Where are you Mr. Postman?

This week hasn't been too eventful but it has been full of online shopping news! Several weeks ago Daniel ordered a 3000 piece puzzle to put together. It came all the way from Germany, and it is going to be huge (3 ft by 4 ft) when it is all assembled. It took a long time to deliver because they had to airmail it to America and then it had to come to our mail box through the postal service. We have been waiting for 3 weeks!

Because Daniel wanted to hang up the puzzle when he was done, I got to help pick it out.  (It is so big that I don't know where we will hang it though!) We decided on this cool old-ish map because it had some cool boats and no half naked Renaissance mermaids. (We had no idea how hard it would be to find an old timey map puzzle without half naked people, but we quickly learned that is is hard to find!)

I also ordered my first batch of maternity clothes early this week, and , they will be here early next week thanks to the miracle of online shopping! We'll see if I like them when they get here. If I do, you will probably get pictures of me in them at some point! I also made a different order on Amazon.com and it should also be arriving soon. So all I can think is "Mr. (or Ms.) Postman when are you going to bring all my stuff?"

Nothing Much

This last week hasn't given us too much to talk about, so this entry will be short.  It was Employee Appreciation Week at work, and this year they decided to give everyone a t-shirt celebrating their 14th year in the Fortune 100 best places to work (that's right, I picked a good workplace!).  It's nice to finally have an NI shirt (of course, I could have bought one any time if I had wanted).

We've been craving lemon bars for a couple weeks now, but kept not having ingredients when we thought about it.  We finally decided to specifically buy ingredients and make them.  I think you'll agree they turned out well.  I offer anyone coming to visit from out of state a free lemon bar*:

*offer limited to supply on hand.

I guess the last thing I wanted to mention was that I found a book (thanks to people here in my ward) called "The Disappearing Spoon", which I thought sounded really boring and 'sciency', but which I would actually recommend to anyone who would enjoy anecdotes about chemistry/science and the elements.

No More Secrets

So, if you any of you know my extended family then you will know that my Grandma hates keeping secrets. So, now that she knows my news, I am just going to tell everyone I can so she doesn't think she needs to keep it a secret!

Here is how Daniel described the situation to me. (at the hospital in a text message):

Guess what -- my girl is growing a healthy baby :D

The text makes more sense in context. We had just gotten out of the 13 week ultra sound, and we had just gotten the same basic news from the ultrasound technician. We even got to take home some pictures for our fridge to compliment the ones I got a 10 weeks.

Oh, in case you didn't guess, I didn't find out until ten weeks that I was pregnant, and even then it was a total surprise to me.  I went in for an annual exam, and the doctor came in and said "We can't do your exam today because you're pregnant!" So we got a dating ultrasound with some pictures instead. Total surprise.

So last week with these pictures on the fridge, I teased Daniel "Hey, did you know there is baby in here?" (Then I pointed to my abdomen.) He shook his head and said in a teasing voice, "Oh, I thought those pictures on the fridge were just baby mock ups, and I was supposed to pick my favorite!" I assured him that he did not have to pick because they were all the same baby and that baby belonged to us.

Weekend Adventures

Last Friday we decided to invite one of my coworkers (and his wife) over for pizza and games.  We had a lot of fun playing a game called Munchkin with them (I'm pretty sure this is one of those 'party' games designed for late night college hang-outs, but we wouldn't know anything about that because we're boring married people...).

Saturday we got to work on our house and put up a couple more shelves (I think we're done with shelves for now).  We also made delicious scones (not like the un-delicious scones you'll find at Starbucks).  This was our first time making them and we were mostly successful.  The important part was that they were an awesome treat.  (This picture of an excellent scone, was not ours).

Sunday morning I got a call to report my home teaching for January.  Only thing is, I didn't know I had an assignment!  Well, it turns out that they had just assigned me, but not told anyone.  With that, came home teachers assigned for us too.  They came by and we got to know them.  They seem nice.

Cake Class

This week we had another fancy Christmas date! Daniel really wanted to do a class, and he thought that a cake decorating class would be an awesome choice that we would both like. After looking at the prices of Joann's Wilton classes we were going to say "No Way!" Fortunately, a friend of mine from the ward is amazing with decorating cakes, and she said she would totally teach us for a few hours about the basics of decorating a cake.

We learned how to cut a large cake in half and what you would do if you wanted a filling (like pudding or jam). We tried our hand at making a frozen transfer which, by the way, is a super cool trick. Then we learned to make a crumb coat which we had never heard of before. (In case you were wondering that is the first layer of frosting that catches all the crumbs. It isn't how your jacket looks after eating a delicious cake or cookie.) Finally, we iced the cake and learned some fancy decoration!

And, in case you were wondering, the cake not only looked great, it tasted great too!

Our First 'Christmas Date'

What is a 'Christmas Date', you ask?  Well, we mentioned a few weeks ago that we had pre-planned some dates as a Christmas present to each other this year.  This weekend we did our first one, which was a lot of fun.

As a background, we decided to watch the Amazing Race this season, and we had a lot of fun watching and talking about how we would have done things different (or exactly the same).  So, I decided to plan a leg of the Amazing Race for us to do (albeit not as exciting or exotic).  In the picture you can see all the clues we found as we went about:

We weren't very successful at doing our 'Detour' activities because of the weather and the fact that I chose the wrong kind of park, but the rest turned out about how I had planned.  Elissa even found 2 cute things at the outlet mall instead of just one.

The Salt Lick was one of the last 'Must-see Austin locations' we hadn't been to (that I know of).  We find this a little strange, because it's in Driftwood, which is like the middle of nowhere about an hour from Austin.  We're thinking they like the location for the low taxes.  It's this BBQ place that was supposed to have the best sauce and really good meat.  We usually get brisket, but this time Elissa decided to get pork ribs (and I figured I'd have some too).  It was a good thing, because the pork ribs were way tastier than the brisket (which, wasn't disappointing either).  All in all it was very tasty and we had a good time.

As we've been moving in, we decided it was finally time to start a few minor projects around the house.  We were particularly proud of our new shelf for our TV/monitor:

Well, that's all for this blog post, but since this one is late, I already know we have a good one coming next week, so check that one out too!

New Adventures

This week was my first week helping with the Sunbeams at church. The kids are really cute. It was the first week, so of course we had a couple that weren't super excited about their first Sunday out of Nursery. This week I'm giving the lesson. Hopefully that goes well!

This week we decided that it would be fun if I picked up Daniel and took him to lunch at our favorite Chinese food place. They have this great lunch special, but we hardly ever get to take advantage of the special because Daniel is working. It was fun to go out for lunch together.

Anyway, after lunch Daniel dropped me off at the library. He checked out this month's book club book which we had reserved on his library card earlier. So I sat down and read that book. Then, I decided I needed something else to read, so I pulled the first of the Hunger Games book off the shelf. I've never read them, and they were pretty good. Fortunately, just as I was finishing up the book, Daniel got off work. It was good to get out of the house for the afternoon, even if it was just at the library.