Snail Mail makes my heart happy

Welp, I've gotten some pretty festive things in the mail lately. I finally gave in and ordered some maternity clothes...totally hit the jackpot with Old Navy! They had a 50% Off maternity clothes special and because I'm on their mailing list - I hit that UP!!
BUT, I haven't gotten that in the mail yet :-)

But, I HAVE gotten a few letters/postcards/baby booties in the mail and I shall share them with you because they make me happy!!!

First up - a postcard coming to me all the way from Portugal!

If you are from my hometown you may easily recognize this handwriting... it's from my foreign exchange sister, Elena!!!! I was shocked to see a postcard from her! She had recently told me on Facebook that she would be traveling to Portugal but I didn't put two and two together until I saw the handwriting! Love my sweet sister Elena!!

Next is one perhaps slightly more representative of my hometown. Farm animals...

 How cute is that?! It says "Hogs and Kisses." I just LOVE it! A best friend from home is the greatest about regularly sending me cards. See, our church ladies get together and make these awesomely intricate cards for any and every season imaginable. So, Megan, no pressure for you to continue sending me these cards but it brings a tear to my eye every time I get one from you! She is a very special and dear friend!!

Up next is a teeny, tiny package I received today! We have a dear friend in Virginia, Merileigh. Merileigh has such a heart for Christ and looks for ways to serve however she can! Apparently, she decided to serve us by doing this...

She made baby Kinsley purple kicks!!!!! They are soo cool!!! Jarred thinks they kinda look like basketball shoes, or maybe he just thinks that because he's a basketball fanatic... Either way, they are absolutely fantastic and totally perfect!! Can't wait for baby girl to try them on!

p.s. I just bathed so don't judge my personal appearance :-)

Warped Mind

If you know my hubby, you may know that he has sometimes said I have a warped mind...

If you know me, you may know my mind is warped because of an eating disorder...

Many times when I have lectured about my experiences with eating disorders I try really hard to change people's perspectives and help them understand that "simply eating" is not such a simple solution. Having an eating disorder is an incredible addiction and completely changes the way your mind sees your own body. To this day, even having lived through the experience, I can't tell you why or how a mind could become so clueless and so "certain" that a person's body has excess fat on it... So I've always stressed in my lectures how I never saw weight loss when I was losing and never really saw weight gain when I was in treatment. However, now being preggers gives me an excellent teaching opportunity and example to share with you!

Here it goes - my "baby bump" is completely not noticeable to me. When I look in the mirror, my belly looks the exact same as it did to me 5 months ago, pre-baby. If you saw my last post, many of you commented that my bump is growing and that it's cute and that it's...whatever... but to me, I've always had this bump. Are you beginning to understand how eating disorders work? So the next time you think someone has anorexia, think twice about telling them to "just eat". To them, they are eating - they're even eating too much. To them, they haven't lost an ounce - if anything, they have become more dissatisfied with their body than ever before.

I told Jarred that my belly looks the same to me, that it appears to be unchanged by the pregnancy and I think his mind was fairly blown. And I guess it reminds me of God's goodness - that four years ago the site of my belly put me into a 40-pound weight loss, downward spiral. And today, even though my belly seems quite pudgy, He allows me to be healthy.

GUEST POST! I am married to the rounding intern!

Guest Post from Jarred the Husband! Yay!

I am very excited about the baby bumps and little miss Kinsley but wanted to share some pics of some other stuff I have been up to! I have been working from home which is very nice, but can get old. Here is my professional office:

The mountain views out that window are nice! So I got tired of just looking at those mountains and decided to take a hike up them just North of our house. I planned to hike up the finger rock trail that leads to linda vista. The trailhead is less than 5 minutes from our house so what's better than that? Here is the pic of the mountains from our living room. Can you guess which one is finger rock?

Well I thought I could handle any trail here after dominating McAfee's Knob and Dragon's Tooth back in Virginia, but boy was I wrong. This was by far the hardest hike I have ever done and it took much longer than I was expecting. I will not lie to you, I about quit and turned around 10 different times. I also took about a minute break for every 2 minutes of hiking, it was rough.

Near the start, lots of Saguaros

Looking back down the canyon, no more Saguaros

 I eventually made it to the top despite some prickly pear thorns in my legs and arms and was blessed with this wonderful view. The lower arrow is where our apartment is and the farther one is where Christina works at University Medical Center. The way back down was just as bad as the way up. I do not plan on doing this hike again as I was just glad God answered my many prayers of just making it through this hike alive.

The view from Linda Vista in the Catalina Mountains

In other news, Cool thing happened on Thursday! The plane carrying the space shuttle Endeavour to its retirement home in California did a low fly by over Tucson. I took these couple of pics from just outside our apartment in the north suburbs. I'm really glad I got to see something cool like this.

Well that is all from me.. we are off to go plan our future baby's room some more and hopefully get a nice used crib! More pics of my wife's cute bump next time in the blog. I still own the biggest stomach bump in this house though! Maybe next post wifey!

Halfway there!

Welp, today I am officially 20 weeks preggers. How that happened - I'm not really sure. I feel like I just peed on a stick yesterday. It helps that I'm experiencing some growing pains - the belly feels very tight and it seems like a lot of things are being stretched that have never been stretched before. It's a very strange feeling, semi-uncomfortable, but manageable :-) Let's see, other pregnancy symptoms that are starting to set in - heart palpitations (thank you increased blood volume), heartburn, severe aversion to any form of protein other than dairy...that's really all! Still feeling very blessed to have had such an "easy" pregnancy so far and experiencing such few symptoms!
But here's what is still not soaking in... (despite the fact that I'm having a child...) I'm finally starting to get a baby bump. I used to be able to wear a very similar outfit; with the high waist and chunky belt, and the bump would be totally concealed. Now, the bump is not totally concealed...

bad picture - i was semi talking and didn't want to redo it...but it's bad

But, when you pull back the skirt, the bump is really not concealed...

semi-bad picture - double chin...

So yeah, there's an update on the bump!

Phase One is Done!

This past week I officially completed Phase I of my internship!! So, to celebrate, all of us interns (and significant others) went out for "drinks"...and by drinks I mean I ate a deep-dish pizza... Either way, it was great to blow off steam and be thankful for completion of phase one!
After dinner, Jarred and I went down to visit my grandparents! I just love them to pieces!! But they have been telling us about a thing they have done several times and they always wanted us to go with them. So, their Son Shiners group from church was going on Saturday and we gladly took the invite to join them. We went Hummingbird Banding!
What happens is this - there is a place where they catch hummingbirds using a remote-controlled net to trap them and then catch them with their hands. From there, a biologist checks out the hummingbirds fat stores, feathers, skin, etc. After all the data has been collected, they place a small band on their leg so that they can track the birds. After the band is placed, you get to hold the hummingbird, until it gets over the shock of being caught, and let it fly away from your hand.

Little hummingbird in a cage

Jarred and I got to transport them from the big trap to the biologist for her to study them

My little bird was very excited to fly away so she held him there for a while

It was sunny and I thought it was going to jack me in the face

He was flapping his wings all over the place

I could feel his little feet running like mad trying to escape!!

Interesting tid-bit about hummingbirds:

• They have translucent skin so you can see their food bolus as it goes down
• They can travel up to 300 miles in a day
• The ladies weigh about 3 grams which is the same as a penny - the gents are smaller

Blessings from Above

This week has been pretty ridonc. It's the last week of Phase I in the internship (meaning next week I'll start handling slightly more difficult patients than I have been the last three weeks) so we had our 30 minute presentations and our first exam. Both went well, praise the Lord! But on top of school stresses, baby has been slightly difficult. I've been having some major pain - very sharp, isolated pain - right where baby girl is. I'm pretty sure it's just a ligament being stretched and pulled but Monday night...or tuesday?... very sharp pains came and literally stopped me in my tracks during our evening walk. But again, prayers were answered and pains are subsiding!
Recap this week up until today: labor pains healed through prayer, successful completion of 30 minute presentation and Phase I exam through prayer.

Today, wow! Today was another level of ridonc! I had my exam this morning and then saw patients this afternoon. And I'm going to tell you a story - not to tell you that I'm an awesome intern or a caring/awesome person but to show you that God really blesses the cheerful giver.
Way long ago I predicted that I would cry during every intervention with a cancer patient. As of today, I am 1 for 1 on that prediction. I saw a patient that was severely malnourished and receiving her third round of chemo. My heart broke the instant I saw her - I described her as someone who just got out of Auschwitz. She declined having a conversation with me to assess her needs due to her degree of weakness. As soon as I left the room I welled up with tears and ran to the bathroom to let the tears flow. And I prayed for her. Unfortunately, I very quickly remembered that I read in the chart that she would be discharging this afternoon and I thought, "There is NO WAY I can allow this woman to go home without some sort of nutrition." So I called my preceptor immediately to get permission to send her home with supplements. I sent her home with two overflowing bags of supplements. When I dropped them off in the room and explained what everything was, the patient looked up at me with tears in her eyes. She then reached for my hand and began to gently rub it. Through the tears she thanked me for what I had done and how I had blessed her. I told her that she had blessed me far more than I had blessed her and that I would be praying for her. I pray that those supplements would allow her body to heal and fight the cancer; I pray that the days she has left on this earth would be filled with Christ and be filled to the fullest; I pray God in thankfulness for that women and the opportunity he gave me to serve her - how undeserving I am to feel so blessed to serve!

Would you like that with nuts or without?

I have to try and be crafty, sometimes... Unfortunately, I saw the ever-so-crafty title of this post used in gender reveal parties. So, do you know if Baby Caplette is with nuts or without? Welp, we got to find out yesterday! This largely terrifies me because finding out the gender means I'm already halfway there! I'm 18.5 weeks already, which is totally redonc! Also, I'm very blessed and really don't feel preggers; never had the morning sickness, I'm not bulging out too badly yet... But not feeling preggers makes me really not believe I'm preggers! It's really unbelievable to think another human being is inside of me...it's a freaking miracle and totally surreal!

So, here it goes...what is Baby Caplette?

 
Well, that's Miss Kinsley Rae trying on HER pink baby bonnet for the first time! (props to my mom for also having made a blue bonnet and a more gender neutral bonnet...just in case!) Oh, and PS, we do prefer that our baby girl isn't a blob of pink...we're potentially thinking of somewhat of a beachy theme with corals, yellow-oranges, teals and browns :-)

Here's more of baby Kinsley!

The top picture is her profile - she is all snuggled up with her arms crossed and legs bent up. And the bottom picture are her little feeties :-) Kinsley is also, apparently, a bit of a thumb-sucker already!

Thumb-sucker or not, we feel so blessed. Even if we can't believe there's actually a baby in there, we believe that baby is being made and protected by Someone bigger than us!

A Laborless Weekend

First of all, I have to tell you...my hubby is amazing!!! He is amazing for many, many reasons, but one reason that I particularly appreciated this past weekend is his ability to plan fun weekend getaways! This past weekend - here is what he planned for us :-)

Saturday:
First stop, Sedona. We went to a church that has been like built into the mountains and then shopped all over the downtown area...this included a quick ice-cream stop where we shared an Oreo Madness :-)
We then traveled to Flagstaff where our hotel was and we had dinner at a place called Fratelli's. It was a super yummy pizza shop and I would totes recommend it!

A view of the actual church from below

Jarred at the Church of the Holy Cross

This one's for my dad :-)

Cathedral Rock in the background

Us at the Church!

Sunday:
First stop, the Grand Canyon! I, for whatever reason, did anticipate the scenery around the canyon to be so pine-tree-ish. I also didn't expect to see Elk Crossing or Mountain Lion Crossing signs along the way either! But my favorite part of the day was my very first view of the canyon...it was ridonc! And we traveled several miles up and down the canyon (some walking, some busing, some driving) to check out different lookout points.
On our way back to Flagstaff we took a different route and we stopped at a place called Sunset Crater Volcano. That's right folks, volcano! I didn't know there were volcanoes in AZ! But we wandered all around old lava fields!
For dinner, in Flagstaff, we went to Salsa Brava. Which, if you are a fan of Diner's, Drive-ins, and Dives, you will know that Guy has been to Salsa Brava! But we had to wait for 30-45 minutes to get a seat!

My first view of the canyon...my favorite!

See! We're at the Grand Canyon!!

See all the trees? I expected desert!

Jarred is much more brave than I am!

Inside the Watch Tower at the Grand Canyon - one of our last stops

At Sunset Crater Volcano

The lava fields

The storms were rolling in!

Monday:
Back to Tucson! On our way we stopped at Montezuma's Castle (no, Montezuma never lived there...let down! ha!). It was really cool but I don't think I could ever actually get to the thing seeing that they apparently used ladders to scale a cliff...hmmm
Also, on our way home, Jarred's chicken fantasies were fulfilled when we discovered a "Raising Cane's" in Phoenix. It is essentially the exact same thing as Zaxby's, except they literally have four options. And their sauce is even the exact same as Zax sauce...Jarred is very happy :-)

Pretty water - streams are my fave!

Jarred's first view of the castle

There it is!!!