Holiday Cheer

Greetings from Kansas City!

(We're actually in Phoenix right now, but I wanted to share some pictures of our

warm and cozy Christmas-ized apartment).

Finally, a Christmas tree I actually like to look at! For 3 years, now, I've decorated and redecorated, purchased, returned, and dealt with ugly trees trying to be beautiful. This was actually the second attempt. As you may recall from my previous post, I went shopping with my mom and sister and spent far too much money on Christmas decorations. Well, it turns out those were just ugly, so I took them back, spent less money on different ones, and redecorated. Who knew someone would be crazy enough to decorate a Christmas tree twice in one year? (I realize that most of you won't appreciate this, a lot of you may even think it's ugly, but I like it, and that's all that matters!) You can't really see it that well - it's not a great picture - but it's your standard artificial tree [that once looked huge in our little Logan apartments and is now dwarfed by the height of the ceiling in our KC apartment] with white poinsettias, silver and white berries, silver, white and clear balls, glass stars, and silver icicle droplets.

On a side note, Alec doesn't like it and we will have something different next year.

We've always wanted a fireplace, and now we have one. So what better thing to do than string some garland, lights, and candles for a little sparkle and warmth?

Sasha likes to get into the Christmas spirit as well. (Mostly she like to chew on the tree branches and use the ornaments like toys, but that's okay... No harm done... yet...)

Help!

Okay people, this is something I never thought I would have a problem with, but I guess you never really can count on too much when it comes to your own brainpower...

Alec and I are having a REALLY hard time finding a name we like for this child of ours (a boy). Yes, there are a few options that are okay, but nothing has really jumped out at us. So, we are enlisting your talented, wise, and open-minded suggestions. Just post a comment with your ideas, and then look forward to another poll as the big day approaches.

*A caveat: Please don't give us suggestions if it's a name you've always wanted for your own kids. I'm a little superstitious about baby-naming, and therefore don't tell people names I like for fear that they will get stolen... Don't make me be a name-stealer, please. Thank you. :)

Breaking News!

Well - it isn't really "breaking" - it happened about a month ago, but our camera has been MIA for a while, and I knew no one would believe me without documented evidence...

Attention one and all: I just wanted to let you know that the world is ending. Hell has frozen over. Pigs have flown. And my husband has bought a coat!

We were just innocently shopping for some church clothes for him, and I simply asked him to try one on so we could know what style he liked...if he were to ever own one. And I guess that just did the trick. He tried it on, and didn't want to take it off. We even went to another store to see what they had and so he could think about it, and we ended up going back to the first one and purchased.... VICTORY!!!

The First Freeze

So, we've experienced our first Midwest Ice Storm. It actually hasn't been all that bad. It comes because of what they call freezing rain - it's warm enough up in the atmosphere somewhere to be rain and not snow, but when it hits the ground, it's cold enough to freeze it. However, the freezing part hasn't really been happening - at least on the roads. I guess the friction of people driving is enough to keep things wet and sloshy... so what ends up happening, is people walk on the road rather than the sidewalk, because the sidewalks are a bit hazardous. (And it's been a little weird to have to break the ice off your door handle before you can get into the car).

Campus was closed yesterday, and there was a chance it would be today, but sadly, no. Alec will, in fact, be expected to show up at his History of Design Technology final this afternoon.

One thing that has been kind of crazy is all the power outages that have been happening. We haven't been affected by it, but on Monday, the governor declared a state of emergency and sent the National Guard out with water and generators for the 90,000-some-odd people who lost power further south and west of us. Also, there is not salt to be had to melt the ice... Not only can your average residential consumer not walk into their neighborhood ice-melt-supply store, but the actual city of Kansas City itself is out of ice... Who knows when that will be taken care of... Not to be critical, but Alec and I both think that one bad night of ice should not deplete your entire supply of ice-melt... But what do we know, we're only used to those mild, non-icy Logan winters...

Thanksgiving

I know, I know, it's a little past the main event, but I thought I'd give a quick recap:

My family came into town for Thanksgiving, and it was really nice to have them all here - though a little hectic, and we're still trying to figure out where some of our dishes were stashed away to when they so kindly cleaned up after themselves.

My parents came into town from Utah on Tuesday after having spent a few days with my sister in Des Moines, followed by my brother, Lee, from DC on Wednesday, and my sister and her husband (Erin and Matt) later Wednesday night from Des Moines. All in all, we had 7 people in the apartment for most of the week, and it was kind of crazy. The kitties didn't know quite what to do with themselves. Max holed up under the bed for the better part of the week, while Sasha made the rounds socializing and exploring all the new stuff lying around.

Games were played by all ... (mostly)...

Food was had by all ... (definitely)...

Even the kitties had a special Thanksgiving treat - they didn't much care for the cranberry sauce, but the gravy was a BIG hit.

On Friday, we travelled to Independence and Liberty (both about 20-30 minutes away from KC) to do some church history touring. We also visited the Community of Christ (the church formerly known as RLDS) "temple." They gave us a tour and we watched a video about how it all started... It sounded vaguely familiar - the whole Joseph Smith going to the woods thing - while key pieces were left out... Then it turned into some hippy propaganda where we need peace and love and tie-dyed banners in the assembly hall... All sort of strange, but now we can say we did it.

While the boys stayed home to watch the BYU-Utes football game on Saturday, the girls went shopping. We had a great time, spent far too much money on Christmas decorations [if you ask Alec, any money I spend on Christmas decorations is too much, because I never end up liking what I get, so I just get more later. Oh well...] We came home to Dad (Alec) and Grandpa (my dad) setting up the changing table. We already had the crib set up before everyone got into town, but these two decided this would be a good activity while they waited for the women. (They're not really into sports anyway). It was pretty cute.

Under Construction

My apologies... I was getting tired of this polka-dotted blog template and decided to change it... However, I guess I didn't push all the right buttons to keep my "widgets" so I lost the baby poll (that's what makes me the most sad) and the links to our friends' blogs, as well as some other things.... So, we are in the process of getting it all back into working order - Sorry about the ugliness...

A City of Culture & Friends

So... After posting last night, I remembered a few things I had meant to include but forgot about...

Living in Kansas City has really been good to Alec and me. There is so much culture and so many things to do here. Over the last 3 weeks, we've been able to see a show a week - and luckily for us, we have connections so we haven't had to pay.

First we saw The Lieutenant of Inishmore which the university did as a co-production with one of the theatres in town - the Unicorn. (No, they don't do children's theatre). It was refreshing to see new faces and new content than what we were used to in Logan.

The following week, we attended Who's Afraid of Virginia Woofle?, which was being produced by the professional theatre company one of Alec's professors founded. There was some pretty amazing talent that night! It was definitely worth staying up late for!

And this last week, we went to the Kansas City Rep's production of Doubt. Ever since it came out in 2004, we've been wanting to see it. When we took our spring break trip to New York that year, a bunch of our classmates went and we felt really left out. Well, this one was worth the wait. I didn't love the actor playing the priest - not because of what he was accused of - but just because... Although the actress playing Sister Aloysius made up for it many times over. She was amazing!

We are so lucky to be here. It was definitely the right decision for Alec to continue his schooling here. The program is wonderful and the opportunities are endless.

***

Today, we also had the chance to see some old friends of ours. Melissa (Thorseson) Godfrey, who graduated with me, and her husband Matt were in town to see the Garth Brooks concert (jealous, jealous, jealous) and we met up for lunch. We haven't seen or talked to each other since 2005, so it was fun to see them. They're living in Omaha, a mere 2.5 hours away, and they're also expecting a baby at the first of the year, so we'll have to make it a point to see them more often.

As I was getting today's picture off the camera, I came across these. This is from when my sister, Erin, and her husband, Matt, came down from Des Moines over Conference weekend. Yes, that is both of our couches crammed into our office - soon to be nursery - because we had to watch it streaming online because we didn't have the right channel in our cable package that we thought we did.... Those were good times!

. . .

I know, I know: It's been ages! And I apologize to those of you who think I'm cool enough to check this blog frequently enough to miss me posting (thank you for that ego boost...). Anyway... unlike most of you who have cute stories to tell about their kids and their day, not much has been going on here in the LaBau household (one of the many excuses for me not posting). But the main reason is that I've been working... yay! I'm just temping right now, although after being there for a month with my own company email address, phone line (that doesn't work) and cubicle, it doesn't much feel like temp work. I'm working in the marketing department of a company called Fujifilm Sericol. They make ink and printing presses. I don't really have any experience in marketing, but I can run circles around them when it comes to spreadsheets, so that's a lot of what I've been doing. Hence - me not writing. I find it really hard to sit in front of a computer for 8 hours a day at work and then come home and sit in front of another computer... Oh well, I will try to be better... :) Anyway, it's been good to get out of the house, and the money has been nice, so I guess I can't complain too much... It was hard to adjust to the "demotion", if you will... In Logan, I was in charge of myself, could do whatever I wanted, and was respected and given more credit than I was probably due, (thank you, Jarrod), but at Sericol, they still haven't quite figured out that I have a brain and can think for myself, and they're always running out of projects so I spend a lot of time just sitting there trying to look productive even though I could probably really just go home after half a day... But like I said, I'm enjoying it pretty well....

Alec has been having a good time in school. It's approaching the end of the semester, so he's realizing the impact of what not having any due dates can do to you. But he'll get through - he always does. He's been able to find some outside work, as well, which has been a nice change of pace from the grind of schoolwork. And it's giving him the opportunity to make some really great connections in the city that he can use later on... We think he's found a summer job, but it's not very official yet, and we don't want to jinx it, so stay tuned for more on that later.

The kitties are doing well. Sasha has become quite a momma's girl, so whenever I'm home, she has to be right there with me. It's cute, and also a little annoying at times. I guess it's just practice for when some other little person is counting on me to fulfill his every need.

Speaking of the baby.... He is doing well... We've only been to the doctor once since my last post, and it was just in and out, everything seems to be going fine, do you have any questions, see you in three weeks... which is good. We have made some pretty exciting purchases lately, though. Two weeks ago, what started out as Amber and Alec sitting down to go over the budget turned into Amber and Alec spending 5 hours of our Saturday baby shopping. A lot of what we were planning to get (the big purchases) we were going to do online because we found some really great sales (40% off), and shipping was free... but the sale ended "tomorrow". So, we got in the car and headed out for a marathon crib/bedding/glider experience so we could actually see the items in real life pre-purchase. I was very proud of Alec - he didn't have a chance to mentally prepare, and he ended up being the more logical one of us in the end anyway. Below are the pictures of what we've purchased so far:

Crib
Changing Table

Bedding Set

Glider & Ottoman

We actually got this in a color called "pear" which will be really exciting and versatile for both genders, and the chair is the comfiest chair I've ever sat in!

So... I guess that's really it for us... I will try to be better about posting more frequently, and if you really miss me, you can always nudge me... (you know who you are!)

the results are in...

I know you've all been anxiously awaiting the announcement of the gender of our child... at least the 39 of you that voted...

And....

Well....

This kid doesn't believe in conforming, because... It is a boy!

(despite the majority vote for a girl... guess the kid doesn't believe in democracy, either)

Our appointment was for 1:30 this afternoon, and we didn't leave until about 4 hours later. No complications or anything, just a really busy day at the clinic, apparently... He is looking healthy and normal; the ultrasound lady even said he had a beautiful heart. And for those of you who are familiar with this term, he also appears to have the "LaBau Nose."

He was being really stubborn [taking after mom] and wouldn't move out of this super-comfy (aka squished-up) position the whole time we were there.

Yes, his knees are just about touching his nose.

Celebratory cupcakes for Alec to take to class tomorrow.

Appropriately colored frosting, of course!

(sorry, Elizabeth, I know they're not very beautiful... the frosting was SO heavy!)

So that's our news... yay! :)

...Tag...

So, I guess I've been tagged - and I won't lie: I hate doing these things. But, I must confess, I like to read them about other people, so I guess I'll just take this one for the team.

Jobs I've Had:
pianist
piano teacher
team leader @ hogi yogi/teriyaki stix
call center survey taker
shift director @ hollywood video
actor
properties designer
asst. stage manager
stage manager
box office clerk
box office manager
scheduling director @ USU Fine Arts Center
voice-over person

Movies I Can Watch Over and Over:
Raising Helen
Runaway Bride
Pretty Woman
My Best Friend's Wedding
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
(are we seeing a theme here...?)

Books I Can Read Over and Over:
Harry Potter
Wicked
The Phantom of the Opera
Bernstein Bears
Nancy Drew
Boxcar Children

Places I Have Lived:
Billings, MT
Heber, UT
Logan, UT
Kansas City, MO

Places I Have Visited:
all of the mainland USA except:
Texas
Louisanna
Alabama
Tennessee
Florida
Georgia
South Carolina
North Carolina
(thanks for those 3 horrible weeks in the car, Mom and Dad) ;)

Places I Would Like to Visit:
England
France
Germany
Spain
Italy
Greece
Russia
Australia
Hawaii
Alaska

TV Shows I Watch:
24
Alias
Veronica Mars
Flip That House
CSI (all three)
The Closer
Law & Order: SVU
American Idol
pretty much anything crime-y or house-y

Foods I Like:
chocolate - not dark
ice cream
pasta
sweet pork enchiladas
cheesecake
lasagna
dessert of any kind

I'd Rather Be:
watching TV or sleeping

Websites I Visit Daily:
hotmail
yahoo
Zions
US Bank
Facebook
blogs
candy.about.com

People I Am Tagging:
Elizabeth
Jason
Kinsey
Jennie
Alec! :)

Kitty... Cradle...?

So, recently we've been noticing that Sasha is all wet when she comes to cuddle with us, and we've been at a complete loss as to why. Well, today, we found out:

Apparently, she has been lounging in our bathroom sink, trying to lick up the water driplets from the leaky faucet... However, that's not the end of it. As I was browsing through some old pictures, I came across this:

I guess she's some sort of sink-lounging-addict.... Just the right size and shape to make her feel right at home...

what will it be?

With just 13 days left until we find out if we're having a boy or a girl, we thought we'd give you all the opportunity to cast your vote and see who's right. The poll to your left will close at noon on the big day - October 3rd.

Lessons in Bad-Wiffery

So, I'm a bad wife. Our building is pretty air-tight to get into: You need a clicker to get into the parking lot. You need a key to get from the parking lot to the front door. You need a different key to open the front doors. And you need a different key to open the apartment door. The other day, I dropped Alec off at class so I could run a few errands while he was gone, and he would call when I needed to come pick him up. Well, he did, but my phone was in the other room with the ringer turned off.. He was able to get a ride home, though... However, he couldn't get into the building because we've only been using one set of keys and he didn't have it because I did. He managed to climb the fence to the parking lot, since that was the best bet I would see him because our office overlooks the parking lot. However, I was too busy playing The Sims (I'm so bad, I know) and didn't see. Nor did I notice when he threw a nut from the tree at our 4th floor window, but missed and ended up breaking the 3rd floor window. Nor did I notice when he climbed up the [should be condemned] back stairs to the "not an exit" locked door of the kitchen.. a mere 10 yards away from the office window and had I looked up I would have seen his smiling, waving little personage and the whole ordeal could have been over. But no, he had to call his dad have his dad write me an email telling me to call Alec, and even then I didn't get it... (stupid Sims). Finally, it dawned on me that he had been gone a really long time, so I went to my phone to call. And what did I find, 16 missed calls! I'm such a BAD wife!!! :( In the end, he made it home, after waiting outside for 1/2-an-hour while stupid me was wasting time on a stupid computer game... who would have ever thought?

On to happier things... I've been a bit inspired by our great place and have built a shower curtain. Not just because I felt like it, but also because we sort of needed one. The way our tub is set up, the rod goes around 2 sides of the tub, making a standard shower curtain too short. Also, the curtain rod is hung high enough above the tub that the curtain barely comes down far enough to do it's job... so we really needed something different anyway. Here's the finished product:

Max has also been training Alec to be a dad. The last 4 nights or so, he's just been crying and whining all night long. It seems like every hour or so, he'll cry and howl until someone - usually Alec because he's nice to me and feels bad that I haven't been sleeping well anyway - comes and watches him eat. That's all he needs. He doesn't want someone to pet him, there's nothing wrong with him, he just wants someone there while he eats. He's so silly!

Here is a picture of the kitties nuggling on a pile of dirty clothes [another sign of what a bad wife I am] ... too cute!

This is the tree outside our office window. It's beautiful. It also has 2 resident squirrels, Jimmy and Sally. Sally is a bit camera-shy.

Everything's Up-to-Date in Kansas City

Well... Here we are!!!

After an extremely exciting (boring and long) drive from Utah, we made it. To make a long story short, we got into our apartment (finally) by signing the lease and then taking a first look at it. It's beautiful! :) It's in a building that used to be a hotel in the early 1900's. It's been a bit worn down, and unloved, and there were a TON of cobwebs, critters, and dusties everywhere, but we've made a little (1600 sq/ft) home of it. (The pictures are some of the beautiful architectural detailing of the apartment as well as our sunroom that I'm still at a loss as to what to do with).

We've spent most of our time here unpacking - Alec has been going to school and really enjoying it, so really I've done most of the unpacking, but we made a deal when we were still in Logan that since he did most of the packing while I worked, I would unpack while he got educated. (It's better this way anyway, because now things are where I want them.)

The cats are adjusting pretty well. They didn't like the drive or the hotel rooms one bit, and it took a day or so for them to decide this was an okay place to live. Max still gets a little lost because it's so big, but we never said he was a rocket scientist kitty. Sasha's favorite activity is terrorizing the pigeons that live outside our bedroom window, but as long as she stays inside, I'm okay with that.

We went to a KC Cheifs football game last week. One of Alec's professors has season tickets that he gives to the students when he can't make a game. They lost miserably, but it was still fun to hang out with some of the other students in the program.