I guess I'm becoming a once a month blogger.  Ack.  I didn't think the summer would become so busy and all of a sudden it's caught up to me.

 

Anyway, most relevant to my life would be the past two weekends.  In mid-July, I visited our Orlando office for a few days to catch up with the employees there and make plans for the academic year and during my maternity leave.   Drew decided to actually use some of that never-ending vacation (I'm so jealous) and come along.  We've been looking for a nice beach place to use as a 2nd home/vacation on the east coast of Florida near my family, so he was stuck playing real estate trooper.  I cannot believe how much those homes have gone up in price over the last couple of years.  I mean, it is near the beach, but hello, do hurricanes stop no one?  I love the beach myself - grew up going almost every weekend for my entire childhood, but at the same time, I'm from smalltown USA - there's no Gap, only one or two decent restaurants, and you have to drive like an hour to get anywhere of significance.  However, I guess that's appealing these days. 

 

Anyway, the poor guy looked at tons of condos, townhomes, small houses, in something like a 75 mile area and still really found nothing in our price range.  However, we both fell in love with one place we saw in New Symrna Beach, so maybe that will actually happen.  My idea of the beach house is to just have a place where we can vacation when we visit my family and meet up with our friends.  I have visions of hanging out with my friends and all of our growing families spending time on the beach, playing games, chilling out.  Not sure if we would use it as a rental property but as a loaner for our friends and family to use and to meet up with us.    My fingers are crossed.  If we did decide to do this, it will mean the end of my designer purse and shoe habit and we'll have to buckle up real tight.  However, I think it will be worth it.

 

The rest of the weekend was spent driving around properties and seeing my immediate family.  They all got a big kick out of my expanding belly.  Ha-ha.

 

This past weekend we had one of my closest friends, Stacey, and her husband D, down to visit.  I was so honored that they actually booked the trip together without even making it a business trip.  It was so sweet to have them both here and we had a lot of fun.  D is a little quiet like Drew and Stacey and I are both the chattiest people in the US, so that works out perfectly.  We mostly did local things near San Mateo but they seemed to enjoy themselves - plus they fixed the toilet that my friend Jenn broke a few months ago (just kidding, Jenn - it really just runs slow) and helped us hang a new lamp.  Drew and I have no household skills and D is just amazing.  Truly amazing.  The nicest part is that I'll see them again in Seattle this weekend!

 

For all of you interested, here's the Yoda update:  I'm about 28 weeks along and bursting out of lots of clothes.  It's now very obvious to all of the world that I'm pregnant.  I'm still working out and feeling good, but the lack of running has been hard for me to adjust to - I didn't realize how much muscle tone I would lose just by switching from running to walking, but I got a new trainer who is giving me lots of toning exercises as a pregnant lady.  The toughest thing she has me doing is any exercise that involves sitting on the floor and then having to get up.  Yoda is a pretty big load to carry around :-).

 

Later this week I'm heading to LA for a day in our office down there and then up to Seattle to meet up with Drew and Jenn is hosting a baby shower for Yoda.  I'm super excited to see everyone.

 

Ta-ta.