due to the purchase of a mini-van).
• We had a Halloween dinner party with a few of our couple friends, so we dressed up as Flo (from the progressive commercials) and Billy Mays. Once I finished drawing on Ryan's beard with eyeliner, he requested to be dead, so we added the dark circles and ashy skin. Like I said before, he really cracks himself up sometimes!

So that's the story from here. I can't believe it's already November! For those of you who are still reading this, I commend you! Especially you, Uncle Matt! I wasn't sure you'd make it past the first bullet point.