The Chairs

Keith and I decided that we wanted to get a comfy rocker/recliner for when the baby comes. There is definitely not any room in the nursery; so the chair would go in the front room. We looked at chairs in Arizona at the Lazy Boy Gallery. Of course Keith had a chair that he absolutely loved and I had another chair that I loved. We tried to be objective and listen to each other's arguments on why their chair was better. We did not really come to any conclusion in Arizona.
When we got back to Pittsburgh, Keith looked up Lazy Boy Galleries nearby. The closest store was 70 miles away in Ohio. He called ahead and spoke for a long time with a nice salesman. He was willing to make quite a deal if we would purchase both chairs. So, we discussed it and decided it was a pretty great deal.
The next day Keith drove out to Ohio and purchased both chairs. He was able to fit them in our car and bring them home that day. His chair has a home in the basement where our TV is located. This chair has a massager and heat feature. It is also a great recliner that is super comfy. My chair is a very soft oversized leather recliner. It is now sitting in the front room. I have made a point to sit in it daily and take a nap. This might seem like something an elderly person would do, but I don't care. It is a great chair and I'm so happy to have it. Keith is loving his massage chair too.
If you come to visit us you'll have to sit in both chairs and pick your favorite. Here is a picture of my oversized leather chair.

Arizona Visit and Baby Shower

Keith and I had a great visit to Arizona during the last week of March. My mom was a wonderful hostess. She knows how much we like to eat so she had several new recommended places for Keith to choose from. Everything was delicious. Keith and I were talking about our favorite place and it was too hard to pick. Keith was able to play golf with his brother Josh on two of the afternoons. They had great weather. Josh is a second year medical student in Glendale, Arizona. Josh and his wife Steph just moved into an awesome condo in Scottsdale. We LOVE their location!
We did a lot of relaxing along with the eating. It was so much fun to be outside in Phoenix after all our terrible snow and cold in Pittsburgh. On Thursday night we went to dinner with Keith's brother and his wife at a place called Zipps. We wanted to watch some of the MArch Maddness basketball. Little did we know that Zipps was a Kansas State Alumni hang out. It was so much fun to watch Kansas State play Xavier and win after two overtimes. The place was going crazy!
We also got to visit my Aunt and Uncle at their house. It has been over a year since we last saw them. On Saturday we went to lunch with my cousin and his wife Lori. Their kids have gotten so big! Their little girl Jamie is very talkative now. She has the sweetest little voice. They were very patient to sit at the table and behave during our long lunch. It does help that they have these cool leap frog and star wars hand held games. My mom tried to play the star wars game and couldn't even figure out how to start it! ha! We are hoping they will get to come and visit us in Pittsburgh sometime next year.
Sadly, Keith had to fly back early SUnday morning, so he missed seeing everyone at church and the shower. That's the life of a first year resident. I'm just glad he was able to take a few vacation days and come out to ARizona.
The baby shower on Sunday afternoon was so much fun. It was wonderful to see so many of the people that I grew up with. We had a great crowd! Two of the girls I went to high school with are also pregnant right now. We are all due within a month of each other. The hostess at the shower had 2 giant edible arrangements. It was my first experience with a chocolate covered pineapple, so yummy! All the shower treats were great. One of the ladies from church made little cupcakes with pink baby feet. They were cute and tasty. My best friend from junior high made us the most precious baby quilt. She was visiting KEith and I in Pittsburgh when we were trying to decide on a nursery theme. Keith really wanted to combine a penguin and a cowboy theme and have cowboy penguins. He was sold that cowboy penguins were a brilliant idea. I did not so much agree on this point. We ended up deciding on just penguins but Sally remembered our debate and came up with a quilted version of cowboy penguins. You can imagine that Sally's quilt is Keith's favorite baby gift. Thank you Sally!!
I was really sad to leave Arizona last Monday. I wish that we were able to visit more often. I am never able to visit everyone or spend enough time with people. Hopefully we will be visiting soon with baby Brooke.

Girls trip to New York

My great friend Liz flew to Pittsburgh on Wednesday (St. Patrick's Day) for a visit. She had never been to Pennsylvania, so it was fun to show her around a bit. She enjoyed relaxing in the movie room in the basement and cuddling with the dogs. Mason was her clear favorite. I love when friends from out of town come to visit. We got up super early on Friday morning and Keith took us to the airport. We flew to New York City and got right on the subway to our hotel. We stayed at the W hotel in Midtown East. It was the perfect place! They let us check in early; at 9:30 AM and upgraded our room. After getting settled in the hotel we got back on the subway and headed downtown to shop. All of that shopping worked up a serious appetite so we went to Balthazar's for lunch. Bobby Flay says they have the best french fries that he has ever eaten. We definitely got TWO orders and finished almost the whole thing. THey were awesome. Then we continued shopping for the rest of the day. We planned to eat out but were so exhausted that we got some New York style pizza to-go and ate it in our hotel room.
The next day we started with the Sex and the City tour. It was really fun to see all the stores and restaurants featured in the show. I was suprised how popular the tour was. Our time slot had 2 full buses! After the tour we spent more time shopping. I loved the NBA store. We got back to the hotel with just a few minutes to relax. Then we headed out to a fancy italian dinner. After dinner we had tickets to see the Broadway show "A Little Night Music" Liz knew one of the main actors in the show. The orchestra and signing was great!
Sunday morning we headed up to the Manhattan Church of Christ for services. They had a really wonderful service.
I cannot believe how fast the weekend flew by. I had such a great time with Liz. I am so proud of how much we walked. We only took a cab to dinner on Saturday night and Church on Sunday morning. That was really because we had on uncomfortable shoes. Hopefully I didn't slow Liz down by being a preggo person. It is crazy to think that by the time we take our next trip I'll have a baby girl. I am so thankful for great friends. I appreciate them making the extra efforts to keep in touch and stay close; even though I am living so far away.

Trip to Vegas

Our company hosts a leadership conference each year. The past two years the meeting has been held in Vegas. Anyone who has talked to me recently knows how excited I was for this trip. The snowy weather in Pittsburgh made me want to get away even more.
The trip was truly great! We had wonderful weather the whole time. I even wore my flip flops. It was really nice to hang out with my coworkers and catch up with everyone. We saw the Cirque show "O" this year. It was like synchronized swimming on crack. The whole show was based in the water but they had acrobats and fire too. We were totally on sensory overload. Our group really loved the show. We had a wonderful italian dinner at the hotel before the show.
Monday night was the cocktail party and dinner with our company. It is so much fun to see everyone dressed up. My friend Rodney won an award this year. Our team was really pumped up for him!!
We had some great speakers at the conference. One of the presentations was on this book entitled "The Flip Side" It highlights your behavior constraints. I was suprised to see which constraints I scored the highest. The book has a test that you take to see where you rank with each constraint. I would recommend this book to everyone.
Our Ops team did a bit of acting in the conference again. Rodney and Brittany played Caesar and his assistant (we stayed at Caesar's palace). Several of us acted in skits. I acted in a skit on my own. I have fun doing things like this for work. I don't think I'd be comfortable acting with friends or family; but for some reason I have fun with it at work.
We finished the conference on Wednesday and everyone flew home. I got in at almost 1 AM because of the 3 hour time difference. Keith was there to pick me up. He had several fun suprises at home to show me. He worked on the baby's room, purchased and setup a blue ray player, and fixed a couple other things around the house. He also had 2 dozen pink roses in a vase for me. I love to have fresh flowers in the house. I'm glad to know that he missed me while I was away. I also came home to 4 dogs instead of 2. We are dogsitting for one of the residents while they are on vacation in Florida. Thankfully the dogs love playing together and get along well.
The sun is finally out here and the snow is really melting. It is still really cold, but I'm thankful for the sun. Now that my Vegas trip is over I am looking forward to my friend Liz visiting from TExas. SHe will be here in less than 2 weeks. SHe and I are going to New York for a weekend of fun! Then KEith and I are flying to ARizona. We will get to spend time with my mom and Keith's brother Josh and his wife Steph. Lots of great things to get excited about!!!
Everything is going well with Brooke. She is kicking all the time and my belly is expanding every day. My next visit is on the 17th. I am be taking the glucose test to see if I have gestational diabetes. I will try to post some new belly pics soon.

Podiatry wives and the new babies!

We took this first picture the second week of December at the Podiatry Christmas party. There were 6 pregant ladies at that time(Jessica is not pictured here). In the last three months we have added 4 new babies to the podiatry family. The Browns were first with baby Evan. Then came the Staskos with their first baby Christian. The Nelsons welcomed their first little girl one day later named Hayden. And finally a couple weeks after that we met the Heck's baby Cal. Jessica and I are still pregnant. She is due in May and they are going to be suprised if the baby is a boy or girl. I am due in June; brining up the rear of the pregnant podiatry wives. We'll have to take this picture again at the end of summer to show all 6 babies. We all got together last night for pizza and hang out time. It was so funny to see all the babies lined up in their car seats. I had to wear my belly band for the first time last night because my jeans do not fit. Thanks to Shevawn for the awesome Belly Band. Hopefully I can make it another month or so in my jeans before I have to switch over to maternity pants.
I am really excited for our upcoming work conference in Vegas. I leave Pittsburgh on Sunday morning and will be gone for 4 days. I'll definitely have pictures to post from that trip. We are going to see the Cirque du Soleil show "O". It is supposed to be a really cool show; all in the water. I think I am most excited to escape the snow here.
This morning I let our dog Mason out to go potty. I was watching him from the window and then a big fox ran by the yard. I tried to get Mason back in the house but he thought it would be fun to chase the fox. I quickly pulled on my golashes and hot pink bathrobe and ran after him. We had a nice little chase through the snow onto the golf course. I finally got Mason to follow me back to the house by promising him a Greenie. These are the best dog treats. Now the dogs are going out to potty on a leash. That run was exhausting. I'm hoping that none of my neighbors were watching. ha!

Snow Storm and Super bowl Pictures

Big Snow In Pittsburgh

This was quite an eventful weekend for everyone in Pittsburgh. The snow started coming down about 1 PM on Friday and did not stop until Saturday afternoon. The weather channel predicted 12 inches of snow. We eneded up getting 22 inches in our area. Keith was on-call at the hospital on Friday night during most of the storm. He was done working on Saturday by 9 AM but there was no way he could drive home on the snowy roads. We waited and waited for a plow truck to come. At 4 PM Keith was getting restless and decided to try and drive home. He made it most of the way without any trouble. Parts of our neighborhood had been plowed so he was able to park at the top of our hill and then walk the rest of the way home. The snow on our street was up past his knees. During the walk home Keith found a neighbor with a plow on the front of his truck. He had gotten stuck on our street. Keith and some of the other neighbors worked to dig him out. He was nice enough to continue plowing the rest of our street. He even came back the next morning and plowed our driveway. Keith estimated that it would have taken him over 8 hours to plow our driveway that clear. Everyone on the street was thrilled when the power finally came back on Saturday night, almost 24 hours later. Our house had gotten down to 51 degrees during that time. We are very fortunate to have our power back. There are still about 5,000 people in the Pittsburgh area without power.
On Sunday morning the city plow truck finally came and cleared up the street. Keith and I decided to continue with our plan to host a superbowl party with all the podiatry residents. Some of the families were still snowed in; which was really sad. We did have 14 people make the drive to our house for the game. Some people came early to sled on the golf course next to our house. Our neighbors accross the street canceled their superbowl party. They brought over the 22 pound turkey they were planning to cook. Keith injected the turkey with buffalo hot sauce and roasted it for the party. It was delicious! We had lots of goodies and enjoyed a great game. Here are a few pictures from the storm and the party. I also had Keith take a couple belly pictures. We are just about 5 months pregnant. Thanks again to Dan and Shelly for all the cute girl clothes. Brooke is going to love them!