Finally... a moose!

Attended baby class again on Friday. We did breathing exercises. We are NOT good at them. We laughed. A lot. It was like when you laugh in church. Everything was so quiet and you're just trying to stifle. But she said it's best if your partner can distract you, so we got an A in that.

Went to the doctor again yesterday. Everything is still good, I'm actually measuring a bit big (surprising considering I can still see my toes), AND I finally gained 2 pounds! This was exciting. So I asked in a hopeful manner, if I'm measuring 35 cm, does that give me any chance of this baby coming early? No, it does not. We're finally pretty set on a name. All we need is a car seat and diapers and we're ready for this thing.

After our errands yesterday, we were heading home and I told Dan we should go up on the hills sometime to look down into the bowl. He sugeested we do that, so we had a mini adventure. We went up on the hills and it is amazing how the climate is different up there. It is definietly winter and we weren't even that far up! We're talking icy roads and snow everywhere. When driving around anchorage lately, you can tell who lives on the hill because they come down into the bowl with four inches of snow on their car and the rest of us are quite snow free. We saw some views from the hill, but the vegetation where we were is pretty thick so there were no picture opportunities. We (and our teeny tiny car) are happy we live where we do though. Those hills would be terrifying for us when real winter comes. No, not terrifying, just not passable. Plus we've had a lot of clear sunny days down here recently which have been absolutely delightful.

Many of you have heard that I finally saw a moose. It was awesome. We think it was a relatively young bull moose and it was just walking around our neighborhood, much like the deer in Eagan. But the moose was not skittish, like a deer, and it was much bigger, obviously. I wanted to take a picture, but it was quite dark and apparently it's mating season so it's best not to annoy the bulls. Also, we were in our car, so our heads were probably a good five or six feet below his head and we felt the moose had the advantage when it came to speed and power. Dan also saw a moose on his run yesterday and chose to alter his route because of it. This one was a cow and didn't seem bothered by him or the small dog that was near, but Dan chose to go a different way just in case. I think the weirdest thing about the moose is that they just don't really care that you exist. Deer are always so on edge. You can't even make a sound or they will sprint away. That's not the case with moose. They seem to do what they want and if anyone is going to be running away, it is going to be the human. This does leave me in a bit of a perdicament though. My main goals while living here were to see a moose and the northern lights... what am I going to do for the rest of the year?

I just saw a cat outside! Yippee!

Don't you hate when you try to cut a tomato with a credit card and it doesn't work? Well I have a solution for you! How did people live without that?

I've been starting to make a mental list of things I'm going to do once the baby is here. It includes barrel rolling across my bed, laying down flat on my back, and cutting my toenails without having to hold my breath. I have big dreams people, big dreams. Ooh, and sit-ups, I am going to do a thousand sit-ups.

A couple years ago, I was looking forward to being pregnant, but not at all wanting a child. When we decided to have a baby, I was looking forward to having a baby and didn't really consider the pregnancy part, it was just necessary to get the baby. Well, I hate being pregnant. If that surprises you, you have not been paying attention to my life. I have never felt so crappy for so long in my life and if every pregnancy were like mine I wouldn't be here because the human population would have died off long ago. We are exactly seven weeks away from the due date, and it cannot come soon enough. Don't get me wrong, I want a fully cooked baby, but if it could be December right now that would be okay. Dan and I really do want two kids, but how and if we get that second kid is up for debate. People say you forget all the crappy parts about being pregnant. I will never forget. Thinking back about how sick I have been makes me feel sick. I might reach a point where I'd be willing to do it again, but then we should do a quick survey of my mental health just to be sure I'm in my right mind.

Believe it or not, there is not much for a light-headed pregnant woman to do in Alaska in October, so there has been plenty of TV watching in my recent past. Mostly I try to watch something I can learn from, but I am not always successful. There was a really good program on National Geographic though (I think). It was called Wild Mississippi and the one I saw was the fall to winter transition in Minnesota so that was neat. It mostly covered the wildlife at the headquarters in Itasca. Nature is cool. It was especially nice to see the fall colors, because that is something that doesn't occur here in Anchorage. We got a little yellow, but that is about it. Other observations: voles are funny, I wouldn't mind having a domesticated bobcat, I had no idea that porcupines climb trees, and whenever I learn something about wolves I think of Julie and camp. Also, it is absolutely hysterical to watch a wolf try to attack a porcupine. Not at all exciting. The porcupine looked at the wolf while the wolf approached not at all stealthily, circled and sniffed a couple times, and left.

We started baby class last night. The woman running the show seems to be really good at her job and passionate about teaching the class. She is on her sixth child/pregnancy, which I don't necessarily condone, but at least we know she knows what she's talking about. The class has mostly young couples in their mid-late twenties, but there is one younger girl who is there with her mom too. Don't judge me, but at first I felt kind of bad for her not having the dad there, but then if the dad doesn't wanna be there, maybe he shouldn't be there. Her mom is wonderful though and knows all sorts of stuff whereas most of the guys, though comfortable enough to ask questions, look a bit scared. It is definitely nice to have her opinion as well as the instructor's opinion.

I think there were about ten pregnant ladies there. All but one are having boys. This follows the recent trend that I encountered with friends at church. There are boys everywhere.

Our instructor said that while having good posture is a good trait most of the time, when it comes to being in labor, having the ability to relax your core into a slouch helps a lot. WINNER. Slouching may temporarily be increasing pain in my ribs, but my slouching mastery will prevail!

Our registry is up at Target if you are one of those interested/waiting for it. We might be adding things, and we welcome gifts that aren't on there as well. Many of you know what we need better than we do.

Most of you know that I am usually the one with the absolutely insane dreams. Well, this was said to me by my dear husband when I woke up at 2:30 or so. He was not fully awake. "If we are ever stuck in the 1920s... and we are trying to get out of a mob-type situation... we shouldn't rely on reality stars... from Honey Boo Boo." After laughing, the response he got was a condescending, "Thank you Dan, that is incredibly useful information."

"Be safe," says the dizzy pregnant woman holdling the knife

I learned on Alaska State Troopers that all moose roadkill is harvested and used for charitable causes. I thought that was neat. I think you can take the meat yourself if you want to, but it is illegal for it to be wasted. Good job Alaska.

Speaking of local meats, I made caribou chili. This is where the title for this post came from. Don't worry, I was sitting down. The chili was pretty good. It smelled incredible, I guess I'm just not entirely sold on the caribou, but I am glad that we used it and I will do it again. It definitely carries more of its own flavor than beef does and that flavor really pops out in the bites of chili that contain it. I guess I might have found it gamey- but I don't really know if that is the right term. Dan really liked it a lot. That always surprises me considering how he wavers back and forth being anti-meat and pro-meat. I guess he thinks that if there is meat, it better be good and taste super meaty.

Dan ran in a half marathon on Saturday that he didn't train for. It was also a zombie race and he didn't dress up for it. It was his slowest at 1:41:20, which is about 14 minutes slower than his best, but he's okay with it due to the not training business. He did have fun at the race and ran most of it with a guy from church. The course they ran was right along the coast so I guess it was pretty beautiful. He also bought some trail running shoes so he won't tip over when running in the hills tonight for the Tuesday night races.

Dan also decided to get some vitamin D pills, which isn't a terrible thing considering we lose about 5 minutes of daylight every day. To paint you a picture, when we moved here, sunset was around 10:00. Apparently the sunset tonight is at 6:42. It's different. Just to be safe I looked up vitamin D toxicity to see if we needed to be careful with these things. No, no we do not. The dosage of the pills is 1,000 IU. Toxicity occurs at 50,000 IU. We're safe.

On Saturday we enjoyed an evening with friends and a casserole in which I can actually enjoy salmon. We got a decent amount of snow that day, probably about an inch and a half. Although it is all gone now, it was really pretty and came with that delicious cold outside smell of fall/winter. You know what I'm talking about. Observe the beauty:

Okay, so the picture isn't great, but it was that nice fluffy snow that sticks on trees and makes everything Christmasy. It was good. We have studded tires on our teeny tiny car for the upcoming snow pounding. It looks ridiculous. Apparently they don't salt the roads here so they are necessary. It still looks funny.

We also saw some northern lights. That was cool- I had never seen them before although I know some people have seen them at camp. I felt like crap and it was cold and we have a lot of trees in our backyard so it wasn't an optimal viewing situation, but we got to see them swirl about and they were very high in the sky. For being in the middle of a city, it was especially impressive.

Recent events have led me to conclude that it is indeed winter here in Anchorage. Luckily I bought some slippers last week, so I'm ready.

2 months left!

     I had another appointment yesterday. Everything looks good. Apparently everything I'm experiencing that makes me feel like I'm dying is normal, so I guess that's good too. My stomach regularly looks like there is an alien trying to get out. It is somewhat comical, but it also makes me feel like people are looking and wondering what I am doing that my stomach is so angry and exploding. It's even worse when I tell him to stop or he makes me jump and people hear or see me. Here's a picture to observe my progress. I can still wear a lot of my normal shirts so that's a nice money saver.

That shirt is not great in photos. The hands are in honor
of the penguin documentary I watched on Sunday.

     You Minnesotans should be thankful for your TV Emergency Alert System. We have had a couple of TV interruptions, which is not unusual, especially considering the flooding that has been going on up here. They last four minutes, cut in and out,both in picture and sound, and because of this not only do you miss your show, you have no idea what you should be alerted about. There was an amber alert that all we caught was "if you have any information please call..." and got none of the description of what to look for. Obnoxious. And it's always during the show- right after a commercial break. Heaven forbid the alert interrupts this gem of a commercial that is on ALL THE TIME. That one is not the exact one on, but that old guy is always dancing and the song is always the same. I prefer that one to the guy selling 4 x 4 trucks though and instead of saying "four by fours" he says "four befores."
     I found another house I would like to buy. It's only $55,000 and needs a bit of work, but the location is great and I want a project house. This will not happen, but it is fun to dream.

It's a rather blustery day

     Most of our deciduous trees are well on their way to naked. We did have two rain free days in a row this past weekend, with a sun out and everything! I don't think that has happened since the first week we were here- and I can't guarantee that it happened even then.

This is the pond by our house that they call a lake.

Looking down the path toward the pond.

Snow covered mountains that didn't have snow last week.

     I have noticed that people here are more accepting of winter weather than we are in Minnesota. I'm used to seeing people resist putting on their winter coats until it is simply unbearable not to have one on, but yesterday we were out and most people had on a winter coat or some layer of it and it was not that cold at all. Some people do come down from the hills though and apparently they had four inches of snow in one night, so maybe that explains it a bit. Apparently we did have a slight dusting down here in the bowl, but I chose to ignore it because it was gone by the time I woke up. To me, that is not snow.     Something is different here in Alaska. Well, many things are different, but I think this is in reference to air pressure. Dan's shoes arrived in the mail from home the other day and they contain gel insoles. After wearing them for a bit- including a walk to church, Dan realized the gel was not so much in as outside the sole. Goop everywhere. Both shoes. Very weird. Another strange thing is that glass jars are nearly impossible to open here. It is very annoying. One particularly hard jar was our strawberry jam from Costco. After about 5 minutes of attempting to open this jar,we were successful, but it came at a price. Not only did we lose about half a cup of it from the jar tipping over, but we also lost our coffee pot, which was killed when the jar of jam flew two feet from the momentum of the opening. In retrospect it could have been worse- but now we need to buy a new coffee pot, which is annoying because they aren't as cheap as one would hope and we have two in Minnesota.
     Another thing that we have encountered is that fast food joints don't have ketchup pumps- just packages. Granted I think we have just been to a couple different Arby's, but still. They also ran out of Arby's sauce though... maybe they shouldn't be trusted.