Notice the lights that are out about a third way up the tree… I can’t find the stupid light that’s out here and it’s a prelit tree…

Our cute little reindeer (and only one front porch light. So we’re a little ghetto. )

And finally, the former Penis tree…

I hope you can see that, It’s not nearly that fat in real life but I had some issues converting it from portrait to landscape (where’s the rotate button for AVIs? ) A picture just didn’t do it justice though. John loves this tree.

I don’t think I really did Denver justice.

We went to Denver from November 5 through the 12th. When we got there, it was seriously 70 degrees. I think a few records were broken those first few days. I don’t like to fly, at all. I try to pretend that I don’t mind it, but I hate it. Our flight was broken up into two, two hour legs, with a layover in Chicago. I had a cramp in my back from sleeping wrong. But there were two wonderful children on both flights (I bet not too many people say that)… the little boy in front of us was named Sam, and was just as sweet and quiet as could be. Sam as a name is growing on us.

So anyway, the conference starts on Monday, and I have very little to do. We decided to go to Casa Bonita for lunch, a little place that South Park did an episode on. They have cliffdivers and a haunted house inside the restaurant. Truly bizarre. (And crappy Mexican food…) Then that night, they have an all-inclusive dinner, including beer and wine in the hotel bar. Super fun. The bartender rocked and was awesome about my little butterbean. And John had a good time having one of each local beer on tap, free of charge. Best part about the conferences. Oh and the hotel rocked. They had champagne and proscuitto and rouqefort cheese in the lobby every night, complimentary…

Tuesday I did some work stuff, but we went to a Colorado Avalanche game that night and had a good time. They lost, but it was still fun.

Wednesday, work, work, work, then the Denver Nuggets game. Some of those pictures are from John driving around Broomfield while I took a nap in the hotel room. The nuggets game was fun, we went with some coworkers… and the hat I’m wearing was the best part. It’s john’s hat, actually, but I think it rocks on me.

Thursday, most everyone else leaves, and John and I start our trek up through the mountains. The rest of those mountain pics come from Rocky Mountain State Park… That’s where the deer pics are from, too. They were just hanging out, 10 feet away from the road. Some of the roads were closed because of ice, so we couldn’t go super far into the mountains, but we got up pretty high (and around 18 inches of snow ) We took the scenic route down to Golden, Colorado where we went to Coors Brewery, by this time we were both exhausted, but how many times are you going to be in Golden, Colorado? So we tour the brewery and get our three free 8 oz mugs of beer (non-alcoholic for me, and only one. Who can drink three beers in less than an hour? And we weren’t going to sit there that long…) Then we headed over to Erin’s and Brent’s.

Erin and I were fast friends at Auburn, we lived in the same dorm together my first summer and hit it off immediately, then kind of went our separate ways. It was like we just picked up where we left off when we saw them again, I’m sure reading her blog every single day helped. And Sarah was as cute as she is in the blog. You should HEAR her. It makes her cuter. She just walked around, “do, do, do”, making little noises. Such a cutie. And God love her with that cast. It’s amazing to see how much Brent and Erin have taught her, she’s awesome at making her little signs, and Erin’s right, she likes the boxes more than the presents inside Such a cutie.

So skip to Saturday, we head off to the Notre Dame Air Force game, and this is where the weather CHANGES. Goes from 65-70 to 35-40. And as windy as it wants to be. It was cold in the mountains, too, but not this windy. So at the game, we’re freezing. And sitting in the middle of a thousand Notre Dame fans, who were THRILLED when Auburn lost to Georgia so they’d go up in the polls. Not so much fun. The pregame show was awesome, though, the best one I’ve seen so far. The freaking mascot parachutes in, for God’s sake. John got a kick out of it, and so did I.

Overall, we had a great time. I struggled with the oxygen thing, not fun being pregnant in less oxygen than normal. And we were in row U at the football game, I thought I was going to DIE walking up those stairs. John went and got me a funnel cake though, God love him. What a man.

Oh and it started SNOWING on our way to the airport. AND we had to get gas and happened to get off at an exit that had a krispy kreme donut place with the HOT DONUT sign on. It seriously doesn’t get any better than that.

Here.

Rossalynn did a fantastic job on my bachelorette party, I think it will be a year ago in two weeks. She got me this… and most importantly, these. The lights were on this cute little christmas tree, and the tree has had its honored place in “my” room since John and I moved in together after our wedding. Alas, my room is now the babies room, and the lights had to go. So I gathered them all up and tied them together, into kind of a penis bouquet, and into a drawer they went. Its a sad day for penis lights everywhere.

Someone who didn’t know I was pregnant noticed I was pregnant today. A guy I work with came up here to ask me something, and he looked down at my belly and said “Are you…” and I said “I am!!” I’m so glad that someone besides me noticed that I was pregnant. I know in those belly shots I look a little pregnant, but it’s different when you have clothes on. If you’re taking tomorrow off (you lucky dogs, you) have a super, super Thanksgiving. And if you’re not (like me) then have a super Wednesday-posing-as-a-Friday!

I’ll post them here if anyone’s interested in seeing our Jumbo Shrimp’s progress. They’re blacked out, that’s the only way I could make them cute. I’ll post the 13 week one tonite.

How’d you like that heading? I know a few of you are interested in what’s going on baby-wise, and I found this neat little article today from babycenter. So here’s week 13 and we’re plowing ahead to week 14. If you read the little “Your Pregnancy” link, it says at 13 weeks they are about the size of a jumbo shrimp, and at week 14, the size of a lemon. Sounds like some sort of shrimp scampi, doesn’t it?

My belly is doing something odd, it’s my scar’s fault. First, about halfway below my belly button, my belly is kind of attached to something, so it’s not poking out there. I’m sure the scar tissue is nestled into something or another, but I’m not sure how that’s going to behave later in the pregnancy. Also, just below my belly button, that part of my scar flattens out when i sit down. It looks like if you took a piece of rubber and pulled it tight, how part of it kind of curves in. Something like that. Hard to describe, but a picture of me sitting down just wouldn’t be cool. I’m going to take a 13 week belly shot tonite, you can finally kind of tell that I’m pregnant I’ll try and post it tomorrow…

I know it’s been forever since I wrote anything, the internet was kind of a pain on our trip, you had to go down to the lobby to use it for free.

This is part 1 because I have a ton of pictures that I’ll probably ultimately post on our webpage, but it’ll take me a while and I didn’t want to wait forever to post a blog…

So the Denver trip went well, the conference wasn’t too bad, I had a crick in my back though that made sitting in a hard chair during the classes kind of a pain in the butt, but it faded by the end of the week.

We went to a ton of sporting events, and every time the hometeam lost I think we’re bad luck. We had fun, though and got some cute souvenirs. Particularly a Denver Nuggets “Net” tobogan that John wore quite well. I’ll post pics of that, too, later in the week.

The baby’s fine. I can feel Baby D move now; every once in a blue moon, but still. I heard the heartbeat again this morning so the lack of oxygen up in Denver didn’t seem to have any adverse effects. We had an ultrasound Friday and the baby kicked the Doppler thingy, so that was cool. The next appointment is December 1, I’ll be 15 weeks then, and then the next one should let us find out the sex.

I’m officially out of the first trimester, so that’s a relief, too. I feel fine, just tired still, but not queasy. Not too bad of a pregnancy so far…

Sorry, we have crappy internet service here and all the things I thought I could get caught up on didn’t really go as planned. Here’s John and I from Halloween…