When Google can start to get weird...

When I first started thinking about posting about our pregnancy, my intial thought was to do a funny post to announce it to the world. So I Googled "i'm having a baby" and looked at Google Images to find things to post about. Bad, bad idea. I highly recommend against that. However, some funny stuff did pop up (that I'm obviously blogging about). Like the duct taped baby:

Really? You duct taped your child to the wall and to keep her happy added the duck? At some point I can see the duck not being able to console her any longer and then you're just stuck with a hysterical baby on a wall that will later be ruined by duct tape residue. Yea, smart thinking. Oh internet world, you amuse me.

12 down 28 to go...

Baby Ryckbost (via Paul and Christa) will be making a debut in February of 2011 and we are EXCITED!

Hello world changing.

Hello maternity jeans.

I've been waiting for this for awhile. Well, not the maternity jeans part but the baby part, and the shouting it from the rooftops part. However, all of a sudden I'm having a really hard time deciding what to shout - other than "we're having a baby!".

Some days I feel like things have already moved so quickly and that the next 28 weeks is going to be gone before I know it but then other days I feel like it is going to take years to get here.

The days where I'm thinking about refinishing the wood floors, and fixing up the back two rooms, and doing this and doing that are the days I am grasping at what little time I feel like we have to get prepared. Especially since the month of Decemeber, Paul and I will only be in our house for 10 or 12 days.

But the days where I'm thinking about seeing our baby for the first time and what it will be like to be a family of three (because there's only one in there in case you were wondering...) I feel like it is going to take forever for 2011 to arrive.

We are so blessed and so excited we can barely contain it. Paul tells me goodbye every morning, kisses my forehead (because I have a cold) and then tells the baby goodbye too. I love that he's excited. I like seeing him with kids and I know I'm going to love him more as a dad.

dumpster diving anyone?

A few weeks ago a co-worker of mine threw away a couple of large tiles that we didn't need for a project any longer into our large trash can. The next morning, the tiles were all out on our flat files. It was a little twilight zone-ish. Someone had taken them out of the trash and we all laughed about it, she grabbed them, threw them into her desk trash can and went on about her day. The next morning she came in to find them on her desk again. The people who collect our trash after hours apparently thought that those tiles really were worth something and they were not going to be a part of throwing them away.

Here's the deal...we order thousands of samples. THOUSANDS. Tile, carpet tile, laminate pieces, fabrics, solid surface counter pieces, wood door samples, you name it, we order it for meetings with clients and for colorboards. For as sustainable as we are and we make buildings to be, we are typically, as a profession, very wasteful. We have to be, it's part of our job. And we have a library FULL of materials and samples. So full in fact, it's dangerous. We keep as much as we can but at some point we just have to throw things out when we are done with them.

We also try and re-use what we can. Carpet tiles are huge and people love them for the garages, back porches, to cut up and use on shelves, etc. So we have huge carpet giveaways in our office. We also have a co-worker who takes the all of our larger tiles to Peru once a year where she does a lot of mission work to use as grave markers in their small cemetery. I'm not bragging about that, just stating that we try and re-use what we can within reason.

Here's my real story:

Yesterday I was purging my desk of old samples that never got used (that I knew we had a book in the library of) and threw some tile in the trash. I started cleaning out drawers and found a scarf I had bought at H&M for no more than $10.00 that I tore a hole in last winter and decided that it wasn't worth holding onto any longer, especially at my desk. So I chunked it. There's a hole in it.

Well, apparently they pilfered through our trash again last night and pulled out a few of the 5" tiles and the scarf and left them on my desk for me, like I had made a mistake.

They're men by the way the people who take our trash. I've never had a lady take my trash from under my desk when I've been working late.

Well, I'd like to know what this guy thinks I'm going to use a single 5" slate tile for. I can understand if I had a box of them, I could do a table or something, but really, just one?

And the scarf, if you don't think I should throw it away, I obviously don't want it and if the hole doesn't bother you, take it.

Goodwill and Salvation Army won't even want it, in case I haven't mentioned it, it's GOT A HOLE IN IT. 

I moved the tile to a different trash can in hopes it gets pitched and amd I'm still staring at the scarf.

robberson steel co., oklahoma city

We found this steel company while driving around parts of Oklahoma City we had never been in before a few weeks ago. We do that a lot. Around 2:00 pm on a Saturday afternoon, we get fidgety, so we go to Sonic for happy hour priced drinks and then we explore until we find things like this.

ironic that i am posting about owls and fireflies in the same day - no relation to the song, really.

I have an aversion to bugs. It's not that I hate them, but 1) I don't want them in my house and 2) I don't want them on me. I have no problem letting them live at peace in their outdoor world, I can't hate nature when it's in nature but the thought of a june bug hitting me in the face on my porch or a mosquito perching on my knee in the backyard has me swatting the air like an idiot.

So, the fact that I have an obsession with lightning bugs is a bit strange.

I liked them as a kid but not like I do now. It all started on our honeymoon and it's still the coolest memory I think I have in my little head. (Although, having a candle lit dinner on a pier in the DR watching a wedding party let off 15-20 Khoom Fay (paper floating lanterns) from the beach and watching them float over our heads was pretty cool too.)

We road tripped to Pennsylvania for our honeymoon to see Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. We had left the Sunday morning after our wedding, drove all day and as we were starting to get tired, and close to our first overnight stop, we had both grown rather quiet. We had done a lot of talking throughout the day and since it was dark and the music was playing, it was good enough to both just be in the car together. I was looking out of my window as we were flying by the tree lined highway at 80 miles an hour and realized I was looking at more lightning bugs than I had ever seen in my life. There were so many of them and they were flashing so frequently in front of and inside the trees that it made for the coolest moment. I quickly made Paul take his eyes off the road and look at them and although he thought it was rather cool too, I knew I was having one of my moments that I couldn't explain to him. One of those, this moment right here, in this car with my new husband, listnening to this song while watching these thousands of bugs was going to be forever burned into my brain. And I liked it.

oh i'm such a hoot

So a week ago or so (that's a fun sentence starter), LGN posted this photo from Lonny

and she raved about the rug. My first thought was, "what rug?! there's a huge white owl sitting on the island and you're excited about some oriental rug?!". that owl is exciting.

Then, Burke Decor had a giveaway through her blog giving away this owl.

It was like only the second internet contest I've ever entered. I didn't win, wah wah, but still love the thing. I wouldn't use it for umbrellas though. I don't know what I'd use it for.

But I seriously like me some white ceramic owl action.

Thoughts for today:

At 11:27 am the women in my office building all decide it’s time to run to the restroom. I hate waiting for a stall when I know there’s a bathroom on every floor, so I meandered to other floors to find I would have to wait in every one of them. That just took me back to my floor and my original restroom where I waited out the now longer line. Note to self: pee at 11:25.

I am tired. Yesterday, I slept through Paul waking up, taking a shower, getting dressed, having breakfast and apparently leaving for church. I woke up 20 minutes after he had left and lay in bed for another 30 before I crawled out of the room, only for a bowl of cinnamon toast crunch. I could have done the same this morning if I knew I couldn't get fired for doing it. I was going to work through lunch, but I may go home and take a nap instead.

Catalog Living is funny. Read it.

I want to do this.

And this.

I need this upcoming three day holiday weekend like no one would believe. And the fact that I have to wait two months before I have another day off of work is a bit unnerving. I'm not used to this not traveling all the time and taking three day weekends thing. I can't figure out how people do it.

If a June night could talk, it would probably boast it invented romance. ~Bern Williams

I haven't forgotten you exist blogger. I've just been busy. Really busy.

Last night Paul came into the living room bringing with him my new favorite around the house shorts, threw them at me and told me to come out front with him. Yes, I was half dressed. It was ten o'clock and I can do that.

So I pulled them on and headed out to the porch with the boy.

It was ten at night and still a sticky 84 degrees outside. We stood in the darkness on the porch for a second when I was just about to ask, "ok...so what are we doing?," when lightning flashed all over the sky to the north above the houses we were facing. All of a sudden the sky was full of clouds I hadn't been able to see just moments before. It was awesome. The lightning was fairly consistent so we both popped down on the porch stairs and watched it for awhile enjoying nighttime summer.

I started to pray in my head for the same thing I've been praying about for weeks, a request of sorts. I am sure God at this point is thinking "yea woman, I heard you the other 900 times you prayed for this - chill out". But before I got to the request in my head last night, the lightning hit again and I thought, how awesome is everything around us. The whole world all of a sudden was just mind boggling to me and I told God how awesome he was and left it at that.

We sat there for a little while longer talking until I started yawning (and shuddering from the idea that June Bugs would be flying around if the light was on). It was affirming, not just the amazing world around us part, but that Paul and I could sit, on OUR porch, and talk at ten at night, like grownups, because we're really not. Ha, if only.

Post Script:

I love me some Photoshop action:

The fact that I can make things like that, from nothing but a blank screen and some images of fabric that I like astounds me.

I've got to make sure my boss knows just how important it is to stay on my computer. Otherwise, I'd be up a creek when it came to personal stuff!  

four years ago today:

I got married.

To this guy:

Hello wonderful.

We went on a honeymoon, we traveled a lot, we hung out with friends and family, I graduated college, we both got new jobs, we worked on our house and remodeled our kitchen and spent many weekends and evenings just enjoying our time together. I wouldn't have done half of it without him, he's been such a blessing to have in my life. Here's to many more years of gallivanting around together.