On Monday, we had our ultrasound of our little baby, and it is, in fact, a boy. We’re really excited about this - his due date is officially June 8th. Everything looked great, and they measured him to weigh about 1.1 pounds right now. I’m about 22 weeks along, so just over the halfway point. I’m not sure how I can get much bigger - I’m feeling like I’m at max capacity right now.

Monday was also our 3rd wedding anniversary - hard to believe it’s been 3 years already! I feel really blessed to have Preston (and soon our little baby) in my life. What a great 3 years it’s been!

Preston and I just returned from our trip to Jakarta and Bali, and we really had a great time. We had the chance to do some very cool things, such as going to the Taman Safari in Jakarta, a safari where you drive your car through the animal exhibits, and even feed carrots and bananas to the animals. (The zebras and other creatures will stick their heads into your car window for a treat!) That was a lot of fun, and one of the highlights of the trip.

In Bali, we went to some different temples, and even the king’s palace, where we walked around the grounds. One of the more interesting parts of our trip was going to the monkey forest. Just outside the forest, they sell bananas you can feed to the monkeys. One thing I failed to notice was that only the tourists were buying the bananas…for good reason. I was standing holding a big bunch of bananas, and the monkeys were all around me, begging for some. I was holding the bunch, taking my time, when a cute little monkey started tugging on my shorts, begging for one. I gave him one, and wham! The next thing I knew, I had another monkey sitting on my head, grabbing for the bananas I was holding. I yelled to Preston, “Preston, get a picture!” He thought that was so funny…so he did. I bent down to get the monkey off my head, and just as I stood up again, two more monkeys jumped onto me - one on my head, and one on my shoulders. I decided that having a large bunch of bananas in a monkey forest wasn’t a great idea, so I threw down the bunch, and bent over for them to get off me. I had enough of the pesky (albeit cute) little guys.

Lesson learned: don’t take bananas into a monkey forest.

The whole trip was wonderful, and I was so grateful to have my father-in-law be such a great tour guide. He knows Indonesia really well, so he took us to some of the most interesting and fun places. Despite the 30+ hours of travel time it took to get there, it was totally worth it. Indonesia is a fascinating and beautiful place, and I’m hoping we’ll be able to visit again next year after our little baby boy is born.

My husband, Preston and I are sitting at Incheon Airport in Seoul, Korea right now. We’re on our way to Jakarta, Indonesia to visit Preston’s dad, who lives and works there on and off for about half the year.

It’s been a long trip so far…We flew from SLC to Las Vegas for a 2 hour layover, then enjoyed a 13 hour flight aboard Korean Air. We’ve been sitting at the airport for a few hours now…I think our layover is 9 hours total. We’ll board the plane in a couple of hours to head to Jakarta, which is a 7 hour flight. All in all, I’ll be very happy to get there.

I will say, however, that Korean Air was much nicer than Air France, which is what I flew on in April on my way to France. The plane was roomy, even in Coach class, which was a relief to me, being 20 weeks pregnant. I felt pretty good on the flight - I just had to get up and walk a lot to make sure to avoid blood clots. (I guess they’re more common when you’re pregnant.) Anyway, I slept a lot, which made the flight go by pretty quickly. Preston ended up sitting next to a rather large man that accidentally kept hitting the Flight Attendant button, and they kept coming over to see what he needed. He was nice enough - just on his way to the Philippines to pick up his new bride. You meet all sorts on airplanes, I suppose.

At any rate, one thing that helped the layover seem better was our Crown Room membership, which allowed us to relax in the Delta Airlines partner lounge. Unfortunately, they closed it after 3 hours, for reasons I didn’t really understand (the language barrier didn’t help…), but luckily they let us stay in another partner lounge. It’s nice and quiet, with food and drinks, and comfortable chairs. It’s nice being outside of the main part of the airport.

I’ll write more about the trip later, but I have to say, this has been the perfect time during my pregnancy to travel. I’m not huge yet (although I’m starting to feel that way…), and I’m past feeling nauseated. Hopefully our little baby enjoys travelling, because we plan on travelling a lot with him. Or we hope so, anyway!

I spent Thanksgiving with my family at a cabin in Truckee (small town near Lake Tahoe), and had a great time. The girls decided they wanted to see a movie, and the guys wanted to hit the tables (Truckee is about 30 miles outside of Reno), so we all piled into cars and headed to Reno.

While the guys lost money at the poker & roulette tables, the girls enjoyed Enchanted, a very cute Disney movie about Giselle, a cartoon princess that gets cast into real life Manhattan. Her handsome prince follows her to try to rescue her, and bring her back to the cartoon world she’s from.

The movie stars Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden, and Susan Sarandon. With such a talented cast, and a well-written storyline, the movie was bound to succeed. It was fun to watch, and Amy Adams was charming as Giselle. I would recommend this movie to anyone - it’s a great family or date movie. I’ll try and drag my husband because I’d love to see it again. (Hint, hint, Preston!)

Alright, so for those of you that read my blog about 20 minutes ago, you may be somewhat confused. No, I didn’t recently have a baby, and no, I’m not taking a weight loss supplement. I just had a blogdesk error, and accidentally posted an article about a client to my personal blog rather than a company blog.

I think Preston can relate to what I’m talking about. I love blogdesk, but sometimes I hate it.

Oops.

So this was a challenge from my sister-in-law Brooke, over at PlainAdvice.com. Brooke - I’m sorry it took me so long to write this - I’m not the most exciting person around. Anyway, Brooke wrote 8 random facts about herself, and challenged me to do the same.

1. My first job was when I was 11 or 12. I wanted horseback riding lessons, so for me to be able to pay for them, I cleaned out horse stalls for an hour each week to pay for my hour long lesson. (I loved it!)

2. I just got over a Milk Duds addiction. Ok, maybe not an addiction, but I really love Milk Duds, and I was eating about a box a day. I knew it was bad whenI was at the movie theater and ordered a box, and complained about how small it was. (Yeah, I’m on Weight Watchers now, and I’ve lost 7 lbs. - mostly due to kicking the Milk Duds habit, I think!)

3. When I was in 7th grade, all the schools in the school districts in San Jose auditioned kids to try out for a kids TV news anchor position. I won the nomination from my junior high school, and went to the news studio to try out. I had to try out in front of the reporters, on camera. (It wasn’t live, though.) I didn’t make the final cut, but it was exciting going to the studio to try out! (We had 10 minutes to memorize a news report - I think I did really badly, but it was fun!)

4. I was MVP and captain my senior year in high school of our Varsity girls soccer team.

5. Laundry is my favorite chore to do because I love having lots of clean clothes to pick from. It’s easy and brainless work, plus, when the laundry is done, it makes my room look less messy!

6. At our Grad Night (after my high school graduation), we had a hypnotist come and hypnotize some kids in front of the entire graduating class. I was picked to go up and get hypnotized. The hypnotist had me to up and dance like Madonna in front of my whole graduating class. Boy, I’m looking forward to my 10 year reunion next year! O_O

7. I was born in a small town called Johnson City in upstate New York. When I was born, apparently, I was still “in the sac.” If you don’t know what this means, I’m not going to explain it - go ask your mom. The doctors and nurses were so surprised that they called in other doctors to come and see…apparently they had never seen that before.

8. Over the years, I’ve had 11 different rabbits. (This does count Honey’s litter of 5, and the rabbits we tried to adopt.) Currently, I only have Honey Bunny, who has been plenty of bunny for us!

So there you go - 8 random things about me. Hopefully you’ve all learned something new! I would challenge Preston to do the same, but it would have to be 8 random internet marketing/internet retail facts about him.

Over the weekend, my husband and I traded in our 2003 Audi A4 1.8T Quattro for a “Victory Red” 2007 HUMMER H3. Admitedly, I was sad to say goodbye to the Audi, despite the problems we’ve had with it. It was a really fun car to drive, and with the sport suspension, could corner really well.

We went to the Jerry Seiner dealership in downtown Salt Lake, and actually had a pretty good experience there. The sales staff was not pushy, although it did take quite a bit of negotiating to make us happy with the price of the car, and the value they gave us on our trade in for the Audi. (I guess that’s to be expected anywhere you go when you purchase a car. Be sure to do your research and understand the value of the car you’re purchasing, along with the car you’re trading in.) The sales team, Alen Maric and Aldon (not sure of his last name) were great to work with, and we’re very happy with our new H3.

One of the reasons we decided to purchase the H3, in addition to liking the style and reading all of the great reviews, was because GM was offering nearly $2,000 in rebates in addition to 0% apr. It turned out to be a great deal, and we love the H3. It can tow around 4,500 lbs, yet it still gets decent gas mileage (19mpg for the automatic on the freeway). Towing it gets a bit less - somewhere between 13 and 15 mpg. At any rate, it can tow our 19 foot Four Winns boat without any problems. Once we get our horses, I’m sure it will be able to tow them with no problem either.

At any rate, the HUMMER is a lot of fun to drive, and it’s a great truck. I’ll post a pic of it soon. If you’re looking at SUVs, the H3 provides a great value for your money. Plus, it’s a great looking too!

With temperatures in the 3 digits here in Utah, my husband and I decided to go get some Slurpees at our local 7-11. When we went up to the machine, we had to laugh because instead of Slurpee, it said Squishee. There was Simpsons paraphenalia everywhere, and, forgetting The Simpsons Movie is due to be released soon, I wondered what the deal was.

Ah yes. The Simpsons Movie. As a way of generating a buzz for the movie, some 7-11’s have changed their names to Kwik-E-Mart, and their Slurpee machines to Squishee machines. The movie is due to be released July 27, and I’m sure there are a lot of teenage boys that can’t wait to see it. Yes, I grew up watching The Simpsons, and yes, I loved it for a long time. (I know my grandpa hates it because it “glorifies stupidity” as he puts it, which is very true!) I like the older episodes, but the more recent ones have gotten too preachy for me. It’s not as funny when they’re trying to push their agenda (whether I agree with it or not). At any rate, if the movie came out a few years ago, I might have been interested in seeing it. Not anymore…I think it has passed its prime. In the meantime, though, I’ll enjoy my Squishee.

Ok, so I realize that was a long title…but the story starts with me ordering flowers from FTD.com for my mom for Mother’s day. I ordered her some red tulips since they go with her decor in her house, and expected no problems. The other cool thing was I would get some Delta Skymiles for ordering through them. I had them set to be delivered on the Friday before Mother’s day.

I got an email the Thursday before saying the flowers had been delivered. This upset me, because I wanted them delivered on the day I specified (Friday). So, I called them up, and they apologized and gave me a 10% refund, which made me happy.

A few days after Mother’s day, I was talking with my Mom and she mentioned how the lavendar and white flowers were pretty, and I was upset because they were supposed to be red. So…I called FTD again, asking them to fix the problem. They told me there was nothing I could do because I didn’t call within 7 days of delivery. They said they had the right to change the flowers delivered because it was Mother’s day, and they wanted to make sure they were delivered at the right time. I told them not only were they delivered on the wrong day, but they weren’t even the right color. I asked them to fix the problem, and the rep told me there was nothing she could do.

I mentioned that they have a lot of compeitiors, and I usually go with ProFlowers, and have had no problems with them. I only went with FTD because they would give me Delta Skymiles with my order. I mentioned that it would be easy to tell my story, and let everyone know they provided bad service and the wrong flowers. I asked to talk with the manager, and she put me on hold.

So…once I was taken off of hold, they told me they would deliver some red tulips to my mom today or tomorrow at the latest, depending on what local florist had red tulips. That made me happy, and I was glad that after all that, they were willing to correct the problems.

I think that mistakes happen, and companies need to be given the opportunity to fix their mistakes. That is the sign of a good company - how they deal with their mistakes. Granted, if a company makes a ton of mistakes, there are problems, but I’m happy with how things turned with with FTD.

Ok, so I have a gripe with i-tunes. Hopefully I’m just missing something…I’d be happy if someone was able to help me out here…but here’s what happened:

I was downloading a purchased Dierks Bentley song (The Long Road Home) when i-tunes crashed and shut down. I re-opened it, and noticed that the song wasn’t in my library, so I went to re-purchase it. It told me I had already bought it, so I went to store —> check for purchases. It said all songs purchased had been downloaded. In other words, because of i-tunes glitch or whatever happened, when it crashed, it charged me, but I didn’t get my song. It reminds me of putting my dollar in the vending machine and watching the soda or candy or whatever get stuck…you paid for it, but you don’t get it. Blargh.