Baby Shower Weekend in Fargo!

The pictures are in reverse order, but here's a collage of my weekend in Fargo/Fergus. I flew in on a Thursday night and came back home on Monday night. On Sunday night, we celebrated our nephew Joe's first birthday (even though it was a few days early)! He is such a little cutie and I had a lot of fun watching him open gifts and destroy a piece of chocolate cake! I'm looking forward to spending more time with him (and his big bro, sisters, and parents) over Christmas break.

Joe opening gifts - with plenty of helpers!

I thought this would be the funniest picture! Jill, not pregnant and flat tummied, me at 23 weeks, and Kathy at 36 weeks!

ALMOST too cute to eat. Onesie sugar cookies with blue, green, pink, and yellow frosting? Seriously! We also had buns, crackers and cheese, orange and raspberry salads, and either pink lemonade, regular lemonade, or blue raspberry lemonade. Yep - three colors (blue, pink, yellow) of drinks!

Opening gifts at my shower. Kathy's shower was first at 10am and mine followed at noon.

Grandma and me (Mom's mom).

Little socks and onesies were clothes-pinned to the food table for decorations.

Gracie helped me open a gift!

Setting up and decorating before everyone arrived.

Frosting cupcakes for Kathy's shower.

WICKED!!!

Have you heard of the musical Wicked? It's been out for a handful of years and I've wanted to see it for quite a while. Well, in lieu of a birthday present, Matt told me that we could get tickets and go in October when it came to Denver. Yes! Well, I slacked a bit on getting tickets, but we went to Denver for the weekend of October 17 & 18 and I had hoped that we could just buy tickets at the box office on the day of the performance. Unfortunately, they were sold out. But our ears (and my hopes) perked up when the ticketing agent said, "Do you know about the ticket lottery?" Apparently, 20 tickets are available for purchase through the lottery system - you put your name in 2.5 hours before the show starts, and 2 hours before curtain, they draw names. If your name is drawn, you can purchase up to 2 tickets in cash. So we put our names in, walked down to the 16th Street mall to find an ATM, and made it back before the drawing. About 45 seconds before the guy drew the first name, I leaned over to Matt and said, "Wouldn't it be so funny if one of our names was drawn first?" Well, guess what? My name was drawn first! After a brief, but loud, celebration, we walked up to the window to purchase our tickets - 2 tickets, 3rd row of the Buell Theater, for $25 a piece. (FYI: that's an AMAZING deal, considering the cheapest regular seat in the theater was $65 per person, and that was on the 2nd balcony.) I was so excited!

The show started at 2:00, so we had a bit of time to kill before coming back to the theater. Since the purpose of the trip was to (hopefully) see Wicked and do some vehicle shopping, we headed over to a Ford dealer in Lakewood, a short 15-minute drive from the theater. Upon arrival, Matt told the salesman our time frame (that we had to leave by 1:30) right away. We looked around, test drove a vehicle, and got a bit more information on the trade-in value of the Taurus. About 1:27, the salesman came back and said that he could give us a more accurate value on the car if we left it at the dealership for a while - which we agreed to do as long as they gave us something else to drive. We ended up with a used Escape, but it needed gas before we left. So we followed the salesman to the nearest gas station to fill up before taking it on our merry way. I'm sure you can see where this is going, but just to make sure, I'll tell you right now that we ran out of gas at the stoplight of the intersection right by the gas station! That has never happened to us before. The salesman brought back a small jug of gas and dumped it in, but then requested that we continue to the gas station so he could fill up the tank a bit more. At this point, I'm watching the clock like a hawk as the minutes are ticking by and our 2:00 theater appointment is nearing. After the guy put more gas in, Matt peeled out of the gas station and drove quickly to the theater. About a mile before, as the clock reads 1:55, Matt turns to get on the interstate very near to the theater and we see a wall of extremely slow-moving cars. Oh no. We're not going to make it, I think. However, my husband, the expert driver he is, took the shoulder (or shoulder-type space) and maneuvered around the cars to the very next exit, which was the one we needed. Score! 1:57. We wove our way downtown, through one-ways and stoplights and got close to the theater to find parking. 1:58. I jumped out at a red light and ran to the theater while Matt went to park the car. 1:59. I literally RAN to the theater only to find out that we were too late. The doors had closed. We wouldn't be able to enter until after the hold-out, about 9-10 minutes after the show started. About 2:03, Matt came bounding down the stairs to the door nearest to our seats. :( After the good fortune of actually getting tickets to the show, we would miss the first 10 minutes. Big bummer. I can't believe how much drama we ran into in the 30 minutes prior to the start of the show! Seriously! Eventually, we got in and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the show. It was amazing, and our seats were wonderful!

Um, I don't think flash photography is allowed in the theater, but I covered up the red light on our camera and turned the flash off in order to get this picture. It's pretty grainy and dark, but who cares!

Playing Catch-up!

The first weekend in October, my parents flew out for a fun weekend visit. The arrived on Friday morning and left again on Monday morning. We had such a nice time visiting, catching up, talking about the house changes (since Mom and Dad were here when the house was in its nastiest form), and of course, talking about Baby Rustand. We took a trip down to Aspen to check out the fall colors, which were beautiful! On the way home, we stopped in Glenwood Springs to eat dinner at Chili's and grab a few things at Target. I guess the first picture is self-explanatory. I thought shopping carts were for small children or merchandise, but Dad thought otherwise. I tell you, Matt and Dad are quite the pair!
Downtown Aspen, CO.

Maroon and North Maroon Peaks - Maroon Bells Snowmass Wilderness Area is one of our favorite places in the state. (This was a potential Christmas card photo!)

A timer picture before we all head to work or the airport. Fun, fast weekend!

Hunting in Minnesota - 10/22 to 11/01

Here are some hunting pictures from the trip I took back to Minnesota in October.

A couple of mallards on our opening day shoot. The father and son team back at it again.

A pheasant and a couple of ducks that the wonder dog retrieved.

Dad and the banded mallard he bagged.

A good shoot on Carson's property.

Hunting down in Herman with my cousin Nick and his dog.

Our goose from down in Herman.

Chad Walkup and I after a hunt, a pheasant and blue-winged teal.

Lady and I after a hunt and the duck she retrieved.

A couple of geese I shot, the only geese that decoyed real well during the week.

I let Lady take credit by being in this picture, she actually wasn't there for the hunt though.

Justin, my nephew on the left, and Hayden, my cousin on the right, hunting for divers on Fish Lake. Unfortunately the birds weren't moving much that morning.

Another pheasant taken on Carson's property.

Lady, patiently awaiting the presence of ducks while hunting one morning.

A merganser taken one morning.

JP, brother-in-law, and I with yet another rooster off of Carson's property. His dog Morgan did a great job of flushing and retrieving this bird.

Check-In With Baby Rustand

A few updated pictures! I'm sure I'll see (yes, see!) some of you before you read this, but I thought it would be fun to post. I'm headed to Fargo tomorrow for a long weekend with the family. Jill and I are throwing Kathy a baby shower, and Jill and Kathy are throwing me a baby shower. Did you follow that?! Anyway, it's going to be a great time. Too bad Matt and I keep traveling separately back to MN! Our next trip home will be for Christmas, and we will be traveling together for that one.

November 1st (21 weeks)

November 4th - front shot! This shirt is a stretchy one from Gap (not a maternity shirt) and I just love it. I think I will be able to wear it all throughout the pregnancy!

Still November 4th. Notice the flowers? I got them the night before from the musicals performances compliments of teachers and students. It was a nice, fresh addition to the kitchen for a while.

We had our big ultrasound on November 6th, and this is a picture of the pictures we got from the technician. For whatever reason, the pictures shows up the right way in my pictures folder, but when I uploaded it (twice!), the picture rotated. I guess it gives you a TRUE picture of how the baby was positioned on ultrasound day - head down, feet up, facing up towards my belly button. Crazy baby! You would think that it wouldn't be that comfy to be upside down all day... The tech said that everything looked good and measured right on track, if even a few days early. Grow, Baby, grow! Can't wait to meet you!

Columbus Day - Hike up Geissler Mountain

I went for a hike on Monday because I had the day off . . . it's great to be working for the feds. I was originally going to hike along a trail up to a lake, but once I made it to the trail head I looked up and I thought I could make it to the top of one of the mountains. The hike was all off trail with 2700' of elevation gain, so it was a tough hike, but the view was great. I did a little fishing on my way down and caught a couple of cutthroat trout, so all in all it was a great day.

Here is a video from the peak.

Taking a break on the way up. As you can see, I am growing out my beard again, for hunting season of course.

A view from the top.

Baby Rustand Update!

Whoa. That's not a watermelon! Baby Rustand is starting to make his/her presence known to the rest of the world. I'm 16 weeks in this photo, but it looks like I should be about 24 weeks. For the record, this picture was taken at the end of the day, you know, when my belly was at its biggest point during the day. We're both getting a big kick out of how my body is changing. I've been feeling great, which we are both so thankful for! Especially since my poor pregnant younger sister was sick for the first 28 weeks out of her 31... or something awful like that. Believe me, I'm ultra thankful that I feel so good! I'm now 18 weeks and have another appointment on Friday. Our ultrasound won't happen for another month, so we'll just keep waiting patiently until we can see our little sweet pea! We will not be finding out the sex of the baby and are keeping our baby names a secret. Don't bother asking - we won't crack! :)

This week marks the end of the first quarter at school, which means that my school year is already 1/3 over. It's crazy to think about it like that! My students are beginning to ask me more and more questions about the baby, which is rather funny. My favorite comment so far has been from a 2nd grader who said, "Bye Mrs. Rustand! Have fun with your baby!" like the baby and I are playing cards or something! I need to start telling my students that they can no longer lean in for a hug with their heads - they are the same height as my belly, and it doesn't feel so good! It's fun to see them so excited about our little sweet pea.

Check back for more updates and pictures of Baby Rustand's progress!