It's been a weird couple of weeks (this gets a little long)...
It all started on a lovely summer evening a few weeks ago. Nancy decided to go out for an evening jog. Not long into her jog, she calls me, "My eye ate a bug." Apparently a rather large flying insect flew directly into her eye and tried to make a home there. So, she was stuck in the back of our neighborhood, unable to see and in incredible discomfort. I drove over to where she was, picked her up, and brought her home. After washing out her eye, she was still very uncomfortable and thought she could feel the bug in there. So, we decided it was time to go see the doctor. At 10:30 at night. Which means only one thing: Emergency Room. After getting our next door neighbor to watch Sophie, we headed out towards the third circle of Hell known as the ER. Have you ever heard the expression that "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the alternatives?" Well, Triage is the worst way to run an Emergency Room except for all of the others. After our surprisingly short wait of only an hour and a half, we saw a doctor who pumped Nancy's eye full of a yellow goo that glows under a black light. It reminded me of a college party, except that there were sick people everywhere. His glowing goo concluded that Nancy's eye had indeed eaten a bug, so he gave her some eye goo and sent us on our way. I'm glad to report that Nancy's eye won the fight with the bug (which, like any good fish story, seems to grow with every telling. I think by next week it will have been a full on bird).
The next week we went on vacation. Our plans were to go to the Smokie Mountains for a few days and get a cabin in the woods and chill. After that, we were going to go camping for the rest of the week with Nancy's family. All in all, a nice plan. Anyway we got our cabin, after driving through the first and second circles of Hell, known as Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, respectively. Our cabin was awesome. Unlike most of the ones we drove by on our way to ours, we were actually in a private area and weren't staring into another cabin's hot tub. The cabin, known as the Romantic Retreat, was quite high up the super-curvy mountain, which meant that Nancy & I (both of who get motion sickness if we're not driving) took turns dry-heaving in the passenger seat every time we had to leave or return to the cabin.
On Sunday, we ventured in the Great Smokies National Park, which is a great place to look at cars. Oh, and there are trees, too. In all seriousness, once you escape the crushing mobs of people who are there in tourist season, it's really a beautiful place (but you can't really escape the crushing mobs). This was a fun day. We took Sophie on her first hike, which was about 2.6 miles round-trip, and went up to a water fall. She actually walked more than I thought she would, but she strollered it most of the way.
Nancy had only one goal for our entire trip, which was to see one of the ubiquitus black bears that are supposedly everywhere down there. She brought our good camera to the park, knowing that we would certainly see a bear, so we should be sure to get a good picture of it. On our way down from the waterfall, we saw a group of people gathered by the edge looking quite in awe, so we wandered over to see what all the hubbub was about. We were told that there was a mother bear with 3 cubs. So, I quickly went over to the edge, zoom lens at the ready, primed to take a bear family portrait. Just as I arrived, everyone turned around and started walking away. Apparently the bears had just gone out of view, but they were headed down the mountain, so we were told we were likely to see them on the way down. So, we headed down, eagerly anticipating a multiple bear sighting. Person after person we passed told tale of the bear family they had just seen, but alas, was just now out of sight. Finally, we arrived upon a group of people who were the most excited of all. Apparently the bear family had crossed over the trail right in front of them. They were even standing right next to the bear paw print. We had our camera, and since we were clearly not going to see any bears at this point, snapped the next best thing:
In case you can't tell (and I only barely can {no pun intended}), this is a bear paw print.
On Monday, we went into Gatlinburg and did the tourist trek around the city. If you were to look on a map, it would say that the loop in Gatlinburg is 10 blocks, but that would be a lie. It is actually 1 block repeated 10 times. In no particular order, each block has: a henna tatoo parlor, a fudge shop, a knick-knack shop, an old-time photo shop, some sort of "Ripley's" attraction, a restuarant, and possibly a miniature golf course. Nancy would have gotten a henna tatoo, but all of the henna tattooists were busy emblazing japanese letters on other people. There was one significant highlight of this portion of the trip, and I shall call this highlight "The Pancake Pantry," mostly because that is its' name. A friend told us to try the French Toast there, which was one of the best things either of us have ever tasted. Seriously, you should go to Gatlinburg just to try that french toast. Although I don't have a picture of that particular item, here is Sophie enjoying her fruit cup.
In the afternoon, we found a very nice non-touristy local park where we had lunch and I got in 9 holes of disc golf. Considering it was the equivalent of a par-3 ball golf course, it was really quite nice and a lot of fun to play. After 2 days of tourism, this was a very nice find. Here is us in Gatlinburg where, despite the tone of all of the above, we had a great time:
On Tuesday, after Gatlinburg, we were supposed to go camping. However, Nancy's Grandma was sick, so the camping trip was cancelled. On a lark, we decided then to drive up to Granger and spend the rest of the week there. It's only a 10 hour drive from Gatlinburg, so it seemed to make sense.
On Wednesday, Nancy had a realization of potentially profound significance. We pondered this significance the rest of the day, had dinner at Bonefish, and went and saw Wall-E (which is, imho, a GREAT movie. Go see it). Afterwards, we decided to test Nancy's potentially profound realization, and went to Meijer to acquite the requisite testing material. So, at about midnight, Nancy's potentially profound realization became just another profound life moment. The next moment, we bought Sophie this shirt:
So, yes, two days after our eighth anniversary, we discovered that Nancy is pregnant with child #2. So, most of Thursday involved us telling our families and basically walking around all day with our mouths agape.
So, what does this mean for our blog readers (that is the most important part, right)? Well, it means a return to our blog's roots, namely showing pictures of Nancy's expanding belly and showing copious amounts of pictures of a newborn baby. Of course, we'll continue to write about other things as well:)
Among other vacation related items:
Sophie tripped and scratched her nose, which you can see here:
And here she is with Buddy:
And at the beach...
You may remember that our very first post on this blog was to introduce Blob 1 (now known as Sophie) to the world. 261 posts later, we now present Blob 2. Again, a more appropriate name may present itself at a later date, but we will use Blob 2 as it A) looks like a blob, B) is a traditional name in our family now, and C) Nancy won't let me call it Jackbauer.
Nancy had only one goal for our entire trip, which was to see one of the ubiquitus black bears that are supposedly everywhere down there. She brought our good camera to the park, knowing that we would certainly see a bear, so we should be sure to get a good picture of it. On our way down from the waterfall, we saw a group of people gathered by the edge looking quite in awe, so we wandered over to see what all the hubbub was about. We were told that there was a mother bear with 3 cubs. So, I quickly went over to the edge, zoom lens at the ready, primed to take a bear family portrait. Just as I arrived, everyone turned around and started walking away. Apparently the bears had just gone out of view, but they were headed down the mountain, so we were told we were likely to see them on the way down. So, we headed down, eagerly anticipating a multiple bear sighting. Person after person we passed told tale of the bear family they had just seen, but alas, was just now out of sight. Finally, we arrived upon a group of people who were the most excited of all. Apparently the bear family had crossed over the trail right in front of them. They were even standing right next to the bear paw print. We had our camera, and since we were clearly not going to see any bears at this point, snapped the next best thing:
In case you can't tell (and I only barely can {no pun intended}), this is a bear paw print.
In the afternoon, we found a very nice non-touristy local park where we had lunch and I got in 9 holes of disc golf. Considering it was the equivalent of a par-3 ball golf course, it was really quite nice and a lot of fun to play. After 2 days of tourism, this was a very nice find. Here is us in Gatlinburg where, despite the tone of all of the above, we had a great time:
On Tuesday, after Gatlinburg, we were supposed to go camping. However, Nancy's Grandma was sick, so the camping trip was cancelled. On a lark, we decided then to drive up to Granger and spend the rest of the week there. It's only a 10 hour drive from Gatlinburg, so it seemed to make sense.
So, yes, two days after our eighth anniversary, we discovered that Nancy is pregnant with child #2. So, most of Thursday involved us telling our families and basically walking around all day with our mouths agape.
And here she is with Buddy:
And at the beach...
Our last appointment went well. Nancy is measuring 31 weeks, just right, and the Dr. continues to remark that she's doing a great job. Baby Erickson continues to be quite active in her ever-growing tummy. Our next appointment is October 17th, two weeks away.
