Well...

I suppose it's been a long time since I've written. I haven't felt very inspired, I guess. In my free time, I'm just trying to relax from caring for a teething 20-month old, and the last thing I feel like doing is writing a blog entry! I think Elena is getting in her canine-teeth things. Oh man, is she ever a grouch. Teeth haven't bothered her too much before, but apparently these ones are painful.

Anyhow, I've been in the States now for a couple of weeks. I've been feeling sick for most of it. Oh yeah, hello blog-world, I'm pregnant! So instead of doing all the cleaning and organizing at our house that I imagined I'd be doing, I've been laying on my Mom's couch, feeling and acting like a bum. I'm just out of the 1st trimester now, so I keep hoping that the nausea and exhaustion will fade away.

Oooh, speaking of pregnancy. My new midwife gave me a prescription for a CHEWABLE prenatal. I had never heard of the likes! When I'm feeling sick to my stomach, I usually have a really hard time swallowing pills. This hurl reaction has left me feeling very guilty for not taking my prenatal vitamins. Poor baby needs his/her folic acid, I KNOW!!! But this lovely chewable goes down so nicely. It doesn't taste the greatest, but I just chew it very quickly and swallow it down with a large glass of juice. Wham, I'm done! Baby has vitamins and I haven't hurled. Mission Accomplished!

In "house" news, we have the house mostly cleaned up and ready for our goods. However, our container has been held up in customs, and we have to wait another two weeks for it. When I received this news, I felt like crying. I love living with Mom and Dad, but I was getting really excited to be in our own place. It's rare that you really get an "alone" moment when living at such a hub of activity as my parent's house. Anyhow, we have been using this extra 'time without our stuff' to contact contractors. We're going to put an egress (escape) window down in our basement. My sister is living in our basement, and I didn't feel very comfortable with her not having some way of escape should a natural disaster strike our lovely home. In addition, we've had a wall built around the stairs going from the main level to the basement. I had a lovely daydream in which Elena missed a step and went plummeting onto the concrete below that prompted us to have a wall built. We are currently waiting for a plasterer to make the wall pretty, and then we're going to have carpeting laid on the steps to make them soft and cushy.

Oh, and we are also ordering some tile to lay in our utility room. Currently the room has multiple layers of cracked, stained linoleum on the floor. The previous home owners apparently thought that just adding a new layer of linoleum every time the previous layers cracked would look good. Hmmm.... well... it doesn't look good! Nate's Dad has a tile saw and apparently has done it before, so they are going to try and tile the room while the Ramquists are down here for Labor Day Weekend.

That's about all of the house projects that we're working on at the moment. I think!

In exciting news, Mom and Dad are going to watch Elena this weekend so that Nate and I can have a 'night away'. We're going to stay in a hotel, eat nice food, and get to catch up. Strange how we're living in the same house, but barely get to see each other.

Anyhow, people have descended on the house again, so I must go. Hope you've enjoyed this little look at my exciting life in central Illinois!