me at 18 weeks

fyi, taking pregnancy photos is so awkward. what do you do with your arms? and what other time do the words, "did you zoom in on my stomach?" ever come out of your mouth? but anyway, here you go:





mark at 18 weeks:


(this is him showing me what to do in the photo. haha, nice face.)

being pregnant makes things funnier

i don't know why, but it does. maybe because my emotions can sometimes be a smidge out of control. maybe because i often find myself eating a family size bag of salt and vinegar chips and sleeping until 10:30 am. (what is this, college?) so anyway, here are some of our laughs as of late. mostly related to pregnancy.

me: (laying in bed) i'm going to make some goals for tomorrow. three goals. okay, my first goal is to make myself a smoothie for breakfast
mark: (breaks into uncontrollable laughter)
me: WHAT!
mark: denise, i just think if you're going to set goals for yourself, you shouldn't make one that you're going to fail on in the first 30 minutes of the day. it will be bad for your self-esteem.

so i have basically gone from being a disciplined student and worker who gets up early in the morning to spend time with the Lord and make myself an omelet for breakfast to someone for whom making a smoothie is an unattainable goal.

me: did you rent transformers?
mark: no, you told me i couldn't
me: i didn't say you couldn't, i said you could rent it but i wouldn't watch it with you
mark: oh no, that's a trap. i know a trap when i see one.

mark: did you take your prenatal vitamin today?
me: no, thanks for reminding me.
mark: how many days a week would you say you forget to take it?
me: what is this, a quiz? i don't know
mark: seriously, how many days?
me: maybe...three?
mark: denise! our baby is going to be born with three eyes!

pancakes and other news

recently i have been eating a LOT of pancakes. and i am not talking your average bisquick pancake. or aunt gemima. or whatever. these are good. whole wheat pancakes with fresh fruit on top and HOMEADE whipped cream. i have eaten these for dinner every night for, roughly, the past week and a half.

(and yes, that is mark's shoulder as he leaned out of the picture. okay, okay, i'm not exactly ansel adams.)

why am i eating pancakes for dinner every night you ask? i am pregnant. :-) okay, i said it. i'm 13 weeks pregnant today. and i have been SICK. i think i'm actually coming out of it now, but the nausea has been the worst at night. mark has been forced to make his own dinners (i.e. stop at wendy's on his way home from work) and i've been eating a lot of plain-tasting stuff. a lot of carbs. a lot of pancakes.

about mark. haha.

hello...it's been a while. i don't have much on my mind, but i'm at work and a smidge bored, so here goes. i'm at work at Bonitz (mark's company)- i am working the front desk here now on Fridays. it goes a little something like this: "Good morning, Bonitz, this is Denise..." for about 6 hours :-)

mark has been a great husband lately. let me give some examples:
the other morning i woke up and i usually sit in our living room and read for a while before i get ready for the day. so i go to the living room and mark had made me a fire in our fireplace before he left for work at 7:30 am! It was one of those cold mornings and it was awesome.

my work schedule now is kind of weird, so i work 10 hrs on wednesdays and i'm off on thursdays. on thursday morning mark called me and asked how i was doing and i said i felt wiped out from the day before. he said "you should just relax today, you worked so hard yesterday. why don't you just read, take a nap, watch a movie, stuff like that." um, yes please. i was expecting him to say something like, "why don't you clean the house?"

he usually lets me park in the garage and he parks in the driveway. but the other night, the night before it frosted bigtime, he parked in the garage and i had to park outside. but the next morning, when i went out to my car i realized he had pulled my car in the garage before he left for work. so the frost was gone and i didn't have to scrape. how kind.

this morning we rode to work together and i had a really bad headache, but as some of you know, i have a hard time swallowing pills sometimes. i know, i'm a grown up and it's kind of ridiculous. but whatever. so i was trying to take a pill with water and i was getting totally frustrated. i was laying back in my seat with my eyes closed saying-
me: do they have chewable tylenol?
mark: what?
me: do they have chewable tylenol?
mark: what?! i can NOT understand you.
me: (screaming now) DO THEY HAVE CHEWABLE TYLENOL?
mark: yeah, they have it for little babies.
me: oh my gosh, i want to die.
mark: (singing now) chillable towel, chillable towel...oh, chillable towel (that's what he thought i was saying all along)
but all that to say, when we arrived at Bonitz he says to me, "i love riding to work with you." and he meant it.

last night we were driving and mark says to me:
did you know that daylight savings used to be in september but the government moved it back so we would go shopping longer?
me: yes, you've told me that fifteen times now
mark: oh, the government should realize it cannot maintain control over the citizens by turning back the hands of time.
me: what? is this like, 'proverbs by mark flanders'?
mark: yes. i think i'll write a book. proverbs by mark flanders.
(later we are at tanner and staci's house and staci says, what are we gonna do if it rains during the marathon)
mark: just receive the rain. you know, receive its showers upon you.
me: is that for your book?

beach trip and new nephew

some pics from our trip to bald head island, a very amazing beach.






why do i include this picture you ask? because mark took this photo and after he took it i asked, "mark, is it good or should we take another?" he looked at the camera and said, "yeah, it's good." i guess it's good, except for our white faces and mel's HEAD BEING CUT OFF.


that's better :-)

and let's welcome to the world our new nephew, noah david flanders:

mark's birthday

so this is a little delayed, but here are some pics from mark's bday.

this is mark receiving his favorite gift, cracklin' oat bran cereal. he is basically forbidden to buy it on a regular basis since it is FIVE DOLLARS a box. but he got at least a month's supply for his birthday.


and this is the cake i made him: chocolate sour cream cake with cream cheese peanut butter frosting. oh yes.suffice it to say, he had a good day.

what does this look like to you?

that's right. it looks like success. "congratulations on all your success, you smell terrific." we have reaped some grape tomatoes this year and now our little green bell peppers are growing! so please invite yourself over sometime for a homegrown, organic salad.

this is our life

Denise: I hate driving the Infiniti. Can you give me my car back please?
Mark: Denise, the Infiniti is a luxury sedan
Denise: Mark, it’s seventeen years old
Mark: When that car was brand new it sold for $40,000!

Mark (looking at a puddle of water on the bathroom floor): so, did you take a shower inside the shower or outside of it this morning?

Denise: Mark, can you do me a favor and taste this brownie and tell me if it’s good?
Mark: What if I don’t want to?
Denise: Is that really a possibility?

Also, two times recently when we were riding in the car together, a song came on and Mark says to me, "this song always makes me think about you." Were the songs gushy love songs? False. The first one is a country song (by Sugarland) that is about a girl whose alarm goes off but she oversleeps, has to go to work with no coffee, no shower and arrives an hour late with two different shoes on. And you should know the second one: “..you’re hot then you’re cold, you’re yes then you’re no…” How exactly does that song describe me? I thought I was the epitome of consistency. ☺

if you see this man..

...run.

funny

so the other day i made a couple of cakes (actually it was two cakes that would eventually make one two-layer cake. are you following?). of course, after i took them out of the oven, i was in a hurry, going somewhere so i had to leave before they cooled. so i asked mark,

denise: mark, in like thirty minutes will you flip these cakes out of the pans so they can cool the rest of the way on the baking rack?
mark: sure

i come home way later that night and walk into the kitchen. and what do i see? the cakes are upside down on the cooling rack, STILL IN the pans. he just took the cakes and turned them over and set them on the baking rack. so i am dying laughing because he obviously misunderstood and probably thought i was insane for asking him to turn cakes upside down after thirty minutes. like how could that possibly help things.

another conversation. and this is just a smidge embarrassing.
me and mark are outside looking up at the sky trying to find the one constellation i know- orion.

mark says, pointing: well, that's north. so then that's east, south and west.
denise: Never Eat Soggy Waffles. if you say it and go around clockwise, then that's how you can know which way each direction is.
mark: do you really need an acronym to figure that out?
denise: well how do you figure it out?
mark: BECAUSE I'VE SEEN A MAP BEFORE

garden begun.

so as many of you know, last year mark and i planted a garden which failed miserably. we reaped zero fruit of our labors. but, let's be honest, there wasn't much labor. we basically threw some seeds in the ground and watered them like once a month. lol, what were we thinking. anyway- over easter weekend mark's family came to hang with us and help us tremendously in repairing our broken fence and building a new garden. below you have proof that i actually did some of the work.this photo was taken right before mark corrected my form in hammering nails. as you can see i was holding the hammer at the very top which was obviously incorrect.

so here's what it looks like now:

and here is mark with his best friend :-) (his nephew isaac.)

This guy is unbelievable.

funny things mark has said lately

me: good morning

mark: i had a dream last night that another girl hit on me...and i was like, whoah, jesus loves you, but i'm married

me: what are we gonna do when mary comes in town to visit us? we need to have something fun to do with her

mark: we could go downtown to that museum, discovery place. i think they have like a kids fun zone or something.

me: mark, mary is in college. 

me: what's wrong

mark: i just got stressed out because there were piles and piles of dishes in the sink and i had to wash them all before we went out of town for the weekend

me: well, you didn't have to wash them

mark: (throwing his hands up in the air in despair) and that is a fundamental difference between me and you

updates

so mark told you i have gotten into 24. yes, this is true. we watched the whole first season in basically a week or two. but what he did not tell you is that he also likes it and is obsessed with one of the main characters- tony almeida. when i call him he answers the phone, "almeida." and then when i call to ask him to stop by the grocery store on the way home, he says something like, "copy that, i have teams in position. we're a go."

another topic-
something i have realized about myself recently is that i absolutely hate doing errands. some people love errands. i do not. yesterday i saw a $27 charge on my credit card from blockbuster. so i call. apparently, i turned in a video 6 days late. now they are going to credit my card back since i turned it in (minus a $1.25 restocking fee) but i just thought to myself, why can't you turn things in on time? i always have library fines on books. i drive til my car is almost completely empty before i will stop and get gas. and if we run out of something at home, say glass cleaner, i will most likely take a few months to replace it. why? i hate errands. i hate spending time driving to walmart or the post office or the video store. (there may be more to it...like laziness?) anyway. i explained this to mark and after i was finished, he said "getting gas is not an errand."

the flying biscuit

this morning i went to the flying biscuit for breakfast with my dear friend staci. at 10 am. on a wednesday. it was actually packed and i wondered, do any of these people have jobs? but we were there too, so they must also work in libraries or hospitals or places of that nature. so it was AWESOME. if you live in charlotte and haven't been, you should. i got an oatmeal pancake with peach "compote" whatever that means. then when we were leaving the server said, would you guys like coffees to go? yes. and then she brought us like 20 oz to go mugs of coffee. which we sat at the table and drank for the next 45 minutes.

it was a delight.

24

Denise is really into 24 now. A little delayed. Although I didn't start getting into it until last season. We now stand before an inevitable marathon of veg-ing out on 6 entire 24 hour periods to catch up with the current season. There's a part of me that doesn't wish to undertake this grand adventure. While at the same time, it is so hilarious to watch Denise cringe, writh, and wince at every move Jack makes.

We started with the first 4 episodes last night. We'll see what happens with this. At least we know Jack survives, and Tony Alameda. ha

Well, I need to run, I'm hanging out at AAA Automark and they just dropped a 234.00 bomb on me. Come on Murphy, leave me alone for just a second!

Flan

Amazing stuff