Rocky, in spectacular, vivid black and white!

OK, so I forgot that John scanned these in, and then I never have time to pull them off the big computer to post them for you. So, finally, 2 months after the fact, here's some ultrasound pictures of Rocky!

Here's the Rock-ster sucking his thumb
And a full profile view of Rocky. Cute, eh?

Why We Walk

It's a chilly Saturday morning, the sun is shining, the sky is crystal clear blue, and at least 700 people are outside, braving the cold, and knowing they are participating in something special. It's the first annual CureSearch walk for childhood cancer in Wilmington, DE. And we're walking, only a mile but that's not the point, to raise awareness and to raise funds for childhood cancer research. Why? For the families, like our friends, who lost a child way too early in life and don't want to have to see other families go through what they did. And for the children who are surviving cancer, or getting treatments now - surely there's got to be better options out there for them. Somewhere, there must be a CURE.

It is a most impressive sight, all these people on the Riverwalk in Wilmington, sporting their bandanas that show their relationship to a child with cancer. And it's a moving opening ceremony, with familes of children who are no longer with us, going up to the stage to say their child's name, and then releasing a gold balloon for each child lost. And a happier sight to see children who are currently in treatment, or in recovery, coming up to the stage to be recognized, and then leading the group, 700 strong, on a walk to raise awareness.

Whether we are raising awareness to the greater Wilminton area this morning or not, I am not sure. Someone is seeing the billions of people out here and wondering what they are doing, right? I do know that we have raised over $75,000 this day to go toward research for childhood cancer. And that's a good start.

Christie and part of the Red Army contingency, ready to walk

Papa and Anatoly out for a stroll
3/4 of the Red Army, and Papa
Surely you can't go to a walk without playing on the playground after!

Troublesome

My dog is old. I am well aware of that. She's 17 this month, and the fact that she looks as good as she does is really remarkable. But she's had a rough ten days or so - off and on super gimp. She went to the fabulous Dr. Moffa last week, who thinks she might have a torn rotator cuff in her shoulder. Nothing that can be done - even in a younger dog there's not a lot to do for it. So we went home with some drugs, that she doesn't seem to need every day. Some mornings she looks great first thing, then must jump off the couch weird and tweak something, and will come out of the house gimpy (she goes to work with me every day). This morning she trotted out of the house fine, so I didn't give her drugs. But we got to work and she was decidedly not ok - gimpy on her front leg, and weak on her diagonal hind leg, which is a new thing. Troublesome. And I have no dog drugs with me. I ought to carry them in my bag, just in case she needs something.

SO - I'll do a little wait and see approach for now and see if she can walk her way out of this hind end stiffness. Otherwise, we're calling Dr. Moffa and going in again. And putting her butt on some Cosequin joint supplement, too.

Poor old pup. She's making me worried. We have a pact - I feed her dog food and carrots, and she lives forever. I think it's reasonable...

Details

Details are a real pain in the butt. Painting walls, instant gratification. Trim work? We could do it all or not do it all, and you'd probably never notice. Kind of irritating, really.

So John spent all weekend busting his butt, painting all the doors downstairs. If you walked in the house now you'd likely never notice they were painted (really - if you walk in the house now, please say something nice about the crisp white doors - it'll make John feel better). But it took all weekend to do it. And they actually are still not done - John has to cut in some holes for the hinges, for the new door in to the basement.

And if you looked around you'd think that all I did all weekend was make more messes, as all you'd see are horse blankets draped across the deck railing, and more blankets in the laundry room waiting to be sent out for cleaning and waterproofing, and a couple containers filled with horse stuff, waiting to be cleaned. So you wouldn't notice all the buckets and other horse stuff that was already scrubbed clean and taken to storage (yay! We finally have a storage unit!). Or know about all the laundry that was done on Sunday, then dried and packed in to those cool vacuum storage bags things so they'd fit in to one container, where before they took up two.

Se WE know we worked our butts off all weekend (except for Saturday afternoon when we went to a wedding). But nobody else will ever know. Damn details...

Girls Rule

I've been blessed with some fabulous girlfriends over the course of - well, my whole life, really. Don't get me wrong - I've got a couple great guy friends, too. But nothing compares to a good group of girlfriends. And from my high school girlfriends who still keep in touch on line and try to get together once or twice a year, to my Movie Night girls here in the Maryland/Delaware/Pennsylvania area... I can't go wrong!

Last night was Girlie Movie Night at Christie's house. John always snorts in laughter when he hears this. His typical comment when I get home is "So what movie did you NOT watch this time?" Because it seems, of late, that we're more excited to actually see each other and have a chance to catch up than we are to shut up and watch a movie. I'm not sure what movie we didn't watch last night - Christie didn't have a definite favorite picked out yet to watch. So we'll say we either didn't watch Practical Magic, or we didn't watch Fever Pitch. But, we still had a great time!

Fortunately, we had a doctors appointment this morning at 8:45, so we got to sleep in til 7:30 or so. Fortunate, because I didn't get home til midnight, and John was still awake when I got home - playing video games. We got to see the cool midwife this morning. We'll hope that Karen is on call when I go in to labor! All seems to be fine. I asked Karen about my pulled stomach muscle thing from a few weeks ago. It apparently is a ligament that runs from my pelvis to somewhere up above my uterus, that can very easily be strained when I cough, twist sideways, or - in my case - throw up. It still twinges with pain every now and then, but Karen said that some day it will give up hope of ever being a normal sized ligament again, and will just stop hurting.

Not much else to report on the doctor and baby front. I go in for a gestational diabetes blood test in a few weeks. I have another appointment in four weeks. We start a childbirth preparedness class in a couple weeks. That's SURE to freak us right out! But everything is going well with little Rocky!

Movie Night October Birthday Girls - Jenn, Christin, and Maria
Opened the new door to let the dog out the other morning and this is what greeted me. Way too pretty not to capture on film!
My (way too cute for his own good) husband cleans up his tools last Sunday after a day of cutting trim for the kitchen.

WHEW!

So, two months of solid work (the boys I go to lunch with every week have been shocked, SHOCKED, that I've been working so hard...), two weeks of working overtime, and two days of solid running around and mass insanity - and I'm not sure I have anything concrete to show for it. Our golf tournament on Sept 22 was fun, and we had a gorgeous day, but I don't think we made any money. I haven't seen the financials yet, but if we made a profit I'll be surprised. Our Gala event on Friday night was fun, and the Maryland Club did an awesome job as always (I saved up my seafood allowance for two weeks to be able to splurge on their crab cakes!), but people didn't open up their purse strings as much as we wanted for the auction, so I know we didn't make as much money as we had hoped. And Maryland Million Day yesterday went much smoother than anticipated, we had great weather, no horse accidents. All in all a good day. But the attendance was about 24,500 - less than we had hoped. I haven't seen the figures on the handle yet (how much money was brought in from betting) but based on poor economic times, we're guessing that the handle will not be as high as last year, either. So - nothing terrible to show for all our hard work. But nothing great, either. On a good note - the concert we had at "half time" during the races was really well received, an interesting concept, and something the track thinks they want to do again on their own. The singer we had, Andy Griggs, was super nice - a really sweet Louisiana boy - and the rest of the band had a good time drinking and placing bets for the rest of the day. So that part was cool. And it was the part that was giving me the most heartburn, as we just signed him up for this event about three weeks ago, after TWO other people turned us down. I got a picture with him - I'll post it some time after I have it.

So now, as Maryland Million Day was a week early this year, I actually have a week and a half before Fair Hill starts. A week and a half to unpack the car, clean out the office, put stuff away, write a billion thank you notes to sponsors, send trophies to winners, get plates made for all the trophy bases, and somewhere in there do some advertising for the slots referendum, host a two day farm tour, and in general push the slots issue so that people will vote YES for the slots bill on November 4 so that the racing industry can stay alive in this state. And then it's off to Fair Hill! Which actually will be fairly low-key for me this year. I'll be there for all four days, but I'll be manning a booth for work, pushing the slots bill, instead of digging holes for fence posts or living in an RV for 6 days, working as the stable manager. Much easier! :-)

John is outside painting trim. I told him I'd help, but I have apparently been forbidden from touching paint for the next four months. I guess John's office mate was shocked when John told him I was paiting last weekend, so John decided to look up "painting when pregnant" and decided that the risks were too great for his wife and son. I think the supposed risks are a bunch of hog wash. But, who knows. This whole "you can't do this when you're pregnant" thing is beginning to make me nuts. Although I am also forbidden from lifting anything heavier than a pencil at work (imposed by my office mates) and that actually is kind of entertaining and cute.

So - I think I am going to finally finish up editing my friend Gianna's wedding pictures (it's only been since May 31...), and maybe clean the house a little bit. Why can't cleaning the house be on the list of "you can't do this when you're pregnant?" Surely toilet cleaner is bad for pregnant chicks!

Here's one of the feel-good stories of the day from Maryland Million - a nice horse who was claimed for $18,000 earlier this year and has since then gone on to win $400,000. Also gives a little recap of the day, and a photo of cute Andy Griggs. :-)

http://www.laurelpark.com/NewsEvents/FeatureStories/Details/Laurel100408MMClassic.htm

Painting the Kitchen

Lots to do in this house before a baby makes its appearance. It'd be great to do it all now, while I am still agile, mobile, and hostile. However, busy schedules for both of us makes house projects difficult.

I was supposed to work on Saturday at Shawan Downs steeplechase, manning a booth to promote Maryland Million Day and to encourage people to vote for slots on November 4. But I got to Shawan and was told by the parking guy that vendors were canceled for the day - too much rain had flooded the vendor tent. So - no work for me! I drove the hour back home and helped John get things in the kitchen taken apart and cleaned, so we could begin painting.

The kitchen used to be this random color of rose/grey stuff

With wall paper and maroon wainescoating, which we decided would be lots easier to keep and paint than to try to remove...

John works on taking old wall paper off the wall behind the fridge. The previous painters did a less than stellar job painting the kitchen...
John works on cutting in the paint by the crown molding. Really he's just showing off his cool new work platform to Dad. New house project = new toy... So the new wall color is a wheat-ish kind of color, that picks up some of the background from the wall paper. We kept the maroon for the crown molding and the wainescoating. We didn't mind that color scheme. We did paint it again. John just has to paint the crown molding, and we need to buy new trim and paint and install it, and then we'll be done! One third of the downstairs done, two thirds to go.
CoCo, helping.
Zoe, helping (this actually is TREMENDOUSLY helpful, for Zoe...)
CoCo snuggles with Mom after a long day of painting.

The good part of this project, besides that the new paint looks much nicer than the old, is that the kitchen has never been so clean. I was cleaning the back of the fridge this morning, while it was pulled out. John says "Why? It's the BACK of the fridge. Who's ever going to see it?" A valid point, for sure. But I figure as long as it's out, it may as well be cleaned. I also did the front of the cabinets and all of the walls. That'd be the first time that's been done in, oh, four years...

My other project for the weekend was to find a dress in my closet that I could wear to my big Gala party for work on Friday. So I came down to the living room wearing a dress that still fit, and pouting. I told John "I don't look pregnant enough to look pregnant. I just look fat." And John just laughed at me. But I did manage to find a dress that would fit. It's not the most flattering, and I look like a big fat-ass. But it'll do. And I don't have to go shopping! :-)