The loss and regaining of respect for man-kind

Mike and I have had an emotional couple of days. Well, the emotional part was mostly on my side, although, one part did get him as well. I blame hormones. And being a girl. And stressed and a big lack of sleep. Anyways.

My mom's company threw her a grand-baby party, right? Well, one big chunk of that was a $230 gift card for Babys R Us. Last night Mike and I went to get all those little things that you need and were definitely spending the entire amount, and then some. When we got to check out, two other gift cards were fine, but that $230 one had nothing on it. We figured that someone messed up when ringing it up and just didn't put the money on, or something like that. We called customer service, but they were already closed for the night, so we just put everything on hold until we figured it out.

Today Mike called them again and found out that the money had been put on correctly, and that on Nov. 29 someone checked the balance and used the card. This opened a whole can of legal worms for the store, and they said they'd try to figure it out and let us know if we could get a new card with the money on it. Needless to say, I reacted emotionally, Mike not so much. I tend to panic more than him about stuff, and the other afore mentioned factors caused me to pretty much lose it. Both of us were just disgusted because the customer service person guessed that someone used it online and just sat there typing in numbers until they hit a real card with money. How can people do something like that? Apparently there's some scam where people have managed to duplicate gift cards and make fake ones and use them after the real card has been activated.

Now here's the really good part. The part that restores our faith in the goodness of people, and then some. We happened to have the receipt for said gift card, and Babys R Us wanted us to fax it to them. Not having a machine ourselves, we went into work at the traffic office a little early to use the one there. Naturally, it raised a little curiosity, and we ended up telling a couple of people what happened. We don't actually know if that is connected to the next part or not, but we think it probably does. Sgt. Vest called Mike into his office and gave him an envelope. He said that someone put it on his desk and told him to give it to Mike. In that envelope was a blank card and a $100 bill.

With the job that we work we see a lot of selfish and self-centered people every day. We see tons of people that think they're the most important person, that they're the exception to everything. Today I feel like the exception. I feel like in a world where so many people just don't care and where so many people feel unloved, we are the exception. Someone really did care, and not just that, but they did such a wonderful act of service and don't even want recognition. That is the true meaning of charity, and the best part is that I know it doesn't have anything to do with the time of year, it's something they'd do if it was summer time. All I can say is, Merry Christmas, and remember what this season is all about!

Snow/ 38 weeks....

Ok, so this isn't a picture I took myself, but it gets the point across. Mike's winter was made happy this weekend when we woke up to snow on Sunday, then to more yesterday, and then even more today. I heard it's supposed to snow more this week as well. The snow is certainly pretty on the mountains, but my biggest peeve with it is that Provo is terrible at clearing roads for some reason. You would think Utah would be on top of things, wouldn't you? Mike and I agree, however, that our hometowns in OR and VA are both way better at clearing the roads.

On other news, I am just over 38 weeks now. At my appointment this week the doctor told us that he never lets people go over 41 weeks, so Dec. 28 would be the latest I could possibly go, and because of the heart issues I've been having with the pregnancy, he doubted that they'd let me go that long. So, I'm still hoping and assuming that we'll have her before Christmas! That would be especially nice since delivering on our anniversary would be kind of a bummer.

We're still rather nervous, but I at least, am feeling more prepared in the baby stuff area. I worked at my mom's company (API) for several years through middle school, high school and college, and since it is not a very large company, I knew everyone that worked there, and they all pretty much considered me a daughter. So, when they found out that I was pregnant, they planned a Grand-baby shower for my mom. We got so many great things from them, it's amazing how generous they were! That helped a lot with making me feel more prepared! We still have to go to Baby's R Us sometime this week to use gift cards and get the last things we need, and then I think we'll be set! Any recommendations of things that you've really liked having or wished you had? Or things that have a lot of hype but aren't really that great? We'd love any help and advice!

37 weeks...

And counting. Boy, people aren't kidding when they tell you that by the end of the pregnancy you really don't care about labor anymore because you're just so ready to have the baby out of you!Don't get me wrong, there's some great things about being pregnant. I feel so close to her, but really, 40 weeks? That's enough!

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun. We had three friends that we work with come over and we all split the cooking, which made it a lot easier and less stressful for me! We didn't get much of a vacation though, as there were two basketball games on Friday, plus the big U of U vs. BYU game on Saturday, and we had to work on Sunday as well. But, it was our last football game, which is good because I'm definitely to the point that working for 8 hours and being on my feet most of that time just isn't good. (have I mentioned that there's only like 3 weeks left?)

Yesterday we started putting up our Christmas decorations, finally! I'll take pictures and put them up later, as the decor is not complete. We got an artificial tree this year since we'll be staying in Provo, and started decorating it, but neither of us have our ornaments out here. Hopefully we'll get those soon so we can finish and our apartment will be officially festive! I've been able to get most of my Christmas shopping done as well (thanks largely due to Black Friday) which is nice because it will be less to worry about later. Just three more weeks!

Costumes!

We thought we were pretty creative/innovative this year. I figured, hey, I have a huge belly, may as well use it, right? Right! So, I was a pumpkin and Mike, deciding that he wanted to match me, was a pumpkin farmer. We were pretty proud of ourselves.

Besides that, not a lot has been going on here. Some of you may know that I was wearing a heart monitor for 2 weeks because my doctor was pretty sure I had developed SVT. We got the results back from the cardiologist a few days ago, and apparently everything was "normal". We're not quite sure what "normal" means as of right now, because something is definitely going on with my heart, but I guess it's just not diagnosable? Or something like that. My next doctors appointment is a week from today, so hopefully he'll have some more ideas and we'll be able to figure this thing out, because right now it's just really annoying. My graduation once again is being pushed back another semester, and once again its because of health. It's just getting old!

On other news, we finally have the baby's room cleared out of everything that needed to be cleared out. I'm pretty happy about that, although Mike is sad because it meant selling our love seat. That's the problem with small apartments though, no room for anything! I'm eager for her to come and to, some day, be able to have a full nights sleep again. I know, I know, it will be awhile in coming, but, it will come!

Halloween

Those are our really cool pumpkins. Mike's is the one on the left and mine is on the right. We have a lot of fun doing things like that, although Mike gets kinda sick of cleaning out the pumpkin goo, since that's his job for both pumpkins. Of course, when we have a kid next year, he'll get to do three then!
Once again he didn't quite make the openings on top big enough to easily light the candles inside, but at least this year neither of the pumpkins became a flaming inferno (although that was hilarious). Maybe next year he'll finally learn and make it easy on himself by making them wide enough to fit his hand and then some.

Did you know when you save a draft of an email on hotmail, it doesn't save attachments? I just found that out, because I don't have a picture now of our costumes with me. So, our awesome Halloween costumes will just have to be posted later!

Ivan Spudnik and Barby Q

So, I have to start off bragging a little bit. Ever been to Olive Garden for their soup, salad and breadsticks deal? We love it. Mike's favorite soup there is the Zuppa Tuscano. Last night I tried a recipe I had found online for Zuppa Tuscano, and it turned out great! Mike said it tasted just like Olive Gardens', which I take to be a huuuuge compliment because Olive Garden is a place of happiness.
Next is a belly shot. Taken today, I am 32 weeks. Almost there! And let me tell you, until I was picking a picture to put up of my belly, I had not realized how much weight I've gained in my face! So, ignore the face and focus on the belly!

Now the main reason for the post! Thursday night Mike and I went up to Kaysville because our friends Rachel and Craig were hosting a murder mystery dinner party thing. Mike was Ivan Spudnik, a Russian scientist, and his accent was the hit of the night. It was pretty bad.... I mean good, it was good! Haha, he practiced all day and got some tips from a friend that served his mission in Russia, so he actually did pretty well.

My character was a bombshell divorcee named Barby Q, but my costume wasn't nearly as entertaining as his, and like I mentioned before, I'm suddenly a lot more self conscious about putting pictures of me on the blog! The party was so fun though! I had never done one before, so it was a new experience and I was kind of nervous about it at first, but it was totally worth it. And no, neither of us was the murderer.

And now on to a question. I'm rather naive when it comes to all the blogging stuff, and I've been trying to figure something out. When I leave a comment on someones blog it makes the name all funny. It shows up as "Mike & Alicia" and I have no idea why. Ok, and the new and weirded thing is that I can't get it to show up how it looks when I leave a comment. Just imagine that after the and sign it has "amp;" For some reason this post keeps automatically taking that out, but it definitely shows up in the name on our comments. (Just to let you guys know, this is also why I don't leave a lot of comments, it always just looks weird) Anyone know how to fix it?

Work, work, work

So, here I am at work, being extremely bored because things got very messed up today and so I wasn't prepared to be where I am. This weekend is Homecoming at BYU, which you can probably imagine means a lot of work for Mike and me seeing that we're both working for BYU Traffic. As if Homecoming and all that it entails (Spectacular on two nights, a parade, run and game tomorrow) isn't bad enough, ESPN Game Day has also decided to come this weekend. Which means closing down parking lots and guarding lots and trucks all day/night today and tomorrow as well. So, basically there are a ton of posts that no one wants. So what do they do? They mess up our shift to cover things, and half our shift isn't here anyways.

The "flu" has been going around big time in the office, and so literally only four people on our shift came in today- keep in mind that both Mike and I came in, so that's half the people right there. Some of these people were signed up for posts tonight as well, so now there's no one to cover those. So, just to make this confusing, I'll explain a little of what happened to our shift. There are three traffic booths that get manned during our shift, then there are usually 4 people on patrol, including the FA (the person in charge of us). So, three of the people on patrol called in sick, and one was told that he had to work a Homecoming Spectacular post instead of working his normal shift. So basically we had the booth people and that was it. Mike and I came in seperately, and when I was walking in to the locker room another girl was coming in and said, "Oh, you're here! They had me close down 2V, so I figured you were sick, too!". At this point I was quite confused because no one had told me they were changing where I was supposed to be. After finally finding the person in charge, he told me that he was putting me in the booth that Mike was supposed to be in and putting Mike at a barricade for the ESPN thing. So right now, there are 3 people on evening shift officially, and one of them isn't even from our shift because they put two of us on special events posts.

To top it off, the guy in the other booth just radioed that he has to be somewhere at 6:15 (our shift ends at 7) so he wanted to know if he should try to find someone to take it or just close down the booths. The FA replied, "Well, there really isn't anyone to take it so we'll have to shut down I guess". So now I have a half hour break before my special event post, I guess. Now everyone that's here is just hoping that no one is going to call in sick tomorrow, because that would be terrible.

Anyways, I just thought I'd let everyone see a little bit of the inner workings of the traffic office at BYU. Crazy, isn't it?