Hello 2009!

...and good riddance to you 2008! Don't get me wrong, I know that 2008 gave me a path that I was obviously supposed to travel but that doesn't mean this has been my favorite year as a whole, that's for sure. WOW! I have so much to catch up on. It's been a busy week so hang with me while I try to recap.

First, Happy Birthday to my baby girl who turned 5 today! We spent her birthday with my parents, my brother and his girlfriend. We went to see The Tales of Despereaux, out to a very yummy lunch and then came home for presents, cake and ice cream. I felt a little bad since I didn't plan much in advance at all. In fact, I didn't even know what I was going to do for her cake until I thought to ask her while we were driving through Spokane on our way to Montana. I usually have everything planned out at least a month in advance but I was pleased with how everything did come together and she says she had a great day! It's so hard to grasp how fast the time flies. She wasn't in the mood for pics today so I wasn't going to fight it, but here are a few:

And Karleigh 5 years ago...

Now, back to where I left off. We got to enjoy the first white Christmas in 13 years in Billings. That seems hard to believe doesn't it? But there was plenty of snow for the kids to enjoy and for me to be cold. It's funny with the snow there, you just have to take they meteorologists word for it when they tell you how much snow there is because the wind blows so much and it drifts in all sorts of various depths. The temperature finally got up to about 20 on the day after Christmas so the kids were able to get out and enjoy the snow without fear of instant frost bite!

Obviously, we made it home from Montana in one piece. The trip home felt very long too but not as bad as the trip going. Let's see, first we left the Billings area and the sun was shining, it was beautiful with a nice clear day and roads not too bad, ahead of us.

At Livingston, the freeway was closed due to extreme high wind conditions leading to a ground blizzard. If you look closely at the pic below, you can see where someone ran smack into the road block with their windshield. We saw a car with a destroyed windshield parked in front of the emergency vehicles. It wasn't until we looked at our pictures that we noticed that the arm was broken and were able to put two and two together.

At this point in the trip it started snowing again, hard. And, it was big, heavy, fast accumulating flakes since it was 26 degrees. We got back to Jim's aunt and uncle's house for a very relaxing evening.

Leaving Missoula we hit the road at about 9 am mountain time. We thought we were doing well until we actually got into Missoula and stopped at McD's for the WORST service we have ever had anywhere and that alone (in the drive through) set us back about 25 minutes. The roads were wet and sloppy and it had turned to Washington snow, slush and ice. We saw more vehicles spun out in the median in the 100 miles to the Idaho border than we saw the entire rest of the trip. Nice. Now, I'll just get to the point. It should take 2 hours to get to Idaho. It took over 4. For one very simple reason. Truckers who didn't feel the need to take precautions and chain up while going over Lookout Pass. I'm sure it's a cold inconvenience for them but it's their job to try to keep them and everyone else safe. Needless to say, the roads were very slippery and once a few trucks got stopped or slowed down too much, they were stuck. Then when you have two lanes of stuck trucks, no body goes any where. We were stopped next to one trucker (who had passed us quite recklessly) and every time he moved mere inches and put his brakes on, he slid back further than he had gone forward. We spent an extra 2 hours on the pass, barely moving at all and at other times Jim just had the van in park... on the interstate. On the upside, by the time we got home, Rylan was still talking about how he got to pee in a bottle! Ah, the joys of being a boy. We had stopped at the rest stop before hitting the pass, thankfully, but it was just too long and I had no idea how much longer he would have to hold it. Anyway, once the truckers got chained up in the middle of the freeway, the traffic was able to start moving again. Once we hit the Idaho border, the roads were basically bare and wet the rest of the way. Unfortunately, Montana couldn't plow the west bound lanes um, yah, because it was jammed up with traffic!!! Catch 22 I suppose. On the bright side, the rest of the trip home was beautiful. Well, until we tried to get into our driveway but I won't get into that. I'll just say we still had a ton of snow here at the house and the snow plow pile blocking our driveway was quite large.

Looking at that sky, we knew we were in for something interesting!

The wait on the freeway was so long that someone ahead of us made the most of their time and hopped out to make a few families of snow "people" along the way!

Phew! Are you still with me? We arrived home on Sunday night so I had Monday to try to get laundry done and find a place for all the new stuff that the kids got. Tuesday afternoon my parents came down to the house. We had asked them to come a little early since we had our NT scan on Wednesday morning and of course Jim wanted to be there too, so they came to watch the kids for us and let us get our last minute birthday and New Year's Eve stuff done.

The NT scan was pretty cool. It was not offered when I was pregnant with Rylan and when I was pregnant with Eli, our insurance denied coverage for it so we didn't elect to do it. Interestingly enough, this time the insurance covered it no problem. I can't help but wonder what Eli's results would have been - if he would have appeared to be at an increased risk for a chromosomal abnormality. I won't know though. What I do know was that this baby was very cooperative and slept through most of it. Of course, we had to start all with all sorts of measurements of the cysts (yes, plural now) on my ovaries. The ultrasound tech at the Maternal Fetal Medicine office votes that the larger of the cysts is on my right ovary like the first tech reported. Good news is that they are starting to slowly decrease in size which is what they did when I was pregnant with Karleigh too. I'm not worried about them and they're not causing any pain which is a blessing. Apparently the MFM specialist asked Jim - after he sent me to the bathroom upon seeing the size of my bladder! - if I was having any pain or discomfort from them so I am very thankful that I am not.

Anyway, the scan was great. Baby totally cooperated by sleeping for the first part while she took crown to rump measurements which confirmed our original due date of July 11th, a number of nuchal measurements all ranging from 1.1mm to 1.5mm (normal being 2.5mm and below). We were also able to see the nasal bone very clearly and a heart rate of 175. After she got the measurements she did some more looking around at legs, feet, the brain, both little hands, bladder and even a perfect "money" shot. We all saw it and when I asked her if she could see she said "yes, without a doubt" and I said "and???". We saw what we thought we saw and it appears that we are having a baby boy! I am so shocked that they can even tell this early but they can and I'm really glad. We aren't buying anything until our next level II ultrasound in several weeks but I'm glad to know now. There are so many different emotions that I wasn't really expecting, that I need to work through. I am finding out that they are totally normal and that I would probably have a whole different yet equally strange set of emotions had we found out it was a girl. There's always room for him to "change" into a her (though the shot was very convincing) and we're happy either way.