A Little Of Everything

Ben and I have had an interesting week.  So far, it's included two plane trips, walking about 25 miles, watching sunrise over the Atlantic at a beach, tasting seven or eight different olive oils (hey, for those of us who don't do wine tastings...), having another double birthday celebration (Kim and I have birthdays only four days apart), and having our baby finally tip out in front.  I went from looking a little pregnant at the beginning of the week to looking VERY pregnant by the end of it.  My ribs are eternally grateful - on Tuesday they were so sore they were driving me crazy, which tells me the baby had grown up just about as far as he possibly could and since he had to go somewhere, now he's growing out instead.

On the downside, now when I look in the mirror I wonder where that fat girl came from and why she's wearing my clothes.  Ben said, "Maybe a little too much pasta."

We've enjoyed pretty much every minute of our trip to Florida, even when we opted out of going through the body scanner at the airport and submitted ourselves to the full pat-down instead.  Turns out it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected; but whatever it was, we weren't interested in taking the baby through the scanner.  We haven't even made free use of a Doppler heart monitor because we were reading about what the sound waves can do to a developing baby's cells...why bombard him with whatever super-rays are used in those big body scanners?  Pat downs are much safer.

Our plane trips were a lot of fun for us - we enjoy doing everything together and plane rides were no exception.  We had one little hop from Detroit to Atlanta and then another little hop from Atlanta to Jacksonville, where we walked off the plane to a beautiful Florida autumn day complete with a breeze that smelled like salt water.  It hasn't been particularly hot here, but we certainly aren't going to complain at 70 - 75 degree temps and sunshine after 40 and rainy had become the norm back home.  It feels pretty good.

We got some good advice on the plane ride from Atlanta to Jacksonville, too.  In a bland professional voice, the flight attendant advised that "in the event that our flight should become a cruise", we should stop screaming and clutching our neighbor's leg and don the life jacket located under the seat in front of us.  "If you're traveling with a child or someone acting like a child, be sure you prepare yourself before helping them," she continued.  "And if you're traveling with multiple children, this would be the time to pick your favorite."

I'm guessing she's had to make that safety announcement one too many times.  But at least she made it interesting.

Stephen and Kim have a beautiful home in the suburbs of Jacksonville and we've agreed they have a very nice guest room bed.  We have been very relaxed about the schedule of things and have basically eaten our meals peacefully, taken a lot of very long walks, done what we could to keep Emma's naptimes and bedtimes as secure and uninterrupted as possible, and enjoyed Kim and Stephen's company a lot.  Stephen was unexpectedly able to be home for the week since Hurricane Sandy closed the airport he would normally fly into during business hours to do his business - which turns out to be setting up IT for very large companies.  I didn't realize I was marrying into a family of computer guys, but the definite upside to this is they are very keen on new gadgets and it's a lot of fun to see all kinds of new stuff in action.  Ben has gotten hooked on another new iPad game and says there is absolutely no way we can ever get an iPad.  He would be much too addicted to playing on it.  And the truth is, now I've been playing the games with him so we'd both be hooked.  Our bed would never get made and we'd be eating TV dinners.

As for Hurricane Sandy, as Mrs. G. always said..."It's an ill wind that blows no good."  Out of all the mess and mayhem, the good in this instance was extra time with the Man of the Izzo Household.  Who ran twenty miles this morning instead of the fourteen he was planning on.  I just can't imagine being able to run that far - it was a major accomplishment to me when I reached ONE mile!

On Thursday, Ben and I went out to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory for my birthday, which was a present from Kim and Stephen.  We sat outside since 75 felt plenty warm enough to us for eating outside and the rest of the clientele seemed to think it was too cold, so it was quiet in the outdoor dining room.  Ben proposed again, which he pretty much does every time we go out to eat.  As I get more pregnant, this either gets funnier or more embarrassing depending on how you look at it.  

We've noticed that we make decisions very decisively as a team, too - there were about two dozen different cheesecakes on the menu for dessert and it took us about five minutes to pick one.  Typically, I find three or four that I like the sounds of and Ben casts the deciding vote.  In this instance, I said, "I think the Banana Cream, the Wild Blueberry, or the Coconut cheesecakes sound really good."  Ben said, "Blueberry it is, then."  He very rarely says, "Hm....none of them," though that does happen on occasion.

Friday we went out to dinner at Maggiano's with Kim and Stephen, which Kim was excited about because she said it was like a double date.  That was fun; and we came home with so many leftovers we had enough for dinner last night too.  (This is where Ben's comment about my suddenly much-expanded belly being due to too much pasta came from.)

Yesterday morning, we got up relatively early and drove out to Jax Beach to watch the sunrise, since it's not often we have the opportunity to see sunrise over the Atlantic and it's not even like we had to get up all that early to do so.  The sun came over the horizon at 7:42 and it was only about a 10 - 15 minute ride to the beach.  We left at 7:15 and got there in plenty of time.  We'd already been out to the beach on Thursday afternoon and discovered it's pretty quiet out there this time of the year.  Not to mention no one seems interested in wearing bikinis, which is a plus.  The interesting thing I've noticed about Florida beaches before is that there's a huge percentage of the female population present in bikinis; and the percentage of women who could even think of looking reasonably un-ridiculous in a bikini is a lot lower than that.  Modesty issues aside, sometimes I wonder if maybe people don't look closely in the mirror before heading out the door.

But coming to Jacksonville in November mitigates this particular issue.  In fact, most people who were out even in the warm afternoon were wearing sweaters (not necessary to our Michigan way of thinking) and at sunrise, folks were out in their pants and jackets.  We drank coffee and hot chocolate respectively and walked a ways down the beach keeping an eye out for some of the nice big waves that came in now and then.  I haven't been up that early on a Saturday morning in years and it was absolutely worth it.

In the afternoon we went to visit Stephen's mom (his dad is out of town - and planning to visit the Jordan River today, to give you an indication of how far out of town he actually is) and had lunch with her.  They've just finished some fairly major renovation on their house and it was fun to see all the results.  I got some very good ideas for our kitchen in the process - I've been trying to figure out if we should try to get cupboards that go up to the ceiling to make the ceiling appear taller or if that would just be kind of pointless, but after looking at the Izzo's new kitchen it looks to me like having the cupboards go up like that really does give the sense of the ceiling being higher than it is.  I also liked that Mrs. Izzo picked out an island that was stained/painted a color (a beautiful blue, in this instance) rather than using the same cabinets.  I'm not positive we can do this easily in our kitchen, but I have considered what would happen if I over-finished the cabinets at the island to get this effect and I really like it, so even if we don't do it now it might be a project for the future some day.

Mrs. Izzo also told us some really good stories about things like the politics of becoming a general's wife (in the military, the capability of a wife to support her husband and take good care of other military wives and keep order in their home is actually one of the things that weighs into her husband's eventual promotion, something I found really intriguing because it reminds me of Paul talking to Timothy about choosing deacons to lead a church) and living in Germany at the time Stephen was born.  She said she had to quit before we got bored.  We were a long way from being bored.

Speaking of our addition, Mom told me today that she'd called MISDIG and our yard is now full of little colored flags.  Ben and I picked up the building permit the day before we left for Florida, so it sounds like when we get home we're going to be heading straight into addition-building.  I'm relieved and excited that things are underway, but I expect these next few months are going to be some very super-busy ones.  Sometimes it's hard to believe that by this time next year we'll have a totally different house and a baby who's starting to talk!

I should probably wrap this up and go find out if we've figured out what to do today.  We've been playing our days very much by ear, which means we probably aren't seeing all kinds of things there are to see...but that's okay with us.  Getting to spend every day together is quite a special thing for us all by itself, and getting to spend the time with Kim and Stephen and Emma is icing on the cake.  The warm weather just puts everything over the top!  We're pretty glad we're the ones that came out in November and Grandma went out in September, though.  While we think the weather's lovely, it's a little cool for swimming and I think Grandma would still think it was cold.  Ben talked to her on the phone yesterday and she doesn't really believe him that it's only in the early 70s, but I can see her out here sitting on the patio in a jacket and blanket while I'm barefoot and in summer clothes.

So long for now...and in my next post, perhaps there'll be something new and exciting about house preparations to talk about.  You know we're going to really get to it eventually!