"The cabin experience"

If you've never been to the cabin, you've never lived. My dad has been building a cabin with his bare hands for about two years now. It is coming along and we have helped a tad here and there. The above pic is my little bro Dallin eating dirt. This can be a common occurence.

We went to a water hole near the property and there was an old fence. Like all encounters with old fences, this one had to be photo-documented.

Hannad and the water hole. Doesn't it look like she's posing for her Lifetouch photo?

Cameron and me. I may or may not have worn those clothes for 2 days. Showers are not common at the cabin. In fact, there is no running water yet so an extended stay has included giving yourself a sponge bath before church to get all the dirt off your body.

The outhouse is around the back. If you're lucky, the wind might blow the "blanket door" out of the way while you're in there and you can feel a cool breeze. And somebody might see you. Awkward.

The classical stylings of the expectant mother

The idea that pregnancy can be laughed at really makes up for those uncomfortable moments of achy calves and heartburn. Lately I have misplaced things that I was carrying in my hands, thrown a marker across the classroom on accident, and locked our 4 weiner dogs in their cage for 12 hours while I was at work. Thankfully, they didn't come down with a horrible case of UTI. They looked like rats trying to escape from a burning building when we got home. There didn't seem to be any "accidents " although the faint smell of urine is ever-present.

Until . . . the next morning when the dog poop was discovered underneath the blankets, waiting there like a horrible hidden surprise. Imagine the desperation of a small dog, locked inside and needing to go potty, and then finally going in his own bed and covering the evidence. Anybody know a good pet therapist?


But let's get to the title of this post. Last weekend we went to a wedding reception for a girl in our ward. I thought it might be cold in the building, so I brought a stretchy black sweater. We were sitting around a table with our cute Bolivian bishop and some of our friends. I pull out the sweater to put it on a lo and behold . . . .


It's not a sweater!

Black stretchy pajama pants! How convenient!

The whole table was laughing and saying it was my prego brain. The next thing I knew, my bishop grabbed the pants, held them up, and put them on his head. Great moment.

Pull out the pink????

The doc said there's a 70% chance we're having a girl. So what do we think about those odds? Do we start buying flowery crib bumpers? Anyway, he was nice enough to check real quick for us and said he can do it again later but I don't want to bug him at my Nov. appointment. So I think I'll ask him in December and get the final word.

"Brainstorm" and is my fly open?

So this year I was conned into becoming the coach of the Brainstorm team at Westwood. This is a trivia game that is similar to Jeopardy and it's actually on TV. Each team has 3 players and they have buzzers. The host is named Dave, and acts like any other normal game show host.

The pic above is some random team I found online. So here's why I'm sharing this story. As a pregnant woman whose pants and skirts don't fit right now, I'm always looking for an excuse to dress casually at work. I also started a routine 3 years ago that on Tuesdays and Thursdays I basically don't do my hair. I put it in a clip or pony tail. So the day of the Brainstorm filming happened to be a Tuesday. I dressed down, not thinking that other coaches from other schools may be dressed up. I wore a blue Westwood t-shirt, khakis that barely zip up, and sandals.

My team on the other hand, wore black suits. The other coach that came with me wore dress pants and a tie. So I was looking a tad on the shoddy side. To top it off, I have a cut on my cheek that hasn't healed and it's huge and red. I don't put makeup on it so it can heal.

So we get to Phoenix for the filming and the other teams and coaches are there, all professionally dressed. They ask who the coach is for Westwood and the lady says, "Oh! I thought you were one of the students." Yeah, I get that all the time. Then I find out that during the filming of the show, I will be called out of the audience to be introduced. So I frantically go to the b-room, put makeup on my cut which makes it look worse close-up I'm sure, and I tuck in my shirt. I realize that the fly area of my pants is folded so that it's going to look like my zipper is down. Not good. But oh well, what could I do? I was feeling self-concious.

So I joked with one of the students about her saying during the show, "I just want to give a shout out to my coaches' unborn child." I was joking, but of course she wanted to do it. So the time comes. They call me out to be on camera. Picture me standing awkwardly in front of those boys in that picture, my fly looking like it's down, bad hair, totally underdressed. So it comes to the girl's turn and she says, " This is my coach, Mrs. Lee. She's pregnant."

Awkward silence. No one really knew how to react, especially the host. And all the camera people and judges just stared at me. It was a rather embarrassing moment, I have to say.

So guess what? It will be out there in living rooms across Arizona on November 19th. If anyone has Cox channel 7, it's on at 6:30 pm. You can T-vo it for me and we can all have a good laugh.

Lessons of the day: 1. It's better to be overdressed. 2. Don't announce pregnancy on a game show.