Halloween!

Another year, and not one trick or treater. Oh well! More candy for me! Here is a pic of me in the Juno costume.
I don't know what it is about the bump, but it makes me make STUPID faces when I'm getting my picture taken. It's like I figure people are looking at my tum rather than my face and forget to smile or even try to look presentable. I have Mike take like 50 pictures so I end up with ONE that I'm not making StupidFace in. Oh well.

Check out this sexy beast

Check out this picture of Mike in his flag football shirt... aren't these the most hilarious uniforms?Arrrrrrrrrrooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Weekend recap!

So this past weekend had a couple fun outings.... Friday night I went to the Bulls vs. Pacers preseason game with my friend Stacy, and Saturday we had a wedding!

Friday, I picked up Stacy and headed downtown. As I told her, "If I have to be sober, I might as well also be convenient and drive." Parking around the stadium was $20 and we split it - and it was the only $10 I spent all night really (aside from the $10 I threw in for pizza with Mike beforehand....hmmmm, Pequod's) - so it was super reasonable considering a cab one way would have been $12-$15. The owner of her company is obviously really important because they had a skybox on the first skybox level right in the middle of the court. It was awesome. I could get used to that kind of treatment! The skybox didn't have food because they just do the full service food for regular season games, but there WAS a dessert cart that came around and a fridge stocked with all kinds of beverages (adult and otherwise). Stacy opened a bottle of Cakebread Chardonnay that I'm sure was awesome and we sat in nice cushy chairs and watched the game and chatted about everything under the sun. When the dessert cart came around Stacy got massive pieces of both carrot cake and brownie cake (I don't even know what this thing was, but it was HUGE and covered in caramel and chocolate). I opted for a chocolate sundae with vanilla ice cream and a huge sugar cookie shaped like a bull. I helped Stacy a bit with the carrot cake and once I was all sugared up, Dos started his/her Tiny Baby Party dance. I took the cookie home for Mike, who loved it. I also may have had part of the cookie for breakfast on Monday. So good! Check out how awesome the cookie looked -

Saturday the wedding we went to was downtown at 1, then the reception was out in the suburbs starting at 6:30. It was nice that the wedding was downtown, because I had a couple hours at home in between the two events. I took Milly out and headed to pick up Stacy, another friend Amy, and then Mike from downtown (where he was studying) and got out there right as cocktail hour was starting. The wedding was at this really nice country club and was really well done - the food was good and the music was fun as well. Although I sat at my table alot of the night (being on my feet is not so fun with Dos!) I had a really good time. There was a fun photobooth and we ended up staying until the end. Bonus part of staying until midnight - almost no traffic the whole way home, so we were at home in bed by about 1. Still, that's later than I usually stay up so there were copious naps on Sunday. But that seems to be pretty par for the course these days for Sundays. In a couple weeks, after his test, Mike can join the Sunday Me/Dos/Milly nap party. I can't wait :)

I took some pics of me and Mike on Saturday on a friend's camera, so I'll post those when she uploads them. But until then here is our photo strip from the photobooth!

Funny conversation.....

The other day I was walking back from lunch with a friend and saw some of the guys who work downstairs outside having a smoke break. So I stopped to talk to them. The one guy asked if I was bringing in my kid for Trick or Treating at the office on Friday.

I was like "Um, I think it's not quite old enough for that."

He replies "How old do kids need to be to dress up and trick or treat?!"

I say, "Maybe.... born? haha."

He says, "You don't have any kids yet?"

To which I reply "My doctor tells me there is one in here" and pointed to my belly.

There was a chorus of "Congratulations!!!" and "I didn't know you were pregnant!" pretty enthusiastically. Fun and funny :)

Random notes

I feel like I haven't had much to write about lately, but I've still been doing some fun things.

• This past weekend on Friday I hit up dinner with the ladies. We have been trying to do a monthly girls' night out, and this month we hit up Las Palmas. It was pretty good, but next time we're going to have to go somewhere with less intricate tastes and more carbohydrates... if I am going to eat that is! The girls seemed to enjoy the margaritas and the chips and guac were super tasty. I had a good time regardless of whether Dos would let me eat or not!
• Saturday Ronda was in town and we went to see Michael Birbiglia. He was super funny and the Vic was great! I had never been to the Vic even though it's within a half mile of my place and super easy to walk to. I'll have to hit that up in the future - it'd be a great place to see a concert b.c it's super small.
• After the comedy show at the Vic we headed to The Crossing to meet up with my friend Peter who was in from out of town. It was pretty nice, but started to get crowded around 11, so we bailed. I am totally fine going out all preggo, but when I start to get weird looks from 25 year olds or have to wait a long time to go to the bathroom, it's time to go! I turn into a pumpkin at midnight :)
  
• A couple weekends ago I visited some friends in Indy and they entertained my Olive Garden craving by heading there for lunch. What can I say, there isn't one anywhere near me! I wish I could have their breadsticks (with alfredo dipping sauce) and salad for every meal. Heaven. I could take or leave the soup, although the chicken gnocchi soup is pretty tasty. That night we ate at the Cheesecake Factory and OMG their pecan pumpkin cheesecake is awesome. The first layer is a pecan pie which then had pumpkin cheesecake added on top. It was amazing.
  
• A group from my Dad's church came up last week and we hit up Pequod's and the Million Dollar Quartet at the Apollo. He had a coach bus full of like 60 senior citizens. It was so much fun! The music during the show was so loud that Dos decided to have it's own Tiny Baby Party and was kicking super hard. At least we know that Dos likes Johnny Cash, Elvis, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis now. Duly noted!
• Last night I had a full-fledged craving and talked Mike into driving me over to North and Western to procure some Pizza Hut. OMG so good. Did you know that they have garlic dipping sauce like Papa John's now? Not exactly the same, but a good enough substitute (no Papa John's in the city makes me a very sad panda). And lo, it was good. Most I've eaten for dinner in a while. We left Milly at home while we went to pick it up so we could eat some pizza in the car without a beagle snout in the pizza box. Poor Milly got some pepperonis when we got home, don't you worry.
  
• As you've probably gathered from a few of these comments, dinner (and eating in general) is still pretty hit or miss for me. I can eat like 1/2-1/3 of what I used to be able to eat. Breakfast is pretty reliable, but lunch is shaky and dinner is usually only barely tolerated. I'm making it through with plenty of snacks and have finally gotten back to my pre-pregnancy weight. It's not so much nausea anymore, as I feel like I had a lap band put in with the addition of a giant gag reflex. Too much food makes me feel like I am going to die. Oh well. This, too, shall pass.... right? I guess if it sticks around it will be much easier to lose weight in the future. Haha....
• This weekend I'm heading to a Bulls preseason game with a friend on Friday, and then a wedding on Saturday. Should be good times! I'll have to post pics of myself in my maternity dress on Saturday - dresses make me look humongo!
  

I think it's official...

Dos has popped!
El bump is definitely out. I'm still able to wear some of my pre-pregnancy tops, and those hide the bump a bit more. But it's definitely crossing over from "Is she just getting fat?" to "Oh, THAT is what is going on...."

I like my little bump :)

On related note, buying maternity clothes is more fun that I thought it would be. I'm finding good stuff at the Gap, Target, and online. Did you know Forever 21 has a maternity line now?

Groupon thoughts

Yesterday my friend Emily and I took a Knife Skills class at Kendall College using a Groupon. And this got me thinking about Groupon (the class was awesome by the way, would totally recommend Kendall College for this kind of stuff).

I used to buy Groupons all the time. Until I got pregnant, I bought one for about everything I was interested in. Any restaurant that I wanted to try, anything that interested me. Since I got pregnant, even thinking about food sometimes made me want to throw up. So I pretty much stopped buying the things because I didn't want to look at the offer of the day and possibly get nauseous just looking at the picture on the thing. Today's is for Erwin, which is a pretty good restaurant. But still I hesitate.

Firstly, there has been all this stink about Groupon hurting businesses. Like, if the Groupon is worth 20K, then Groupon gets like 10K of that and the restaurant gets 10K to serve 40K worth of food. Since restaurant markups are so big alot of the time, sometimes they can still cover their costs. But sometimes they can't. And that's where the drama comes in, b.c people say they hurt restaurants more than help. Which, in my opinion is a pretty dumb argument. I mean, if the restaurant is going to make poor business decisions, this just speeds up the Darwinism component to owning a restaurant. If you are going to go out of business you are going to do so with or without Groupon in my opinion.

Secondly, the other thing I've noticed is that alot of establishments that use Groupon are freaking MOBBED after the promotion. I mean, how could they not be? They just sold like 4,000 coupons. Oy. One of our favorite brunch places participated (in a very intelligent way I might add, but selling a $15 coupon for $7, which is only an $8 discount on what is surely at least a $35 brunch), and I can hardly bring myself to go back there after 9AM because it is so freaking crowded. Plus I bought a massage on Groupon, and the soonest appointment open was three months from when I called (and then the massage therapist called in sick and I had to reschedule for three months AFTER THAT, it was so freaking annoying). So now when I think of buying a Groupon for a restaurant I factor that into the cost. As in "Is this $20 discount enough to deal with massive crowds and stressed waitstaff?" Alot of the time it just isn't. Because again, it's probably not somewhere I would have gone ANYWAY, so it's probably not that much of a deal. It's not a good deal if the coupon encourages you to go to a dinner you probably wouldn't go to in the ordinary realm of your life, spend $70 you wouldn't have anyway, and also makes you have to deal with five million yo-yo's crowding the place.

Anyway, what do you think of Groupon? Have you had good or bad experiences? Or both like me? I like it, but I think I'll be a far less quick to pull the trigger on buying Groupons in the future.