Back on the Air!

I can't believe its been a whole week since I posted, yikes. Sorry everyone, life got crazy... really crazy. So sit back, grab some snacks and see what we have been doing around here.

Last Wednesday marked the big 12 weeks and the last week of the first trimester. I was feeling EXTREMELY gross that day and so I skipped the picture, but here is a little look at the belly growth during these 12 weeks. Crazy!


Thursday was a blur of packing and preparing for our trip to Port Alberni on Vancouver Island for my cousin Ross' wedding to Kailey. It also became a day of panic because the outfit I had planned to wear wasn't looking so great on anymore. Basically, the 'girls' grew a bit more than I thought and lets just say I looked more like a waitress at hooters than a nice respectable girl going to a wedding. Haha.

So Friday morning Ariel and I rushed out to Richmond to hopeful find SOMETHING for me. Thank heavens Old Navy had a maternity dress in a beautiful berry color that was perfect! It was literally an answer to prayer. It was so pretty, and fit perfectly and I felt lovely. For a girl who hasn't felt very attractive lately, it was the cure. Yay!

Ariel wasn't going to be left out, and we found this cute little dress on sale, and of course she was pleased as punch!


She even got a little snail purse that matches her shirt as a potty princess reward. I am proud to say Ariel is the master of #1, on the BIG potty now!!! Poop is still a bit of an issue, but at this point, she has accomplished so much in such a little time that I am so impressed, as is she.


Friday afternoon we met up with Aunty Kara! She showed us her new car, a cute 2000 Echo, I love those cars! Ariel seemed to as well as she wasn't wanting to get out of the back seat. Haha.


We had lunch out and it was nice to catch up with Kara as we haven't seen her in ages with all the busy schedules.


On the way home we got to pick up Ariel's quilt from the quilt shop! Oh my goodness, the gal who quilted it did such an AMAZING job, it has totally brought another level to it and I was practically speechless when I saw it. All that's left is the binding, and then we have a finished quilt, yay!


A few close ups on the details, the cupcakes...


... and the 9 patch blocks.


The rest of the day was last minute packing and loading the car up for our trip. We picked Ken up at the loop and drove to the ferries and caught the 6pm boat to Swartz Bay. We would have preferred to go directly to Duke Point, but the times of that boat were not great and we didn't want to be up super late so we opted to do a longer drive up the next morning.

We stayed in Saanich overnight at this cute hotel called the Waddling Dog. They even had a real dog mascot that greeted you when you arrived. His name was John the 4th. Ariel was a little bit shy around him, but John really wanted to give her kisses. Such a sweet puppy, only 9 months old. Aw!


The rooms were cute and old fashioned and we tucked in for a quiet night.


We were up early to eat our free breakfast and get on the road to Port Alberni which was a 3 hour drive from where we were. Although, it was a long drive, it was sure beautiful. Everything was great until we hit Nanaimo and the winding roads got the best of Ariel and she threw up. Poor thing totally freaked out and kept yelling 'I coughed!' We pulled over and got her cleaned up and changed and headed on our way, only to have her do it again shortly outside of Port Alberni. There was no place to stop since it was all forest, so we had to keep driving while she wailed. It was heartbreaking.

For some wacky reason the directions we got online suddenly weren't making sense as we came into Port Alberni The road it said we were to turn on didn't exist! We had to get some directions from the gas station and thankfully arrived at the hotel on time! We thought we were going to have enough time for lunch, but they wanted the families for pictures before the ceremony, so we ran inside, and got changed and cleaned up in under 15 minutes. Got the the photo site, stood for our 3 pictures and made our way to the church. Ariel was happy to run around and showed no signs of being sick anymore, yay! Although everyone she talked to, she mentioned that she 'coughed' in the car... good thing that they didn't know what 'cough' really meant. Yuck! So if she tells you she needs to cough, better grab a bucket.

When the mother's lit the candles to start the service, Ariel started singing happy birthday, haha! It was a lovely wedding and Ross and Kailey looked very happy. I am so happy for my cousin, he has found a wonderful girl and we wish them the best!


The wedding party...


At the reception we stuffed ourselves with sandwiches and fruit, as we were starving. I even got Mike to steal more food from the table that no one was at, haha, the pregnant gal was hungry!


Ariel and Me, after many fancy sandwiches, we were very happy, hee!


When things wrapped up we stuck around to help clean up since we couldn't help with set up on the Friday. Ariel spent most of her time trying to eat all the left over chocolates.


Ken had some cuddle time with Ross' son Ethan. Such a cutie!


We came back to our hotel and had a wonderful steak dinner with Dad (Rita had gone to bed already), who was kind enough to treat us, thanks again! Ariel was still very hungry and made her huge grilled cheese sandwich disappear. Since we had promised Ariel a dip in the pool we took her, but only stayed a moment as it was REALLY COLD! It was enough to please her though, so that was good.


We tucked in for the night and I watched the Food Network while Ken and Ariel played on the computer. There was a guy making a southern breakfast hash that looked great.... then he topped it with fried chicken! GACK! I am still laughing about that one, just kinda funny for some reason. We slept well and were up for breakfast, again someone paid, we have no idea who did, but thank you! We also got to see and say goodbye to Ross and Kailey. They were on their way to Victoria for a honeymoon and we headed to Nanaimo to take the ferry home.

On the drive, we noticed that the car was a little bit weird, not totally having lots of power when going up the hills. Thankfully we made it on the boat and home with no problems... that was until we left for the evening to go to our Oscar party. After dropping Ariel with Dad and Rita, we got into Vancouver only to barely pull into the corner gas station. UGH!

Called Dad who came as well as the BCAA guy. Turns out our alternator that we though was ok, really wasn't. It was completely dead now, so Dad was kind enough to lend us his car so we could get to our event and had our car towed home. I can even express how terrible I felt that Dad came out to stay with our car and get it towed. I am so thankful for my Dad and all his help, we both are. We are also very blessed this didn't happen on the island, I can't imagine how expensive that would have been to get the car back here.

We made it to the party by 530pm, just missing the opening of the show (we did catch it later online). After filling up on a fabulous steak dinner, we went to watch the show on the big planetarium screen, it was crazy huge! Both of us really enjoyed the show this year, I loved the changes and it made for a fun night, even though both of us still were thinking about the car. After the show, we collected our swag bags and headed home. We brought Dad a bag for all his trouble that night and got our sleeping girl home. I didn't end up taking many pictures since we were late, but I did get one of 'Oscar' himself, haha.


Today I took Ariel to dance class, although I was feeling pretty gross this morning. When we got home we got a call that the car had been fixed, and we are all hoping that its the last of the trouble for a long time. Well, I am going to get back to cleaning up all the junk we just dropped in the living room when we got home yesterday. Will be a better blogger this week, promise!