The Countdown is On

2 more days of work until we hit the road for a much needed relaxing vacation spent lounging by the pool, seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time, strolling around Sedona and pretending we are rich enough to buy any of the art work there, and showing Moxie a good time on her first ever trip away from home.

33 days until I turn the big 2-5 and we are going to Disneyland since you get in free on your birthday!

45 days until Matt's 29th bday!

53 days until I fly to B-town for the baby shower my bestest sister ever Megan is throwing for me, I get to see a bunch of family and friends I haven't seen in ages, eat at least 7-8 snowcones while I'm there, and take my big pregnant self to Roaring Springs to float around in the wave pool at some point during my stay.

Only 50+/- days of work left until I go on maternity leave!!

Weekend Highlights

1. Date night! I found a coupon on line for a buy one entree get one free at TGIFridays while I was at work friday afternoon. I got home and told the hubs his son wanted him to take us out for a yummy dinner. Good way to start the weekend, out on date, with good food and good company.

2. Took Moxie to school on Saturday. No one else in her class showed up so she got special treatment and had one on one training with the teacher. She has been so calm lately and has actually been known to lay on our laps once in a while to be pet and snuggled. Before she was like a wild maniac running around. Looks like our little girl is growing up. :)

3. Discovered from my cousin Leisy how to turn my blog into a book by using Blurb.com. I'm addicted!!! It's so much fun and any free time I've had has been spent on putting mine together. I've got ants in my pants to get it all done because I can't wait to see the finished product!

4. Actually excited to say goodbye to the weekend because that means this is our last full week of work and next week is hello vacation!

come again?

So today at work this lady who is in the same office, but works for another doctor approached me. She so kindly informed me that my weight gain is really starting to show and how I look good with a fuller face. Um, excuse me? Were you just trying to compliment me by saying I have a fat face?! What do you say to that? a thank you? I should have returned the favor and pointed out that the crows feet on her face really bring out her eyes.

My mom told me that the day before she had my older brother (and was ready to pop) she was standing in a check out line at the grocery store and a man behind her asked if it was her first baby. She said it was and he replied "it's really going to hurt!" Wow, how very nice of him to point that fact out to a 9 month pregnant lady!

Just wondering what thoughtful advice or commentary everyone else has been victims of during their pregnancy? I need a good laugh knowing I'm not the only one who has had an experience with a tactless person.

One more update.

Daddy Matt felt his boy kick for the first time the other night. I've been feeling him doing acrobats in his cozy home for a few weeks now and any time he was wiggling around I made Matt try to feel it. The baby would kick and I'd look at Matt eagerly so to see if he felt it, but he never could and it would be disappointing. Then I'd move his hand to another region of belly and he'd wait patiently and quietly, only to feel nothing. He said it was like trying to look for shooting stars where if you blink or look another way you always miss the best one. Luckily though the other night after many failed attempts he felt a little kick under his hand. Now hopefully as he gets bigger and more active Matt will be able to feel a 'meteor shower' of movements.

I heart Craigslist

My fondness for Craig and all his lists has been increasing over that past year. I first found Craigslist when I was in the process of moving to California and would use it to look for potential apartments from my computer in Idaho. Then when I did move here I then used it find a job, and have successfully found 2 different salon jobs in the past. For those who don't know it's a FREE website where you can find and post just about anything. I use it on the weekends to find garage sales in the area and in the past year we have sold numerous furniture items on it when we were downsizing: a desk, a recliner, a couch, a bed frame, and a pub table just recently. Our rule of thumb: When listing an asking price for whatever it is you're selling, always list if for $20 more then you're willing to settle for. 9 times out of 10 the interested party makes an offer for twenty less then what original price you put on the ad. My two greatest finds have been purchases I made off of Craigslist within the past few months.

First was an ad I saw for maternity clothing. I'd already started looking for pants and found it frightening at how insanely expensive maternity clothing is! Are you kidding me?! So by adding that band of stretchy fabric at the waist or that extra material to a shirt for belly room allows for them to charge a fortune?? And then you only wear it for a few months anyway! So this ad caught my eye because it was for a closet full of clothing from a mom who just had 2 kids in the past 2 years, everything was my size or could be "grown" into, and it was all relatively new and from a bunch of different expensive mommy to be stores that I could only maybe afford to buy a pair of maternity undies from (which I was shocked to find out there is such kind of underwear out there). She said the whole lot cost her around $2000 and she was listing all of it for $350. After discussing with other mothers to see how much I would end up spending if I bought everything individually on my own and realizing it would end up being a lot, I decided to make an offer. I sheepishly offered $150.

And she accepted!!! Yahoo! It was like Christmas morning opening up those boxes when I got home. This picture doesn't even do it justice as to how much clothing was packed in there. I had just started unloading when this pic was taken but I tallied up the total at the end and there were 5 jackets, 15 shirts and blouses, 5 skirts, 30+ pair of pants including khakis, black dress pants, jeans, corduroys, capris, loungepants, etc. some still was the tags left on them! You should see my closet now, it's busting at the seams. I totally one hundred percent scored! I won't have to buy one more clothing item for this pregnancy or any of the future ones for that matter!



Then this morning we just picked up a cradle and a changing table for $40 that I found yesterday on Craigslist. They were from a grandma's house whose grandkids just outgrew the cradle so they are in excellent condition. Luckily I made the call on them early in the morning because she said she had 5 offers after that.

Maybe a baby won't break the bank after all if we can manage to find all these great deals on craigslist for all of it's childhood! God bless all the people out there who buy new and then sell ridiculously cheap to people like us. :) Keep up the good work.

Matt and Kristen Kronicles

In light of our 3 year anniversary I was going through my journals the other day to read about the early days of when Matt and I first started dating. 95% of our relationship was via text messaging and talking on our phones since he lived in California and I was going to school in Utah. I wrote down a ton of our text conversations down in my journal and I'm so glad I did! They are sooooo hilarious, silly, mushy and sappy and just reading them you can tell how head over heels we were over each other! My sister told me the other day that she remembers me texting on my phone with a big grin on my face at the dinner table, having some kind of funny conversation with Matt at that time. I was totally in la la land a majority of the time. The people at Matt's work thought he had some imaginary girlfriend that he was always on the phone with since they had never seen me in person! We figured we saw each other face to face (not including when we first met) a grand total of 4 or 5 times before we decided I would move to California and we would tie the knot!
I moved home to Boise for a month or two for the holidays and then after Christmas '05 Matt flew in to Idaho, loaded up my Ford Taurus to the brim with all my belongings and we made the trek down to California to move me into my very own apartment! Matt waited 3 weeks after that before he popped the question. This pic was while we were engaged and visiting my dad in Vegas while he was on a business trip.

Two nights before the big day we went down to Santa Monica Pier with my friends Kim and Melissa who flew in to be my bridesmaids. Here we are all twinkly-eyed about to become a married couple in less then 48 hours!

When I was in elementary school I would always write "...and it was a sunny day" in all my stories. And luckily so was our wedding! It was a beautiful sunny day amidst weeks of rain. We couldn't have asked for better weather. The whole day from start to finish was perfect, but by the end of the night our cheeks were hurting from smiling so much!

On our honeymoon in Maui. The best vacation we both had ever had. If we could have found jobs there I think we would have stayed indefinitely.

In our first apartment together. A rinky dink, size of a refrigerator kind of place, but boy did it make us appreciate the next one we moved to. Everything else seemed like a mansion in comparison!

First Halloween married. This was'06 when Pirates of the Caribbean was a big hit so we dressed up like swachbucklers along with everybody else. I also won one of the last pair of tickets that year off the radio for a My Chemical Romance concert that was on Halloween night. I've been trying to win something again ever since.

Our first Christmas with our midge Christmas tree and it's 3 or 4 teeny tiny ornaments.

That first year we spent more then a few Saturdays at the happiest place on earth since we had Disney passes. I lost count how many times we rode Splash Mountain, but I know for a fact we never went on "It's A Small World" not even once. This summer we're going on my birthday since you get in free, but pretty sure this time around "It's A Small World" might be the only ride we can go on with my the 7 month pregnant belly.

This was our Christmas this past year with the newest addition to our little fam. at that time. We're glad we chose a puppy when we did since all in all it had to have prepared us somewhat for what the future holds with a baby. Except I hope our little one is not as furry or likes to lick your face.

The past 3 years since our wedding have whizzed by and I can honestly say the more days I spend with my hubby the more and more in love I fall with him. Some of my favorites about him are: that he always offers to wash all the pots and pans since I hate washing anything that doesn't fit in the dishwasher, he wakes me up every single morning to kiss me goodbye before work and doesn't even resent the fact that I'm still all snuggly in bed while he's off to ride his bike in the morning cold, he always lets me have the remote so I can watch whatever I want even though I'm pretty sure he doesn't truly enjoy watching Jon and Kate plus 8 or A Baby Story on TLC, he makes me change the channel when something scary is on since he says I'll have nightmares (which he is always right about), he has squished every last spider for me that has crossed my path since we've been married and sprays for spiders every spring to save me a few less 8 legged creature freak outs, while I had the eternal morning sickness and would spend the weekends rotating between sleeping in bed and being sick in the bathroom he would always check on me and if there was only one particular thing that sounded good to me that I could stomach he would run out to get it, ever since we found out I'm gluten intolerant he always read the ingredients on anything new we get at the grocery store to save me from a tummy ache, he is the most intelligent person I know but never makes me feel silly when I have to ask him for help on my homework (which was most of the time in Math and Chemistry), he cuts the coupons out of the Sunday paper every weekend, he has so much more patience and takes much better care of Moxie then I do even though I was the one who said I HAD to have her and would brush her everyday, and last but not least he helps me be a better person and I wouldn't be as grounded or happy or complete if he hadn't come into my life when he did and that is something I'm grateful for everyday.