Quick update on baby 2 – things going well. Baby may be a boy yet, we will have another ultrasound on the 19th. I’ve lost 14 lbs this pregnancy and gained back 11lbs. Otherwise, everything going well.

So, the new preview for the Marley and Me movie is out here:

marleyandmemovie.com

The book is my favorite, next to “Where the Red Fern Grows”, and if you have not read either or these books I highly recommend them. I read the Red Fern book to my 8th graders back when I was teaching in Orlando. Out loud. The entire book. It took a full week of reading it out loud to get through it, and the ending of course had the whole class crying, but that is still one of my favorite moments from teaching. Seeing these kids respond to that book, reading along with me (from copies I had to buy for them), and understanding the point of the book was by far one of my best moments from teaching. I still miss teaching a lot of times. Sometimes I think I will go back when Anya and the new baby are both in school. However, I’m a bit picky. I want to go back to teaching my delinquents, I don’t really want to teach a normal class, it doesn’t seem like it would be as rewarding and since my very first teaching job was teaching “at risk kids”, I wouldn’t really know how to teach a normal class now.

Back to “Marley and Me”…I would read this book aloud to a class as well. Of course, everyone who knows me knows how much of a dog person I am. This book was right up my alley and my brother gave it to me for my birthday two or three years ago. Its special to Travis and I as well as the couple the book is about, a TRUE story by the way, was very similar to us. They moved to Florida when they first got married and a few months after being married they get a puppy. Of course the puppy is the most destructive thing ever and grows larger than anyone expected. Sounds familiar even now! The book continues to follow their lives as Marley the dog grows up. Our Chance is 8 years old and much calmer than he was during his puppyhood, but the similarities between Marley and Chance are uncanny. I can’t wait for the movie. To give you a heads up as to how important it is to me, and as to how sensitive I am right now with all the pregnancy hormones too, I cry in the trailer! And its a funny trailer! Doesn’t matter I still cry! I am so excited to see it. Travis said obviously that this will have to be my first outing after the baby gets here! Hopefully, the pumping will go well and the baby will take a bottle no problem so I can go enjoy my movie! And yes, its MY movie, I’m sure the Hollywood people made it just for ME!

Okay, so I know most people are posting things about the election. I don’t really care anymore. I’m surprised that we are putting a man in office with no military experience, but I’m a big supporter of the military and its hard for me to understand people who are not. I don’t think Obama is a bad choice by any means, in politics there are rarely good choices it seems, but only time will tell. In the meantime, the more exciting news to me is “Marley and Me”!

So, last weekend Travis, Anya, and I explored the apple orchard and pumpkin patch. This weekend we decided to try the Brickyard Meat Processing place that is here locally. The general public is allowed to go in there and buy organic wholesale meats. After I comparison shopped Wal Mart w/ the types of meat we bought it breaks down like this according to what we bought Saturday…
Ribeye steaks, 2, about 1 1/4 lbs
BMP (Brickyard Meat Processing) – $14.00
WM (Wal Mart Supercenter) – less than a 1 lb. – $11.53
2 chicken breasts, boneless, skinless, about 3lbs.
BMP – $3.12
WM – $4.74 for 3 Tyson chicken breasts, about 2lbs.
1 full rack of Baby Back Pork Ribs
BMP – $11.13
WM – $14.03
Grand total:
BMP – $31.44 w/ tax
WM – $32.80 w/ tax
We grilled the steaks Saturday night and I have to say they did taste different. The only way I can
describe them is that they tasted clean…We really liked them. I’m pretty sure we will start buying all our meat from here. We are even thinking of getting us a small freezer for our garage because as long
as the other meats taste as good to us it seems the far healthier thing to do, even if it does eventually end up costing slightly more in the end than Wal Mart would, but we were impressed that it was a little cheaper than Wal Mart would have been. Keep in mind we don’t have but 3 grocery stores here in Cullman, with Wal Mart of course being the biggest one. I wish we had a Super Target here because I went to the one in Huntsville yesterday and they have a great grocery selection. I love all of their choices, especially the Archer Farms store brand of their foods. I would go to Super Target any day over Wal Mart, but alas our closest Super Target is almost an hour away.
The rest of our weekend was spent playing with Anya and Travis painted her bathroom yesterday, a really pretty ocean blue color. Its bright, but I like it.