The Unadventures of Tracie

This is a brief shout-out to Charity, who recently turned 25! Happy Birthday! Here we are at lunch: (Not the best picture of us by any means. But, hey, it was self-taken since we couldn't flag someone down to take it.) And here is her birthday party: (the picture of her blowing out candles unfortunately did not turn out.) (There were other people there as well but we didn't take any other pictures.)

I love popcorn. It is one of the best treats ever invented. I am perfectly capable of devouring enormous quantities of popcorn single-handedly. I blame my mom. She is also a popcorn fiend. But this isn't about her. This is about fluffy, buttery popcorn and all of its marvelous wonderousness. My life has been forever changed. So I'm not a complete idiot. I was perfectly aware that not all popcorn comes from little paper bags cooked via "the popcorn button" in the microwave. I mean, I had heard of air poppers. What I didn't know is that it was entirely possible to cook popcorn YOURSELF...ON THE STOVE. Thanks goes to Charity who shared this little piece of wisdom with me. A few weeks ago Austin and I went over to Charity and James' to watch a French postapocalyptic film about cannibals called Delicatessen . (Verdict: Weird, but interesting. And the French are weird.) Anyway, being the good host that she is, Charity had made some homemade popcorn th...

Lots of food for me to eat What, you say? This was a month ago? Well, poppycocks. Deal with it. Austin and I had a fun Superbowl Sunday. We went over to Tyler's where we each made our own individual pizzas. (Ty, your white sauce rocked. Send me the recipe and the pizza dough recipe STAT.) To show you how important the game was to me, I cannot now remember who even played. I do remember that it was a pretty exciting game to watch. One of the best in a while. Though I still don't really care for sports all that much. I enjoyed Bruce Springsteen's Halftime show and the super-cool-3D-commercial-product-promoting commercial break. (Lol, actually it was fun watching stuff in 3D at home.) Before the game was over we headed over to Jan Beckstrom's (Austin's first cousin once removed) house and visited with Justin (his second cousin slash best friend). A good time was had by all. And here are pics to prove these things happened: (Except the second part. I have no pictures of...

Austin and I recently went in for our twenty-week ultrasound. I was really nervous for several reasons. Like other obsessive, neurotic (or otherwise normal) people, I constantly worry about the health of my baby. Am I getting enough nutrients? Is the baby growing? Does our baby have some weird birth defect? Has our baby stopped growing? Am I going to lose the baby? These fears have been compounded upon due to the fact that I have not yet felt the baby move. :( (Still stressing about this one as I am coming upon 22 weeks here.) I was also nervous because we were finally going to find out the sex. Though I (and many others) have been convinced it's a boy from the beginning, I was a bit anxious to discover for sure. It was SO relieving to see our little baby. There were two arms, two legs, toes, fingers, a belly, head, back, spine, brain, heart, and other organs. I can't begin to relate the relief that it looked like a baby (albeit a very small one) instead of a mutant. Since ...

It is now February. But that doesn't mean I can't make New Year's resolutions anymore. In fact, I hope that we all constantly make and strive to meet goals all year, not just at the beginning. I wanted to briefly give an account of my New Year's Eve. The McNeil family (and some on Cheryl's side) had a lovely party over at Tyler and Cheryl's. There was good food and good company. Austin and I (and by that I mean me) planned some games. They were well-received. It was good to see a group of adults laughing that hard. Highlights include Austin miming giving an elephant a bath and my dad screeching out "Baby, if you love me, won't you please, please smile." At midnight we had the countdown and Austin and I kissed: We then had some brief, but really cool, albeit illegal fireworks courtesy of Tyler. The next day we spent some time with Heidi, Aaron, and Will, and then went out to dinner to Red Robin with Brittnee and Matt. The day after this I started th...