Changing Pad Cover

Here is a picture of the pad cover I mentioned last time. Not too exciting. But it does match nicely. I plan to make two more also. Just to have clean ones when needed. And I think I'll be embroidering some designs on the sides. This purple one was my test/pattern maker. Now I am ready to embellish. :)

I also have the quilt almost done. I just needs some type of quilted design in the middle of the 4" squares. Not totally sure what to do there.

Nursery Decor

If you recall, at the end of February my mom came down and we worked on the nursery.

Well, not much has been done in there since then. :) I did make a changing pad cover that matches our colors very nicely, but I have no pictures of it here. We also found fabric we like for curtains, so we'll go buy that from JoAnn sometime.

But today, I'm working on our theme. I'm not ready to share it with you now, but it has to do with dinosaurs and statistics. It's pretty swell so far.

Recent Baby Pictures

*Updated* I didn't say much with this last night, so here is some more. The doctor has been checking and I'm not dilated yet. I still have 17 days till my due date. The baby hasn't really dropped either. He said I may go a little late, but that makes sense. My original due date was May 16th, then he moved it up to May 9th. So, I wouldn't be surprised if I was "late." Also, he said she weighed about 6 lb. 14 oz. (which puts her around the 52nd percentile, right in the middle).

I'm still feeling well. Not too uncomfortable and basically sleeping through the night, save for the occasional trip to the potty.


In the picture above, you can see her little left hand in front of her face. That thing on the bottom is her arm, a little distorted, but it's still her arm.

This picture is a bit harder to see. But it is again her face (on the left). You can make out her nose and mouth, and sort of her eyes. :)

Deceiving Smiles

The car time line and a little Nelson Mazda review from me.

• Friday 4/9/10: We went to Nelson Mazda and test drove a Mazda5. Not bad (besides having the windows down in the back). We talked with the salesman and said we'd think about it some.
• Saturday 4/10/10: After too many hours at the Mazda dealer talking with the salesman and with a finance guy, we were told about 5% interest, then actually given 5.49% so we were gonna walk out (about 11:30 pm now). But that made them lower it to 5%. Even though it was only about 4-5$ per month difference in payments, it is the principle. We were told it would be close to 5%, maybe +/- .2%. But 5.49% was not close. So we signed the papers and spent just under 19K for a 2010 Mazda5. We are getting a blue one, so they are driving it in from Norman, OK. Also, the salesman said he'd get us a cargo net for no charge.
  
• Tuesday 4/13/10: Call from the salesman, the drivers are running late and the car won't be in until late Tuesday night. He'd rather not rush it, so we decide to wait until Wednesday to get it.
• Wednesday 4/14/10: Call from the salesman. The car has a 1.5" scratch on the passenger sliding door. They are going to get it professionally fixed and it should be ready on Friday.
• Friday 4/16/10: No call, but we go in after work. The scratch is completely gone and the outside of the car looks great. However, the inside is dirty. In some places (like the 2nd row passenger side seat), it's completely filthy. I mean, excessively dirty, even for a used car. And this one is brand new! So, they are going to clean it and then the salesman will drive it to us Saturday morning. Oh, and it has 189 miles, which was good (Norman is about 130 miles away).
• Saturday 4/17/10: Around noon, the salesman calls and says he's on his way. When he gets to our place, the seats are MUCH cleaner, and we finally have our car*. Still a little spot, but I'll just get it out myself. We ask the keys to drive him back. But he's only got one of the two. The other one (with the manual) was sent to some other dealer by accident and it's being overnighted to Nelson Mazda. The salesman said he'd drop it by Monday. We drove him back, came home, parked in the garage, and noticed we had no temporary tag. Called the salesman again and he said he'd drop it by that day.

• Monday 4/18/10: Still no key and still no temporary tag. I called Nelson Mazda, but our salesman was out. So, I spoke with his boss. Apparently the key had not been overnighted, because they didn't have it. So, it should be in Tuesday. He said they'd see about having someone bring it by our work. I finally got my tag (it still took about 15 minutes from when I walked it to when I left to get a sheet of paper that has a date that is over 1 week ago on it).

And that brings us to today. Still waiting for word on our other key and our manual and, well, that cargo net is probably never going to happen.

It has been 10 days since we signed the papers for our car and we still don't have everything taken care of. This has been a mess. Yes, I like the car (I've only driven it for about 12 miles so far, though) and it was a decent price (about MSRP, nothing special). But really, delivering a brand new car with a scratch and then a filthy interior and then not all the things it needs (like keys, manual, and tags) are not acceptable.

I've never bought a new car before, so I can't compare. But I would say that this experience has not been pleasant and I would not recommend going to Nelson Mazda.

*It was raining that day. When the water fell on the door arm rest it made a bunch of smiley faces.

Integration by Parts

It's not very easy to see what's going in the picture, but I'm doing calculus! Integration by parts and tabular integration to be specific. I was really worried that I would have no idea of what I was doing (and I've had to look up some things, for sure), but overall, it's not too hard!

It's actually fun.

I am such a nerd.

Also, here is a video from Stand and Deliver where they are doing tabular integration as well.

Still Waiting

No new car to pick up yet. Tuesday evening we were planning to go get it after work. But the salesman called and said it wouldn't be in till late and that they'd rather not rush it that night. Since I had to teach, it worked out okay. We only would have had from 6:00 to 6:30 to check it out and finish the deal.

So then Wednesday (yesterday) the salesman called again. "Good thing we didn't rush it last night" he says. "There's a 1.5" scratch in the passenger side sliding door." Great. They didn't want to fix it in house, because it wouldn't look good enough. They were getting it professionally done. So he estimated Friday evening. So again, we wait.

Hopefully when we actually get to see our car on Friday it is in better than great condition. It better be spotless inside and outside, have all the pieces in place, have a cargo net, and have low mileage. I keep asking him what the mileage is and he keeps forgetting to check. Good thing is, if it's too high, we can say "Nope, not new to us" and they have to get us a new one.

But really, buying a car should not be this hard. Stupid car dealers.

Another Lack of Pictures

I really need to take more pictures. Dave and Rhonda were here this weekend, and I took not a single picture! Dave came and nothing to document it! But I can document my plants. I planted the seeds Monday the 5th and my Thursday, we had seedlings.

This is the basil and dill on Saturday. Below it is the tarragon. We planted basil, dill, tarragon, rosemary, thyme, and cilantro.


Dave and Rhonda arrived Friday and when we got home, they were milling around outside because we never gave Rhonda the key we thought we gave her. That evening we gave Dave a tour of the house (as he's never been before) and then we headed over to Nelson Mazda to check out the Mazda5.
After a test drive and some chatting with the salesman, we headed to Red Lobster for dinner and chatting. We ordered a lot of crab legs, 3.5 pounds I believe. We ate almost all of them too.

Saturday, Shannon's birthday, we hung around a little, starting drying some bananas in the food dehydrator and then eventually headed over to First Watch for brunch. Oh, but before that we stopped by the post office so I could mail 3 statistical distribution burp cloths off to Texas. Sweet!

Now, back to the Mazda dealer. We spent a lot of time there on Saturday, and it did end in us buying a new car. We will get it this week (they are driving it in from somewhere in the color we wanted, blue). It's a 2010 Mazda5. I'm pretty excited. :) No pictures yet, but they'll come later.

Sunday Dave and Rhonda left for GC. Shannon and I chilled around the house. I sewed some and Shannon played Civ IV some. Overall it was a nice lazy day. One of the things I sewed was this newborn dress using fabric I had lying around (from Nikki's 1st birthday dress) and a free internet pattern. I did make a few changes, but overall, it's basically the dress she made.

Hows it Going?

I'm an optical illusion.

Not so much baby...

Much baby...

I have 31 days left til my due date. Wow. It goes so fast. She moves around a lot now. Her movements started getting much stronger about 3 weeks ago. Now they are starting to get more defined. I can feel a little thing (foot?) jabbing at my lower-right rib and then a big thing (butt) pushing just to the left of my belly button. Oh, and my belly button is still an innie. Its a rather deformed looking innie, but still an innie.

I haven't worked on anything baby in a while. No quilt work in about 3 weeks. No room work in about 4 weeks. I did knit her legwarmers about 2 weeks ago. But that was the most recent. Also, we still don't have a name picked out. Hopefully we have some spell of brilliance over the next few weeks and come up with a wonderful name.

Easter Weekend with Mom

I never take enough pictures to actually show-off my weekends.

But this past weekend, my mom came down for Easter. We had fondue Friday night and then woke up around 11:00 on Saturday. That day was full of more food, looking at Lowes for grills, playing games, and dying Easter eggs.


In an effort to make a purple egg, we ended up making a crazy black egg. It turned to blue spotted as it dried.
The Sunday, we chilled and looked at bbq grill reviews. Shannon's birthday is this coming weekend, and Mom wanted to get him a gift. So, we were looking to get him a grill. We originally were considering this Char-Griller Duo but decided against it. Instead of spending 300$ on one grill that does charcoal and gas both at an average to below-average level, we decided to just get a better gas grill for less, and then invest in another charcoal grill later, if our little baby isn't good enough.

So we did some researching via Consumer Reports and watched some videos on fireboxes that melt down and delicious looking steaks. That was it, we decided to buy a Grill Master for 200$ and then get some steaks. And that made our Easter dinner! Steaks, potatoes, salad, and grilled veggies. Yummy.

An upgrade from last year

Face-off. Shannon is the farthest purple player to the right.

Last year Shannon and I got snowed out of going to the K-State Hockey Alumni Game.

This year we had snow the weekend prior to, but the weekend of the hockey game, it started pretty nice. So, Thursday Shannon and I drove to Wichita, ate with Jayme, Charles, and Nikki and then used Mom's house as a hotel. She was up in Colorado while we were in town. After some stuff and lunch on Friday (at Doc Greens' which I really enjoyed), we drove up to Manhattan.

Rhonda was there already and we just hung out for a while. Friday was Chris' birthday so we at at Houlihan's to celebrate. Then Saturday morning was the game! It rained...and was windy...and was cold. But it wasn't snowy and icy. :)

Club players in between periods.

Jenette and I didn't play, but Shannon did. I did run the scoreboard though. The game was fun to watch. About 17 alumni players and another 20 or so current club members. It was a good time. It ended with the club winning over the alumni, 11-8.

Club players warming up goalie.

Afterwards, we went out to Milford Lake for a picnic. It was cold and wet. Jerry and Colette had set up some tarps to block the wind and rain. That helped a lot. Jerry also brought a generator and super heater. That also helped a lot. It was nice to sit and chat and eat with the players. :) The hockey team has always had some pretty good people on it. So we are able to sit and chat with them.

Can you spot Jeremiah?