small town rewards

ooh. today was another cc holiday celebration: the livestock and heritage festival. but this one is pretty awesome. i came out of albertsons this morning (after saving $22 with coupons and my preferred shoppers card {!}) to find a large herd of sheep being paraded down main street. they were escorted by an atv, a horse with rider, one animal control unit and 2 cop cars. in case any of the sheep got out of line and tried to make a break for the pizza hut i guess. things got tense around the dairy queen, but there happened to be a pickup with an aussie shepard in the back who set them all straight. the paper claimed that there were 1500 head in the herd but id say 200 max by my count. one of those moments i am truly sorry i didnt have my camera, but boy did it make me smile. very cute... fortunately the cedar city review posted the above photo. other events include: cowboy poetry, dutch oven cook off, tractor pull, stock dog competition.

welcome mulch

so monday was harvest day. its another holiday that i think exists solely here in utah. its a special day set aside to go out and harvest yerself some deer or elk or whatever you want to shoot and kill and hopefully eat. i decided to extend the 3 day weekend into a six day trip to go n harvest me some baby gear. first stop: new york. where i didnt take any pictures. but had of course a super fantastic time, tho very little sleep. well there are some photos, but they all look like this:

lots of cute small clothes and whoozitwhatsits that rattle and blankets and amazing hand knit things and books of all sorts and fuzzy lambys ... cant you just hear all the "awwwwwww loookat this its soooo cuuuute!"s. and i cant believe all the people that came all the way to the upper west side from places like texas, florida, and brooklyn. seriously, that brooklyn trip is almost as long as the flight from jacksonville. my friends and family are the best. next morning i had a shuffle bus pick me up at 6 am and drive me around and around midtown in the still dark morning before dropping me at newark airport where i flew to: chicago.

my dad and brother picked me up and we had one of the. most. amazing lunches. ever. can i say: duck prosciutto. ! its probably in that "do not eat when pregnant" category, but jesus god it was so damn good and i havent died and charlie is still punching me from the inside regularly, so... there, take that, what to expect to not eat when youre expecting... i finally had a solid night's sleep at the family's lake house in the indiana dunes:

steel city quick stop mart gas station. welcome mulch 5 for 999. which if you didnt know, is a really good deal...

when i woke up the next morning, this was my dad's breakfast (the first, he had 3 more). we have perogis with sour cream, a bag of mini snickers and some ice cream... this was also his dinner the previous night.

dads porch:

and chicago division shower cupcakes. kinda got destroyed in transit. thats sups to be an airplane on the center cupcake.

and back to cedar city on monday. kb picked me up at the airport and we went directly to car dealership and signed a million papers and the next 4 years of our life away. yes, we reconsidered our reconsider and decided to get the nissan... im still recovering from all the traveling, too much too pregnant. so right now i think its nap time. happy friday!

no welcome wagon

since we have lived in our duplex, we have had 3 maybe 4 landlord/owners. the original couple who rented to us were great, but maybe too nice to be landlords, so they got out soon after we moved in. eversince then its been a progressively worse slide downhill to slumsville. somewhere along the way they decided: will only rent to drug addicts. the adverts must resemble something like this:
unit for rent, must use drugs, have criminal background {parole a plus}, slam doors regularly and be willing to leave furniture on lawn or driveway.
so we have a new neighbor whos drug of choice im guessing is meth. she came over this morning to yell at me about the heat (this is the second time). oh shes lovely. apparently our unit controls her unit (hehe, i said unit...). unfortunately for her, being the preggo person that i am, i am rarely cold now, so we havent really needed it. but after having her scrawny manic winter coat covered self shake wildly about on my porch this morning, i will be sure to bump it up a bit. i really dont need any more visits. and i do remember what its like, that meth cold. yuk. soo glad those days are over...

the weather

its snowing! its snowing! so what. i think its exciting...

introducing

the $763.00 seizure inducing scratching post:


in use:
jeezus i need to clean the carpet. im terribly embarrassed. but its a rental... ? anyway. as you can see, the couch finally arrived. its nice. it smells of pine. the stripes hurt my eyes.
oh, and we were approved for the nissan. sort of. not the 155/mo for 60 months that we had originally signed up for, but at 178/mo for 48 months. but after insurance it comes out to 300 bucks a month, which we decided was too much for us to take on at this time. . . seeing as how kb hasnt worked for 7 weeks and i make 8 dollars an hour... how the hell did we get approved? seriously. isnt this part of the reason the country is headed towards bread lines? so we had to turn down the offer. i made kb make the call, and in a last ditch attempt to change our minds mister carsalesman tells him, "i sure hate to think of your wife in that toyota..." kbs retort was, "yeah, poverty sucks." soooo, we are still looking for a car. but one we can just pay a medium amount of dollars all at once to a nice person in exchange for a reliable vehicle. is that so much to ask for?

fear of approval

so. had a regular prenat check up this morn with my crnm (is that right? certified registered nurse midwife?) (whatever, the woman who will deliver my baby). week 28 weigh in: 156 lbs! thats up 42 pounds from a pre-preggo 114. but i am apparently right on schedule, all looks good so on and so forth. last night i saw the baby move for the first time. that was incredibly bizarre. little alien creature. anyway, after the appointment i was a little early for work so we stopped into a ford dealership---just to look around. . . we ended up "applying" for a 2004 nissan sentra. and now im afraid we will be approved. car payments? i hate the idea. plus its a stick shift, which i am totally not thrilled about. but since my husband just learned how to drive a stick, he totally wants one. we also drove a saturn something. 2004 as well, but about a grand more. honestly i liked the nissan better. filling out the paper work i had to put down how much i make a month. i was really stretching the truth with 950/mo. like double stretching it. the guy gets out his whiteout and tells me he would like to hear 1500/mo. jeeze, so would i mister, but hey, ill tell you whatever you want to hear. sure 1500/month it is. does the same thing with kb... whatev. its after 4:30 and hes yet to call, so probably no deal. oh and guess what the trade-in value of the camry is... 100. thats how much of a piece of junk our current little car is. . .

"well...the mileage has got to ya..."

or so says leon from the auto shop. $1200 to fix the camry. boo poop. alignment probs. what do you with a 90 camry? fix it or get a newer hopefully less junky piece of crap car. gah. dont want to think about it now. so here are some photos from my latest digital photography assignment. the assignment: pt 1: shoot 10 subjects straight and then pt 2: shoot the same subject in a more creative and interesting way...

you may recognize this guy:

and then theres a couple of donuts. but its taken me 2 days to figure out how to resize for the web and blah de blah. and i dont want to do any more. tomorrow we are off to vegas for a wedding.